Three Axes Explains Soda Taxes

Catherine Rampell writes,

Why not just target the output, rather than some random subset of inputs? We could tax obesity if we wanted to. Or if we want to seem less punitive, we could award tax credits to obese people who lose weight. A tax directly pegged to reduced obesity would certainly be a much more efficient way to achieve the stated policy goal of reducing obesity.

Because taxing obesity would be “blaming the victim” from a progressive perspective. Taxing soda fits the narrative in which the obese are oppressed and soda manufacturers are the oppressors. Never mind about efficiency, tax incidence, and other economic concepts. A soda tax advances the oppressor-oppressed narrative, and therein lies its appeal.

8 thoughts on “Three Axes Explains Soda Taxes

  1. I have yet to encounter anyone that wants to be fat. If the benefits from being thin aren’t enough, we should be skeptical of how much economics can accomplish. Choices that may be trivial for some may be next to impossible for others, but does limited effectiveness, increase or decrease importance? The reason to focus on inputs is it is likely more effective in altering thoughtless behavior. I can’t think of anything less effective than focusing on what everyone already wants unless that means subsidizing liposuction.

    • This is an argument for a calorie tax, not an explanation of why soda taxes are relatively more popular politically than a calorie taxm

      • This assumes all calories equal and calories unnecessary for life. Government policy using a market solution to solve a technical problem, the inability of people to control their own set points, strikes a third or fourth rate solution at best, but if one insists on one, the better approach is focusing on caloric/nutrient density volume product emphasizing sugar/carbs which just goes to show how poor any such solution is as we wouldn’t know if this leads to greater allocation or quantities and to doubt all such solutions.

  2. There is also (the seemingly forgotten) FUNCTION of taxation:
    To provide **revenues** for the functions of governments.
    Can it be an “instrumentality” for those functions?
    If so, what are the functions of governments; how are they determined?

  3. I think the oppressor-oppressed narrative is at play, but isn’t there also the notion that we should tax some things that have incidental side effects that are not so great. A soda tax would presumably reduce consumption and at least some of these side effects. We already have cigarette taxes and liquor taxes and marijuana taxes, so is soda tax so different? Maybe it is because the customer base is the largest of them all, and many customers don’t feel big negative consequences?

  4. “We could tax obesity if we wanted to”? How, exactly? By compelling monthly hydrostatic weigh-ins by the entire population? This is “more efficient”? It would make TSA pat downs seem as remote as bar code scanning, and require an entirely new bureaucracy to implement.

    By contrast, taxing soda just involves counting, something existing tax regimes seem to do pretty well.

    • Efficiency in collecting taxes is no virtue. Efficiency refers to the tax incidence. A tax on sodas is not a tax on what it is purported to be a tax on. People who buy soda are not obese. Obese are not who spends more on healthcare. Etcetera.

  5. Presumably, progressives understand that if you tax a thing (like soda), you’ll discourage its use. Yet at the same time they think that raising the minimum wage is a swell idea that won’t discourage hiring.

    Or maybe they’re not thinking in those terms at all. It’s all about inflicting harm upon the oppressor.

Comments are closed.