There needs to be a separation of concerns, and do I really need to give a history lesson why taxing the disadvantaged is not a long term solution? History must repeat, but almost always from ignorance, huh?
Please do make your best argument for why taxing horribly unhealthy junk foods will actually harm poor people more than it helps. No sense holding back and merely threatening to make that argument. Do you figure that expensive cola will cause famine or something? I'm eager to know.
Because it isn't the 'disadvantaged', many of whom are going to need it.
* Income Tax
* National Insurance
* VAT
* Corporation Tax
In terms of amounts received, the first is by far the largest and is overwhelmingly paid by 'higher earners'. The top 50 % pay over 90% of it. The top 1% pay ~30% of it.
National Insurance is less progressive. I would argue that should change but it is what it is.
I can't argue against VAT being regressive, but breakdown of 'amount of VAT paid by income' isn't available.
Can it really?
Cigarettes and alcohol are heavily taxed. A similar racket?
Or are you of the opinion that someone should be denied emergency medical care because they had some sodas on the regular?
I'm not disagreeing we have problems, but my original question was why the solution is a tax. It's very clear who that benefits and it's also very clear those same people control marketing and education. This is insanity.
there's no way that can be true right?
And isn't alcohol already taxed a lot for the same reason?
Because it works. Source: TFA.
... Wait, how are you defining 'alcoholic'?
Even by the 'regularly exceeds recommended intake' definition (which most medical professionals would not read as 'alcoholic' on its own, btw), this is not true.
> There are a lot of externalities from having an unhealthy populace, this fee can help to counter that.
Is the collected money exclusively used to counter the externalities or is the spending left to the discretion of the government?
I'm asking from ignorance, but if the answer of any of those questions is no then the purpose of the tax is not to make up for the externalities.
No, nothing like it. The final costs to the state of excessive sugar consumption are _vast_. This levy is primarily to discourage people from consuming loads of sugar.
> Is the collected money exclusively used to counter the externalities
While I don't know, I'd be very surprised. That sort of bucketed approach to tax collection/use is _extremely_ inefficient; the only place it can possibly be justified is social insurance.
Strongly disagree. That's the entire point of these kinds of questions.
I’m open to the argument that it -is- bad, actually, but a tax seems like a reasonable approach if you want people to drink less sugar.
1. Prohibiting products that have sugar content above a certain percentage.
2. Asking the industry nicely to please favor children's health over profits.
3. Instead of taxing, giving subsidies to products that are "healthy alternatives".
4. Education campaigns telling children and parents to "say no to unhealthy food".
I'm sure there's even more. I don't like taxing unhealthy products, because it creates this weird incentive for selling more of it for the tax gains. Also, products like soy milk are taxed while cow milk is untaxed, despite cow milk being much less healthy than soy milk. But given these four alternatives, I still think taxes are the best way to do it, although I'd love to hear better alternatives.
How could that possibly be true? One is a fluid that exists in similar forms for millions of years in order to supply all growing mammal infants with all the nutrients they need ... and the other is just some plant matter from a random cheaply cultivable plant (by currently dominant species at current tech level) dispersed in water.
Is soy milk healthier in a sense that no food is healthier than too much food for a person who has western diet?
Also, 70% of the human population is allergic to cow milk (as opposed to 0.4% being allergic to soy).
Anyway, there's tons of data public about it that you can easily find, just wanted to respond to your "millions of years" argument.
I doubt 70% of human population is allergic to milk. If you just read Wikipedia article about milk allergy you'll find out that the rate is 3% and 15% of those 3% are also allergic to soy. And that is just about children. Only 0.4% retain milk allergy in adulthood.
I can imagine that 65% people don't have ability to digest lactose because they lost it at some point because of culture and food availability they didn't need to retain it beyond childhood.
The funny thing is that the problem is with just lactose and if you supplement the missing enzyme nearly all people can draw nutritional benefit from milks vitamins, micro elements, sugars and fats.
Could you point me to some research indicating superiority of soy milk over any animal milk, preferably one that's not analogous to "eating Teflon is healthier than eating a burger for the purposes of weight loss"?
It works because it increases the price, which reduces demand and leads suppliers to change recipes.
What is your concern?
Taxing isn't ideal and is a blunt instrument at best - but I'm not convinced there's a better (working) alternative.
People aren't going to will themselves to personal responsibility
- Public education: This is easiest, but not particularly effective. Doctors, and more recently governments, have been telling people to eat less sugar for about a century; meanwhile, in most places, the level of sugar consumption has only increased.
- Taxes/levies: This is thought to be somewhat effective (in particular it seems to have worked in many places for tobacco to some extent), and it has the great advantage that it's _easy to do_; governments typically have a lot of latitude over what they tax and it's quite difficult for the industry to resist through legal means (they can still lobby, of course).
- Ban or restrict advertising: This seems to have been effective for tobacco and maybe alcohol, but certainly in Britain it's currently seen as a bit culture war-y (Sadiq Khan banned ads for unhealthy food on TfL, apparently with some promising results, but the right-wing media had a complete nervous breakdown) and is open to legal challenges. Some other countries, with different political environments, are in the process of doing this for certain problem food products.
- Ban the product: This is practically impossible, even for products which are known to be extremely harmful like tobacco. Just a political death sentence, not worth pursuing.
Given the above, they probably did about the best they could.
I don't think people's habits will change irreversibly. If you remove the tax, a new cool drink (think Monster when it came out, but for kids) will sweep tiktok, and all the kids will want it.
> the money received from this tax should be directly spent on educating the public about why it's bad to consume too much sugar
Sadly I don't think taxes end up working this way for long. They might or might not start by doing this, but then they just stay forever.
> Sadly I don't think taxes end up working this way for long. They might or might not start by doing this, but then they just stay forever. I just described my idea how to approach this. I agree that governments are far from being perfect in this matter.
Probably because we've all been programmed with the neoliberal agenda[1] of less money spent is better (for food, for cars, on taxes, like you've been programmed).
Norway has had steep taxes for ICE cars for ages, and when EVs came along they were taxed very low, and to cite this source [2], 80% of new cars sold are now EV...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-...
[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/...
Sugar is for the rich.
Making unhealthy food too expensive for poor people is a blunt instrument of course, but it does have an empirical case.
There are/were plenty of British YouTuber's doing "how cheap can you eat" meals through COVID and the cost of living crisis, they started at ~£1 for a bare-bones meal for one, they were at ~£1.50 last I looked; that's hopefully improving with the recent falls in inflation, but still and issue for many.
Of course the same demographic who can't afford the ingredients to cook their own healthy meals can often also not afford the time to prepare them either; due to working long hours, not being able to afford care for their children, etc.
Food banks are very much on the rise in many parts of the UK[0] and we have millions of children in poverty[1], a significant and heart breaking statistic for such a country.
[0] https://www.trusselltrust.org/news-and-blog/latest-stats/end... [1] https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/poverty-facts-and-figures
I understand the issues with sugar, I have no arguments with it, but it is, as you say, a blunt instrument. Sadly, the opposite case; healthy food, is also too expensive for the same demographic this affects; that's a separate and independent problem though, and the evidence in OP seems to suggest the tax is (somewhat) effective, so, again, no arguments from me.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm talking about in the UK when I talk about a demographic.
We should strongly question why this is the most effective means rather than blindly pursuing that it works and digging ourselves a deeper hole.