[N_Fiddledog]

If you follow the links to that study Xerxes posted it's right in there that purchases of soft drinks and juices were increasing outside the study area.

One thing the study didn't cover is how do they know the less affluent people who could no longer get their sugar fix from drinks weren't getting it elsewhere. For example Marshmallows are cheap. Cheap carbohydrates like kraft dinner will calm a sugar fix. More value brand Ketchup. More sugar in tea and coffee. That's poverty 101.

The study did not show there were fewer fat poor people in Philadelphia as a result of the tax.

[N_Fiddledog]

$1:

The Liberals own plan says that a tax they claim is about saving lives will bring in $29.6 billion in new revenue while only saving the entire national health system $7.3 billion over a quarter century.

This is about picking your pocket, not saving your life.

“A soda tax? Give me a break. Why do these Liberals see new taxes as the solution to every problem?” Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer asked on Twitter.

He’s not wrong.

Another problem in search of a solution would also see the Liberals bring in a tax on selling your home.

Toronto Liberal MP Adam Vaughan promoted an idea — ranked second out of 19 proposals put forward by the Ontario Liberal caucus — that would see your home profits taxed at 50% if you sold after just one year of ownership.

Right now, selling your home and reaping the rewards and profits is one of the few tax-free gains most Canadians experience. There is no capital gains tax on selling your primary residence.

In order to deal with questions of home ownership affordability, Vaughan wants a punitive capital gains tax imposed on homeowners that sell their homes faster than he thinks they should.

His proposal, supported by his fellow caucus members in the Liberal Party, calls for a 50% tax on any profits after one year, 25% after two years, 15% after three years, 10% after four and 5% after five years.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnis ... our-pocket

[herbie]

And because it's just too hard to implement a tax on sugared drinks, the tax will be applied to everything not beer in a bottle or can.
Diet Pepsi
Soda water
Sugar free sodas
Bottled plain water

And whatever the tax is, double it. Distributors will mark it up as a fee for collecting the tax.

[bootlegga]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

bootlegga bootlegga:

Wow, the Liberals really want to lose the next election...taxes are about as popular as cancer for most people. I don't like taxes, but I do like being able to go to the hospital, having good schools for my kids, and nice roads to drive on, so it's a trade off.

Under this proposed tax, it's okay if I stuff my face with two Big Macs and fries and wash them down with Diet Coke, but not if I choose to drink root beer? That's fucked up if you ask me.

That's like saying, we're going to tax beer because drinking and driving is a problem, but not tax wine, whiskey or vodka. Seriously?!?

Either tax all fast food, junk food, pop, and chocolate, etc. or don't waste everyone's time.

Given the costs to society for overweight people's health issues (of which I am one), I don't have a problem with this, but don't half-ass it or pick and choose what is or isn't taxed.

I wouldn’t oppose a general junk food tax but there are specific issues related to pop in particular ....BTW in your example the Diet Coke would still be taxed, it’s still pop. I imagine all those ice-t and fruit-flavoured sugar drinks would be too.

People don’t eat 2 or 3 Big Macs a day but people really over-consume pop. It’s everyone’s go-to beverage and I know multiple people who drink more than 1 per day. Personally I’ve probably had at least one regular can per day for most of the past 20 years. My wife is an elementary teacher and she has kids who are sent to school with half-litre bottles of coke every day in their lunch.

Plus, the price is really distorted and artificially low thanks to special interests. How is it a bottle of plain water costs more than a bottle of water that’s had a bunch of ingredients added and then has to undergo a carbonation process?

You’re right though that these days, North Americans are uniquely resistant to any comcept of taxes and so there will be howling at the moon for sure.

Fine, most people don't eat 2 Big Macs a day, but far too many stuff too much greasy, sugary, salty food down their throats far too often. That's why obesity is skyrocketing in Western countries.

If the rationale to taxing sugary drinks is to reduce obesity, then you should be taxing everything that is not healthy and leads to obesity. Fast food and junk food fall under that category IMHO.

I don't know where you go that a bottle of water costs more than a bottle of pop - everywhere I've gone in Canada, they cost the same, unless you buy in bulk. Then a flat of bottled water (whether you go to Costco, Wal-Mart or Safeway) usually costs less than a similar amount of pop. I bought 24 500 ml bottles of water for $4.99 not too long ago, but good luck finding pop that cheap.

If it's the shitty filtered water that Coke and Pepsi push (Dasani and Aquafina), the retail cost is the same to match the prices of their other products. Whether or not they sell them cheaper to convenience stores for less is something I can't speak on, but it wouldn't surprise me. If it's 'spring water', then companies can charge more for it because it's perceived to be cleaner/better than tap water or Dasani/Aquafina.

I stopped drinking sweetened pop more than a decade ago, because I was worried about a variety of health issues. I still have a bottle of diet pop per day, but mostly for the caffeine content (I don't drink coffee or tea). Otherwise, I drink just water because I'm worried about getting another kidney stone, which was the most painful thing I've ever encountered.

Friendly PSA to any guy between 30 and 50 here (kidney stone high risk group): Add a slice of lemon to your water, because the citric acid in lemons helps prevent stones. You can also make homemade fresh squeezed lemonade using honey instead of sugar.

[DrCaleb]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Friendly PSA to any guy between 30 and 50 here (kidney stone high risk group): Add a slice of lemon to your water, because the citric acid in lemons helps prevent stones. You can also make homemade fresh squeezed lemonade using honey instead of sugar.

Protip: Blue Agave syrup has a lower glycemic index than sugar or honey.

I make a lot of David's Teas into Iced Tea during the summer months. Adding Agave while still hot helps it mix quickly.

[N_Fiddledog]

Get a Soda Stream and make your own recipes for soda.

[Thanos]

In the end using taxes as a punishment to change behaviour some holier-than-thou's don't like remains a failure of imagination and merely encourages those who are obsessed with interfering in the lives of others to keep doing it on other fronts. That's how you end up with a literal garbage police in shit-for-brains places like Calgary doing "inspections" of the collection bins to make sure people have sorted their fucking household trash (that should rightly all be sent to a power-generating incinerator in the first place) in the "correct" manner.

I'd almost respect the various levels of shitty government more if they were just honest enough to say "we're doing this because we need the tax money to spend on more stupid un-necessary things". At least that would be semi-defendable, as opposed to making up this farcical bullshit out of the thin air to justify their urge to bother others who just want to be left alone.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

In the end using taxes as a punishment to change behaviour some holier-than-thou's don't like remains a failure of imagination and merely encourages those who are obsessed with interfering in the lives of others to keep doing it on other fronts. That's how you end up with a literal garbage police in shit-for-brains places like Calgary doing "inspections" of the collection bins to make sure people have sorted their fucking household trash (that should rightly all be sent to a power-generating incinerator in the first place) in the "correct" manner.

I'd almost respect the various levels of shitty government more if they were just honest enough to say "we're doing this because we need the tax money to spend on more stupid un-necessary things". At least that would be semi-defendable, as opposed to making up this farcical bullshit out of the thin air to justify their urge to bother others who just want to be left alone.

It's not 'punishment'. As you've found out, people are generally lazy and uninformed. And sadly, many are just making it day to day. They don't have the cash, or the money to feed the family a proper meal, so they rely on what is quick and cheap. They think gas station chicken, fries and a coke are good enough, and that's what they have time and money for.

Taxes like this are meant to change behaviour, and even the price differences out between government subsidized crops like corn and potatoes, and things like carrots and onions. Sure, I'd rather education change people's habits, not another tax. Or, I'd rather that these crops are not subsidized instead. But the US government doesn't have the balls to go against that lobby.

As for your 'garbage police', I would looooove to meet that guy. I could have so much fun putting a single sheet of paper with a coffee stain on it in the recycle bin . . . just to watch his head explode!

[Thanos]

No offense to anyone here in particular but I'm getting real laugh out of people on the left on this issue. Those who are completely hands-off (quite rightly too, because it's none of their business) on things like abortion and marijuana are also at the same time quite willing to virtue-signal in order to chastise those stopping for KFC and an energy drink. And apparently don't care in the slightest that what someone consumes as food and drink is none of their goddamn business either. If this is a problem then correct it through the education system, and by providing proper school lunch programs. You don't do it through the imposition of excessive punitive taxation on those who are deciding of their own free will to go through their daily lives this way. There is absolutely no right at all granted to activists to incessantly harass others who are allegedly making the "incorrect" decision.

And I don't want to hear any of the social costs nonsense either. The medical system isn't in danger of collapsing from the cost of treating fatties anymore than it is from treating smokers, or AIDs patients, or abortions, or opioid addiction. This is a chimera of an argument, designed to introduce the false spectre of a system breakdown that isn't going to happen, and never will either. It's panic-mongering, and that's something only ideologues and cheap moralists do. And it's also something that an immature society, one that's been ripped apart by ideology and cheap moralizing, desperately needs to stop doing every time it's confronted by a so-called crisis. This is just another "War On (whatever)", and every single War On (whatever) this society engages in ends in defeat just from being based on fraud and fear-mongering.

As for the brave Calgary garbage police they're nice and friendly and smile a lot in the way that Big Sister instructs them to do when chastening a wrong-doer. As of right now they don't issue fines. They just put a sticker on a bin that hasn't been sorted "correctly" so the garbage trucks won't collect it. It'll sit their until the "offender" swims through their trash until it meets official approval. Which is terrific on all levels. Someone sorts their garbage, it gets shipped overseas to a poor country, the poor country gets pissed off and send it back where it gets dumped in a landfill, all at a cost multiple times higher than simply sending to the damn landfill in the first place ever would have cost. The cycle of smug goodness is complete! Those with the well-manicured lawns in gated communities that thought this idiocy up in the first place get that feel-good moment to make their day terrific!

[N_Fiddledog]

The Philadelphia study was not the only study. Put them all together and the tax doesn't work:

[llama66]

Thanos Thanos:

No offense to anyone here in particular but I'm getting real laugh out of people on the left on this issue. Those who are completely hands-off (quite rightly too, because it's none of their business) on things like abortion and marijuana are also at the same time quite willing to virtue-signal in order to chastise those stopping for KFC and an energy drink. And apparently don't care in the slightest that what someone consumes as food and drink is none of their goddamn business either. If this is a problem then correct it through the education system, and by providing proper school lunch programs. You don't do it through the imposition of excessive punitive taxation on those who are deciding of their own free will to go through their daily lives this way. There is absolutely no right at all granted to activists to incessantly harass others who are allegedly making the "incorrect" decision.

And I don't want to hear any of the social costs nonsense either. The medical system isn't in danger of collapsing from the cost of treating fatties anymore than it is from treating smokers, or AIDs patients, or abortions, or opioid addiction. This is a chimera of an argument, designed to introduce the false spectre of a system breakdown that isn't going to happen, and never will either. It's panic-mongering, and that's something only ideologues and cheap moralists do. And it's also something that an immature society, one that's been ripped apart by ideology and cheap moralizing, desperately needs to stop doing every time it's confronted by a so-called crisis. This is just another "War On (whatever)", and every single War On (whatever) this society engages in ends in defeat just from being based on fraud and fear-mongering.

As for the brave Calgary garbage police they're nice and friendly and smile a lot in the way that Big Sister instructs them to do when chastening a wrong-doer. As of right now they don't issue fines. They just put a sticker on a bin that hasn't been sorted "correctly" so the garbage trucks won't collect it. It'll sit their until the "offender" swims through their trash until it meets official approval. Which is terrific on all levels. Someone sorts their garbage, it gets shipped overseas to a poor country, the poor country gets pissed off and send it back where it gets dumped in a landfill, all at a cost multiple times higher than simply sending to the damn landfill in the first place ever would have cost. The cycle of smug goodness is complete! Those with the well-manicured lawns in gated communities that thought this idiocy up in the first place get that feel-good moment to make their day terrific!

[Thanos]

Fuck, I'm in a mood today, man.

[Tricks]

Thanos Thanos:

And I don't want to hear any of the social costs nonsense either. The medical system isn't in danger of collapsing from the cost of treating fatties anymore than it is from treating smokers, or AIDs patients, or abortions, or opioid addiction.

While I'm not sure I'm on board with a sin tax on soft drinks, that's a shit argument.

Cigarettes have a sin tax.

Aids is 173/100k. (.17%)

Abortions are a medical procedure, and a relatively inexpensive one at 500 to 1000 dollars, with little after-care (aside from psychological) needed.

4000 people died of opioid over dose in 273000 deaths in 2017. 1.5%.

Meanwhile heart disease is the second leading cause of deaths in Canada and affects one in 12 Canadians over the age of 20.

You're making shit comparisons that aren't even remotely close to representing the nature of why this kind of tax is floated.

[Thanos]

Then have the governments ban all the bad things altogether to keep us safe from them instead of nibbling at the edges of the so-called problem. Be 100% honest about it instead if dodge-and-fake all the time about safety while allowing the unsafe things to exist and be a vehicle for tax revenue. And give up the damn taxation on it too in order to fully confirm the good-guy cred the governments are so desperate to wear every damn day as a badge of honour.

[raydan]

Thanos Thanos:

Fuck, I'm in a mood today, man.

You're always in a mood.