Poorest Americans drink a lot more sugary drinks than the richest | Hacker News Reader

Poorest Americans drink a lot more sugary drinks than the richest

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27 pointselorant12 comments

Over here we went through this approach with cigarettes decades ago. It worked, but it took taxation in the range of multiple 100% before the effects were real. Do you think your political system can carry this?

It’s not so much that it isn’t taxed enough (if that is the solution), but that the corn syrup inside is so heavily subsidized, the end product ends up being cheaper than it should.

The focus on cold sugary drinks makes me wonder if they are looking at the displacing factors which also aren't good like alcohol or the infamously syrupy Starbucks drinks. What precisely makes up the difference in consumption? Is there any relation to water quality and taste?

I notice that all the litter I see on the ground when fishing/hiking is the kind of garbage food that you can buy as gas stations.

This isn't surprising given how cheap soda is.

Self control correlates with a lot of things.

So let's tax the poor Americans so they get even poorer.

Do you disapprove of taxes on alcohol or cigarettes as well? Or are sodas special?

Yes, I disapprove of them too. I prefer the anti-whatever campaigns. The "got milk?" one worked pretty well!

It's so easy for rich people to look down their noses at the vices of poor people and tax the hell out of them. I find that whole worldview disgusting.

You don't offer any other approach. So I am going to assume you probably think soda drinking is a good thing, but don't want to come right out and say it.

I’m always torn on this one. I value low taxes and freedom, and personal responsibility.

However it wasn’t until mid 20s when I started feeling weird after drinking soda that I started realizing it was damaging my body.

It was many years laterthat I realized diet drinks were also bad.

Information is out there, but people are amazing at ignoring it.

I talk to kids all the time about sugar addiction. They understand it. They also have zero sled control around it.

Things for them fall into the category of “this specific Brand of food/drink is good/bad”

Other part is I grew up with food pyramid.

Being taught by government that carbs were good helped re-enforced a lot of poor choices. Was a slow realization over mangy years that growers were using government to pump out bad information.

Yeah, I think educating the population is the right approach. Of course, mistakes like the food pyramid is very hard to overcome since at the time you did have scientists advocating for the food pyramid, you have lobbyists influencing the government, and various other corruption problems. Removing government corruption is just something that has to be overcome in general.

But sin taxes are just a bad idea since you end up punishing people who are doing the sin, can make the poorest people poorer which can potentially spiral. Sure, the non-sinners get to feel good since they are punishing the sinners, they can get money from the sinners to do good things with it. They just feel a great sense of righteousness from it. For what? For making things more expensive for poor people. Instead of reaching out to people and educating them about why it's bad, etc.

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