How so? If given the choice of buying a 2 liter coke for $1.20 + $0.66 tax = $1.86
or buying 3 - 20 oz. bottles of coke for $0.99 each, $2.97 + $0.60 tax = $3.57
I think most people would still buy the 2 liter.
It’s interesting that the OP is okay with taxes on cigarettes and booze but not on soda. I’m guessing it’s because he consumes more soda than cigarettes or booze.
Governments primary reason for levying taxes is to raise money to pay for government services. The best way to lower taxes, is to reduce the size of government.
Dude. I’m a lawyer. Do you really want to argue that the reason I don’t object to booze taxes is that I don’t drink enough to care about them? For the record, I do object to taxing alcohol, but feel these taxes are so universally well-established that fighting them is futile. Ditto tobacco.
As for the question of people buying more small bottles as a result of this tax - I admit it’s speculative, and I’m not particularly committed to that point. I would point out, though, that anything that narrows the price gap between small and large bottles, as this tax will, would be expected to make the smaller bottles more attractive. This is particularly so given the advantages I’ve already discussed - portability, etc.
When I talk about education, I’m not just talking about education narrowly focused on nutrition - though of course, that’s important and desirable. I’m talking about education - literacy, numeracy, history, civics, research skills. I believe, perhaps naively, that a person who can read, and think critically about what they read, and find things to read on their own, has a profoundly different worldview and set of options from a person who can’t do these things. A person with those skills can find recipes, or read newspaper articles about how burgers will kill them, or whatever they wish. And such a person can get a job that lets them budget for food more than one day in advance.
That said, I agree that some people, despite their level of education, will make bad food choices. Hell, the only reason I’m fairly healthy is probably youth and fortunate genetics - I eat crap on a regular basis. And do you know what? I think I should be allowed to do so. I don’t see a need for the state to intervene. So long as I know what I’m doing, and others do as well, I think informed adults should be allowed to make informed choices - even ones I think are wrong.
Exactly. I can’t say, for a certainty, that fixing DC public schools so that they produce functional adults won’t help solve the nutrition issue. But people are coming out of this system with so much stacked against them now - how could it not help make them more functional, and thus savvier consumers of food (along with everything else)?
Ouch. I’m not disagreeing, but it is shocking. I have a feeling that the people this affects the most, won’t know about the tax and won’t know why prices have gone up. The fact that DC seems to throw a lot of money at the schools and it hasn’t helped much is pretty disheartening although it appears that some strides have been made. I don’t know that having more education on healthy foods will be the way to go either since a portion of the city’s population historically haven’t good access to fresh fruits in vegetables and a lot of the corner stores and smaller supermarkets don’t seem to carry much in the way of produce.
I’m no mathematician, but won’t this leave DC’s soda tax rate in line with what they charge in the suburbs? This wouldn’t be the driving force for me to go out to the suburbs to buy groceries, when the longer lines in the District, lack of parking, and DC bag tax haven’t.
No, the soda tax will be much higher than in the suburbs. MD is 6%, while VA is 1.5%. Since the District tax will is by the ounce, the percentage will vary depending on the size of the bottle - but it’ll work out to about a 33% tax on two-liter bottles, with a bit over a 10% tax on cans.
D.C. Council Member Mary Cheh’s proposed beverage tax would include much more then just soda. Cheh’s proposal would target all sugary beverages. Sport drinks, juices, iced tea, lemonade, if it has sugar, Cheh wants to tax it. This would lead to confusion as baristas attempt to calculate the tax of a large black coffee with two sugars. It would be the 1993 snack food tax fiasco all over again.
The dividing line between low-income and outright poverty is a string of coins. Low-income families shop for food by looking at price tags, not the USDA food pyramid. Regressive taxation not only stretches the food budget, but could wreak devastation on the whole family economy. It isn’t the president of Pepsi that will join the unemployment line, but the delivery driver, the convenience store clerk and the hot dog vendor.
A per-ounce tax, as opposed to a percentage tax, is precisely in accord with other “sin taxes.” For example, cigarettes are taxed at a flat rate per pack, not as a percentage of whatever the final retail price is. Buying cigarettes in a carton, versus individual packs, doesn’t change the tax.
I think it should be higher, and include pretty much all processed foods and fast food, too. And end corn and soy subsidies, for god’s sake. One of the majors reasons that junk food is so much cheaper is because us taxpayers are subsidizing the raw materials of our own poison. Of course, that’s a pipe dream that’ll never ever ever happen, because government is snuggled down way too tight in bed with these industries. Most of the soda taxes that are being proposed now probably won’t even happen, and will be repealed shortly if they do.
At best Mary Cheh’s attempt at micromanaging other people’s lives will simply create more pollution because people will drive outside the district and buy car loads of the consumables they want in order to save money. Instead of a beer run it will be Sunny D. It is a guaranteed economic and ecological boondoggle that will ultimately lose tax revenue as people shop elsewhere. Grocery stores and the vendors that supply them will take a huge hit on this.
I don’t think it will make much difference pollution wise. A lot of people with cars already do quite a bit of shopping outside of the district. There is no Costco in DC so anybody who shops there is already outside of DC. I see lots of DC plates in the parking lot at the Arlington Costco which is where I would probably buy soda.
NoMoreDCTaxes, its soda and juice that is being taxed at a higher rate not the other stuff so it shouldn’t really make a difference in a family’s food budget.
Obviously there are taxable items being sold in DC or the tax wouldn’t be proposed. Soda and other consumables currently purchased in DC will be purchased outside. It is a guaranteed loss of revenue for DC.
Not only will soda be purchased outside of DC, there will be an increase of general grocery purchase (outside of DC) because of the extra trips.
I think most of the commenters in this thread underestimate how difficult it can be to make healthy eating choices, how difficult it is for parents to insulate their children from poor eating choices, how heavily subsidized sweetened drinks are, how much marketing and product-development sophistication is brought to bear in circumventing customers’ rational decision-making abilities, and how serious the problems of sugared sodas are, esp. to the African-American population. Oh yeah, and how many government funds are spent combatting their health consequences.
Maybe there’s some sort of libertarian ideal world where people really could make rational choices with a full understanding of the facts. But we don’t live in it – unquestioned assumptions, status-quo bias, poor education, and the awesome budget and sophistication of The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo all have their thumbs heavily on the scale. In the meantime, I’m perfectly happy to have government create disincentives for people not to engage in self-destructive behavior, especially when it could have the side-benefit of saving us a ton of health-care tax dollars. And come on folks – this is very low-hanging fruit.
I find it far more likely that a very small percentage of people would “protest shop” outside the district, a very small percentage of people would stop drinking soda, and the vast majority would pay the tax.
You’re forgetting tourists and those who buy sodas on their commute/during their workday as huge demographic in DC. These people would have virtually no choice but to pay the tax if they want a soda.
I’m sure a small faction of middle-class misguided faux-cost-conscious moms would add soda to the list of things they buy on their already extant shopping trips outside the district, but the upper and lower classes (both of which, I believe, are significantly larger in DC than in America at large) are not going to change their behavior over this.
Indeed. I find it fascinating that corporations spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year on advertising, and yet every single person you talk to will claim to be personally exempt from its effects. Really? You think they’re pissing all that money away?
That’s not even getting into tax breaks, deals with schools, deals with the USDA, deals with the FTC, etc etc. A soda/sweet foods/junk foods tax would be a very very small counterpunch thrown by the little guy in a very very uneven fight.
This is certainly true, but one has to wonder how much of this there will be. Without evidence, I assume it’s going to be very small. People who buy soda in bulk, have easy access to transportation, and are price sensitive probably already buy in the suburbs, because that’s where the Targets and Wal-Marts are, not to mention the Costcos. I doubt there is a huge demand for cheap bulk sodas that’s being satisfied in the District – price sensitive people already drive to Virginia, or they already go without. I think the effect is overwhelmingly going to be to disincentivize people from buying sodas at lunch, and probably the soda tax will make up for lost tax revenue on both forgone soda sales and the (I think small) lost taxes from people buying groceries in the 'burbs while they’re there on a Coke-hunting trip.