[d2vid]

As much as I think vice taxes are a good idea, the panelists raised a lot of great points about the holes in Prop E.

It's only SF so people will just drive to Daly City to stock up on soda. There are tons of other sugary products that won't be taxed - like milkshakes or candy. It's a tax at the distributor level, so small businesses will just get their soda from outside the city.

[wpietri]

This is a classic "if X is not perfect, there is no point to X" argument. Nobody sensible says, "This patch does not fix all the bugs in the module, so we shouldn't apply it!"

The only question I care about here is, "Is this going to improve the situation enough to justify the work?" So far, it looks like yes.

[stanleydrew]

Those types of arguments fail to impress me. They are the equivalent of "But Mikey's mom lets him ride his bike without a helmet?!"

Are we so naive to think that until the entire country or the entire world decides to implement the same tax that nobody should attempt to make progress?

[7Figures2Commas]

So a tax that is regressive represents "progress"?

I assume your reference to "progress" is based on an assumption that the tax will produce the intended effect of forcing individuals to make healthier choices, but there's no evidence that this is the case. In fact, there's evidence that many consumers will just substitute in untaxed high calorie foods[1].

[1] http://www.rti.org/newsroom/news.cfm?obj=5C84B2F7-5056-B100-...

[wpietri]

Cigarette taxes are regressive and definitely represent progress. They were a big help in reducing smoking, and in turn reducing smoking-related health problems.

[7Figures2Commas]

Putting aside a debate over regressive taxes, the problem with your comparison is that you assume the market for sugary drinks functions the same way the market for cigarettes does when, in fact, studies have not found the same type of substitution dynamic[1].

In other words, "support soda taxes because cigarette taxes!" is not an argument based on any hard data. If you're going to argue for the use of taxation to force behavior, as a starting point you should have real evidence that the specific tax in question has a high likelihood of producing the specific behavior you're trying to change. Relying on some other tax that may have influenced another behavior is simply specious.

[1] http://tigger.uic.edu/~fjc/Presentations/Papers/taxes_consum...

[wpietri]

I don't believe I made that argument.

Also, if your view is "before you can do an experiment you must have hard data to prove the experiment will work" then it sounds like you aren't getting many experiments done.

[7Figures2Commas]

Data already exists, and you can model against it. Apparently you didn't read the study I linked to:

> The study, published online in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, found that a half-cent per ounce increase in sugar-sweetened beverage prices, which adds up to about ten cents on a typical 20-ounce bottle of soda, could reduce total calories from the 23 foods and beverages examined under the study.

> However, researchers found, the reduction in sugary beverages due to a soda tax would likely lead consumers to substitute for those beverage calories by increasing their calorie, salt and fat intake from untaxed foods and beverages.

> “Instituting a sugary beverage tax may be an appealing public policy option to curb obesity, but it’s not as easy to use taxes to curb obesity as it is with smoking,” said Chen Zhen, Ph.D., a research economist at RTI, and the paper’s lead author. “Consumers can simply substitute an untaxed high calorie food for a taxed one. And as we know, reducing calories is just one of many ways to promoting healthy eating and reducing nutrition-related chronic disease.”

Other studies[1] have come to similar conclusions, and note that much of the research predicting significant reductions in obesity are flawed because they failed to look at substitution.

If you are genuinely interested in implementing a tax ("experiment") that actually has a chance of producing the intended outcome irrespective of cost, the first study suggested that instead of taxing based on ounces, a tax based on calories would address some of the fundamental flaws in ounce-based taxes like those proposed in Prop E.

[1] http://www.news.wisc.edu/22659

[stanleydrew]

You missed my point.

I was questioning the validity of the arguments the parent commenter presented against Prop E.

Those are not arguments against the proposition based on its merits. They are arguments based on lack of universal implementation.

It doesn't matter how you feel about the actual proposition. I was claiming that the presented arguments were not convincing.

[baddox]

I don't think it would be progress to implement this tax only in SF, or across the globe.

[onida]

What progress is being made here?

[hyperbovine]

Marginal effect of tax != average effect of tax. Also, every objection you raise could have just as easily been leveled at cigarette taxes in the middle 20th century. In the long-run tobacco excise taxes have been a huge public health victory. I'm not accusing you of shilling for the ABA but you have pretty much repeated their talking points in your post. It just amazes me what an effective job they have done of distracting everybody from the obvious parallels to tobacco.

[icebraining]

Are cigarette taxes applied at the city level in the US?

[UrMomReadsHN]

They are taxed at every single level of government. The feds have a ~$1/pack tax, plus whatever that state adds onto that. Then cities and counties are free to add on a tax too - New York and Chicago do. There might also be a general sales tax added to all of the above taxes. And of course sales tax can be at the state, county, and city level and said taxes are cumulative.

[jordonwii]

Why do you think of those as negatives of the proposition itself? Those seem like arguments that it perhaps won't be as effective as supporters might hope, but not that the proposition itself is flawed.

(I'm actually unsure how I feel about the proposition at this point, so I'm just curious to hear some more discussion about it.)

[d2vid]

It just feels too much like a symbolic victory rather than actual progress. I think it falls into the same category as the plastic bag ban - bags are a very small component of overall trash, but they're highly visible so let's ban them.

[wpietri]

Who said they were about reducing total landfill volume? My understanding is that they're mainly about reducing litter. Which they've certainly done in my city.

[malandrew]

It always takes one issue and one municipality at a time to make progress. Is marijuana decriminalization in Colorado a symbolic victory because people in the surrounding states and even here in California haven't yet experienced decriminalization.

Wouldn't if be great if we can one day get back to having robotic milkmen deliver milk in re-usable bottles?

[cglee]

This is how progress happens, one small experiment at a time.