But, the health externalities associated with drinking such beverages should get priced in and be used to offset eventual health complications. This is not easy because no one likes taxes, but you get what you pay for.
Yes you can get cheaper premiums by living healthy, but how far do you want to go? Are you going to let your insurance company log everything you eat and how many steps you walk every day? Seems much easier to just factor in the external cost of goods into their price.
For medical insurance, it seems they could at least do something like "if you send us evidence of healthy exercise/diet/weight, then we'll lower your premiums; otherwise you'll get a premium based on the estimated risk of the set of people who don't do this". (If the government doesn't forbid it. healthcare.gov says "They also can’t take your current health or medical history into account", which sounds like it might rule out some of that.)
1. It was probably a tax write off.
2. It was probably also both a community service project AND a reflection of lower expected insurance payout.
3. Maybe the straight-A students are correlated with insurance payers that would rather pay the repair known 1-off payment (or skip doing anything at all) vs the unknown recurring increase in insurance payments?
(Source: drove a dented-up pickup for over a year after a short romp along/into an orchard)
2. The lower expected payout is exactly what an insurance company is trying to determine, and they’re very good at doing that assuming they have lots of data.
3. Most vehicle insurance cost are liability related, meaning the damage their insured to others, and namely healthcare costs. A collision with another person or their property will not be fixed without the insurance company getting involved, and a reduction in those is what the insurance company is betting on.
And they're far from the only company burning energy, effort, time and knowledge to accomplish nothing but profits at the expense of virtually everything else touching them.
The other option is to let insurance companies monitor your diet, but that sounds quite a bit more dystopic...
Maybe we should ban them as well. All companies "burn" energy, effort, and time to produce profits, that's pretty much the goal of a company.
True. But would people enjoy it as much if it were priced accordingly to give the workers who made it a living wage? If they had to pay full non-subsidized prices for the corn sugar they use, and to give those workers a living wage as well? In other words, would people enjoy it as much if it was instead of a dollar a bottle, more like four dollars?
And don't even try and shift to a different company. It is not unreasonable to assume that there is ethical compromise involved in purchasing anything from a company Coke's size. Chiquita almost started a war so they could continue exploiting South Americans for cheap bananas.
I take issue with this "well there's no haaaarm" point because there very often IS harm. There is tons of harm if you follow the supply lines back to the developing world where western corporations exploit entire nations for the sake of cheap goods that then are consumed at a break neck pace in the West, far more than they should be, which then even harms THOSE people by making them overweight.
If your company could do actual good in the world by ceasing to exist, then I question why you need to exist in the first place. That's all I'm saying.
In Finland we do (or did, it might have changed on 2017) tax sugar. Then they added artificial sweeteners and even mineral water under the tax because it’s ”fair” that way. Thus negating the original point.
That doesn't mean cake and cookies should be banned, nor should soda. It's nanny state nonsense, and one of the more steeply graded slippery slopes...
If you're really concerned for people's wellbeing, ensuring access to healthcare goes a lot further than denying people snacks..
As to why, clearly it was due to people wanting to eat pleasurable food.
Glad you phrased it that way, because a lot of the people who want me to pay a tax for eating a cookie probably aren't imagining themselves paying a tax for going Whitewater rafting, or for driving their car multiple times a day.
Are these people not aware of kidney stones and the associated pain?
Interesting. That's not even sugar water. We're going to need some pretty elaborate regulations at this rate.
I’ll eat the snacks I want.
I’ll pay for the healthcare I want and need.
You do what you need. And neither one of us is responsible for the other.
Now leave me be.
They will die without treatment. They can be saved, but not for free. What action, if any, do you recommend?
As for the rest, the doctors, nurses, and paramedics are now going to be required to do something that's against their training and likely their nature, by letting people die on the sidewalk out front. Do you suppose this policy will be workable in the long run?
Basically, if you're poor, you will get a public defender. Someone who is overworked, underpaid and probably won't give your case the appropriate time it needs to develop a valid defense..
Whereas if you have money, you can afford an attorney that can spend the appropriate time to create a robust defense.
Absolutely reasonable question. How about coffee? Soda-prohibiters usually ignore it, because, I guess, they like it themselves, or expect a huge backlash. However, it's a very common way of excessive sugar consumption world-wide.
You could buy reduced-sweetness soda I suppose, but I don't know where you're going to find that. Even the boutique brands are very sweet.
You can also buy artificially-sweetened soda, but lots of studies are now showing that crap isn't any healthier for you.
There's no option to just have less-sweet soda. It does not exist. (Unless perhaps you're counting the fact that artificially-sweetened drinks simply don't taste sweet to some people, but that's a different argument.)
Whether you want to believe it or not, it is very easy to control how much sugar you pour into your cup of coffee at work (and you don't have to put artificial sweetener in it either as the only alternative; you can simply not put anything in it). There's no such option with soda, because it's premade. I don't know why you're arguing about this, because it's a simple fact.
Not sure I see what do you mean by "artificial" here. Making extracts from stevia is not more artificial then from sugarcane. What is more (un)healthy is still matter of gathering data, but it doesn't make an argument in either case. The argument is that you are not obliged to buy soda, as you are not obliged to put sugar to your food, and drinks. As well you are not obliged to drink alcohol for which WHO says there's no safe dose - unlike sugar. And which if we stick to your reasoning should be prohibited in the first place. But wait... does it sound as if it was tried already?
I don't know why you're arguing about this, because it's a simple fact.
I don't know too, because I'm nor arguing about exactly that. I suggest you to look at my previous comment again, you probably glanced over it too quickly.
The whole thing started when someone compared soda to coffee and said coffee had sugar too, and I responded that you don't have to put sugar in it, or as much, since you're the one controlling the sugar addition. We're not talking about safe doses of sugar here, or the WHO, or whether you're obligated to drink anything besides water. We're just comparing the sugar in soda and coffee, that's all, and the simple and completely undebateable fact is that you can put a little bit of sugar in coffee, whereas there is absolutely no way for you to control the amount of sugar or other sweetener in your soda. (I guess you could try adding sugar to non-sugar soda, but you can't take out the artificial sweetener (or stevia, which just tastes bitter), and good luck getting sugar to actually go into solution while the soda is still cold.)
Finally, I don't drink soda at all, or coffee either, I'm just pointing out that the drinker is the one in control of the sweetener with most coffee, and this is simply not the case with soda.
that would be predicated on an honest and direct pricing scheme for healthcare. taxing soda may be a feel-good thing to do, but how can you say - with a straight face - how much dialysis treatment or 'beetus meds actually cost? The whole business model of healthcare is built on information hiding.
*depending on your definition of working fairly well
It’s the same consequences. Little Johnny with well connected parents and a judge who doesn’t want to ruin the life of someone “who could be his kid” gets off easy while they expel little Jerome who is just “going to turn out to be a thug anyway.”
It also hasn’t stopped kids from getting weed and cigarettes.
people would drink it, but far less.
Bootlegging is generally a short term response to diminished access. But soon after the controls arise, demand generally shifts elsewhere to less inconvenient alternatives.
I can think of no examples of continuing bootlegging in the US, aside from piracy of media, which is another kettle of fish.
Whether Eric Garner was bootlegging cigarettes or not - do you think it was worth it?
It's only through action that power manifests (and the inaction of others to oppose the use and abuse of that power).
That's bullshit. A government can't take away power from others by exercising the power it doesn't have yet.
> (like the people).
A democratic state cannot take away power from the people, the people cannot take away power from itself. And non-democratic states don't have a legitimate government anyway.
Just curious, what are some of your hobbies? Things you like to do in your spare time?
LOL, looks like some people can see where I'm going with this.
Meanwhile, why should my health insurance rates go up because Dr. Joshgel is into cave diving or parachuting or enjoys the occasional track day in his GT3?
Or because someone else leads a sedentary life playing video games? How about banning those? There's no valid science behind claims of an "epidemic" of soda-induced obesity, but if you're going to generalize the argument to include all common causes of obesity, I'd respond by pointing out that there's certainly no shortage of studies showing the harmful effects of a sedentary lifestyle.
Rest assured, after the Dr. Joshgels of the world have come for my soda, they WILL come after something you enjoy. Maybe your steak, maybe your beer, maybe your guns, maybe your Playstation or your sofa. The slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy, but these people aren't logical. They're too busy being right.
There's also huge taxes on alcohol and tobacco for instance.
There's also a lot of other stuff that is banned already or strongly regulated or taxed heavily. Recreational drugs, medicine, certain additives that turned out to be harmful. Or rules like having to buckle up in your car. A lot of nanny state stuff that saves people from themselves.
No, they don't, unless they are doing something their policies call out explicitly. Which is extremely rare.
There's also huge taxes on alcohol and tobacco for instance.
Because unlike soda, the damage done by those products is unequivocally identifiable.
Maybe you're just not convinced about the actual harm that sugar and obesity causes. I won't be able to write a good summary of the research here and now,but there's a lot of evidence out there. It's more dangerous than many people would assume.