NY soft drink tax
Apparently people are pissy about a proposed tax on soda in new york.

How is this a big deal? Not that it's a direct comparison, but cigarettes in new york are taxed at well over 50%, sometimes exceeding 100% (depending on what you buy), and there are negative health effects to soda as well - studies have shown links between soft drink consumption and metabolic disorder (even with diet soda).

Does anybody who doesn't work within the soft drink industry actually care? What's 18% - an extra 7c a can? If you're drinking enough soda to impact your financial situation, that's a lot of fucking soda, and you should probably stop for health reasons anyway.

As diet soda is exluded from the tax (though I would disagree with that since as I mentioned it has been shown to contribute to metabolic disorder just as regular soda), the economist side of me is curious to see what sort of price differences there might be between diet and regular sodas if/when this goes into effect, and if higher prices on regular soda might make it appear as more of a "premium" product, in turn countering some of the sales loss due to the higher price.
- posted by vcmc @  12/17/2008 01:14:00 PM