They tax diet soda too from what I can see.
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It’s also cheaper. That’s the damning thing.
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Apparently Seattle are going to specifically exclude diet drinks from their tax.
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The real problem with the lottery is that it is literally a regressive tax targeting the poor, and the government’s stance on alleged socialism they don’t update the lottery to the more successful programs that hand cash prizes to a lottery based on savings in a bank account.
This is not that even if the tax money goes to a state pool. Also, more state and local tax is desperately needed in many areas of the country.[quote=“daneel, post:23, topic:96194”]
Apparently Seattle are going to specifically exclude diet drinks from their tax.
[/quote]I can’t find Berkeley’s stance, but Philly specifically taxes diet soda too.
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Philly’s experience would point to disagreeing. It’s a widely believed myth that upstream wholesale taxes don’t make it to the consumer. See also: property taxes. In the end, whether a tax is borne by the seller or buyer depends entirely on market forces.
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$5 for a little tiny fruit cup, $3.50 for a ginormous heart attack donut. Yep.
The cafeteria in my office is similar, except they don’t even have fruit cups. Maybe one or two yogurt parfaits, assuming they haven’t been already snapped up. The rest of the food is sugary sweet and looks and tastes like someone’s five-year-old made it, and there’s nothing else within an honest half mile, so I either eat leftovers or skip lunch entirely.
Convenience stores? Big fat nope. Lots of candy, soda, salty snacks, donuts, and maybe a few bruised apples here or there.
Grocery stores are usually not walkable from most neighborhoods, especially not with a couple armloads of groceries. Besides, cooking is a skill that not everyone has learned.
Food deserts are very real.
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At the local Gas N Go:
Bag of Doritos, $2.50
Jar of peanut butter, $4.50; loaf of bread, $4; and you get to spread the peanut butter with your fingers.
Alternately, shriveled apple, $1.50
Ain’t no bargains here.
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Yeah, that’s why I said “directly impact(s) customers” which is exactly what you are trying to prove here.
And if a distributor is cutting 20% of its workforce after 2 months then they are manipulating the market by encouraging the rollback of regulation, they will be forced to rehire within several months after their stunt as so many businesses do. It’s not a long-term strategy, it’s a short term burdening of their customers to try and kill the legislation.
Considering the heavy leaning on editorializing and appeals to emotion, Boehm is not actually applying reason well.
I don’t live in a food desert. Plenty of big grocery stores here. But:
One head of cauliflower: $3.79
One green pepper: 89 cents
One pound of tomatoes: $3.29
I can afford to eat these veggies every day. At those prices, many can not.
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Philadelphia recently instituted its soda tax. When I got my bill, this fast food franchise had itemized it separately, and had posted a snarky letter on the wall about calling your councilmen. Not too weird.
But here’s the dumb part: I asked if they served any beverages NOT covered by this tax, and they said no.
So much for making healthy choices.
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black market soda
What franchise? Water and unsweetened tea are specifically not taxed.
And those veggies require additional outlay of time spent preparing them, assuming consumers even know what to do with them. If they grew up with their parents feeding them entirely from convenience stores and fast food places, it’s not far-fetched possibility that they don’t.
One popular form of aid in poor food desert neighborhoods is community gardens, which often offer basic cooking classes too.
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As someone who is obsessed with the theory and practice of exonumia, I thank you for introducing me to this. I might try to implement this in Brooklyn, where beards have become quite a public nuisance!
Most 19th Century comment I’ve read today.
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I suppose there is a planet somewhere on which taxing these beverages is not “manipulating the market” (the explicit claims of its advocates notwithstanding), while a business cutting its staff is an attempt to do so.
I see this as the private sector following the footsteps of the public sector:
I might be happy about this since I drink diet soda exclusively, but I should not be, because sooner or later, there will be an extortionate tax proposed on something I do consume regularly, and I would prefer not to be seen as a hypocrite in opposing it.
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That’s surely part of it, as humans we do find it hard to always make good decisions in the face of immediate temptation.
Yeah, not really so tidy. Please see @agies, @MadLibrarian’s, @LearnedCoward’s, and good lord, even @lolipop_jones’ comment.
So much this. We’ve had two municipal subsidised supermarkets fail in our city’s major food desert. Turns out, the working poor are really tired after a full shift or two and several hours back and forth on the bus. Who knew?
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Yeah, they are all manipulating the market. That’s how that works. The “free market” doesn’t exist when human involvement changes the conditions against what would be in the optimal short and long term interest for the consumer. This taxation is purposely changing the market, and the business cannibalizing its lowest rung workers (the ones doing the actual work of the business) because a short-term loss is not a correction. It’s also the glaring flaw of the free market - the fact that it simply does not exist whatsoever. Whoever has the lion’s share of the resources controls the market. Period.
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