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Soda Tax

Burning Giraffe

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Burgaw, NC
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Wall Street Journal

Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to help pay for an overhaul of the nation's health-care system.

The taxes would pay for only a fraction of the cost to expand health-insurance coverage to all Americans and would face strong opposition from the beverage industry. They also could spark a backlash from consumers who would have to pay several cents more for a soft drink.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee is set to hear proposals from about a dozen experts about how to pay for the comprehensive health-care overhaul that President Barack Obama wants to enact this year. Early estimates put the cost of the plan at around $1.2 trillion. The administration has so far only earmarked funds for about half of that amount.

Has anyone seen the movie Demolition Man? Well, in it, every kind of food that was deemed unhealthy was made illegal. That won't happen here, but as the government assumes responsibility for our health care, you can damn well bet that anything deemed unhealthy is going to be taxed to death. If Americans don't start fighting Liberalism in this country, it will be too late. Americans have gotten weak and lazy, primed to enter into that fashionable European decay... or what I like to call Societal Rot. They will weaken every aspect of the American Economy and destroy the foundations of liberty for shorter work weeks, free health care, federally financed retirement, and less personal responsibility. If we don't have the stomach to take on these cultural problems manifesting themselves as a liberal political movement, we are going to go down with the ship.

If the Republican Party cannot find it within themselves to stand upon firm philosophical convictions and meaningful mores than a new Party must evolve to supplant the decrepit soon to be corpse of the GOP.
 
Wall Street Journal



Has anyone seen the movie Demolition Man? Well, in it, every kind of food that was deemed unhealthy was made illegal. That won't happen here, but as the government assumes responsibility for our health care, you can damn well bet that anything deemed unhealthy is going to be taxed to death. If Americans don't start fighting Liberalism in this country, it will be too late. Americans have gotten weak and lazy, primed to enter into that fashionable European decay... or what I like to call Societal Rot. They will weaken every aspect of the American Economy and destroy the foundations of liberty for shorter work weeks, free health care, federally financed retirement, and less personal responsibility. If we don't have the stomach to take on these cultural problems manifesting themselves as a liberal political movement, we are going to go down with the ship.

If the Republican Party cannot find it within themselves to stand upon firm philosophical convictions and meaningful mores than a new Party must evolve to supplant the decrepit soon to be corpse of the GOP.

Taken from George Wills column.

In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville anticipated people being governed by "an immense, tutelary power" determined to take "sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate." It would be a power "absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident and gentle," aiming for our happiness but wanting "to be the only agent and the sole arbiter of that happiness." It would, Tocqueville said, provide people security, anticipate their needs, direct their industries and divide their inheritances. It would envelop society in "a network of petty regulations -- complicated, minute and uniform." But softly: "It does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them" until people resemble "a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

George Will : Upside-Down Economy - Townhall.com
 
Taken from George Wills column.

In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville anticipated people being governed by "an immense, tutelary power" determined to take "sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate." It would be a power "absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident and gentle," aiming for our happiness but wanting "to be the only agent and the sole arbiter of that happiness." It would, Tocqueville said, provide people security, anticipate their needs, direct their industries and divide their inheritances. It would envelop society in "a network of petty regulations -- complicated, minute and uniform." But softly: "It does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them" until people resemble "a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

George Will : Upside-Down Economy - Townhall.com

I am committed to doing everything in my power to avoid contributing to the US tax system. The only taxes I am willing to pay are property taxes and sales taxes, because a majority of that money goes to the county and state. I'm going to have to figure out how to run a vehicle on something other than oil. I know several people of fill up at McDonalds using their old vegetable oil to power their cars. That's not a bad idea. The Federal Government is going bankrupt and they intend to squeeze the productive class of Americans. The only way to fight this is to cease being productive. We cannot defeat liberals politically. Our only hope is to quicken the bankruptcy of the federal government and produce primarily for our own needs. The government taxes so much of what we produce for others that it is no longer economically beneficial for us to do so. We'll have to go back to producing for ourselves and cultivating our own lands.

Democrats require willing victims. I will not be one. I already lost my productivity when the housing market crashed so it will be easy for me not to produce in the future. I simply will not start another business. I'll make just enough money to avoid federal income taxes, which is getting easier and easier as time goes on. I've already reduced my energy bills by 70%. I'm looking for ways of reducing my transportation by 70%. I've quit smoking and started working out in order to avoid future health care costs. I purchase the majority of the things I need at resale shops to keep my consumption costs down.

I am learning very quickly that I can live on less and less, and that for the most part I can avoid behaviors that allow the government to use me to fund their irresponsible projects. All I really need to learn how to do is to grow my own food and provide myself with transportation that doesn't require the use of oil and I'll be fairly autonomous.
 
I am committed to doing everything in my power to avoid contributing to the US tax system. The only taxes I am willing to pay are property taxes and sales taxes, because a majority of that money goes to the county and state. I'm going to have to figure out how to run a vehicle on something other than oil. I know several people of fill up at McDonalds using their old vegetable oil to power their cars. That's not a bad idea. The Federal Government is going bankrupt and they intend to squeeze the productive class of Americans. The only way to fight this is to cease being productive. We cannot defeat liberals politically. Our only hope is to quicken the bankruptcy of the federal government and produce primarily for our own needs. The government taxes so much of what we produce for others that it is no longer economically beneficial for us to do so. We'll have to go back to producing for ourselves and cultivating our own lands.

Democrats require willing victims. I will not be one. I already lost my productivity when the housing market crashed so it will be easy for me not to produce in the future. I simply will not start another business. I'll make just enough money to avoid federal income taxes, which is getting easier and easier as time goes on. I've already reduced my energy bills by 70%. I'm looking for ways of reducing my transportation by 70%. I've quit smoking and started working out in order to avoid future health care costs. I purchase the majority of the things I need at resale shops to keep my consumption costs down.

I am learning very quickly that I can live on less and less, and that for the most part I can avoid behaviors that allow the government to use me to fund their irresponsible projects. All I really need to learn how to do is to grow my own food and provide myself with transportation that doesn't require the use of oil and I'll be fairly autonomous.

I hate, hate, hate property taxes more than any other tax. You never own your property when it is perpetually taxed. :censored

I'm pretty much the same, except I can't grow my own food(townhouse).

I have to quit smoking too. It's very difficult as you know.

Hastening its demise really sucks but if it doesn't happen no one will learn that this garbage is unsustainable. If you caught 20/20 the other day they were talking about how Medicare is robbing the young. The comments section is full of people who didn't read or listen to the meat of the story.

The part that is most important is that it will run out of money.

Old folks just railed on about how they paid into it and they want it.
Sheep, damn sheep.
 
This tax has been proposed several times already in the past, spanning at least two Administrations. What has stopped it each time is the sugar industry which has enormous lobbying power in the United States, equivalent to that of even the pharmaceutical industry. It's the same reason why there is sugar in everything imaginable.

Legislation needs to target sugar in products, not consumers. Sugar is in practically everything due to extensive support of the sugar industry by the government, and taxing soda pop will not resolve the issue. There need to be hard laws limiting sugar content in products, and there are more than enough modern studies to back up such an action.
 
This tax has been proposed several times already in the past, spanning at least two Administrations. What has stopped it each time is the sugar industry which has enormous lobbying power in the United States, equivalent to that of even the pharmaceutical industry. It's the same reason why there is sugar in everything imaginable.

Legislation needs to target sugar in products, not consumers. Sugar is in practically everything due to extensive support of the sugar industry by the government, and taxing soda pop will not resolve the issue. There need to be hard laws limiting sugar content in products, and there are more than enough modern studies to back up such an action.

Sugar? So much of sugar has been replaced by corn. Sugar is much healthier for us than these corn syrups. Granted, I'm not much of a fan of either, but I prefer sugar to High Fructose Corn Syrup and the Sugar Lobby to the Corn Lobby.

And thank god these industries have lobbies. If they didn't, they probably wouldn't survive.
 
I quit smoking about five months ago because I refuse to give anymore tobacco tax to the leftists who don't have the stones to simply outlaw tobacco. They want to suck as much money out of smokers as possible. Now the leftists are starting in on soft drinks and other snacks foods.

I rarely buy any of that **** so the leftists can kiss my a**. I'm getting extremely tired of the neo-marxists bleeding the American people of their money.
 
Wall Street Journal



Has anyone seen the movie Demolition Man? Well, in it, every kind of food that was deemed unhealthy was made illegal. That won't happen here, but as the government assumes responsibility for our health care, you can damn well bet that anything deemed unhealthy is going to be taxed to death. If Americans don't start fighting Liberalism in this country, it will be too late. Americans have gotten weak and lazy, primed to enter into that fashionable European decay... or what I like to call Societal Rot. They will weaken every aspect of the American Economy and destroy the foundations of liberty for shorter work weeks, free health care, federally financed retirement, and less personal responsibility. If we don't have the stomach to take on these cultural problems manifesting themselves as a liberal political movement, we are going to go down with the ship.

If the Republican Party cannot find it within themselves to stand upon firm philosophical convictions and meaningful mores than a new Party must evolve to supplant the decrepit soon to be corpse of the GOP.

Well, out in California, the government has put a stop to, or tried to, put a stop to fast food restuarants in poor areas. So to say it wont happen might be a little naive.

Good thing I dont drink "soda". I drink "coke" Do people really call it "soda"? Or am I just a good ol' Louisiana Southern boy?
 
Good thing I dont drink "soda". I drink "coke" Do people really call it "soda"? Or am I just a good ol' Louisiana Southern boy?

I grew up calling it "soda." Or "soda pop."
 
I quit smoking about five months ago because I refuse to give anymore tobacco tax to the leftists who don't have the stones to simply outlaw tobacco. They want to suck as much money out of smokers as possible. Now the leftists are starting in on soft drinks and other snacks foods.

I rarely buy any of that **** so the leftists can kiss my a**. I'm getting extremely tired of the neo-marxists bleeding the American people of their money.
Im disappointed that you did not chew it and spit gobs into a bowl 10 mtres away just like in the old cowboy films! I suppose the new ones like "Broke Back Mountain" are more factualy correct but it lacked baccy juice spitting.
 
I am committed to doing everything in my power to avoid contributing to the US tax system. The only taxes I am willing to pay are property taxes and sales taxes, because a majority of that money goes to the county and state. I'm going to have to figure out how to run a vehicle on something other than oil. I know several people of fill up at McDonalds using their old vegetable oil to power their cars. That's not a bad idea. The Federal Government is going bankrupt and they intend to squeeze the productive class of Americans. The only way to fight this is to cease being productive. We cannot defeat liberals politically. Our only hope is to quicken the bankruptcy of the federal government and produce primarily for our own needs. The government taxes so much of what we produce for others that it is no longer economically beneficial for us to do so. We'll have to go back to producing for ourselves and cultivating our own lands.

Democrats require willing victims. I will not be one. I already lost my productivity when the housing market crashed so it will be easy for me not to produce in the future. I simply will not start another business. I'll make just enough money to avoid federal income taxes, which is getting easier and easier as time goes on. I've already reduced my energy bills by 70%. I'm looking for ways of reducing my transportation by 70%. I've quit smoking and started working out in order to avoid future health care costs. I purchase the majority of the things I need at resale shops to keep my consumption costs down.

I am learning very quickly that I can live on less and less, and that for the most part I can avoid behaviors that allow the government to use me to fund their irresponsible projects. All I really need to learn how to do is to grow my own food and provide myself with transportation that doesn't require the use of oil and I'll be fairly autonomous.

as for productive class, the very rich are often not producing anything, just living off the productivity of others.
but I agree with living on less. our lives are so cluttered with things that we don't need that life gets too complicated. it is very good for an individual's economics to live on less, but it plays havoc with macroeconomics. the govt depends on us being consumers, and if enough of us minimize our consumption, it will be a long and messy period of adjustment for the nations economy...
 
Good thing I dont drink "soda". I drink "coke" Do people really call it "soda"? Or am I just a good ol' Louisiana Southern boy?

I can't stand Coke. The pop that I drink is usually Mountain Dew.

Soda is used in baking...
 
And if any of you are complaining about this, but supported raising taxes on tobacco products, tough ****.

You are the ones that brought this on.
 
I can't stand Coke. The pop that I drink is usually Mountain Dew.

Soda is used in baking...

I don't like it either. I prefer to drink sparkling water, with only a hint of fruit flavor and no sugar or sweetener.

Besides, I'm diabetic, so sugar is not something I should indulge in.
 
I can't stand Coke. The pop that I drink is usually Mountain Dew.

Soda is used in baking...

haha, the moment I read that I was going "$10 says he's from Michigan" and then I looked at your location and sure enough.....
 
I love it. First the smokers. Now the fatties who drink coke every day at MacDonald's. I'm surprised conservatives don't support taxing the people most likely to drag down our healthcare system. I can't wait till they start taxing sugar. If my altoids go up a few cents I will surely get off...oh **** it. I can afford $10 a pack.
 
I have already cut back on soft drinks, based on price alone. I buy Diet Dr. Thunder from Walmart instead of Dr. Pepper. Dr. Thunder WAS 67 cents for the 2 liter bottle, has gone up to 78 cents. Same size Dr. Pepper is $1.49, and I won't pay that. I will pay $1, so if it goes on sale, then I buy Dr. Pepper.
If govt wants to tax soft drinks and other non-essential foods, it should tell us exactly what the tax is for. If for carbon, as in CO2, they could certainly use less of that. Most of it bubbles off as soon as you pour in on ice anyway.
I might support that, but not sugar....
 
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I love it. First the smokers. Now the fatties who drink coke every day at MacDonald's. I'm surprised conservatives don't support taxing the people most likely to drag down our healthcare system. I can't wait till they start taxing sugar. If my altoids go up a few cents I will surely get off...oh **** it. I can afford $10 a pack.

First, not everyone who drinks soda/pop/coke/whatever is a "fattie" :roll:. As for taxing the soft drinks, I have no issue with it at all...so long as alcohol gets a tax increase as well.

I'm one of those nasty smokers, and yep, I still smoke, tax hike or not. However, I now roll my own because it's far cheaper. I don't dispute that smoking is a horrible habit. I don't dispute taxes being raised on it. What I dispute is that tobacco is taxed routinely to fund so many government wants and needs. I think it's about time other products, especially beer and liquor, feel the tax axe as smokers have been for years. I think a little fairness across the tax board would meet less criticism, but that's just my opinion.


-k
 
haha, the moment I read that I was going "$10 says he's from Michigan" and then I looked at your location and sure enough.....

We used pop in Colorado as well.
 
This is just a logical extension of sin taxes. If you are going to tax certain behaviors because they are somehow worse than others(but still legal), then you should tax all products that are in some ways harmful. Tobacco, alcohol, sugar, caffeine, red meat, and so on.
 
This is just the beignning folks. As soon as "we" supported the cigaratte tax, we left ourselves open. Enjoy, peeps. Funny thing, it's probably the poorer Americans who smoke more butts and drink the most soda. And we want to legalize dope? Ha! Imagine the tax on that. :rofl
 
The Federal Government is going bankrupt and they intend to squeeze the productive class of Americans. The only way to fight this is to cease being productive. We cannot defeat liberals politically. Our only hope is to quicken the bankruptcy of the federal government and produce primarily for our own needs.

This sounds completely off the wall, but if you can find a copy of Kate Wilhelm and Theodore Thomas's [ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=&field-author=Kate+Wilhelm&field-title=The+Clone&field-isbn=&field-publisher=&node=&url=&field-feature_browse-bin=&field-binding_browse-bin=&field-subject=&field-language=&field-dateop=&field-datemod=&field-dateyear=&sort=relevancerank&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=25&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=15]The Clone[/ame] you'll see an interesting if unintended allegory of what happens when you starve a voracious monster.
 
Legislation needs to target sugar in products, not consumers.

This is so typical of the ignorance of the lefties.

All taxes on "products" are paid by the consumers of those products, ergo, the tax is on the consumer.
 
I quit smoking about five months ago because I refuse to give anymore tobacco tax to the leftists who don't have the stones to simply outlaw tobacco. They want to suck as much money out of smokers as possible. Now the leftists are starting in on soft drinks and other snacks foods.

I rarely buy any of that **** so the leftists can kiss my a**. I'm getting extremely tired of the neo-marxists bleeding the American people of their money.

I didn't quit. After Rick Perry added a dollar a pack tax on cigarettes, I bought a machine that injects tubes with tobacco, and began rolling my own. My cost went down to 47 cents a pack. However, Obama added a 25 dollar tax on each pound of tobacco, so now it costs me $2.06 per pack. I am in the process of purchasing bags of tobacco leaf, which I will then shred myself. It is not as hard to do as you think. Then my cost will go back down to about 90 cents per pack. The best part of smoking your own manufactured cigarettes is that, each time you light up, you are giving Rick Perry and Barack Obama a big, fat middle finger. :)
 
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I didn't quit. After Rick Perry added a dollar a pack tax on cigarettes, I bought a machine that injects tubes with tobacco, and began rolling my own. My cost went down to 47 cents a pack. However, Obama added a 25 dollar tax on each pound of tobacco, so now it costs me $2.06 per pack. I am in the process of purchasing bags of tobacco leaf, which I will then shred myself. It is not as hard to do as you think. Then my cost will go back down to about 90 cents per pack. The best part of smoking your own manufactured cigarettes is that, each time you light up, you are giving Rick Perry and Barack Obama a big, fat middle finger. :)

Three cheers for rolling your own!! :2dancing:

-k
 
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