Philadelphia Becomes First Major City To Tax Soda

I don't understand government trying to tell us what we can eat and drink. I know they're concerned about our health, but it's really up to us to make our own decisions, poor or not.

As it is I don't drink pop. I love water.
 
next it will be how much coffee we can drink..


(sipping...mmmmm)
 
AlleyCat said:
I don't understand government trying to tell us what we can eat and drink. I know they're concerned about our health, but it's really up to us to make our own decisions, poor or not.

As it is I don't drink pop. I love water.
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Well, our poor health can be a financial burden on our local gov'ts for health care and such. Not saying I agree with the taxes or not.
Also, if they didn't tax the sodas, then they might up their city sales taxes on everything.
Residents want good schools, good roads, etc, etc, but don't want to pay for them (taxes).
 
LoveBlue said:
Well, our poor health can be a financial burden on our local gov'ts for health care and such. Not saying I agree with the taxes or not.
Also, if they didn't tax the sodas, then they might up their city sales taxes on everything.
Residents want good schools, good roads, etc, etc, but don't want to pay for them (taxes).
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good schools and good roads...
ah cmon
you can do better then that
 
It's like we're losing freedom little by little by taking away our choices and making us pay a bit more and more.
 
San Francisco's soda tax went down to defeat, but they are talking about trying to try and pass it again. Berkeley is surrounded by other cities that don't have the tax, so people can go to the other cities to stock up if they want to. I know a couple people who live in Berkeley and they now buy their soda in Piedmont or Oakland. They have had articles in the paper about Berkeley's soda tax and the small stores are collecting the tax and many of the larger stores aren't collecting it. The health nazi's in Berkeley wanted the soda tax to cut peoples consumption of sugary drinks and curb the obesity "epidemic." What they failed to take into account is the loss in sales tax revenue from declining soda sales if they can get everyone on board collecting the tax. About six months into the tax, one of the articles said that Berkeley had collected $643,000 in soda taxes so far, but because the regular sales tax is collected through the state and returned to the city they won't know for a while whether the overall sales tax revenue has gone down. Another potential problem is if the sales tax revenue goes down the city could come up short because the soda tax revenue must be spent on public health programs and can't be put in the general fund. Time will tell.
 
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