Oh, the humanity

Yup. The government is here to help.

BACKFIRE: Philadelphia Implemented Soda Tax, But It Didn't Go As Planned

As outlined by Hotair on Saturday, the “soda tax” has actually led to Philadelphia residents traveling outside the city to buy their soda (and likely other goods), decreased the city’s revenue, and led to layoffs in the local beverage industry and cut hours for employees at small markets. It did not, however, lead to an increase in healthier beverage purchases in the city.

snip

A CNN report on a study from medical journal JAMA focused in on the 51% drop in city soda purchases, but admitted: “While researchers found that sales of sugary beverages fell in Philadelphia after the tax, beverage sales in nearby towns and counties without the tax went up. That suggests people may have been traveling to get their soda at a reduced price.”

“People stopped buying their soda in the city (and almost undoubtedly a lot of other shopping list items) and decided to shop where prices were lower,” Hotair noted.

snip

CNN did not discuss the revenue hit Philadelphia took, but Hotair did: “The tax on soda increased by 17%, but the sales fell by 51%. So, let’s look at this assuming one million ounces of soda was sold annually before the tax went into effect. If sales had remained the same, the city would have realized $62,400.00 in revenue instead of $54,300.00. But with the volume cut in half, they managed to slash their revenue to $31,200.00.”

Do not drink that Coke or Dr. Pepper, it's bad. Also, don't drink your tap water because we cannot validate it's safety anymore (see Flint). And most certainly don't drive 15 miles to buy stuff not taxed like this and increasing your carbon footprint, you bastard. Where's your sense of social responsibility?

Welcome to America. The land of freedom and liberty. Except when you want to drink what you want and eat what you want and shit in the woods just because you can...Kombucha for everyone barkeep!

This is getting tiresome, don't you think?

Oh the Humanity

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to travel more than a mile out of their way to save a buck on a 2-liter bottle of soda, because it costs damn near a buck to drive a car a mile out of your way. Anybody who's going to make a special trip to the suburbs to buy low-tax soda is beyond salvation.

In any case, the Hotair article is premised on exactly the same sort of biased and unsupported "reasoning" that they're bitching about in criticizing the CNN article. When I have time, I may try to get to the numbers, but for the moment neither you nor I nor anybody at Hotair or CNN has done the work to figure out whether the total amount of soda being consumed by people from the Philadelphia area has in fact decreased. If it has, then that's a success, even if Philly has taken a hit on their tax revenues. The best-case scenario would be that revenues from the soda tax fall to zero.

Regardless, the more sensible solution to the problem is to remove the federal agricultural subsidies that make high fructose corn syrup practically free; and if that is insufficient, then tax the goddamned syrup. This gunk is killing us by the tens of millions, and it's driving our healthcare costs through the roof. Personally, I'd be okay with a total ban on the production and importation of HFCS. Nobody needs it, and the truth is that nobody would want it if they hadn't been conditioned to eat such oversweetened foods from childhood. Our sandwich "bread" is cake, our breakfast "cereal" is candy. It's ludicrous.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd
No doubt. I have developed an intolerance to the crap. If it is in a food or beverage, my body rejects it. The guts go: no way man! I can taste and smell it, no matter how they try to disguise the shit. What does the FDA stand for? Favoring deadly agriculture (or some such). It's bad ya'know.

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@QMS

tobacco companies' adding extra nicotine to cigarettes to make them more addictive. I don't know whose administration that practice began under, but the FDA kept its silence for many years.

The FDA is also the agency that allowed Monsanto's practices, even though Monstanto had not complied with EPA requirements. One of the consequences of those practices is making organic crops all but impossible, given wind, pollination, etc. Crops as far away as Oaxaca, Mexico were contaminated because of Monsanto's Frankenseeds.

That administration was the Obama administration, represented in the SCOTUS by then Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who argued on behalf of Monsanto.

Organic farmers sued. At the time, dembots argued that the Solicitor General HAD to defend a government agency like the FDA. (I am not sure this claim is accurate, but I am not motivated to do the research it would take to make a definitive statement on the subject.) But why did the SG have to take the side of Monsanto the FDA, when Monsanto and the FDA were both ignoring the requirements of the EPA, a federal agency of stature equal to that of the FDA? why not represent the EPA instead?

That, obviously, is a rhetorical question. Government agencies that were originally charged with the impossible task of fostering the businesses they were supposed to regulate to protect consumers and other businesses "somehow" became advocated for the businesses. Something about lobbyists, a revolving door and other corrupt practices.

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@UntimelyRippd @UntimelyRippd
Hotair headline is a bullshit lie.
(EDIT:
Sorry, "BACKFIRE" was from dailywire's bullshit lie headline.
Hotair's bullshit lie headline was "Philadelphia’s soda tax bombed as predicted"
)

From the study (my emphasis):

Total volume sales of taxed beverages in Philadelphia decreased by 1.3 billion ounces after tax implementation (51%), but sales in Pennsylvania border zip codes increased by 308.2 million ounces, partially offsetting the decrease in Philadelphia’s volume sales by 24.4%.

Oh, wait ... you mean consumption of these taxed beverages fell by 1 billion ounces? OMG OH NOES. Oh. Wait. Wasn't that the objective? Probably some libertarian pinhead out there thought the whole thing was just a scam to increase government revenoos but guess what, it wasn't and it isn't. It would appear that consumption of these nasty, loathsome products fell by about 40%. So yeah, in bullshit bizarro libertarian-land the tax backfired because it failed to raise more tax money, which was its secret and eebil purpose all along, but in the real world that real people really live in, it appears, at least on the surface, to have been a resounding, not-at-all backfiring success.

Sorry to pop your anti-government bubble.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Pricknick's picture

@UntimelyRippd
I love your bit of sleuthing.
You are what you eat and it seems many are swallowing bullshit.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

@Pricknick
to valid criticism.

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0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd Except that plane hitting the Pentagon!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp
hindenburg voiceover!

anyway, here's something that's pretty real (it's a wicked satire on beverage company sponsorship of tours, and a brutal parody of, among other things, Clapton's so-cool Michelob ads):
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSSvzCNBvlQ]
Great comment from the YT page: "I just had to sit through a commercial to watch this anti-commercial song. If Neil Young were dead he'd be rolling in his grave. Thank god he's alive and kickin' ass."
No idea whether the moment where the dog licks the model's boobs was contrived, or just something that happened. Her face suggests that the pup was ad-libbing.

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd
clip is itself a bit of inaccurate journalism that has made its way deep into our consciousness. For reasons that no longer matter, the sound has been sped up. This is what the original broadcast originally sounded like:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0FFm4pq1EU]

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd

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Pricknick's picture

My faith in the human race as the most intelligent species continues to slowly slip away.
Gaining speed.
Well done!

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Lookout's picture

I don't really have a problem with folks drinking what they want, but it would be nice if there was some sort of educational component prior to legislation. Ad's like "Cancer in a Bottle" or "Diabetes inducer" or "poisonous drinks" or "drink this and get fat".

Education prior to legislation is difficult in a for profit world...

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

here in Crook County, Il. As soon as they found out tax revenue went down because of everyone driving to other counties to shop it was repealed. Because we all when the tax is increased on something it's for our own good.

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@pro left
your claim.

The Cook County board repealed the law because the voters hated it (not least, one presumes, because a big-money barrage of anti-sugar-tax propaganda contributed to their hostility) and the state government was on the verge of passing a law that would have banned any such county or municipal taxes.

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd and I don't need to respond to you. So please don't respond to my comments with some BS you read somewhere. Matter of fact don't reply to my comments at all as I wont respond to yours.

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mhagle's picture

@pro left

Was living in Crest Hill and teaching in Cicero. We were adequately paid and treated well. Teacher friends and I would go to theater and concerts, sailing, enjoying the great restaurants and museums. I got my Masters at Governors State University and the school district paid for it. Our Christmas party included staff and custodial workers. Teachers and administrators had mutual respect.

Not enough money for schools and overcrowding, as is everywhere.

In the late eighties I felt safe hanging around downtown.

Not sure if it is like that now. But it was then.

Then I moved to the Dallas area. The capital of greed and consumption. Ugh.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

@pro left
your claim.

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Dawn's Meta's picture

Lets take tonic water for example: it has cane sugar instead. Which is true for most products which include a sweet flavor.

Tonic water for Gin and Tonics tastes so much better.

Corn here is use mostly for some beef cattle feed. Which should also be stopped. Not healthy for cattle or people. Requires more antimicrobial treatment because digestive tracts are not designed for such food (sic). Makes cows sick and poisons the ground their manure is spread on...Ivermectin in the cow pats kills ground worms and other wrigglers essential to healthy soils.

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

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