My Thoughts upon Listening

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?

MAY 5, 2010 10:30 AM

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.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Please note this is the gentlemen President Obama wanted as Surgeon General.

http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/01/study-soda-tax-isnt-curbing-obesity-in-kids/

Petition to stop DC Beverage-Soda Tax

Help prevent the birth of a new tax here in D.C.  Check out the No D.C. Beverage Tax to sign the petition

http://nodcbevtax.com/Sign_the_Petition.html

reBlog from Dickster1961: Dickster's Random Thoughts

I found this fascinating quote today:

I am a big believer in personal responsibility.  I believe in education and making an informed decision, whether it be drinking sugared soft drinks, alcohol, or smoking cigarettes.  If after all of that, you choose to part take in an activity that can shorten your lifespan whether through getting fat or cancer, then you have reaped what you have sown.  It is not the place of the government to make those decisions for me.Dickster1961, Dickster's Random Thoughts, May 2010

You should read the whole article.

Beverage Tax Rebuttal

Recently a proposal was put forth by D.C. Council Member Mary Cheh to tax beverages in order fund programs and close the budget gap. Cheh is not innovative in her ideas. A similar tax has twice been included in Governor Paterson’s budgets for New York. Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia raised the stakes by suggesting that beverages be taxed at two cents per ounce. It is a bad idea that has migrated down the I-95 corridor.

The beverage tax’s proponents justify increasing the tax burden on the citizen with an appeal to the public health crisis of obesity. This is both shameful and misleading. While Cheh and other politicians point to laboratory studies suggesting that their tax would help combat obesity, the five most obesity states according to the CDC all have beverage taxes on their books. Not to completely leave the academics out of the argument, a recent economic study calculated that even a 58% soda tax, equivalent to the average taxation on cigarettes, might have reduce the body mass index by 0.16 points. As drinking water after eating five servings of apple pie is not a way to lose weight, this tax is not a solution to the problem of obesity.

If there was real political will on the part of Cheh, Paterson, Nutter and other politicians to face the public health crisis, their proposals would outline ways to make better food choices affordable for any family budget. Public facilities used for exercise and physical sport would receive greater priority rather then being the first on the budgetary cutting block. Building useful institutions and mechanisms within the community, rather then economic suffocation through regressive taxation would be the goal of these individuals.

It has been put forward that Healthy Schools Act of 2010 be fund by revenue from a D.C. beverage tax. The pitfall with this is the politician and their machinations. Repeatedly across the country at differing levels of government, the behavior of elected officials falls into familiar pattern. A new tax, a new lottery or a new toll is enacted to pay for a new program, a new initiative or a new public amenity. Only to see the politicians then cut the funding to the institution in the next budget cycle to pay for another pork belly project.

The beverage tax would include much more then just soda. Cheh’s proposal would target all sugary beverages. Sport drinks, juices, iced tea, lemonade, if it has sugar, Cheh wants to tax it. This would lead to confusion as baristas attempt to calculate the tax of a large black coffee with two sugars. It would be the 1993 snack food tax fiasco all over again.

The dividing line between low-income and outright poverty is a string of coins. Low-income families shop for food by looking at price tags, not the USDA food pyramid. Regressive taxation not only stretches the food budget, but could wreak devastation on the whole family economy. It isn’t the president of Pepsi that will join the unemployment line, but the delivery driver, the convenience store clerk and the hot dog vendor.