The article seems to be shittily written in my opinion but I figure if you watch the video (about a minute) it will get the point across.
My question lies in, do you think this will benefit the health of the people moving forward, or do you fear it being weaponized to endorse or threaten companies to comply with the mention of Kennedy being tied to its future as mentioned in the end of the article
I don’t want more sin taxes. Sin taxes are anti choice. Subsidizing products that’s meet the healthy label I could agree with though
Edit: aka subsidizing the crops that are used to produce and possibly writing laws to ban the taxation on foods labeled healthy. Thus making such food in states like I live cost 10% less just by banning the state taxes on them before even getting to the subsidization on the crops. Shit, forcing us to move off corn to things like sugar cane would be great. Dense, the crop cycles are better, water usage is less and overall would be easier to manage. As in if we are going to kill ourselves with gas powered cars using 10% ethanol from corn… Why not use 10% from sugarcane which is easier to acquire and better for the population long term
Half of them are only cheap because of heavily subsidized corn being heavily processed into an inordinately cheap sugar substitute.
Taxes aren’t really raising prices so much as undoing the subsidies distorting the market.
Then remove the fucking subsidies! What you’re proposing is that taxpayer money in the form of subsidies goes into the pockets of wealthy agricultural corporations, and then more tax payer money in the form of sin taxes goes to the government to purchase those products, which the government turns around and gives right back to the same corporations. Sheesh! Should we tip them too while we’re at it?
“Repeal farm subsidies” is one of the few things you could walk into congress and have overwhelming opposition to from both sides.
I didn’t propose anything.
But your summary makes absolutely no sense. A tax on manufactured corn syrup after subsidizing corn is functionally the same thing as removing the subsidy for just corn used to make corn syrup.
Farm subsidies do have an important goal, and that seeming contradiction still supports that. It’s important for any society to ensure a relatively stable and productive food industry. Subsidies help farmers stay in business and producing at least enough, even if they are giant agribusinesses. It’s important that we always have enough of staple crops like corn. How can we tune that to deemphasize corn syrup, and support bigger and cheaper supply chains for healthier foods?
How do you support corn but not corn syrup? One way is to subsidize corn production but add a tax to that portion that turns into corn syrup
Yeah, that’s basically what I’m saying.
I didn’t make the argument about the value of subsidies because the actual details of how they encourage domestic farming is above my pay grade, but subsidizing then taxing the specific use that’s damaging is way more “removing the active incentive to do harmful stuff” than it is [whatever his argument is?].
So your saying the sales taxes are like tariffs, as they are being used to spread the cost to all purchasers without reguard to income making them harm lower and middle class people more, without ever having to raise taxes back to reasonable levels for the high income members of society. (3 million a year+)
I’m not saying anything about sales tax.
I’m saying that if you tax foods high in corn syrup, you’re just making it cost what it’s supposed to cost. You’re literally subsidizing the least healthy food at the moment.
Yeah tax on food is strange. It’s 0% in Florida for unprepared food, 10% in Tennessee.
In Florida corn syrup isn’t taxed at 0% it’s taxed below 0% because it’s already gone through layers of subsidies.
I think that’s common. Here in Massachusetts, sales tax does not apply to food ingredients, but prepared food is taxed, and in many places they add a ”hospitality tax” to fleece the tourists and anyone going someplace popular
I think sin taxes are absolutely acceptable if the government is also fully paying for the healthcare of all citizens (which we should totally be doing).
The combination of the two would make America a much healthier place overall.
I’m in the UK, we have the NHS, and several “sin taxes”, and they still pretty much exclusively penalise the poor (as does the NHS which has been defunded to oblivion in favour of rampant privatisation, so those who can’t afford to go private are left with the ruins), while those selling the “sinful” products (and private health insurance) continue to rake it in.
There is no taxing or legislating or regulating our way our of capitalism, which is exclusively responsible for those in power exchanging the health and well being of the population and the planet for profit, and they will never allow any tax or legislation or regulation to pass that would put them at any kind of disadvantage. The fact that some people still think they would, is frankly quite terrifying.
Yes… these kinds of taxes are regressive, in that they cost poor people more than they do wealthy people
The government is not the arbiter of morality, only legality, and I definitely don’t want a government of whatever the fuck the GOP has become deciding what’s affordable and what’s not.
To be clear, not literal “sin”, which is why I prefer the term “vice tax”. A vice is perfectly legal and we all have them, but they’re bad in some way. A “vice tax”, is just an extra nudge to choose the vice less often
For example, I sometimes drink alcohol. I know it’s bad for me, but it helps relieve stress and lets me briefly relax in ways I don’t otherwise do. I don’t if it would give me enough nudge toward healthier habits, but I fully support higher alcohol taxes in case it does and despite the direct impact on me
I would never support a return to prohibition nor more restricted access (despite that I know how to make my own beer and have all the supplies)
What is a law but enforced morality?
So since they aren’t…
Right… and your comment was in reply to someone merely proposing taxes that don’t exist yet either…
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They don’t think the US does, they think it should. You don’t need to be so aggressive about it.
I was an asshole, yeah. Sorry mate
So you’re supportive of Canadian sin taxes on sugar? Obviously America is broken as shit but let’s look at a less fundamentally awful example. Canada has a (granted smaller) issue with obesity and the costs of supporting long term care for it - a sin tax on sugar that helps support the Canadian healthcare system due to the outsized costs obesity causes.
Denmark instituted a sugar tax and that seemed to have very positive effects (manufacturers reduced the sugar content in various products, better health outcomes). It makes sense in countries with socialised health care systems that you’d make the people that end up costing more due to behaviours pay more into it.
Sin taxes are an incredibly effective way to reflect externalities of actions… sin taxes on offensive goods with no healthy malady are dumb as fuck - but we should be making sure that consumers are seeing a more accurate cost for expensive consumption habits. In an ideal world those revenues would be earmarked for programs to counter the societal harm (i.e. buying a pack of cigarettes would come with essentially a payroll style tax that’d fund smoking cessation programs) but America is currently deeply dysfunctional.
I’d be okay with that. The key thing is we need to do more than we’re currently doing because the system is broken
It’s amazing to me how many people respond to everything with “tax it” or “ban it”. WTF happened to liberty as a national ethos?
Yes the founding fathers fought for our freedom to checks notes eat as much junk food as we can
Well they certainly didn’t fight for the government to make its way into every little crevasse of our lives, deciding how we will live at every turn, instead of us having the freedom to choose for ourselves.
It died with fucking Reagan. Get with it.