And now, from the Department of Unsurprising Things: The food lobby is against a soda tax to help pay for health care reform. That's fine. This is a food tax. They are a food lobby. It's their job to scream right now. But let's shelve the politics and look at the policy for a second. A small tax on sugary soda drinks -- and on alcohol -- would be a really good idea. Here are three reasons:
1) The Sin Reason
Sugary beverages account for up to 15 percent of the calories
consumed by children, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. The authors wrote that "sugar-sweetened beverages
... may be the single largest driver of the obesity epidemic."
2) The Market Reason
There's a simple reason why sugary drinks and junk food are
contributing to the country's obesity epidemic. They're very, very
cheap. As this NYT graph below demonstrates, the price of fresh produce has
increased by about 50 percent in the last three decades while the price
of alcohol, butter and soda has plummeted. The ability of food
producers to make delicious, cheap food would be a commendable
accomplishment of food engineering, but it's also contributing to a
nationwide obesity epidemic. Raising the price of sodas, which
plummeted relative to overall inflation in the last 30 years, strikes
me as a responsible way to incent consumers to make healthier choices.
3) The Deficit Reason
But let's say it doesn't change anybody's eating preferences. Let's say
Americans keep paying a couple cents more for the same amount of Pepsi.
Well then fine, I say, at least they're helping to pay down the federal
deficit. I hear the argument that a sales tax on soda (or alcohol)
would be regressive, taking a larger percentage of poorer people's
income and striking at the less fortunate demographic that is more
likely to buy lots of soda in the first place. But health care reform
would use those billions of dollars -- a 3 cent tax per 12-ounce
serving could generate $24 billion in four
years -- to pay for Medicaid and health care subsidies
for less fortunate Americans, anyway.
This would also be a good time to reiterate that I'd also support a small tax on alcohol. Inflation has eroded the alcohol tax over the last half century. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that simply returning
alcohol taxes to their 1991 levels would raise another $27 billion in the
next ten years. What would that cost us alcohol drinkers? A
person who drinks a glass of wine every night "would pay
only $10.95
more in alcohol excise taxes over the course of a year," according to the CBPP. In other words, this alcohol tax would cost you one extra glass of Merlot per year.
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