SF's Sugary Drink Tax

If we think of soda like tobacco this makes sense. If tobacco companies are against it, then it probably is a good idea.

But what if the book industry spent $15/SF voter to stop some law that applied to books? Perhaps that law would be harmful to book publishers AND to society overall.

It's amazing how soda companies have come to be seen as evil so quickly.

I honestly had no strong opinion on the measure prior to the anti-campaign. I do think sugary drinks are a public health menace, but I did not think a tax is a good way to deal with them. Then: anti-E canvassers appeared at my door 3 times, I got about 5 robocalls, and about 10 pounds of glossy fliers in the mail. Clearly somebody with a deeply vested financial interest (not a public interest) doesn't want this to pass. So it definitely makes me consider researching the sugar tax a bit more and even consider voting for it.

The most substantiative arguments I've heard against the idea come from the angle of the tax being a regressive "punish the poor" item by being narrowly focused on the cheap added-sugar beverages, while exempting fruit juice and other equivalently concentrated forms. For the populists in the crowd, this is seen as a way to make this particular vice a privileged luxury.

Regardless, I'm going to vote yes; it really should be a luxury, we made a mistake back when we let it become a default option.

Because Iowa farmers get to vote on federal matters, but they don't get to vote in SF and NYC.

When I worked at Climate Corp, it was pretty interesting to hear the (nearly universally) Republican farmers argue for why there should be farm subsidies. About half wouldn't even try to justify it, and just said if the money's there I'll take it.

In this case, it's because Archer Daniels Midland can afford to buy enough federal representation to get the subsidies.

Sugar producers care more about the issue (because they get all the subsidies) than voters (for whom the subsidies are a small percentage of their tax bill). Plus, the subsidies represent a positive return on lobbying dollars, because there are a relatively small number of people to bribe. Sorry, I mean support.

This, however, was put on the ballot by local supervisors, and will be voted on by SF's population at large. That's a much harder dynamic to influence with money. Not that they aren't trying.

The government is not a single entity. There are various groups and conflicting interests, and it can be easier to do something that goes against a powerful lobby's interests on a local level. Corn subsidies are also meant to lead to stable food prices, which is something that benefits governing politicians. There are various conflicts of interest at work here.

No: the proposition exempts products that contain only "natural fruit and vegetable juice", not "natural flavors" - the two are different. Some "natural flavors" are only natural in the sense they are derived from natural compounds, but are still synthesized in a lab.

Similarly, diet sodas - which do contain artificial flavors - are similarly exempt. You can read the ballot measure in full here:

http://ballotpedia.org/City_of_San_Francisco_Sugary_Drink_Ta...

Transcript is a good idea, we've been looking into APIs & mechanical turk for that. In general we're trying to figure out how to present the responses in an interesting/informative way without you having to watch ALL the videos.

Generally when you run an in-person focus group or user interview, you're combining the interview time with the "watching" time since you're there in the same room. With instapanel, it's definitely faster than doing the interviews yourself, but there's no forcing function to watch the videos.

Reminds me of how my dad stopped watching talks at Xerox PARC once they started webcasting them. Without needing to show up for the talk at a specific time, he could always say "I'll watch that later".

Those types of arguments fail to impress me. They are the equivalent of "But Mikey's mom lets him ride his bike without a helmet?!"

Are we so naive to think that until the entire country or the entire world decides to implement the same tax that nobody should attempt to make progress?

Why do you think of those as negatives of the proposition itself? Those seem like arguments that it perhaps won't be as effective as supporters might hope, but not that the proposition itself is flawed.

(I'm actually unsure how I feel about the proposition at this point, so I'm just curious to hear some more discussion about it.)

This is a classic "if X is not perfect, there is no point to X" argument. Nobody sensible says, "This patch does not fix all the bugs in the module, so we shouldn't apply it!"

The only question I care about here is, "Is this going to improve the situation enough to justify the work?" So far, it looks like yes.

Marginal effect of tax != average effect of tax. Also, every objection you raise could have just as easily been leveled at cigarette taxes in the middle 20th century. In the long-run tobacco excise taxes have been a huge public health victory. I'm not accusing you of shilling for the ABA but you have pretty much repeated their talking points in your post. It just amazes me what an effective job they have done of distracting everybody from the obvious parallels to tobacco.