Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Oof. Seattle Sugar Tax Raises Soda Prices by 75 Percent
Seattle residents started the new year with a bad case of sticker shock followed by a sugar crash. A new tax of 1.75 cents per ounce was added to all sweetened beverages sold in the city. The move had public support in June when it was passed 7-1 by the Seattle City Council, but images of regret have been hitting social media as the bill came due Monday.
The prices at an area Costco showed that the tax increases the price of Gatorade by 65 percent and Dr Pepper by 75 percent. To avoid complaints from outraged customers, the discount chain posted an explanation of the steep price increase.
THEY ARE NOT MESSING AROUND WITH THE NEW SUGAR TAX IN SEATTLE pic.twitter.com/xqmj7940y2
— hayden 🌹 (@HaydenBedsole) January 5, 2018
"Why do you hate the government so much?" they ask. pic.twitter.com/rodI1Yl9R2
— Devin Sena (@DevinSenaUI) January 5, 2018
Where will all the new revenue go? Seattle officials expect a $15 million boost in the first year. Since this was sold as a health initiative, $2 million of that will expand a city program that gives fruit and vegetable vouchers to low-income families. Of course, only $400,000 will go to actual vouchers; the other $1.6 million stays with the government for “administrative costs.”
Philadelphia, which enacted a similar tax last year, overestimated the expected revenue. Sales of carbonated soft drinks fell 55 percent inside the city, while sales rose 38 percent in the towns that surround it. It achieved neither the financial goals nor the health goals.
When the Seattle tax was first proposed, a “racial-equity analysis” found that diet beverages should be included since they are more popular among whites and the wealthy people. The politicians shot this down since they know which constituents donate to and vote for them.
Like most of these beverage taxes hitting blue cities, what is and is not included are counter-intuitive. All meal replacement drinks, powdered mixes, and most sugary coffee drinks — such as those found at local mega-company Starbucks — are exempt.
So, if you buy a bottled lemonade, you pay the tax. If you buy Kool-Aid and mix it with water at home, no tax. If you buy a Venti Brown Sugar Shortbread Latte at Starbucks, the tax doesn’t apply. If you get a Tall Brown Sugar Shortbread Frappuccino, which has less sugar, it does.
Local convenience store owner Jong Kim is frustrated, to say the least:
“What can I do? I have no power,” he mused, shrugging his shoulders behind the counter at his store, Summit Foods. “Seattle is too expensive. Everything is a tax.”
Oh well, I’m sure this foolish new soda tax will turn out fine just like Seattle’s foolish minimum wage hike.
Published in Economics
Ten-point-one percent sales tax!!!???
I know. Horrifying.
Yep. 10.1%
Makes shopping in Oregon for big things seem like a good idea. Washington State doesn’t have state income tax – yet. Our property taxes in the City of Seattle are also very high. Despite this, we choose to stay for various and complicated reasons.
It is disappointing to see conservatives, even libertarians, semi-endorsing nanny state taxes.
Where does it stop?
So mandate a reduction in corn subsidies and suddenly, through the magic of mandates, everyone’s healthier.
If there’s ever been more of an immediately contradictory example of why I have zero faith in other people trying to engineer the lives of others, well, I’m sure there’s a zillion of them, but this one seems particularly telling.
Okay – here is the REAL evidence of the cruelly addictive nature of sugar: the City of Seattle will immediately add an additional $15 m to their municipal budget. The fact that this new sugar tax will never actually supply that revenue is mostly irrelevant to city council members. It’s an excuse to increase the city budget. Once expanded, the deficit between expected tax revenue and actual tax revenue will have to made up through the use of other means of taxation and the issuance of municipal bonds.
Sugar, along with tobacco, alcohol and gasoline before it, is a vicious substance that leads to incurable addiction on the part of the government entities who become helplessly hooked on it. Sadly, the temporary feelings of euphoria that accompany each new “hit” are soon replaced by the indisputable negative affects that are inseparable from such unhealthy governance.
(BTW – I posted this after reading to #60. If I’m inadvertently repeating what another has already posted in the span of 150+ posts, please forgive me.)
This tax indeed changes behavior, just not the behavior the taxers want to change. It changes residents of Seattle’s behavior NOT by enticing them away from sugary drinks, but by enticing them to do their shopping outside the city limits, thus maintaining their sugary drink habits and denying the city any revenue from their shopping.
Next is the nutritional profile of the cows.
Not sure where this ridiculous idea comes from, but it is not something I have said or implied.
Yeah, grass-fed is the preferred choice, but I’m not a stickler on that point, for now.
Gots to be careful in Colorado if they say grass-fed…lots of grass in CO. Whose watchin’ where the cows eat?
Mandates are bad. We shouldn’t mandate that the government follow due process, either, right? Also, we shouldn’t mandate that the government limit its power through the constitution. Mandates are bad.
Yes, I would approve of repealing all taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. In fact, I’d approve repealing nearly all taxes and implementing either a flat consumption tax or a flat earning tax. Then, I’d shrink the government by about 85% and end most forms of welfare.
Where are the Reagan conservatives? The scariest thing you can ever hear is someone saying ” I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Social engineering thru tax code limits our basic freedoms. Justifying an overreaching sugar tax by comparing it to any other social engineering tax code (ie: mortgage interest deduction) would seem to be the antithesis of conservative logic.
Oh, I forgot about taxes on weed. Do those go too? Should we also end state licensing for selling weed, and go with a totally free market?
How so? Both are government actions designed to influence behavior.The mortgage interest deduction is many orders of magnitude greater in economic influence (manipulation) than is the sugar tax.
And why is taxing sugar an overreach?
Many Seattleites support the tax, as a way of getting the people to drink less sugary drinks. Thus, they support the Government adjusting the eating/drinking behavior of the citizens through taxation.
On the KOMO Web site, they are running a poll. 69% of respondents said they would buy soda outside the city limits.
I don’t think either of those are social engineering. They are more like the way the Romans built aqueducts. Lots of trial and error. If the aqueduct collapses, try building this or that part stronger. Repeat as needed.
The Wright brothers engineered their way to inventing the airplane. The other guys who were trying to build one were not using engineering techniques.
Occasionally you do see attempts by government to do social engineering, and they are deadly. I’m 100 percent against them. I’m not in favor of sugar taxes or mortgage interest deductions, either, but not on the grounds that they constitute social engineering.
The sugar in a smoothie or frappuccino is the same as the sugar in soda. The reason they tax soda and not the other is that the political class likes smoothies etc and “those people” like soda.
Once while on a cross-country road trip with friends I paid the bill after we ate in a diner. On the way out, my friend asked why I’d left such a small tip — he thought the service had been fine.
I was puzzled. I hadn’t meant to leave a small tip, I just used my standard shortcut to calculate the tip: find the sales tax line on the bill and double it. It hadn’t occurred to me that in some states that method might yield a tip of less than 15%…
At what point would you consider it an overreach? I’m assuming you don’t drink soda. You probably also ride a bicycle. Let’s say I didn’t like the way you live your life (based on this thread, that’s a good bet), and I got elected to city counsel and decided that I ought to try to change the way you live your life. Maybe I mandate bicycle driver’s licenses. Maybe I limit you to only one pet dog. Maybe I put a tax on all artisan cheeses. Maybe I outlaw hipster glasses and beards. At what point do you tell me that you’ll live your own damned life, thank you, and that my attitude toward Pilates is irrelevant to my work as city manager?
You mentioned the pot tax earlier. Yes, I’d eliminate it. Please describe to me it’s purpose in terms of important state interests.
You are also confusing licensing with taxation. Maybe licensing serves a legitimate purpose, and maybe it doesn’t. But it is not the same thing as taxing, which serves only to boost revenue at the expense of one demographic, generally at the whim of another.
Would you support my idea for a 75% tax on all organic foods? Organic foods are a scam and a waste of valuable resources, which leads to starvation and global hunger problems. I’ve piggybacked it to a proposal that fines $500 to anyone who doesn’t get a flu shot, $1,000 for each child not vaccinated. Will you sign my petition?
Actually, grass fed meat is a vanity and a waste. With mass feeding of cows and the liberal use of hormones, we could solve world hunger. But the privilege of dying from something else, coupled with the self-righteousness of eating prissy foods with your seltzer-water is, to you, worth countless thousands of faceless lives.
I think we should ban grass-feeding! Since the government is also moral arbiter, and since the city of Seattle has already employed a garbage police, I also suggest that we place hefty taxes on plates that are left uncleared after meals. People in Africa are starving. Seattle can be the first run of this new program. Surely they wouldn’t mind.
You should ask the ones in favor of it just how much they are prepared to pay in additional taxes to cover the loss of revenue and how those taxes should be levied. I just love doing things like that. The look of confusion in their eyes warms the cockles of my black conservative heart.
There are no “unintended consequences.” There are only the consequences that the conservatives they insist on ignoring predicted would happen.
I’ve known all along that you were a racist.
If they’re going to tax sugar, they should literally tax sugar, instead of only beverages lower class people enjoy disproportionately.
Depends on the surgery. If your appendix is about to rupture I would suggest you have it. If you break your hip, probably a good idea too…..
If my appendix is about to rupture, I think that fits the “deathbed” scenario. I’m not going to break my hip.
That’s a good point. Even better would be to eliminate the sugar subsidies.
Well, maybe that would have a different objective. Supposedly the purpose of sugar subsidies is to keep prices high.
And it apparently works to some extent. Back in 2002 the makers of Life Savers candy moved their production to Canada, which didn’t have sugar subsidies to make the cost of their sugar so high.
Apparently, due to subsidies, the cost of sugar in the US is about half again as much as it is on the world market.