Raising the price of sugar-sweetened sodas, coffees, teas and energy, sports and fruit drinks by an average of 31% reduced consumer purchases of those drinks by a third, according to a new analysis of restrictions implemented in five US cities.
“What we measured is how consumers change their consumption in response to price changes,” said study author Scott Kaplan, an assistant professor of economics at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
“For every 1% increase in price, we found a 1% decrease in purchases of these products,” Kaplan said. “The decrease in consumer purchases occurred almost immediately after the taxes were put in place and stayed that way over the next three years of the study.”
Or you could stop subsidizing sugar.
Gonna pay taxes to give to the sugar companies to get taxes more when we buy the sugar to discourage us from buying so much of the sugar we are already paying taxes for
This seems like such an efficient ways to run things.
Gotta push that cost and responsibility on to the consumer, wouldn’t want the companies making these products then investing trillions on
marketingmanipulating people in to buying them, to make a little less profit…I’m FOR taxing soda.
But taxing fruit drinks? Prune juice, carrot juice is good stuff.
And teas and coffees? Getting weird here.
Fruit juices still have the same issues as sodas where it’s still liquid carbs.
fruit juices can also have actual nutrition like vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
straight up taxation of drinks, carbs, or calories isnt a smart or viable solution. instead we should be looking at taxing highly processed foods and foods with excessive added sugars, stop subsidizing unhealthy foods like corn used for sugars and factory farmed beef, and start subsidizing foods with redeemable nutritional value
A bit better than soda, but fresh fruits have those elements without it being liquid carbs.
Have you read the ingredients on most fruit juices? When’s the last time you had fruit juice with bits of actual fruit? I don’t think I’ve noticed fruit in anything besides orange juice and lemonade, and not most of those
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You know what else has nutrition like fruits? Actual fruits.
“Sugar sweetened”. They’re not talking black coffee, they’re talking venti mocha latte - are they really any different from a milkshake?
Have you looked at the ingredient list on fruit juices? Most of the cartons in my grocery have water first, then high fructose corn syrup as the second ingredient
Anything to increase taxes! You’re for taxing things you disagree with, well be ready to embrace them taxing things you agree with too, since supporting sin taxes places the government as the arbiters of judgment between appropriate and discouraged, and they have a vested interest in everything becoming discouraged.
Where I live they tried this tax, but eventually repealed it. I think part of the problem is that it wasn’t applied in a way that makes sense. It was referred to as a “sugar tax” on sugar sweetened drinks, yet it taxed artificially sweetened/sugar free drinks under the same umbrella.
They’re going to tax as many things as they possibly can. They are motivated to increase tax revenue.
Fantastic, I’m always for taxes that encourage people to live healthier lives! Healthier population means less has to be spent on healthcare for those people
and then beverage peddlers will ‘have to’ raise prices to make up for ‘lost’ profits… which will further deter sales… rinse–repeat.
Fat tax!
For a moment I thought you were yelling to try and stop a taxi for overweight people.
On a more serious note, they were going to introduce a sugar tax here in Germany a couple of years ago but politicians instead decided to ask companies nicely to please reduce sugar in their products. It’s been going great, so far.
What did customers spend that money on instead? Maybe it went to crack.
You’d hope they drink water, but you really need to watch whether it affects alcohol consumption. That would not be a good tradeoff
Avocado toast.
We did it! We taxed something, we’re fucking geniuses
Fuck this stupid shit. It’s just the government positioning things as bad, sinful, evil, or unhealthy so they can tax more, and reap more revenue. Adults should be free to make their own decisions about this sort of stuff. Embrace this and you’ll soon find something you like up for sin tax the next time the government wants to raise taxes.
Health psychology is valid and important.
As someone with many sins, I’m still all for it. If it helps me cut back, fantastic. If it helps make up for my extra cost on society, fair enough
