The new “soda tax” fad; is it driving consumers out of the cities to buy their groceries in the suburbs – PB/TK
The Truth About Seattle’s Proposed Soda Tax and its Ilk – By Baylen Linneken / June 3 2017
Seattle lawmakers are expected to vote early next week on a citywide soda tax that would add more than $2.50 to the cost of a twelve-pack of soda. The tax would undoubtedly drive consumers—at least those Seattle residents with cars and Costco memberships, including me—to buy more groceries in the city’s suburbs.
But Seattle’s proposed tax is just one cog in the larger misguided, ongoing campaign against soda by lawmakers in this country.
After years of defeats, supporters of soda taxes have scored several recent victories and are increasingly on the attack.
“There’s an awful lot of things that governments could do, but they will only do it and devote money into it if the public demands it,” former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week in comments on his self-funded anti-soda agenda. “So increasing awareness among the public of what problems they and their children face is a very big deal.”
That quote’s worth a moment of parsing. In the first sentence, Bloomberg is acknowledging the public is not demanding soda taxes. Rather, he is. In the second sentence, Bloomberg is suggesting American families will only know what problems they and their children are facing if a billionaire like him points these problems out to them and ensures their local government taxes them to make those problems somehow vanish through taxation.
Continue to reason.com article: http://reason.com/archives/2017/06/03/the-truth-about-seattles-proposed-soda-t
