Home › Forums › West Seattle Rants & Raves › RANT: City of Seattle toying with soda tax
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April 15, 2011 at 3:00 am #598625
ernieusafretParticipantI just got a call from a research company about a tax on sodas for the city of Seattle.
I can’t believe the city council is even thinking about a tax after it was defeated in the state election. Who else would think of it?
Why can’t they be made to live within their means like the rest of us have to. I haven’t had a raise in 2 years and prices keep going up.
KEEP YOUR HANDS OUT OF MY POCKETS There is nothing left.
April 15, 2011 at 3:24 am #722547
JoBParticipanternieusafret,
i am all for the city of Seattle taxing soda
regardless of whether a soda tax failed in a state election
this tax is pretty easy to avoid
don’t buy don’t soda in the city …
i know that the tax was defeated statewide
but it would be interesting to see how that tax did in the city limits..
i don’t care enough to look..
but it still would be interesting.
April 15, 2011 at 3:30 am #722548
redblackParticipanti’ll gladly pay a soda tax. i voted for it on the state level, and i think it’s a good idea.
and thanks for letting me know. now i can tell the city council to vote “yes.”
April 15, 2011 at 3:35 am #722549
angelescrestParticipantYes, yes, yes.
April 15, 2011 at 3:38 am #722550
redblackParticipantbtw, “keep your hands out of my pockets – there is nothing left” pertains to bank of america, chase, comcast, qwest, state farm, etc. ad nauseum, too.
and more so than the government. i pay far more in bills than i do in taxes.
April 15, 2011 at 4:31 am #722551
TDeParticipantI don’t have a problem paying a few cents more for soft drinks. Maybe it will help fix more streets so I don’t have to drive down California Ave like a drunken sailor trying to avoid all the tire bustin’ potholes.
April 15, 2011 at 4:47 am #722552
ernieusafretParticipant“i pay far more in bills than i do in taxes.”
Not for long if our government has its way.
This tax is just another foot in the door for higher taxes. Whenever they find out we are willing to pay a tax, for whatever reason, they find out another reason for another one.
If you and I can balance our budgets than WHY can’t the government.
I do without for a lot of things bacause I can’t afford them.
I worked for a living for my retirement, why should I support those who don’t want to.
I know there are some who can’t work,or can’t find work, but why should I support those families who have been on welfare for generations, and there are some.
I’m just getting fedup with new or increased taxes every year.
Maybe I should change my nic to FEDUP.
April 15, 2011 at 4:58 am #722553
Rod ClarkMemberNot about taxes, but… if you drink a lot of soda, this is worth watching.
Sugar: The Bitter Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
It’s a comparison of how glucose, fructose and ethanol are metabolized, in particular by the liver. Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a professor of endocrinology at U. of California, presents it in an easy to understand way (if you let the detailed biochemistry reaction slides go by and listen for the summaries).
His conclusion is that quite a lot of glucose intake is fine, but that ethanol and fructose both are processed largely by the liver, and that there are real limits on how much of them it’s healthy to consume.
Lustig also gives some data about how too much sugar intake increases one’s chances of contracting Type 2 diabetes, and why. Along with other opinionated views on lots of things, including the positive nutritional value of consuming whole fruit but how it’s very easy these days to drink too much fructose.
How much is OK and not too much? Something like one ounce of fructose a day, if I read one of the data slides right. The average person in the US is consuming more than that at present, he concludes.
I didn’t understand the biochemistry, but have no reason to believe that he and his colleagues at UC are wrong about this.
April 15, 2011 at 7:53 am #722554
JanSParticipantthis reminds me of a show I was watching last night. The guest, a woman whose name escapes me now, called herself a fiscal conservative. And she followed that with the fact that she believed that she shouldn’t pay ANY taxes. NONE!. Sounds like a great idea…right? She couldn’t answer how the basics would get paid for…clean water, firemen, police, transportation regulations, roads, and on and on. That is the thinking. They don’t want to pay any taxes at all…ever. If you think we’re in trouble now….imagine what life would be without a gov’t. with money. These people really have no idea what it entails.
A soda tax? pffffttt…drink water. You don’t have to pay the tax…just shop in Burien…
April 15, 2011 at 12:28 pm #722555
KenParticipanthttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:A_Day_In_The_Life_of_Joe_Conservative
and the reverse:
A Day in the Life of a True Conservative
Joe Conservative wakes up in the morning and goes to the bathroom. He flushes his toilet and brushes his teeth, mindful that each flush & brush costs him about 43 cents to his privatized water provider. His wacky, liberal neighbor keeps badgering the company to disclose how clean and safe their water is, but no one ever finds out. Just to be safe, Joe Conservative boils his drinking water.
Joe steps outside and coughs–the pollution is especially bad today, but the smokiest cars are the cheapest ones, so everyone buys ‘em. Joe Conservative checks to make sure he has enough toll money for the 3 different private roads he must drive to work. There is no public transportation, so traffic is backed up and his 10 mile commute takes an hour.
On the way, he drops his 12 year old daughter off at the clothing factory she works at. Paying for kids to go to private school until they’re 18 is a luxury, and Joe needs the extra income coming in. Times are hard and there’re no social safety nets.
He gets to work 5 minutes late and misses the call for Christian prayer, and is immediately docked by his employer. He is not feeling well today, but has no health insurance, since neither his employer nor his government provide it, and paying for it himself is really expensive, since he has a precondition. He just hopes for the best.
Joe’s workday is 12 hours long, because there is no regulation over working hours, and Joe will lose his job if he complains or unionizes. Today is an especially bad day. Joe’s manager demands that he work until midnight, a 16 hour day. Joe does, knowing that he’ll lose his job if he does not.
Finally, after midnight, Joe gets to pick up his daughter and go home. His daughter shows him the deep cut she got on the industrial sewing machine today. Joe is outraged and asks why she doesn’t have metal mesh gloves or other protection. She says the company will not provide it and she’ll have to pay for it out of her own pocket. Joe looks at the wound and decides they’ll use an over the counter disinfectant and bandages until it heals. She’ll have a scar, but getting stitches at the emergency room is expensive.
His daughter also complains that the manager made suggestive overtures towards her. Joe counsels her to be a “good girl” and not rock the boat, or she’ll get fired and they’ll be out the income.
His daughter says she can’t wait until she’s 18 so she can vote for change or go to the Iraq War.
They get home and there’s a message from his elderly father who can’t afford to pay his medical or heating bills. Joe can hear him coughing and shivering.
Joe turns on the radio and the top story is a proposal in Congress to raise the voting age to 25. A rare liberal opinionator states that it’s an attempt to keep power out of the hands of working class Americans. The conservative host immediately quashes him, calling him “a utopian idealist,” and agreeing that people aren’t mature enough to make good choices until they’re at least 25.
Joe chuckles at the wine-swilling, cheese eating liberal egghead and thinks, “Thank God I live in America where I have freedom!”
Note: This reverse on the riff was copied directly from Thom Hartmann’s website. The site is marked “(c) Copyright 1996-2007, Mythical Intelligence, Inc. and Thom Hartmann”, however, Thom says of the piece in reply to a request for authorship of item/permission to reprint: “It’s not original to me…”.
April 15, 2011 at 1:25 pm #722556
redblackParticipanternie: if there are things i want or need, i find a way to pay for them. i don’t start out from a position of shutting off the cable, the water, electricity just to save money so that i can have other stuff.
look, the government isn’t a business, and it shouldn’t be run like one.
speaking of business, government has to be able to regulate and control the largest corporations in our society. you want smaller government? have smaller corporations.
April 15, 2011 at 1:38 pm #722557
anonymeParticipantRedblack, thanks once again for bringing up a truth that is almost universally overlooked, despite assertions by Donald Trump and his ilk. GOVERNMENT IS NOT A BUSINESS. There is nothing at all in the Constitution about government being run as a business, or for the benefit of business. Government exists to serve the people; business serves only itself.
April 15, 2011 at 3:41 pm #722558
JiggersMemberSoda isn’t good for you anyways.
April 15, 2011 at 3:52 pm #722559
datamuseParticipantI don’t really understand the assertion that governments should be run like businesses anyway. Isn’t the point of business to make a profit?
April 15, 2011 at 6:20 pm #722560
villagegreenMemberI find it humorous when people whine and complain about all the seemingly small and ridiculous things that are taxed here. It really comes down to a simple fact, if you don’t want to pay taxes on every little thing, pay an income tax like most other civilized states. Otherwise, stop complaining. How else is the government supposed to raise money in order to keep services and the state running?
April 15, 2011 at 6:49 pm #722561
charlabobParticipantYup, I got called by the same “research group” in their push poll last night. I *tried* to answer the questions so that the corporate shills would have to recognize and record my complete support for the tax. About half way through, I realized that the poll was weighted so that wasn’t possible. It was just an attempt to “scare” people or to raise the antitaxers or both.
My favorite questions involved “Do you really believe these crooks will limit their use of taxes to children’s health or will they just put the money into the general fund?” There was no way for me to say, “Yup, they’ll put it in the general fund — if they have the sense g-d gave a wombat.” So they can take the positive answer of a pro-tax person and twist it into “98 percent of the people don’t trust the government to use the money “correctly.”
At that point I opted out (and asked the young woman to please make sure my half-completed poll did not make it into the final results.)
I forgot how devious these people are, because I usually say, “No thank you,” and hang up.
SO, a long winded way of saying *I think* there’s no way for pro-tax results to be included in these bogus polls. If someone else knows a way, let me know.
April 16, 2011 at 12:01 am #722562
suzanneParticipantHere’s an interesting article about the amount of taxes we have had to pay from 1945 to 2011. It includes a cool interactive tool.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/map-data-tool/new-interactive-tool-puts-tax-rates-historical-context
April 16, 2011 at 1:05 am #722563
JayDeeParticipantGo for it! Soda water taxes are pennies that can be avoided if you just buy mass quantities of soda at the Tukwila Costco…and if it helps close the revenue gap, great.
April 16, 2011 at 4:44 am #722564
JoBParticipantApril 16, 2011 at 4:29 pm #722565
dawsonctParticipantGee Ernie, at the end of the year your debt is always zero$? That is interesting, as most Americans can’t claim that for themselves. No house payments? No car payments? No credit card bills for that HDTV and home theater system? Bravo, I applaud you for your frugality.
OUR government is not a business, it doesn’t need to balance the books or show a profit. And sometimes we citizens NEED to spend more in one year than we have taken in. (Try fighting for OUR GAWD-given petroleum if we have to pay for our interventionist military every year).
People complain about how long it has taken to put our light rail system in place (thanks to Kemper Freeman, Sr., Jr. and their ilk, about forty YEARS too long), but if our government HAD to balance their books every year, things like that would NEVER get built.
Instead of complaining about the system that allows us to do great things collectively that we could NEVER achieve as individuals, why not try complaining about those who have gamed the system solely for their own profits, at YOUR and OUR Nation’s expense.
April 16, 2011 at 4:40 pm #722566
JoBParticipantApril 17, 2011 at 1:50 am #722567
maplesyrupParticipantI was disappointed that the soda and candy tax was overridden.
If the city wants to bring it back I’m ok with that. A few cents on each candy bar or soda can isn’t going to cause anyone to go broke.
April 17, 2011 at 2:58 am #722568
JoBParticipantApril 17, 2011 at 6:11 am #722569
carterParticipantApril 17, 2011 at 10:23 am #722570
HMC RichParticipantJames Madison said…I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
If Seattle wants a tax on soda, fine, but when will that tax end, or some other tax. They are like age spots, they don’t seem to go away unless they are cut out. James Madison did NOT state the last paragraph.
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