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Comment by cantankerous | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the idea that sin taxation is stupid in the sense that there's a moral component involved. The tax in this case is essentially an indulgence. That said, I see a benefit in taxing soda and cigarettes in particular because they impose a substantial externalized cost on society that isn't reflected in their price. With smoking its lost productivity for smoking, sickness, secondhand smoke, etc. With soda its increased diabetes, weight, secondary issues (joints, etc.).

I do love me some regular Dr. Pepper, but it's so bad for me I rarely drink it any more. (Admission: I still drink diet soda. I had to acquire the taste.)

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Please pardon me nitpicking on one phrase from your comment - it's not directed at you but at the discourse that often ensues when selective taxation is discussed. There was a soda tax on the ballot where I live last election season and I got more junk mail opposing it than all the other political mailers put together - completely wasted as it passed anyway :)

I absolutely reject the notion that tax on soda or other potentially-addictive substances are a punishment of the consumer for poor moral choices. Making sugar expensive is simply an effective strategy to lower consumption by shifting the equilibrium point for consumer purchases.

We have a family friend that's disabled, she's an adult but only able to read around a 4th grade level. She's seen her grandmother die of diabetes, her mom has it too and the friend herself is fat. But notwithstanding the healthy food we give her when she visits or stays with us, and no matter how many times we remind her about how to choose between different kinds of food, if she goes into a store on her own and has money she's more likely than not to buy 2 quart bottles of soda and drink one of them immediately.

It's really hard for some people, especially kids, to resist getting jacked up on sugar. The younger they do so the more likely they are to develop lifelong eating habits that are going to give them painful and expensive medical problems and send them into an early grave. There's no moral component involved at the consumption end for me because many people are just not smart enough to carry around the idea of healthy eating and to choose it over the marketing signals that surround them. The younger they get exposed to an addictive substance, the more difficulty they're likely to have resisting the temptation to consume it.

I am utterly indifferent to the economic situation of shareholders in the crap food industry. They don't have a right to make money out of people; it's usually the suppliers who make the moral argument about consumers needing to make healthy choices and tax being a horrible punishment. That's just an attempt to shift the entire burden of responsibility onto consumers at the same time that the suppliers are spending a fortune on marketing to kids. Frankly most of the drug dealers I've met in my life had more of a moral center than the professional lobbying and marketing people I've known.

While that is pretty sad, it is also an extreme case and it sounds like she either needs a caretaker or she needs a better caretaker; I would say the same thing about children: they are the parents responsibility.

And whether you reject the notion the fact of the matter is that it is still going to punish every responsible person with a new tax that will go into the general government coffers.

It's not an extreme case; it only seems so because this person is disabled and it's surprising to discover that this superficially adult person has the mind of a 9-year old. I'm using that to draw attention to the fact that kids often make terrible decisions, and there are a lot of 9-year olds buying a lot of soda whose future negative health outcomes are easy to overlook because marketing has trained people to associate soda with healthy people having fun.

I would say the same thing about children: they are the parents responsibility.

I know you would, and I think your reasoning is foolish. Many parents are clearly not responsible, either from indifference or ignorance. I am fine with government acting in loco parentis in a very narrow way (even for adults) because the negative health outcomes and their associated costs are predictable and lowering those costs has demonstrable overall utility. Available information shows this policy to function better than waiting for people to get a responsibility transplant and just shrugging our shoulders about kids who end up suffering because of their parents' poor guardianship.

How are you being 'punished' if your soda costs $0.50 more? When I smoked cigarettes I didn't feel punished by their continually-rising cost. I'd rather pay for something with a large negative externality at the point of purchase than in the form of income tax, since it's likely to be more efficient. The Coase theorem tells us that aside from transactional friction, it is no more expensive to pay up front than later, and in its role of insurer of last resort the public interest is best served by minimizing the predictable scope of the problem.

The fact that revenue ends up in the general fund is irrelevant; the objective is to reduce consumption, and soda taxes have been demonstrated to be effective in that goal. In case you're not familiar with the geography, Berkeley and San Francisco are only about 20 minutes apart by subway and travel between them for work or leisure is very common.

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.3...

> It's really hard for some people, especially kids, to resist getting jacked up on sugar.

Somehow that reminds me of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...

oh come on, get off that high horse. if she's impaired she should be in custodial care. if she's not disabled then she's entitled to do what gives her pleasure. if she's as disabled as you say she is, who's to say that's not the best part of her day when she pops open that soda? she's entitled to make that choice regardless of what the hard left such as yourself think about it.

She is in custodial care but she's functional enough to visit people, take a dog for a walk, play videogames and paint pictures. When she's at our place we try to behave like responsible parents. Maybe it is the best part of her day to guzzle a quart of soda in one go, but as someone invested in looking after her I don't want her to suffer from diabetes later.

Also, have you noticed that many kids like soda but have poorly-developed reasoning skills because they're not finished growing? I object to people exploiting that to make money while avoiding the taxes to pay for the predictable social costs.

So those taxes on cigarettes are passed to employers for the lost productivity? And the taxes on sugar will be passed to insurance companies?

The answer is of course no to both... so people are being taxed because others are being infringed, but the taxes don't serve those infringed.

Also, diet soda has its' own issues... and more fat people are drinking diet soda than regular.

edit: Also, we don't need to tax soda, just stop subsidizing farming...

You don't need to pass the tax on to those effected for it to work. As long as people pay something like the costs they impose, they'll only do it when it's worth that cost. After that, it doesn't matter if the money goes to those effected, or the local schools, or road maintenance, or whatever.

I agree that not subsidizing sugar production would be a much better step to take here.

Wait..are you suggesting tax something because reason A in order to raise money for thing B where A has absolutely no relation to B? This is why people hate liberals. Why do we need to arbitrarily tax things? Let me guess these are things you don't like or use so you have no problem with increasing taxes on them.

No, I'm suggesting that if activity A imposes some external cost on B, you can discourage A by the "proper" amount by taxing it even if the money doesn't go to B.

Would you mind cutting out that "this is why people hate liberals" nonsense? It's incredibly obnoxious.

Lost productivity isn't a valid reason to tax something, unless you would also tax working less than full time, taking a year of to travel or fishing trips.

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