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Comment by bumby | Hacker News Reader

>If we added a 10% tax to soft drinks, fries and pizza

The argument against this is that it becomes a regressive tax scheme. Many in the lower income strata disproportionately eat these foods because they are convenient and relatively cheap. A 10% increase in the food budget of someone at or near poverty isn’t trivial.

Talk to chefs at high-end restaurants and you’ll see how much fat is inherent in (or gets added to) “luxury” food as well. But I almost never hear about them in the discussion about fat/sugar taxes. I’m not necessarily against the idea, just not in favor of the classist way it’s usually discussed.

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The WHO found that the consumption of sugary soda declines when it is taxed[1].

> A 10% increase in the food budget of someone at or near poverty isn’t trivial.

The goal is to decrease the consumption.

[1] https://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/fiscal...

That’s a given. Increase the cost of anything and you’ll decrease the consumption (in general, exceptions exist).

My point is that the discussion is centered around only taxing the sugar/fat disproportionately consumed by those in the lower economic strata, meaning it becomes a de facto regressive tax.

Like I said above, I’m not against the idea. I’m against the way the implementation is typically discussed. Tax it, but tax it across the board. Tax caviar and truffles as well as hamburgers and sodas, that’s all.

High-end restaurants are such a microscopic part of the problem that this isn't really a point worth fighting over.

I can understand the utility part of the argument.

But human beings have an innate drive for fairness in society. People will actually work against their self interest if they feel they are being treated unfairly.

The counterpoint is that the “small part of the problem” logic works both ways. If it’s such a small part, it shouldn’t matter if it gets taxed. Taxing would have little impact on the consumption dynamics while having a much larger impact on the perception of fairness

I disagree that caloric drinks like sugary soda (along with hyperpalatable food) are a small part of the problem.

From the standpoint of public health policy, it is a good idea to introduce simple measures that are effective for 90% of the target group. If it turns out necessary, you can find a (perhaps less optimal) solution for the other 10% later.

Obesity isn’t caused by excess sugar, it’s caused by excess calories. 6% is all sugary drinks, of which soda is a (major) subset. Taxing won’t eliminate consumption but it will reduce it. Say it’s wildly successful and soda consumption is reduced by 30%. If we’re being generous and say soda makes up 80% of the “sugary drink” category, the tax has reduced overall calories by less than 1.5%. I just don’t think that will move the needle of the country’s obesity epidemic. Will it have some impact? Sure, but I think our priorities should be focused on something that actually have a bigger effect. That small effect is what I mean by “feel-good” measures... they allow politicians to put a feather in their cap without having a meaningful impact.

Anecdotally I’ve known people who’ve lost a lot of weight by cutting out soda completely. But success at the individual level can’t be generalized to the population level. Healthcare is nearly 20% of US GDP and nobody doubts obesity is a real contributor. An outright ban on soda would be infinitely more successful and if that would solve the major problem of the industry, I think you’d hear more about it.

I’ll try to put a finer point on it. You can’t (shouldn’t) just increase the cost if access to alternatives is also part of the problem. If you don’t increase the access to high quality, affordable alternatives you will just make things worse. There’s a lot of discussion in this thread that is only looking at one part of the problem (consumption of unhealthy food) and ignoring the other aspects (like access to higher quality alternatives)

Sure, but the lower income strata are also the ones who are more disproportionally fat as well, so they benefit. Something I've always found amazingly annoying is the tendency to throw pragmaticism out the window for "virtue points".

Also, chefs at high ends restaurants is a non-sequitur. People, even of wealth, do not eat those every day. And those with the capability to do so are a tiny subset of the population. Furthermore, there's a negative correlation between wealth and obesity in developed countries.

Fair enough on the frequency argument. But you could easily substitute a different, more apt comparison. Even making the case that sugar laden coffee deserves an equal tax even though it would probably apply to the middle class. It does come across as condescending that since they are likely to benefit, it necessitates the government telling a particular group what personal choices they should make, almost as if they aren’t capable without regulation.

It’s not about “virtue points.” Its about understanding the true nature of the problem. Poorer people don’t disproportionately eat that food just because they’re too dumb to know better or somehow lack willpower. They often lack the time or access to higher quality affordable food. So by taxing it, you’ve just made a hard lifestyle even harder. To a large extent, the food consumption is the symptom of much larger problems. It’s not like just taxing soda will fix the US’s obesity epidemic. (The percentage of calories coming from soda doesn’t actually amount to enough - the numbers I’ve heard are around 6%). If anything, this type of taxation is the feel-good regulation that ignores the root problem. IMO that’s anything but pragmatic and tends to be be a shortfall of technocrats who sometimes fail to see the larger picture that spans multiple domains.

Now if we’re talking about using those taxes to address the deeper problems, I can get on board with that. I’ve yet to have anybody reply to that effect though, almost as if they think banning soda would magically fix our health crises.

Mind you, I'm personally opposed to a sugar tax myself, since I like soda, so you have my bias explicitly stated here. I'm also interpreting his initial thing as a proxy for the more established "unhealthy food tax", most commonly proposed as a sugar tax.

>It’s not about “virtue points.” Its about understanding the true nature of the problem. Poorer people don’t disproportionately eat that food just because they’re too dumb to know better or somehow lack willpower. They often lack the time or access to higher quality affordable food. So by taxing it, you’ve just made a hard lifestyle even harder. To a large extent, the food consumption is the symptom of much larger problems. It’s not like just taxing soda will fix the US’s obesity epidemic. (The percentage of calories coming from soda doesn’t actually amount to enough - the numbers I’ve heard are around 6%). If anything, this type of taxation is the feel-good regulation that ignores the root problem. IMO that’s anything but pragmatic and tends to be be a shortfall of technocrats who sometimes fail to see the larger picture that spans multiple domains.

So, this isn't a feel-good regulation, nor is it something that ignores the root problems, The current research shows that a sugar tax would be effective. The fundamental issue here is that they ingest too many calories, and sugar is by far and large the easiest way to do so. You're saying that they'll have problems affording sugary foods. That's the entire point. This is not a tax that's targeted at revenue or fairness, this is a tax that's fundamentally constructed to modify behavior.

Furthermore, from a nutritional standpoint, 6% of calories from soda is huge. That's a half litre of soda per day or double what the Europeans drink on average. Remember that for obesity, it's the little things done many times that gets you. A consistent increase in calories per day, compounded over the years is exactly how you get an obesity problem. Of course it's one of many factors, but it is an important factor and low hanging fruit at that.

>You're saying that they'll have problems affording sugary foods.

That’s not quite what I’m saying and I think this is probably the core of our disagreement.

I’m saying they are buying fatty or sugary (or otherwise unhealthy) food because they often lack access to suitable alternatives. “Suitable” being defined as relatively convenient and affordable. In that context, extra tax makes a bad situation worse.

A somewhat clunky analogy would be levy a tax on any grocery store that doesn’t have a competitor within 50 miles. For the sake of the analogy, let’s say it’s in the vein of logistics/transportation externalities related to getting food to said store disproportionately contributing to climate change. What do you think that does to people in that community? It makes a shitty situation of lack of alternatives even worse. Before you hand waive this analogy as silly, I’ve lived in communities that were almost two hours from a grocery store and people had to pack coolers of ice in their pickup beds. There’s many other rural communities where a Family Dollar is the main grocery store.

>The current research shows that a sugar tax would be effective.

As an aside, a smaller point of disagreement is that I don’t think soda would fix the obesity problem. If it would, simply banning it would be a near panacea for our healthcare system. As you stated, obesity is much more complicated. As I understand it, the research shows sugar taxes are useful for reducing sugar consumption not necessarily at producing better health outcomes. It’s important to not conflate the two. That’s not to say it won’t lead to better health outcomes, just that the longitudinal data has isn’t there yet.

If poor people eat so much of it that they get fat, then at a higher price point they will only afford less of the same stuff and thus get less fat.

So why doesn’t the same logic extend to non-poor people?

Again, the issue isn’t with the intent, it’s with the execution. No need to apply it in a manner that disproportionately affects that subset of the population, especially when there are significant other systemic factors that contribute to that consumption.

“Fat and sugar is bad” is quite different than “fat and sugar eaten by poor people is bad”

Rich people already have their ways of maintaining their health and are fitter in general.

I can’t quite follow your logic. Is it that poor people should pay more because they don’t have the tools and resources to maintain their health?

I.e., there’s a greater risk that their lifestyle leads to bad health outcomes that society will have to pay for?

If so, what other groups does this extend to that should be taxed? Should video games get a “health tax” because gamers tend to have a more sedentary lifestyle?

Yes, the same logic could be extended to tax sedentary entertainment products.

Or just let it take its course... Hail freedom! (for corporate marketing and optimizing addiction potential of all products) Boo regulation, that's anti-competitive and communist!

I know you say it in jest, but poorly administered regulation can be worse than no regulation at all. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or something to that effect.

I’m not against the idea of taxation, I just think it should be done equitably and properly thought out, not haphazardly applied in a reactionary manner.

It’s like the idea of regulating check cashing places. I concede that they can often have predatory practices and deserve to be regulated. However, people who advocate completely banning them don’t necessarily realize they can also provide a valuable service and lifeline to poor communities.

You also don't take into account that companies respond to taxes by reducing the amount of the taxed components in the products.

Every variant of a sugar tax I’ve seen has been at the consumer level. A “sugar added tax” would probably make more sense, but I think there would be little chance of that happening in the US because of lobbying effects. It would be interesting to see if Coke, for example, would shift to mainly sugar-free products (doubtful) but these are also correlated with obesity and its unclear why

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