
Soda Taxes Seem to Cut Soda Drinking - OrwellianChild
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/upshot/yes-soda-taxes-seem-to-cut-soda-drinking.html
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willidiots
Or perhaps the soda tax and reduced consumption both stem from the same body
of scientific evidence and anti-soda narrative? As a whole, consumers are
shifting to healthier eating trends, soda's one of the obvious things to cut.

I agree with the last paragraph, the studies to date haven't shown much. It'd
be interesting to compare state-by-state changes over the past 10 years.

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dmritard96
As a diet soda addict, I was always surprised that soda companies haven't just
started pushing diet drinks more. Until the additives are deemed to be
carcinogenic, the health benefits over regular soda are plain as day light and
they can really mitigate the public health push back they are getting on their
nondiet brands/varieties.

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zzleeper
Isn't there a large body of research that show unexpected negative effects of
diet drinks?

EG: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2015/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2015/03/17/bad-news-diet-soda-drinkers-your-favorite-beverage-may-
lead-to-more-belly-fat-as-you-age/)

~~~
nommm-nommm
Yeah and it may alter your gut bacteria in terrible ways
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial-
sweeten...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial-sweeteners-
may-change-our-gut-bacteria-in-dangerous-ways/)

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masterleep
Eminently logical. The question is what right does the government have to
penalize a person for drinking soda, and the answer is "none whatsoever."

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nopinsight
There is economic externality for the healthcare system in the future for
excessive consumption of bad diets. If we want to reduce punishment to other
taxpayers, it might be rational to nudge people towards healthier behaviors.

Such policy might include tax breaks for exercises, taxes on cigarettes, soda,
etc. Tax subsidies for veggies, etc. Obviously solid evidence is needed before
it is initiated.

There could be philosophical arguments that the government should not
interfere with their citizens' lives. But this is more about charging the true
(future) costs of actions, like carbon tax, rather than dictating behaviors.

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tsotha
There's no end to that road. What people do in the bedroom affects their
health as well. Shall we tax the more risky sex practices?

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Akkuma
Why stop there? We might want to monitor people each day via fitbit like
devices that report back the data to ensure everyone is exercising the
recommended amount. We can then tax or reduce taxes for the applicable
individuals.

This could obviously be deemed a bit of a slippery slope fallacy, but I'd
argue the above is probably more beneficial than taxing my soda if you truly
want to reduce healthcare costs by having healthier individuals. But, who
wants to go that far?

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TeMPOraL
Personally, I would, if FitBit et al. were actually about health and not about
sports-obsessed people bragging about their fitness activities. I definitely
wouldn't mind being monitored for health with real-time advice on how to
optimize it.

As for the bedroom thing, this is a bad kind of slippery slope argument (not
all slippery slope arguments are fallacies). It's ignoring the fact that
penalizing soda is not a binary +health/-health decision but a complex
tradeoff that includes the magnitude of expected gains and the probable
sentiment of the public.

