“Washington is talking about a new tax on juice drinks and soda. They say it’s only pennies. Well, those pennies add up when you’re trying to feed a family,” one advertisement said.
If you’re feeding a family with sugary drinks, you’re doing it wrong.
The US is considering imposing a tax of 1c/oz on sugary drinks in order to combat obesity. If the aim of this really is to raise money to pay for public health care, they’d be better off abolishing the corn subsidies which continue to hurt Mexican farmers and pump Americans full of high fructose corn syrup. If the aim is to increase the price of sugary drinks to stop Americans buying them, they’d be better off abolishing corn subsidies.
I’m not opposed to the idea of taxing things in order to pay for the health care costs associated with their consumption, but in this case it’d be better to stop spending money on the subsidy rather than attempting to raise new revenue. This tax is regressive in that, when coupled with the subsidy to corn farmers, redistributes money from the poor Americans who drink the sugary drinks to the large scale farms which soak up the corn subsidies.
The front group “Americans Against Food Taxes” don’t care about the pennies adding up in the household budgets of American families; they care about the pennies adding up in their bottom line.
No comments:
Post a Comment