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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

I still don't understand the approach to these taxes. Why single out one very specific form of food with added sugar? If added sugar is contributing to a health crisis - and I believe it is - then taxing it may be a reasonable way to address that crisis. But focusing on such a narrow subsection of foods with added sugar seems insufficient and just plain bizarre.

Do you never eat candy bars or sugary pastries but enjoy soda sometimes? You get taxed. Do you eat piles of candy bars and sugary pastries everyday but never drink soda? No tax for you! What?

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I think since the us govt sponsors corn syrup (correct me if I’m wrong), it would be weird for them to also tax the same thing. They could... you know... do neither thing...

It makes perfect sense. It's income redistribution from American food consumers to Big Ag shareholders.

Yes. Or otherwise we should get a full rebate for running or other exercise. Send in a BMI receipt with your yearly tax refund request. Now that is some serious job creation!

I think Norway are currently testing a sugar tax.

That said, there are research that shows that sugar in drinks does not trigger the same biological saturation triggers as sugar in food. The example I have heard is that eating an apple is completely different from drinking the juice of a pressed apple. The act of chewing and the fibers acts as a ques for the brain in order to know when the body has enough. The health risk of eating too many apples is low, but drinking too much apple juice is easy.

> I think Norway are currently testing a sugar tax.

We are, but it's got some paradoxical warts: a bag of pure sugar is not affected. Yet a sugar-free(!) soda is. It kind of makes a mockery of an otherwise good idea.

I'm OK with sugar-free being taxed as well. Sugar-free drinks that have artificial sweeteners are still sugary-tasting drinks. I think it is actually better overall if folks drop most sugary-tasting drinks in everyday life and save them for occasional use. I'm going to guess this sort of thing (all sodas) probably makes it less cumbersome to follow and as well.

> Sugar-free drinks that have artificial sweeteners are still sugary-tasting drinks. I think it is actually better overall if folks drop most sugary-tasting drinks in everyday life and save them for occasional use.

That may be a debate worth having, but the sugar-tax debate was framed entirely in the context of the negative health effects of sugar. It's then dishonest and unconstructive to apply the tax to sweet sugar-free products.

Why? If they have no sugar in them, why should they be treated the same?

Probably for the same reason that, while candy cigarettes have no tobacco in them, they are still outlawed. Artificial sweeteners gets people addicted to sugar, which is unhealthy.

> Artificial sweeteners gets people addicted to sugar, which is unhealthy.

Perhaps so. But to lump it under a sugar tax seems dishonest to me, and may provide real and significant fodder for those who fight against such tax altogether.

I have a theory the soft drink industry is lobbying for this behind the scenes.

Soft drink sales appear to be declining since 2010 or so. I think the writing is on the wall, but companies like coke aren't just selling sugary sludge while calling it a beverage...they are selling American culture and American exceptionalism. Therefore, Coke can't just go bankrupt and disappear globally, because it would be the equivalent of admitting the decline of American exceptionalism and culture.

But taxing soft drinks sets the stage for some serious face saving when the market inevitably dries up and bankruptcies start, again not just face saving for the beverages and companies, but face saving for American culture. In other words in the future you will see the Coke executives not admitting they were hocking sugary sludge that caused health problems all over the world which people rejected as they became more educated about the health issues cause by consuming these products, rather the executives while floating down on their golden parachutes get to falsely claim they were regulated out of existence through taxes.

Because they've studied this and "sugary drinks remain the largest source of added sugars intake in the U.S." (quote from the article). If sugary pastries and candy bars were the largest source, they would be targeting those, but they aren't, so they don't.

But why only tax the "largest source"? It might make sense if it's 90% sugary drinks vs. 10% sugary pastries and candy, and if for some reason taxes on pastries and candy were hard to calculate or collect. It would make less sense if it's 51% sugary drinks vs. 49% pastries/candy. And taxing sugar-the-substrance directly would make the tax easier to compute and to collect at the source as well.

The real reason for targeting sugary drinks vs. fancy patisserie is that the drinkers of sugary drinks tend to be less well off than the eaters of fancy patisserie and less likely to have a political lobby.

> But why only tax the "largest source"?

To effect the largest impact with the smallest policy change. Bakers aren't going to oppose a tax on sugary drinks, but would oppose a tax on baked goods. Further, why try to change a behavior that isn't significantly contributing to the problem?

> The real reason for targeting sugary drinks vs. fancy patisserie is...

I don't think you can assert this so definitively. Just because you can't think of another reason doesn't mean there isn't one.

> Bakers aren't going to oppose a tax on sugary drinks, but would oppose a tax on baked goods.

This is almost exactly what I wrote, which you claimed I couldn't assert. You just switched my rich-people-who-love-patisserie to the-people-who-sell-rich-people-their-patisserie. Either way, there would be more opposition to doing the right thing, but more opposition does not mean that it wouldn't be the right thing to do.

> Further, why try to change a behavior that isn't significantly contributing to the problem?

But... but... there are obese and diabetic people out there who love cake but only drink Diet Coke. Also, again, "largest source" doesn't tell you whether it's "the only significant source" (say, 90% of total sugar consumed from sugary drinks) or just barely "largest among different groups, if you group them just right" (say, 34% from sugary drinks vs. 33% from pastries and 33% from candy). I don't know which of these extremes is closer to the real values, but I know that only one of them is consistent with your argument, and I haven't seen data to support that.

The answer is in the very title of the article; it works.

This is "whataboutism" at it's finest; taxing soda results in health gains so we should do it. Maybe we should also tax those other things but no health gains have been show (at least in this article).

It is not "whataboutism", it is basic fairness. If we know (or can reasonably assume) that both A, B and C is unhealthy in similar level, then taxing A selectively is fundamentally unfair, regardless of whether it works or not.

> taxing A selectively is fundamentally unfair,

That's not an objective value. If it's relatively simple to tax and direct funds from 'A' to treatments...like cigarettes. We can (and do) tax lots of sources of cancer, but convenience is relevant to forming public policy.

Different sources of cancer are much harder to compare w.r.t. their effect and ease of taxation, so it is irrelevant comparison (as taxing all foods based on sugar content is not much harder). More apt comparion would be taxing cigarettes and not taxing cigars and loose tobacco.

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