Michael (Wild Bill) said...
So we subsidize healthy food choices and educate the public on what's healthy? Hey, I'm all for it, but where do we get the money from?
I think a better idea than soda tax is a redirection of funds from corn subsidy to the healthier food choices you mention. Thoughts?
I posted excerpts of my in number of places with the open invitation to discussion. When a reply has been merited, I have responded. Sometimes to clarify myself, other times to question the respondent. It is a learning process, but every experience is a learning process.
A few years back, I began a project redecorating a friend's apartment kitchen. I knew what end of the drill goes into the wall, how to pour can out of a can and the method of not turning one's thumb into pancake. The complete kitchen remodel that the project became was well beyond my backpack toolbox.
Did I mention that I was poor as was my friend who paid me in homemade lunches and cable TV?
So going to the local Home Depot to buy a new power tool wasn't in the budget. I monkeyed with the tools I did have. Borrowed what I could find amongst equally poor friends. Broken a few things trying to invent a new branch of physics. The work got done. The kitchen now has favor, character and I swear a gremlin unhappy with me.
The subsidy of corn is a political apartment kitchen. Only so many things can be done; and there is no national politician willing to lose the Iowa Primary for the Party. So Wild Bill, the option to eliminate the subsidy isn't in the toolbox.
There maybe enough political will to use the subsidies in a more constructive and economically responsible way. Grow the corn for fuel without the use of petrochemical fertilizers. Most large transportation are run by diesel engines which can with retooling run on bio-fuels. The technology is there. The original diesel engine ran on vegetable oil. The companies that lose out on the rise of HFCS would recover some of their bottom line with a reduction in fuel prices. Enough of a rise in HFCS might see the rebirth of the cane sugar industry in the U.S.
High fuel prices hurt the economy. Lower transportation cost coupled with the more dollars flowing into American fuels will help the U.S. economy. The more robust the private economic sector is the greater revenue collected by the tax man without yoke of new levies.
As someone else reminded me in their response somewhere that I forget (or really rather not find), D.C. has done a remarkable job fostering farmer's markets in the city. I thank the visionaries who helped them come into being. There are still neighborhoods in our cities that food options are limited at best. Maybe a food cooperatives between farmers, local store owners and residents is a possibility.
A short-term revenue fix, a commuter tax on civil personnel who work in D.C. but live outside the city.
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