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Sticker shock over Seattle's new sugary drink tax

The ONLY way that a sin tax can be even remotely legit is if it goes 100% to the "sin". Tobacco taxes 100% to tobacco-related medical treatment and/or tobacco cessation programs. I can live with that, but I still disapprove in principle.

If any of it goes elsewhere, then it's just sleazy picking the pockets of the politically powerless. We're supposed to be better than that.
 
Fiddytree said:
Depends on where the dollars go and the perceived need of those funds, if you ask me. If the dollars just go into the general fund or are used to pay salaries of bureaucrats or advertising campaigns, I'm not as interested in them save desperate revenue generation. However, because sin taxes often have public health consequences, I'd rather institute a sin tax in order to provide services and care to folks.

For instance, half of all cigarettes smoked in this country are from people with mental health needs. Given the substantial health problems, costs to taxpayers to support declining health, and the dearth of cost-effective services for mental health and substance abuse, I would be and have been in support of sin tax increases that take the revenue and put that into city and state mental health funds to create services that didn't exist prior.

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This is what I've always wanted. If you're going to tax something that is bad, fine. But give it BACK to the people you're taxing in the form of services they will need down the road. Taking cigarette tax money and using it to buy school books for children is not representative.
 
If you're going to tax sugar in soda then you should tax ALL junk food relative to how bad it is nutritionally. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to create a fair formula. Singling out one item is just making an example of somebody. They also shouldn't be taxing it at insane rates. Adding a dollar to a case of soda that goes into a healthcare fund might barely be acceptable but this? It's ridiculous.
 
In Minnesota, we had Blue Laws on the books for nearly 160 years......no liquor sales on sunday.

Someone with two brain cells to rub together finally did some math to figure out how much money was being lost by people going across the border to Wisconsin, Iowa, etc.

Sunday liquor sales became legal on July 2017......but it took 160 years of lost revenue to get to that point.
 
SMTA said:
Damn right they are.
Fountain soft drinks have insane profit margins.
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Which is true because they're mostly water. But all food-related businesses and probably a lot that aren't food-related are going to suffer. A family that has to go outside of the city for soda is just going to take all of their grocery shopping outside of the city. They might take a fair bit of their non-grocery shopping too since they're leaving anyhow. Tax revenue will suffer. Businesses will suffer and maybe close. All because liberals are idiots.
 
Polar Bum said:
In Minnesota, we had Blue Laws on the books for nearly 160 years......no liquor sales on sunday.

Someone with two brain cells to rub together finally did some math to figure out how much money was being lost by people going across the border to Wisconsin, Iowa, etc.

Sunday liquor sales became legal on July 2017......but it took 160 years of lost revenue to get to that point.
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Blame the protestant social reformers for that. ;)

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Cephus said:
Sure, they can stop being a liberal. Give that a shot.
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What, be more conservative? Yikes. You mean, like, try to stop social change, try to preserve a moment in history and legislate that society remains in that moment? That'd be just idiotic.
 
Fiddytree said:
Blame the protestant social reformers for that. ;)

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As with anything for the "greater good of the people", they are ideas so great they have to be mandated by law. :roll:
 
Next they will put a sin tax on red meat products.

Sin taxes should be illegal
 
Polar Bum said:
As with anything for the "greater good of the people", they are ideas so great they have to be mandated by law. :roll:
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Many good ideas have to be forced and enforced. This may not be one of them.

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I dont think anyone actually believes the sin tax thing. Its obvious politicians are pocketing money. No human wants this. Taxation without representation. I think homeless people would make better politicians that what we have now.
 
I am pretty sure that none of our ancestors ever went so far on the "Drinking sugar is a Sin, well, if we dont like the drink anyways" idea.

The New Dark Age is here.
 
Fiddytree said:
For what it's worth, you may have to edit that bit about weed. After Sessions rescinded the DOJ guidance on state laws regarding pot this week, you saw a rapid denunciation by a number of Republicans, not on individual liberty grounds, but on states rights and previous personal assurance grounds.

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If I see a reversal of the DOJ's direction I'll call myself out.
 
Most of that expected $15 million is allocated for the "poor" and the children (the liberals' favorite causes).

What if Seattle doesn't even come close to that number, because people will just not buy their usual amount of soda in Seattle, but rather somewhere else?
Would that mean the "poor" and the children would go without?!?
 
Maybe Wine Coolers make a big comeback, I mean if you are going to be paying so much for soda might as well pay a little more and get a buzz off of it.


Well, if we drink a 4-pak anyways.
 
Barnacle said:
Most of that expected $15 million is allocated for the "poor" and the children (the liberals' favorite causes).

What if Seattle doesn't even come close to that number, because people will just not buy their usual amount of soda in Seattle, but rather somewhere else?
Would that mean the "poor" and the children would go without?!?
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A very temporary situation to be be sure, come back in 5 years and look at where the money goes.
 
lurchadams said:
If I see a reversal of the DOJ's direction I'll call myself out.
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It'll be interesting to see what Gardner does. His threats were far more serious than what even Murkowski said after she was getting pressure from Zinke.

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Cephus said:
Which is true because they're mostly water. But all food-related businesses and probably a lot that aren't food-related are going to suffer. A family that has to go outside of the city for soda is just going to take all of their grocery shopping outside of the city. They might take a fair bit of their non-grocery shopping too since they're leaving anyhow. Tax revenue will suffer. Businesses will suffer and maybe close. All because liberals are idiots.
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Damn straight! If I'm already outside the city shopping for soda I'm going to make all my grocery shopping one trip.
 
The biggest laugh about this whole social engineering thing. That we need to pay the government extra money to buy a product thats bad for our health is the goverment gives the poor people free stamps at the tax payers exspense to buy these sodas.
 
Perotista said:
Anyone for bathtub Gatoraide? Bootlegged Pepsi? Speakeasy soda fountains? Rip opportunities for the next Seattle version of Al Capone. Or take the easy way, just do your shopping outside of Seattle.

Seattle is about the most expensive place I've been. I was TDY to Ft. Lewis, that was a good 5 years ago and everything I bought was a good 3 or 4 dollars more than at Ft. Bragg or North Carolina. Thank god the Army was paying for it. I sure wouldn't live there.
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They expect to raise all this revenue, but in the end e.g. Lose revenue because people don't buy it or they drive a half hour and buy it there.

Think about it all drinks have sugar.
From apple and grape juice to soda.

Koolaid, more so fruit punch.
Etc. ...
 
Skeptic Bob said:
That is insane. Though a part of me is curious to see if it has an effect on obesity and diabetes. I tend to doubt it but we’ll see. Regardless, I am against “sin taxes” in general.
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Amazon conquers all.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
I also remember seeing studies that switching to diet soda doesn’t result in an average loss of weight because people are more likely to just make up for those calories elsewhere. You feel less guilty about eating a snickers if you are downing it with a diet drink. So you are more likely to eat that snickers. Again, on average. If you make no changes to your diet other than switching to diet sodas you will lose weight, or at least gain less than you were. But that isn’t how most people behave.
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Bob...that's self licensing. Check this out. It's super interesting and if you look around you can find some cool studies that have been done with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing
 
Helix said:
i don't like sin taxes. they are too regressive.
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There is a certain aspect of it that the "sin taxes" are are products that have a tendency to have net loses for society and actually costs everyone else more (e.g. treating smokers for cancer which costs more than anything they've ever paid into). That aside, that's not really the government's place and I'm against all consumption taxes. They are almost all regressive, with property and gas taxes being among the worst.
 
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