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Comment by d2vid | Hacker News Reader

I was really surprised by the results. When I created this instapanel I was a strong "Yes" on Prop E - governments need to raise funds, so why not tax vices.

Watching the responses, I've changed my vote to "No". The panelists raised a lot of great points about the holes in Prop E. It's only SF so people will just drive to Daly City to stock up on soda. There are tons of sugary products that won't be taxed. It's a tax at the distributor level, so businesses will just get their soda from outside the city. It's a regressive tax. On and on.

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Why would you ever think adding additional taxes to other products is the best way to make up for a government deficit? Certainly makes things more complicated and may have unintended consequences. Shouldn't we be trying to simplify the system?

Anyway, I'm not economist either. Perhaps it's best if someone could referred to economic theory, instead of what feels right.

We tax income, even though we agree that income is a good thing.

Why not tax cigarettes, soda, pollution, and other bad things. The dead-weight loss from the tax is actually a good thing in these cases.

Agreed that there are always unintended consequences, I don't really know for sure, and democracy is unfortunately usually about feelings.

Every tax will do two things: raise revenue and modify behavior. Usually, the purpose of the tax is the former, but you need to remember that the latter will still happen.

In the case of income tax, you raise revenue but you change behavior in a negative way (discouraging work). If you instead tax vices and consumption, you can raise money while not causing negative behavior changes (and maybe instead causing good behavior changes).

However, as the parent comment pointed out, you have to really look deeply at a tax to figure out how it will affect behavior. It won't always be in the desired way.

The "drive out of the city to buy" still is a form of disincentive/tax. Its just paid to the oil companies instead of schools :(

I also like how the myth of fatty food causing obesity is repeated a few times in the panelists. Clearly not experts on nutrition or its effects on the human body.

If you watch Jude's video, she says she bicycles to Daly City to buy her cigarettes because they're too expensive in SF, and threatens that she'll just start doing that for soda too.

Get people to bicycle an hour for cigarettes and soda? That's a public health official's dream.

It also shows you how little someone might value their time. If I take a 20 minute walk or ride to get something which could be had 1 minute away, I better be able to save a whole lotta bills.

> I also like how the myth of fatty food causing obesity is repeated a few times in the panelists. Clearly not experts on nutrition or its effects on the human body.

Do you really believe this or is it some kind of satire?

edit: not snarking, I genuinely can't tell if parent thinks fatty food does not contribute to obesity. Obese people aren't obese just because they eat far too much sugar. They're obese because they eat far too much sugar, starch, and fat. It is ridiculous to think that the amount of fat in an obese person's diet has no influence on that person's obesity.

The parent to your comment is probably someone who has bought into the keto (read: re-named Atkins) diet.

more Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) than either keto or atkins (they're not the same) .

See http://www.dietdoctor.com/science

tldr; i was commenting on the false claim that composition of food causes obesity vs the number of contained calories.

From what i've read, ive taken a few points:

fatty food does not cause or contribute to obesity. Total intake does.

1000 excess calories of fat and 1000 excess calories of sugar will roughly cause the same weight increase.

1000 calories of fat is far more satiating than 1000 calories of sugar and therefore leads to lower future consumption of calories. 1000 calories of the former may take 4 hrs to become hungry, whereas 1000 calories of the latter may take 1 hour to become hungry, for example.

Saturated fats a no more correlated with heart disease than other forms of fats.

Some of the science is linked here: http://www.dietdoctor.com/science

"governments need to raise funds"

Sounds like you are under the false impression that governments are the ideal size, need to grow larger, or are able to spend money efficiently. Almost all state and city budgets are in a crunch due to mis-management and over-spending, not do to any kind of shortfall in tax collection.

Always vote NO on crap like this. The less ways the government has to collect taxes, the better.

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