I love these things, because the states that adopt them never seem to exclude diet versions of the sodas, which gives the lie to their “obesity-fighting” rhetoric, right off the bat. I do recognize that there is a level of hard-core diet Coke consumption that is harmful, too—but I think it’s northward of eight cans a day. That’s how my uncle got osteoporosis—by leaning too hard on that one beverage. But that’s at an extreme: mostly, soda is used like coffee or tea, as a morning starter or an afternoon pick-me-up. When I’m working at a client’s place on deadline, I’ll drink Red Bull, coffee, or green tea after lunch. And for the same reason: to enhance concentration and ward off sleepiness.
Most people will simply drink more iced tea, and that will be that. Except for many of the poor, who got that way because they are not good at planning. They won’t make a pot of tea the night before and chill it ahead of time—they’ll just pay more for Coca-Cola. So it will be a regressive tax in that way, just like the lotteries, and the taxes on tobacco, and the rest of these moneymaking schemes.
UPDATE: I got so worked up I forgot Eliza’s hat-tip—thank you, ma’am!
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Instead of taxing the soda, would it not make more sense to, y’know, stop subsidising the ingredients? I think they’d actually save more money that way, and they wouldn’t be double taxing people.
I’m a big fan of reducing subsidies, myself, so long as deregulation comes with it. (Imagine how much we’d save if the federal gov’t wasn’t involved in telling us what acceptable uses for corn are, or regulating toilets, or telling my local hospital how many maternity wards it can build?)
Same mechanics for sin-tax on alcohol in Washington. The coasties with money just make sure to hit Idaho on their skiing weekends and stock up on the hard stuff; folks fifty miles from the border who don’t have a lot of disposable cash keep buying locally, at $26+ for a “cheap” bottle. (I can get the same bottles a half-hour drive away for $16 each. Er, could, if I were a scoff-law who would dare cheat Mother Washington out of her hard-earned sin tax.)
Sin taxes remind me of the Blackmail sketch by Monty Python: “We’re not trying to censure you, we just want the money.”