Comment by Melting_Harps | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Melting_Harps | Hacker News Reader

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> And you didn't address that they did find modest gains to the goals in the Seattle study.

I don't have much to say, other than personally I feel it's a tacit nod to the fact they found the results they wanted from this study, because it resoundingly relies on justifying a higher sales tax and this further encourages other parts of WA to adopt it and further establish it as a form of tax revenue while trying to provide a 'social good' which can be monetized.

Again, it's not entirely hard to bypass and because it 'may' show some minor benefit to justify itself seems like how most poorly formed versions of bureaucratic gate-keeping works.

But, to take the contrarian position [0] to even my own argument it seems that in the 5 states they launched this with income taxes have also 'benefited' from these taxes. But its hard/impossible to properly measure that these consumers didn't just purchase things in a nearby city with no additional tax or just online so I think it's parameters can derive the favourable results it claims. And the following claim regarding 'significant evidence' doesn't really compel me to say it was vastly evaluated:

> But the study also looked at adjacent zip codes to the SSB-taxed cities: finding no statistically significant evidence that purchases had increased in these neighboring areas.

Which is why I defer to my anac-data, which admittedly biased illustrates that its just not effective but is entirely moot without addressing the core of the issue and principal of the matter as a whole: body autonomy.

0: https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2024/01/11/US-sugar-ta...

PS: That 2nd quote was not yours, but the other users who wanted to address tobacco use: I keep doing this having grown up on IRC/forums but since HN doesn't do attribution. I should find a solution to this, but making 2 posts seems tedious, I guess I can pre-fix with @ or something.

Ah, 2nd quote being a sibling post makes sense. I typically look at things in threads after I post, so didn't see it.

I want to stress that logically, I fully agree with your position. I am always hesitant to go with logical arguments that aren't supported empirically, though. Would love to see some critical studies that go into why this stuff isn't the case.

I can say that, at a personal level, we thought we would shift buying of juices and sodas to outside of Seattle when the law passed. We largely didn't, though. Just started getting smaller servings from places in the city. I hesitate to say we are representative, though; as we don't do that much on the sweetened side, all told. Were buying small juices for the kids, but not many of that, even.

> Which is why I defer to my anac-data, which admittedly biased illustrates that its just not effective but is entirely moot without addressing the core of the issue and principal of the matter as a whole: body autonomy.

Can you explain how sugar tax is an issue about body autonomy ? As far as I can see, you are free to continue putting sugary water into your body. Is the argument that even a small increase in tax is an encroach upon bodily autonomy ? Do you consider farm subsidies (e.g. maintaining US corn production) as a bodily autonomy issue then, since it lowers the cost of corn / fructose and making them available in more food ?

> Can you explain how sugar tax is an issue about body autonomy?

Simply put, you are arbitrarily punishing those who consume these products (which I will repeat I do not purchase myself) in often high cost areas (eg Seattle, San Francisco, Boulder) to align with a specific ideology that these areas ascribe to, at least on the surface.

I feel like a boomer saying this and it seems like I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, because it's something that on the surface makes sense to a degree--relying on the old adage of tax it and you get less of it--and even appears to be well intentioned way to make people make 'healthier' choices, but from what I've seen in practice is a bureaucratic way to modify behaviour in people's everyday lives that ultimately only causes a minor inconvenience/friction for those resolved to circumvent and the initiative's results seem dubious at best and over-reaching at worst.

I genuinely don't think in practice it's about health either as you can easily go around the other aisle and buy all the high sodium, poly-saturated chips with as much or more HFCS and MSG and countless amounts of dyes and food preservatives to your hearts content with no tax implication and are often encouraged to be purchased in bulk, so it seems perplexing that this is really the success they make it out to be.

It seems to me like a bike-shedding initiative if I have ever seen one as it avoids the much bigger issue of how un-healthy the American diet really is.

> Do you consider farm subsidies (e.g. maintaining US corn production)...

Because as you have mentioned, the obscenely lucrative farm subsides of corn for mega farms is the crux of the issue here and by extension all of the lobbying by big business that takes place for these chemicals that are actually shaping what the American diet itself is; I believe we would be better served addressing that obvious and glaring problem, and forcing producers of these products to have to do without these highly subsidized and addictive chemicals in their products and letting consumers decide whether to consume them of their own volition at actual market rates rather than this window dressing approach.

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