I see that our legislatures and even congress is debating a regressive tax on the poor for their consumption of “sugary” soda and soft drinks which presumably is the source of recent poor people diseases like diabetes etc.
A regressive tax is a tax imposed in such a manner that the tax rate decreases as the amount subject to taxation increases. In simple terms, a regressive tax imposes a greater burden (relative to resources) on the poor than on the rich — there is an inverse relationship between the tax rate and the taxpayer's ability to pay as measured by assets, consumption, or income. --- Wikipedia
Proposed Tax on Sugary Beverages Debated
The group, which includes the New York City health commissioner, Thomas Farley, and Joseph W. Thompson, Arkansas surgeon general, estimates that a tax of a penny an ounce on sugary beverages would raise $14.9 billion in its first year, which could be spent on health care initiatives. The tax would apply to soft drinks, energy drinks, sports beverages and many juices and iced teas — but not sugar-free diet drinks.I knew that a lot of hidden European Value Added Taxes (VAT) were likely to surface in the short term to pay the Ten Trillion National Debt. One long term tax that is likely will be a VAT on new cars or on big ticket items like refrigerators, stoves, washing machines etc.
This is how “socialist” Europe pays for social programs like National Health Care – and not paying over there for a Corporate generated national debt.
Leave it to the half-assed, socially backward Americans to try and tackle a problem from the end zone and not have had any real game plan from kickoff.
While in the short term, a VAT on soda pop may generate more cash for local governments, it will never make it into any research and development on Obesity, the national American disease at present.
The “sugar” in soda pop is HFCS – High Fructose Corn Syrup – some spin dried industrial version of a sweet with no officially released long term studies as to its long term effects on the population. Unless what we are now looking at is that long term effect – selling an addictive substance which some say it is – and taxing it too. The poor have not been this screwed since Jesus’ time with the Temple crowd and the Romans getting their fat cut of everything and the peasants getting the shaft.
The soda pop tax will not apply to “Diet” “Sugar Free” sodas. I don’t know what “aspartame” is but I know that it will be the next regressive tax target against the poor when its side effects become known with an increase in use among the population.
This whole imbalance in the national sugar question - this corporate generated national, foreign sugar policy - this maddness (import quotas, tariffs, subsidies) - started with Castro in 1959 and it has evolved to this industrial waste products in “sugary” sodas and “sugar free” sodas – that and bonuses for food industry CEOs. The American Domesitc/Foreign Sugar Policy is a dinosaur relic straight out of the Eisenhower/Nixon White House.
Good food impossible! Big Bonus = god!
I know that I do not agree with the specifics of the birthers and deathers. They are inarticulate and expressing anger and prejudice. I do not feel their prejudice but I feel their anger toward a government that cannot get around nickel and dime lobbyists and demand wholesome food to be produced and distributed to the American population like the so-called socialists in Europe.
