I doubt the diet soda is going to be much better for you. Seattle seems crazy. Banning plastic straws. Sure wouldn't want to live there, maybe visit but they even want to ban people from driving gas and diesels into the city! So I guess skip them on the road trip across the country once they do!
Electric cars are all about control, limiting freedoms and are gimmicky. The new Tesla you have to use the touch screen to even open the glove box! Even the AC is touch screen based - which I think is unsafe compared to a tactile physical knob.
I really think these local governments are out of control. I really hope the feds step in and do something to them using the Commerce Clause to end this nonsense. I think there are certain things cities should be prohibited from regulating.
So you want to ban them from banning stuff? What's wrong with local citizens deciding what they want for their own city, anyway?
The new Tesla you have to use the touch screen to even open the glove box! Even the AC is touch screen based - which I think is unsafe compared to a tactile physical knob.
Nice about the Bolt. I just feel like Silicon Valley and other cities like LA and Seattle are out of touch with the rest of America, and some sort of bubble of repeating ideas over and over again.
I care about the environment but I also think we have to be practical about it. Newer and newer gas cars are getting cleaner and more efficient. Or maybe someone enjoys off roading in their Jeep. or someone out of state is touring the nation in their Diesel Pusher RV. I just think it's crazy for a city to try to ban people who live in other cities from even being allowed to drive there based on their car. Well by 2030 and the article mentions the mayor, so maybe it will never happen. I just hate that idea. Maybe the tourism or chamber of commerce would step up for that one.
At least with the soda tax you can just drive out of the city and buy it cheaper like the signs they posted mentioned at the store.
I just feel like Silicon Valley and other cities like LA and Seattle are out of touch with the rest of America
I thought that was one of the cool features of the US. That cities and states are much more free to come up with their own way to do things and test out new ideas without always having to go the federal government and ask for permission. If Seattle wants to do A and Minneapolis wants to do B, they can just go and do it and see what happens instead of lobbying the government to make either A or B mandatory across the whole country.
Isn’t one of the central tenets of federalism that everything should be done by the smallest government that can do it effectively? If something is done at the municipal level, it is almost definitely more democratic than if it is done at the federal level. If someone doesn’t like Seattle’s sugar tax, they can make their voice heard in city council elections, or vote with their feet, move to the suburbs, and commute into the city.
Presumably the people of Seattle are down with the tax. Who are you to say they shouldn’t have it. It’s their city, after all.
It makes sense because gas usage is very correlated with road wear, so people who drive heavier vehicles pay a proportionate share of the road maintenance costs.
> It makes sense because gas usage is very correlated with road wear, so people who drive heavier vehicles pay a proportionate share of the road maintenance costs.
There are also some cases where it makes no sense, particularly since fuel tax is a primary source of funding for infrastructure and repair.
A Toyota Prius and a Ford Focus are both around 3,000 lbs, will do roughly the same damage on the road. The Prius gets 58 mpg city and 53 highway. The Focus is at 30 city 40 highway. So for city driving the Prius driver contributes 1/2 as much to the fuel tax revenues.
It's a nice incentive to reduce emissions, however the Prius driver is not contributing proportionally to the fuel tax.
If only we could charge make a charge based on weight, mpg, and miles driven.
The brouhaha over a Prius (or heck, my Focus Electric) not paying fair share of gas taxes is overblown since hybrids and electrics still constitute a minuscule % of total road wear.
The issue will come to a head when we have 4x4s and 18 wheelers en masse hybridized or fully electric in large quantities. I don't see that happening for a decade or more out.
I honestly don't ever see the typical 4x4 being a hybrid. Living in rural Arkansas, almost everyone I know who drives a 4x4 drives an older model, and working on them is a large part of the experience.
I drive a 2000 Jeep, and wouldn't even consider buying a hybrid or fully-electric version. A diesel, absolutely, but not anything with a battery pack.
I broadly agree that we americans consume too much sugar but I'm worried that many will find drinking artificial sweeteners as detrimental as I have. Somewhere I have a link to a source article with references to the study behind this article but alas, I'm not finding it in my Pinboard - https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/....
What about all our other over-sweetened junk foods? What about all our fried snack-foods?
HFCS is chemically identical to naturally occurring fructose and glucose (high concentration of simple sugars). Not advocating to consume it, but the possible harms of consumption have to do with simple sugar metabolism, and its consequences, and not the origins of the substance.
I've posted this before, but I'd like to bring it up again for those who are unaware.
--
As a general note, the validity of claims from Mercola should be taken with a large grain of salt. He publicly holds a number of frankly dangerous opinions which he bestows upon anyone who reads his website, and has made many millions of dollars from such claims and tactics.
Among other things:
* Questioning whether HIV is the cause of AIDS, claiming manifestations of AIDS (including opportunistic infections and death) may be the result of "psychological stress" brought on by the belief that HIV is harmful.
* Claims that microwaving food alters its chemistry, despite consensus that microwaving food does not adversely affect nutrient content compared to conventionally prepared food.
* Claiming cancer risks arise from mobile phone radiation, which is pseudoscientific.
Isn't diet soda consumption also declining in favor of seltzer water (i.e. La Croix?). I thought the reason why La Croix has exploded over the past 2 years or so is because canned carbonated water is the best no calorie/no artificial sweetened alternative to soda.
Probably unrelated, but I spent 2 weeks in US early December and had trouble finding a tasty sparkling water (most tasted awful) until I randomly found LaCroix and really liked it.
At home I’m using a soda stream machine to sparkle my water (mostly tap water), and I found in LaCroix the equivalent of what I drink mostly.
So I think if it exploded as you say, the taste is involved.
I hate 'sin' taxes in all forms including this one. Tax alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and now sugar. It's meant to control behavior, but they disproportionately affect the poor. They do a poor job of controlling behavior. Any cigarette smoking given the choice between having no lunch or having no cigarettes is going to choose cigarettes every time. That's not controlling behavior it's subverting it.
In Australia, it works with tobacco taxes too, particularly because it makes it too expensive for teenagers to take it up and become heavy smokers before they're old enough to understand the consequences.
Research indicates smoking among Australian teenagers declined by about 65-70% in the 15 years to 2014.
Per the CDC[1], "Low-income persons consume more sugar drinks in relation to their overall diet than those with higher income." In fact, individuals with an income of 3.5x or more of the poverty level consume half as much as those with an income of 1.3x or less.
Levying a tax targeted at the poor does not "benefit" them.
Yes it does because the intended effects (lower consumption of sugary drinks leading to lower disease and lower health care costs) have an outsized effect on them.
Nobody is disputing sugar taxes are regressive, they’re disputing that’s actually a bad thing.
The word "sin" implicates that it's all about morality, but there are also real negative externalities associated with these stimulants that are costing society a lot of money. Also, taxes have to come from somewhere, isn't it good to tax things that are (on average) bad for society rather than only good/neutral things (like income)?
"Pigouvian tax" is the term for a tax on negative externalities.
A tax on sugar is both a sin tax and a Pigouvian tax. IMO the real reason for its introduction was the sin tax angle, but it's Pigouvian tax principles is what makes it a "good" tax.
I was under the impression that the taxes were more from a public health perspective: smoking, alcohol etc. are leading causes of death and we want to discourage public consumption while at the same time raising revenue
The whole paternalistic government thing is a bit creepy, but if you are going to do it (which we obviously are) then good to apply it somewhat equally.
Soda is basically poison. The producers would be driven out of business in any rational economy where they were not shielded from product liability law suits.
A free market requires a free and just legal system. In the US every single producer of toxic and deadly products has their own specially granted immunity from product liability, either by judicial custom or legislation.
Debatable. Here is one study[0] that claims that while it has minimal effect on people who already are heavy smokers, it does have an effect on reducing the consumption among the young.
These taxes currently only drive purchases out of your jurisdiction, lowering your tax base but not preventing the bad behavior. If you want a sugar tax to be effective it needs to cover a large enough area that I can't easily avoid it.
Boulder, CO has a two cent per ounce sugar tax. It has been extremely effective- I now always stop at a gas station in Denver to buy a soda before driving into the Boulder city limits (I only go to Boulder once or twice a month).
It's just like how we used to drive across state lines to buy cheap fireworks as a kid.
> These taxes currently only drive purchases out of your jurisdiction
Or you can use it as an employment generation exercise by setting up checkpoints at state borders to avoid import from other states, applying a higher tax on fuel locally and making it illegal to bring more fuel into the state than you go out with. A few states in India have successfully implemented the first part for alcohol for instance, and I guess other countries should have the same. Even US has differing gun laws across states, so whatever mechanism is used to enforce those can be extended to enforce this
Don't give any bright government worker wanting a promotion any ideas! I would hope the ACLU or some group would fight against internal checkpoints using the fourth amendment. Seems like ideas like this would be a good way to tear apart the US instead of uniting us... I think it's odd we live in a "United States" yet nothing is united when it comes to governing. Even states can't agree on tint laws.
A smaller government, consistent government and personal freedoms is what I support.
@olympus good point on the gun laws. New York is known for jailing and charging people with felonies. Even when they store the gun and ammo the way the TSA instructional video says to and checks it. https://youtu.be/3Xs_jrnmwoU - I wish the second amendment and full faith and credit clause was more respected. What part about "shall not be infringed" do they not understand?
There is no active mechanism to enforce gun laws when crossing state lines (and there are often safe passage laws if you are just driving through without stopping), but you can be charged if you are pulled over for another reason and the police see an illegal gun in your car.
I imagine sugar tax enforcement would work similarly to the gun enforcement, not dedicated checkpoints for private cars (commercial trucks which already have checkpoints). You get pulled over for speeding, the police officer sees you have 18 cases of soda, and all of a sudden you get two fines.
> Even US has differing gun laws across states, so whatever mechanism is used to enforce those can be extended to enforce this
Ah, so stopping minorities to shake them down for soda.
In all seriousness, you can't just set up border checkpoints in the US. You'd have to have probable cause to stop an individual, and even if you stopped everyone you can't search them without a warrant (which requires probably cause) or their permission.
Isnt checking for cross state border tax evasion considered probable cause? Just like how customs inspects packages coming from outside the country or even Americans returning from a foreign visit (Not an American, just curious.. since apparently this is a US specific behaviour)
Very true but this will still have a non-zero effect. People who don't want to pay for the sugary stuff might also not want to travel out of the area to stock up on sugary drinks.
I grew up in a state with stricter fireworks laws than the one that we bordered but the border was a 6 hour drive away. Nobody I knew made the journey to get the good stuff.
In common scenarios this can be a 134-236% tax. Cigarette tax is roughly 50%, Marijuana is roughly 50%, Liquor is roughly 30%.
Common scenarios:
Store brand 2-liter: $0.88, 67 ounces, $0.0175 per ounce, $1.17 in tax, 134% tax.
During all of December, 2-liter Cokes at Walmart in my town in Washington (not sure about Seattle) were $0.95 with $1 off coupon when buying two, this yields the 236% tax rate.
If milk is listed as the first ingredient, it's not taxed. So 1200 calorie milkshakes are a substitute.
I walk 5-6 miles a day around my neighborhood and I very rarely see plastic bags on the streets.
I mainly see crushed canned drinks, fast food wrappers and other garbage that would be left over from eating / drinking on foot or in a car. Most fast food places here use paper bags too.
I will now but I don't think it'll do much in the grand scheme of things.
Even if you bought 1 bag every day for a year that'll be $18.25. Most people won't care enough to reuse bags and will continue doing business as usual pre-tax.
Then of course, there's the ~7.4 billion other people on Earth who never even heard of a plastic bag tax so their habits won't change either.
I would rather see them just stop manufacturing plastic bags and also make them illegal. If their goal is to cut down on people using them that would be the way to do it. Instead, they tax it to an amount where they are hoping more than enough people won't care enough, so they can profit off laziness while they care nothing about the environment.
At least when I was in the States a few month ago, the bags I got at the grocery store where of really terrible quality (this was at Publix). They barely made from the store to my apartment without falling apart. Reusing them was completely out of the question. Most bags you get in most places I've been in Europe are much sturdier and can easily be reused a dozen times.
58 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadElectric cars are all about control, limiting freedoms and are gimmicky. The new Tesla you have to use the touch screen to even open the glove box! Even the AC is touch screen based - which I think is unsafe compared to a tactile physical knob.
http://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-other-major-world-cit... - wonder how huge of a fine they'll give to tourists just passing through.
I really think these local governments are out of control. I really hope the feds step in and do something to them using the Commerce Clause to end this nonsense. I think there are certain things cities should be prohibited from regulating.
The new Tesla you have to use the touch screen to even open the glove box! Even the AC is touch screen based - which I think is unsafe compared to a tactile physical knob.
I fully agree, but that has nothing to do with being an electric car. The Chevy Bolt has a regular knob for AC control, for example: http://st.automobilemag.com/uploads/sites/11/2017/03/Chevrol...
I care about the environment but I also think we have to be practical about it. Newer and newer gas cars are getting cleaner and more efficient. Or maybe someone enjoys off roading in their Jeep. or someone out of state is touring the nation in their Diesel Pusher RV. I just think it's crazy for a city to try to ban people who live in other cities from even being allowed to drive there based on their car. Well by 2030 and the article mentions the mayor, so maybe it will never happen. I just hate that idea. Maybe the tourism or chamber of commerce would step up for that one.
At least with the soda tax you can just drive out of the city and buy it cheaper like the signs they posted mentioned at the store.
I thought that was one of the cool features of the US. That cities and states are much more free to come up with their own way to do things and test out new ideas without always having to go the federal government and ask for permission. If Seattle wants to do A and Minneapolis wants to do B, they can just go and do it and see what happens instead of lobbying the government to make either A or B mandatory across the whole country.
Presumably the people of Seattle are down with the tax. Who are you to say they shouldn’t have it. It’s their city, after all.
EDIT: Ah, cigarettes and alcohol (in the US) apparently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_...
https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/2013/44854
And healthcare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excise_tax_in_the_United_State...
It makes sense because gas usage is very correlated with road wear, so people who drive heavier vehicles pay a proportionate share of the road maintenance costs.
There are also some cases where it makes no sense, particularly since fuel tax is a primary source of funding for infrastructure and repair.
A Toyota Prius and a Ford Focus are both around 3,000 lbs, will do roughly the same damage on the road. The Prius gets 58 mpg city and 53 highway. The Focus is at 30 city 40 highway. So for city driving the Prius driver contributes 1/2 as much to the fuel tax revenues.
It's a nice incentive to reduce emissions, however the Prius driver is not contributing proportionally to the fuel tax.
If only we could charge make a charge based on weight, mpg, and miles driven.
The issue will come to a head when we have 4x4s and 18 wheelers en masse hybridized or fully electric in large quantities. I don't see that happening for a decade or more out.
I drive a 2000 Jeep, and wouldn't even consider buying a hybrid or fully-electric version. A diesel, absolutely, but not anything with a battery pack.
What about all our other over-sweetened junk foods? What about all our fried snack-foods?
Also implying natural is better.
I think its less to do with the type of sugar consumed... and more about how much we consume.
--
As a general note, the validity of claims from Mercola should be taken with a large grain of salt. He publicly holds a number of frankly dangerous opinions which he bestows upon anyone who reads his website, and has made many millions of dollars from such claims and tactics.
Among other things:
* Questioning whether HIV is the cause of AIDS, claiming manifestations of AIDS (including opportunistic infections and death) may be the result of "psychological stress" brought on by the belief that HIV is harmful.
* Claims that microwaving food alters its chemistry, despite consensus that microwaving food does not adversely affect nutrient content compared to conventionally prepared food.
* Claiming cancer risks arise from mobile phone radiation, which is pseudoscientific.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola
At home I’m using a soda stream machine to sparkle my water (mostly tap water), and I found in LaCroix the equivalent of what I drink mostly.
So I think if it exploded as you say, the taste is involved.
My 2 cents.
Research indicates smoking among Australian teenagers declined by about 65-70% in the 15 years to 2014.
[1] http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-1-prevalence/1-...
https://theconversation.com/rejection-of-sugar-tax-is-based-...
Levying a tax targeted at the poor does not "benefit" them.
1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db71.htm
Nobody is disputing sugar taxes are regressive, they’re disputing that’s actually a bad thing.
Semi-related: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...
A tax on sugar is both a sin tax and a Pigouvian tax. IMO the real reason for its introduction was the sin tax angle, but it's Pigouvian tax principles is what makes it a "good" tax.
Soda is basically poison. The producers would be driven out of business in any rational economy where they were not shielded from product liability law suits.
A free market requires a free and just legal system. In the US every single producer of toxic and deadly products has their own specially granted immunity from product liability, either by judicial custom or legislation.
Debatable. Here is one study[0] that claims that while it has minimal effect on people who already are heavy smokers, it does have an effect on reducing the consumption among the young.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/
Boulder, CO has a two cent per ounce sugar tax. It has been extremely effective- I now always stop at a gas station in Denver to buy a soda before driving into the Boulder city limits (I only go to Boulder once or twice a month).
It's just like how we used to drive across state lines to buy cheap fireworks as a kid.
Or you can use it as an employment generation exercise by setting up checkpoints at state borders to avoid import from other states, applying a higher tax on fuel locally and making it illegal to bring more fuel into the state than you go out with. A few states in India have successfully implemented the first part for alcohol for instance, and I guess other countries should have the same. Even US has differing gun laws across states, so whatever mechanism is used to enforce those can be extended to enforce this
A smaller government, consistent government and personal freedoms is what I support.
@olympus good point on the gun laws. New York is known for jailing and charging people with felonies. Even when they store the gun and ammo the way the TSA instructional video says to and checks it. https://youtu.be/3Xs_jrnmwoU - I wish the second amendment and full faith and credit clause was more respected. What part about "shall not be infringed" do they not understand?
I imagine sugar tax enforcement would work similarly to the gun enforcement, not dedicated checkpoints for private cars (commercial trucks which already have checkpoints). You get pulled over for speeding, the police officer sees you have 18 cases of soda, and all of a sudden you get two fines.
Ah, so stopping minorities to shake them down for soda.
In all seriousness, you can't just set up border checkpoints in the US. You'd have to have probable cause to stop an individual, and even if you stopped everyone you can't search them without a warrant (which requires probably cause) or their permission.
Nope. Probable cause is a specific legal standard in the US - the Wikipedia article gives a decent overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause
In short, it requires a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed.
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/pe/ExteriorExclusion/borders.h...
I grew up in a state with stricter fireworks laws than the one that we bordered but the border was a 6 hour drive away. Nobody I knew made the journey to get the good stuff.
Common scenarios:
Store brand 2-liter: $0.88, 67 ounces, $0.0175 per ounce, $1.17 in tax, 134% tax.
During all of December, 2-liter Cokes at Walmart in my town in Washington (not sure about Seattle) were $0.95 with $1 off coupon when buying two, this yields the 236% tax rate.
If milk is listed as the first ingredient, it's not taxed. So 1200 calorie milkshakes are a substitute.
I live in a place where as of Jan 1st of this year, you have to pay a tax on plastic bags (5 cents per bag).
Unlike soda, just about everyone who goes grocery shopping in small increments uses bags (because a cart is overkill).
Yesterday I left the grocery store with a chicken breast sticking out of my coat pocket.
Complete success. Irish countryside used to have plastic bags everywhere. Now they're scarce.
I walk 5-6 miles a day around my neighborhood and I very rarely see plastic bags on the streets.
I mainly see crushed canned drinks, fast food wrappers and other garbage that would be left over from eating / drinking on foot or in a car. Most fast food places here use paper bags too.
Even if you bought 1 bag every day for a year that'll be $18.25. Most people won't care enough to reuse bags and will continue doing business as usual pre-tax.
Then of course, there's the ~7.4 billion other people on Earth who never even heard of a plastic bag tax so their habits won't change either.
I would rather see them just stop manufacturing plastic bags and also make them illegal. If their goal is to cut down on people using them that would be the way to do it. Instead, they tax it to an amount where they are hoping more than enough people won't care enough, so they can profit off laziness while they care nothing about the environment.
Actually a plastic bag charge or even ban becoming the norm in more and more parts of the world. If anything the US is late to this game.