General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 142

Can you link me to one? I want to see if it accounts for cigarette black markets, which thrive in places like NY where the taxes are the highest.

 

Effects of Tobacco Taxation and Pricing on Smoking Behavior in High Risk Populations: A Knowledge Synthesis

 

I think most of them are basing it off of how many people report smoking regardless of where they get the cigs from. Getting them off the black market just circumvents the tax, but those people would still be counted in the "still smoking" category.

Most of the studies and articles I've seen show that the taxes lower consumption in small but still noticeable ways. It's usually a combo of taxes+regulation+state laws that have a bigger impact than just taxes alone. Minimum age use, restrictions on where it can be sold, how it can be advertised, etc

I'd prefer more cities or states go the Philly route and actually use the revenue for a specific public service, instead of using it just to pad the general fund. If you're going to hit poorer people with a tax they'll burden more heavily than the rich, at least provide a service they need with the money you're bleeding from them.

 

So basically people aren't smoking because they can't afford them.

 

Problem is our health care system is all interconnected. The more people smoke and are unhealthy, the higher health care prices are for everyone.

 

This is true. Remember when doctors used to promote certain brands? Shit was hilarious back then.

 

Isn't there kind of a conflict of interest in taxing things like smoking and sodas? On the one hand, the purpose of the tax is people will reduce or abstain participation in unhealthy vices. On the other hand, if the tax is successful, we lose a substantial amount of tax revenue.

In short, if everyone in the country quit smoking tomorrow, our economy would crumble. So is that really what want to encourage people to do through taxation?

 

Why can't people just smoke and slowly kill themselves if they want to? Smoking by yourself has no effect on anyone else.

 

Democrats will just find something else to tax. I'm still surprised we don't have a "breathing air tax"

 

As David pointed out, unhealthy smoking contributes to rising cost of healthcare for everyone else.

 

How about we just tax the shit out of firearms and ammo, that would make everyone happy.

 

Considering that you're likely breathing in more dangerous micro-particles standing over a charcoal grill or mowing your lawn than you do smoking cigarettes you probably aren't far off.

 

I have always found fault in that argument. At the very least, it's unfair.

EDIT: Guess I should elaborate.

Singling out a single group of people satisfying an addiction and saying they're making it more expensive than everyone else makes no sense to me. It's a collective system, and there are an infinite number of variables that effect people's health. Picking one and taxing it is a non-starter for me.

 

That money wouldn't suddenly disappear from the economy, though. It would almost definitely be spent on other things at that point, and very small amounts of it would be put away into retirement funding, but not enough to say it'll even mildly damage the economy.

There are also the health benefits and the money saved by people quitting smoking. If everyone quits smoking tomorrow, the long term health benefits end up meaning lower health care prices for everyone, which frees up more disposable income (and, of course, saves Medicare money). That's why these taxes are usually presented as a "win-win": There will be extra revenue for public services, and people will get healthier. However, the jury is still out on whether or not sugar taxes will put any big dent in obesity. There's just not enough samples that have been in place long enough to show it at this point.

Well, again, because health care prices are all connected. Higher cancer rates means higher health care prices for everyone, because cancer is expensive to treat and health insurance companies gotta make money.

 

My dad had throat cancer about 8 years ago, never admitted it was due to smoking but he's been doing it since I was little, and he still smokes!

I understand the argument.

 

I didn't mean to single out smokers... obese people, those high risk of cancer and heart disease, and longer life expectancy all contribute to rising costs.

 

Thanks to the inherent regressivity of any sales tax and the demographics of soft drink consumption, the soda tax hits the poor hardest. Even the ubiquitous use of “soda tax” as the shorthand for a fee on sugary beverages hints at the tax’s unfairness.

While low-income people’s fizzy drinks are getting socked with taxes, most of the sugar-laden beverages favored by the upper middle-class and the rich are conspicuously exempt.

In Philadelphia, drinks that are at least 50 percent juice are excluded from the 1.5-cent-per-ounce fee. The bottled smoothies that line Whole Foods’s shelves? Tax-free, even when they contain more sugar than a Pepsi.

Beverages that are more than 50 percent milk are also exempt, a loophole big enough to drive a tanker truck full of venti white-chocolate mochas through.

And beverages to which the buyer adds sugar — or even asks an employee to add sugar — aren’t covered by the tax either. (Legislators must’ve forgotten to add the asterisk to the Philadelphia bill’s official title: “Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax.”)

And, it almost goes without saying, foods with loads of sugar (or fat, or cholesterol, or sodium) are exempt. Cronuts and crème brûlée remain untouched by the tax man....

Even worse, Kenney’s linking of the soda tax to universal pre-K was little more than rhetorical. Whereas the Social Security Act of 1935 permanently tied the payroll tax to the pension program, the text of Philly’s bill says nothing about pre-kindergarten.

In fact, even before the Philadelphia City Council approved the bill, it became clear that less than half of the soda tax’s revenue would go to pre-K.

“A funny thing happened on the way to City Council’s expected approval of Mayor Kenney’s sugary-drinks tax for pre-K: It ceased to be a sugary-drinks tax for pre-K,” the Philadelphia Inquirer quipped.

More progressive sources of revenue were available. Some of Philadelphia’s city council members, for instance, recommended a tax on all beverage containers and a levy on so-called “ride-sharing” services like Uber.

And rolling back the tens of millions of dollars in tax abatements and incentives handed out to Comcast and other major business also would’ve been a fine place to find revenue to fund universal pre-K."

Against the Soda Tax | Jacobin

Tl;DR Soda taxes are regressive in nature.

 

Everyone contributes to the cost.

 

Philadelphia's soda tax is especially stupid because there's no reason to believe the revenue will actually go to pre-K. Philadelphia government is notoriously corrupt, as highlighted by the fact that the mayor's office redirected profits that were supposed to go to pre-K, rec centers, etc. to the city's general fund literally the day before it was up for vote, without telling the city council of those changes. (Of course, all but one Democratic councilperson still voted to pass the bill.) Plus the city has a huge tax delinquency problem. A soda tax was not the right move.

 

I think the point is that more health care costs can be attributed to someone who smokes and is at increased risk of cancer/heart disease, than someone who works out every day. The idea behind higher prices is to encourage people to not start or to quit smoking, eliminating the unhealthy behavior and the costs associated with it.

 

I get all that, just seems arbitrary, seems like punishing someone for suffering from addiction. I don't pay a tax because I sit at a desk all day and I don't get a tax cut every time I spend an hour on the treadmill.

 

But that industry doesn't disappear in a vaccuum--It exists because that money is being spent by consumers. Every economic study and theory on consumer behavior shows that money would simply be shifted into spending elsewhere. One industry disappears, others will grow. Grocery stores aren't going to close all together because they sell literally hundreds of other products--products their customers will now be buying more of with extra disposable income. Grocery stores and pharmacies have already stopped selling cigarettes, either in certain states or all over the country. Not sure if there are state laws that have caused it in certain states or not.

Virtually all of those other things would either be shifted to other products, or wouldn't go away the way you seem to think they would. Tobacco farms would either 1. keep running because tobacco companies sell their products all over he world, or 2. be sold and shifted into agricultural production of another product. Boxing and shipping companies will sign contracts with other products to ship. Liquor stores aren't closing down because people stopped smoking. Lighters, rolling papers, head shops--all still used by people who smoke marijuana. And with the movement towards legalization of marijuana around the country, their uses for that will continue to rise. Not to mention the dozens of uses for lighters that aren't related to inhaling things. I've never smoked anything (outside of a few random drunk puffs of black and milds) and I still own a lighter. Also, just pure speculation here, but my guess is that the lighter manufacturing industry isn't really a huge economic boon to the country. Chances are the health care savings alone would exceed the salaries and tax revenues from the people who work in lighter manufacturing plants in the US. Because treating things like lung cancer are really, really, really, expensive. The month of diagnosis alone for an individual, without any treatment, costs on average 10K-13K. Which means just diagnosing, say, 3 people with lung cancer will cost the probable salary of someone working in a lighter manufacturing plant. Prices start to get a little higher when you talk about treatment, and they get REALLY high when that treatment doesn't work and hospice care comes into play.
Also, going back to the "tobacco companies sell their products worldwide" thing, Zippo Lighters have increased their sales in the past decade despite American smoking rates declining, specifically because they've been able to market their lighters worldwide.

Bottom line, people quitting smoking tomorrow doesn't make all of those other places of work and industry go away, and even if some of them did, increased spending elsewhere from consumers means production of other things must increase to meet new demand, service in stores selling those other products needs to increase, etc. The money just doesn't disappear--it goes elsewhere.

 

That's why many companies have started offering health programs and such to encourage their employees to undertake healthier lifestyles to save money. Food Lion, for example offers their employees a certain amount of $$ a month off their health care premiums if they quit smoking.

 

Also, I wouldn't call it arbitrary--we know that smoking specifically increases risk of costly diseases that raise health care prices for everyone, which is part of why it's often targeted by sin taxes. There's a direct, scientific link between smoking and cancer at rates higher enough than "the norm" to really justify the tax. And we know the taxes help lower smoking rates a little bit.

Sugar taxes, on the other hand, are still very much in their infancy. We know sugar causes obesity and we know obesity causes diseases, but we don't know if sugar taxes are really going to lower obesity rates at all. Part of why they're still pretty controversial.