Economics 101 and Soda Taxes

It is not difficult to understand the economics of taxation. Simply stated, the more you tax of something, the less you get of it.

You can show the adverse impact of taxation with supply-and-demand curves (very helpful for understanding “deadweight loss“).

But you don’t need to be an economist to grasp the essential idea that we shouldn’t impose excessive penalties on productive behavior.

This is why I endlessly argue for lower tax rates on things that are very good for society, such as work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. Simply stated, governments should minimize barriers to the creation of wealth and prosperity.

But what about using the tax code to punish things that are bad for society?

Consider, for instance, taxes that are designed to discourage obesity. I personally don’t think politicians and bureaucrats should try to dictate our lifestyle choices, so I’m not overly sympathetic to imposing special taxes on things like sugar.

But I also recognize that people do respond to incentives, so maybe such taxes would work.

Though it’s also possible that we might get unintended consequences, which is the message of Baylen Linnekin’s new article for Reason.

A new study is pouring cold beer on Seattle’s soda tax. …since the city I call home adopted a soda tax in 2018, residents have swapped out soda and replaced that soda with beer. Pointedly, the study says Seattle’s soda tax “induced” consumers to buy more beer. …The PLoS study, by University of Illinois-Chicago researchers Lisa M. Powell and Julien Lader, compared sales of beer in Seattle both before and since adoption of the soda tax with comparable sales in nearby Portland, Oregon, which has no soda tax. “At two-years post-tax implementation, [the] volume sold of beer in Seattle relative to Portland increased by 7%,” the authors report. Though supporters of soda taxes claim (largely without evidence) that they’re a successful tool to combat obesity, the authors of the PLoS study note that the dangers of “excess alcohol consumption [include] higher risk of motor accidents/deaths, liver cirrhosis, sexually transmitted diseases, crime and violence, and workplace accidents.” Also: obesity. …”It’s hard to overstate the abject failure of soda taxes to deliver on their promised benefits,” Reason Foundation’s Guy Bentley wrote several years ago… “Nowhere in the world, let alone the United States, have soda taxes reduced obesity.”

Here’s a link to the study for those interested.

The obvious takeaway is that imposing an anti-obesity tax may not be very effective if consumers can easily switch to a different product with some of the same characteristics (i.e., lots of calories).

And such a tax may wind up making society worse off if the original problem (obesity) isn’t solved and new problems (drunk driving, etc) are created.

So what’s the solution? Politicians presumably will look at the results of the study and argue that beer taxes also should be increased.

And then when they learn that people will drive to different cities to buy beer and soda (as happened when Philadelphia imposed such a tax), they’ll argue for statewide tax harmonization. And when that leads to cross-state shopping, they’ll push for federal harmonization.

Maybe, just maybe, they should leave people alone. In a free society, you should have the right to control your own life, even if it means making decisions that some people don’t like.

P.S. Nobody should be surprised when Seattle politicians enact bad policy.

P.P.S. Since we now know that soda taxes backfire, you also won’t be surprised to learn that marijuana taxes backfire. And tobacco taxes.

P.P.P.S. To the extent these taxes are successful, we get more evidence of the Laffer Curve. That happened in Berkeley. And it happened in Mexico.

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Philadelphia’s Soda Tax Backfired (for Everyone other than Politicians)

I’ve periodically opined about why politicians should not try to control people’s behavior with discriminatory taxes, such as the ones being imposed on soda.

And I’ve cited some examples of how these taxes backfire.

• The big drop in soda purchases after a tax on sugary drinks was imposed in Berkeley.
• The big drop in soda sales after a big tax on sugary products in Mexico.
• The big drop in soda purchases expected to occur following Seattle’s new tax.

If the following headlines are any indication, we can add Philadelphia to that list.

For instances, this story from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Or this story from the local CBS affiliate.

These examples reinforce my view that it is not a good idea to let meddling politicians impose more taxes in an effort to control people’s behavior.

Some of my left-leaning friends periodically remind me, however, that there’s a difference between anecdotes and evidence. There’s a lot of truth to that cautionary observation.

To be sure, I could simply respond by saying a pattern is evident when a couple of anecdotes turns into dozens of anecdotes. And when dozens become hundreds, surely it’s possible to say the pattern shows causality.

That being said, it is good to have rigorous, statistics-based analysis if we really want to convince skeptics.

So let’s look at the results of some new academic research from scholars at Stanford, Northwestern, and the University of Minnesota. We’ll start with the abstract, which nicely summarizes their findings about the impact of Philadelphia’s big soda tax.

We analyze the impact of a tax on sweetened beverages, often referred to as a “soda tax,” using a unique data-set of prices, quantities sold and nutritional information across several thousand taxed and untaxed beverages for a large set of stores in Philadelphia and its surrounding area. We find that the tax is passed through at a rate of 75-115%, leading to a 30-40% price increase. Demand in the taxed area decreases dramatically by 42% in response to the tax. There is no significant substitution to untaxed beverages (water and natural juices), but cross-shopping at stores outside of Philadelphia completely o↵sets the reduction in sales within the taxed area. As a consequence, we find no significant reduction in calorie and sugar intake.

Here are some of their conclusions.

We draw several lessons about the effectiveness of local sweetened-beverage taxes from these analyses. First, the tax was ineffective at reducing consumption of unhealthy products. Second, in terms of revenue generation, the tax was only partly effective due to consumers substituting to stores outside of Philadelphia. Third, low income households are less likely to engage in cross-shopping, and instead are more likely to continue to purchase taxed products at a higher price at stores in Philadelphia. The lower propensity for low income households to avoid the tax through cross-shopping leads to a relatively larger tax burden for those households. In summary, the tax does not lead to a shift in consumption towards healthier products, it affects low income households more severely, and it is limited in its ability to raise revenue.

If you’re wondering why consumers responded so strongly, here’s a chart from the study showing the price difference after the tax was imposed.

The bottom numbers in Figure 3 show that some sales still occurred in the city, but a persistent gap between city sales and suburban sales appeared.

And here’s what happened to sales inside the city (taxed) and outside the city (untaxed).

Wow. This data makes me wonder if suburban sellers will start contributing to the Philadelphia politicians who have generated this windfall?

Others have noticed how the tax is hurting rather than helping.

The Wall Street Journal opined about the failure of Philly’s soda tax.

When Philadelphia became the first major U.S. city to pass a soda tax in 2016, Mayor Jim Kenney said it would improve public health while funding universal pre-K. Two years in, the policy hasn’t delivered on that elite ideological goal. But the tax has come at the expense of working people… On Jan. 2, Brown’s Super Stores announced the closure of a ShopRite on Haverford Avenue. The supermarket is close to the city limit, and customers discovered they could avoid the soda tax by shopping outside Philly. …the once-profitable store began losing about $1 million a year. …That means fewer opportunities for workers with a criminal record. Mr. Brown’s supermarkets employ more than 600 of them, with the majority in Philadelphia. Some of the ex-cons have become his most-valued employees.

And Kyle Smith explained in National Review how the tax backfired.

Philadelphia’s outlandish soda tax is what Democratic-party politics looks like when it lets its freak flag fly. So many classic elements are there: (failed) social engineering and “think of the children!” on one side, paid for with a punitive tax on poor people and destroyed businesses, which means destroyed jobs, which in turn means lives upended. …Now that beer is, in some cases, cheaper than soda in Philadelphia, alcohol sales are up sharply. …the total loss attributable to the tax in sales of all items was $300,000 a month per store. Other, untaxed drinks also suffered sales declines within the city, suggesting people were simply saving up their shopping trips for when they left town.

I don’t feel compelled to add much to what’s been cited.

Though I will cite a headline from the Seattle Times to reinforce one of the points in the academic study about consumers bearing the cost of the tax rather than the soda companies.

And my one modest contribution to all this analysis is this comparison of the winners and loser from Philadelphia’s new tax.

For what it’s worth, similar comparisons could be developed for just about every action by every government. Academics call this “public choice” while ordinary people realize it’s just common sense.

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Sin Taxes and the Nanny State

Here are three things I’ve written about tax policy. See if you can detect a pattern:

• I’ve written that I don’t want a value-added tax because the money would be used to finance bigger government.
• I’ve also explained I don’t want a carbon tax because the revenue from such a levy would finance bigger government.
• I’ve given thumbs down to financial transactions taxes as well because I don’t want to finance bigger government.

Just in case it’s not obvious, the common theme is that I don’t want to give politicians new sources of revenue that would be used to expand the burden of government spending.

Some of my technocrat friends get upset by these writings. They argue, often correctly, that some of these taxes are not as destructive as the current tax code.

My response is that they’re making an irrelevant argument. Politicians who advocate the above taxes are not proposing to eliminate the income tax and repeal the 16th Amendment. Instead, they simply want to levy a new tax without fully repealing the awful system that already exists.

And now there’s a new tax idea gaining steam.

The Task Force on Fiscal Policy for Health…will examine the evidence on excise tax policy for health, including barriers to implementation, and make recommendations on how countries can best leverage fiscal policies to yield improved health outcomes for their citizens with the added benefit of bringing in additional revenue.

For readers who aren’t familiar with DC bureaucrat-speak, “leverage fiscal policies” means higher taxes. More specifically, advocates want higher “sin taxes” on unhealthy food and drink.

This Task Force is being spearheaded by Larry Summers (yes, that Larry Summers) and Mike Bloomberg (yes, that Mike Bloomberg), so it’s no surprise that this pair of leftists view “additional revenue” as an “added benefit.”

While my focus is on the negative fiscal and economic consequences of higher taxes and more spending, it’s worth pointing out the moral and practical argument against sin taxes.

Bill Wirtz, in a column for CapX, warns that nanny-state policies treat people as infants.

2017 has seen yet another increase in lifestyle regulations and sin taxes… Historically, it was social conservatives pushing for this kind of meddling. …How different is today’s excruciatingly irritating public health lobby…? Food and non-alcoholic drinks are…under fire, and blamed for a range of health issues. France and Ireland are now cracking down on that scourge on society: fizzy drinks. Ireland introduced a new tax on sugary drinks, while France increased the tax created in 2012 under French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Such policies are highly regressive… When Denmark introduced its controversial tax on fatty foods, consumers simply switched to cheaper – but equally unhealthy – alternatives. The country’s diet did not improve. …We are adults and we sometimes make decisions for ourselves which are unhealthy. The answer is for us to moderate our consumption, not quasi-prohibition. It’s time to stop infantilising the…consumer.

Charles Hughes of the Manhattan Institute reviews what happened with a new sin tax on sweetened beverages in Seattle.

Seattle recently became the latest major city to enact a sweetened beverage tax. …customers are reeling from sticker shock. One local reporter found that the tax added $10.34 to a case of Gatorade, bringing the final price to more than $26.00. …One of the justifications for beverage taxes is that customers will respond to price changes by reducing consumption of taxed beverages. The mechanism here is straightforward: tax something to get less of it. If people were to substitute diet sodas or other, less-harmful beverages for sugared sodas, they would be healthier.

But will such a policy work?

Many people are likely to avoid the tax by traveling to other untaxed locations to purchase groceries. Costco tells its customers about locations outside the city that are not subject to the beverage tax. …so the tax will have limited success in its health-related goals while also harming local businesses and failing to generate revenue.

Yet the fact the tax will be a failure at generating revenue isn’t stopping the city was squandering the money.

…revenue has already been allocated to a smorgasbord of causes, ranging from $500,000 for displaced worker retraining, to more than $1 million in tax administration costs, to vouchers to purchase fruits and vegetables.

While I’m glad consumers are escaping the tax by buying beverages from outside the city’s borders, in an ideal world, they would react in a bolder fashion.

If nothing else, the pro-tax crowd has a very elastic definition of sin.

They even want to tax meat.

Move over, taxes on carbon and sugar: the global levy that may be next is meat. Some investors are betting governments around the world will find a way to start taxing meat production… Meat could encounter the same fate as tobacco, carbon and sugar, which are currently taxed in 180, 60, and 25 jurisdictions around the world, respectively, according to a report Monday from investor group the FAIRR (Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return) Initiative. Lawmakers in Denmark, Germany, China and Sweden have discussed creating livestock-related taxes in the past two years.

By the way, the supposed Conservative Party in the United Kingdom is pushing sin taxes to finance bigger government.

The sugar tax was announced by Chancellor Philip Hammond in his budget statement in 2017. He said the money raised as part of the levy would go to the Department for Education. The former Chancellor said the new levy would be put on drinks companies and they would be taxed according to how much sugar was in their beverages. Two categories of taxation are set to come into force. One on the total sugar content on drinks with more than 5g per 100ml and a higher levy for drinks with 8g per 100ml or more. …The new tax could whack up the cost of a 2 litre bottle of Coca-Cola (10.6g per 100ml) by as much as 48p.

The nanny-state crowd complains that this isn’t enough.

Health campaigners have said the fizzy drinks tax should be extended to cover all chocolate, sweets and other confectionery containing the highest levels of sugar. …Action on Sugar is urging a mandatory levy set at a minimum of 20 per cent on all confectionery products that contain high levels of sugar.

Politicians in other nations also are using this excuse to extract more money from the citizenry.

Other countries have introduced similar measures and have seen some success in reducing the drinking of fizzy drinks. Mexico introduced a 10 per cent tax on sugary drinks in 2014 and saw a 12 per cent reduction over the first year. Hungary brought in a tax on the drinks companies and saw a 40 per cent decrease in the amount of sugar in the products. Brits will be joining some of our European neighbours with the move with similar measures in place on drinks in France and Finland and the Norwegians chocolate tax.

Let’s sum this up. The case against sin taxes is based on two simple principles.

1. Politicians want to seize more of our money in order to have greater ability to buy votes. Saying no to tax increases is a necessary (though sadly not sufficient) condition for good fiscal policy.
2. Politicians want to tell us how to live our lives. But that’s not their job, even in cases where I agree with the underlying advice. Coerced good behavior is not a sign of virtue.

The bottom line is that some proponents of sin taxes presumably have their hearts in the right place. But they need their brains in a good place as well. If they want to be taken seriously, at the very least they should match their proposed sin taxes with permanent repeal of an existing tax of similar magnitude.

For example, offer to trade a sugar tax for repeal of the death tax. Or suggest a fat tax accompanied by elimination of the capital gains tax.

Until we see such offers, advocates of sin taxes should be met with unyielding opposition.

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Laffer Curve Lessons for Leftists, Part VI

I shared yesterday an example of how a big tax increase on expensive homes led to fewer sales. Indeed, the drop was so pronounced that the government didn’t just collect less money than projected, which is a very common consequence when fiscal burdens increase, but it actually collected less money than before the tax hike was enacted.

That’s the Laffer Curve on steroids.

The purpose of that column was to share with my leftist friends an example of a tax increase that achieved something they desired (i.e., putting a damper on sales of expensive houses) in hopes of getting them to understand that higher taxes on other types of economic activity also will have similar effects.

And some of those “other types of economic activity” will be things that they presumably like, such as job creation, entrepreneurship, and upward mobility.

I now have another example to share. The New York Times is reporting that a Mexican tax on soda is causing a big drop in soda consumption.

In the first year of a big soda tax in Mexico, sales of sugary drinks fell. In the second year, they fell again, according to new research. The finding represents the best evidence to date of how sizable taxes on sugary drinks, increasingly favored by large American cities, may influence consumer behavior.

This is an amazing admission. Those first three sentences of the article are an acknowledgement of the central premise of supply-side economics: The more you tax of something, the less you get of it.

In other words, taxes do alter behavior. In the wonky world of economics, this is simply the common-sense observation that demand curves are downward-sloping. When the price of something goes up (in this case, because of taxes), the quantity that is demanded falls and there is less output.

And here’s another remarkable admission in the story. The effect of taxes on behavior can be so significant that revenues are impacted.

The results…matter for policy makers who hope to use the money raised by such taxes to fund other projects. …some public officials may be dismayed… Philadelphia passed a large soda tax last year and earmarked most of its proceeds to pay for a major expansion to prekindergarten. City budget officials had assumed that the tax would provide a stable source of revenue for education. If results there mirror those of Mexico, city councilors may eventually have to find the education money elsewhere.

Wow, not just an admission of supply-side economics, but also an acknowledgement of the Laffer Curve.

Now if we can get the New York Times to admit that these principle also apply to taxes on work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship, that will be a remarkable achievement.

P.S. Leftists are capable of amazing hypocrisy, so I won’t be holding my breath awaiting the consistent application of the NYT‘s newfound knowledge.

P.P.S. Just because some folks on the left are correct about the economic impact of soda taxes, that doesn’t mean they are right on policy. As a libertarian, I don’t think it’s the government’s job to dictate (or even influence) what we eat and drink.

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What Can We Learn When the Pro-Tax Hike Crowd Says “Oops”?

I don’t like tax increases, but I like having additional evidence that higher tax rates change behavior. So when my leftist friends “win” by imposing tax hikes, I try to make lemonade out of lemons by pointing out “supply-side” effects.

• Such as the big drop in soda purchases after a tax on sugary drinks was imposed in Berkeley.
• Such as the big drop in home sales after a tax was imposed in Vancouver on purchases by foreigners.

I’m hoping that if leftists see how tax hikes are “successful” in discouraging things that they think are bad (such as consumers buying sugary soda or foreigners buying property), then maybe they’ll realize it’s not such a good idea to tax – and therefore discourage – things that everyone presumably agrees are desirable (such as work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship).

Though I sometimes worry that they actually do understand that taxes impact pro-growth behavior and simply don’t care.

But one thing that clearly is true is that they get very worried if tax increases threaten their political viability.

This is why Becket Adams, in a column for the Washington Examiner, is rather amused that Mayor Kenney of Philadelphia has been caught with his hand in the tax cookie jar.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney fought hard to pass a new tax on soda and other sugary drinks. He won, and the 1.5-cents-per-ounce tax is now in place, affecting both merchants and consumers, because that’s how taxes work. Businesses pay the levies, and they offset the cost by charging higher prices. That is as basic as it gets. The only person who doesn’t seem to understand this is Kenney, who is now accusing business owners of extortion. “They’re gouging their own customers,” the mayor said.

Yes, consumers are being extorted and gouged, but the Mayor isn’t actually upset about that.

He’s irked because people are learning that it’s his fault.

Philadelphians are obviously outraged by the skyrocketing cost of things as simple as a soda, which has prompted some businesses to post signs explaining why the drinks are now do damned expensive. Kenney said that this effort by businesses to explain the rising cost is “wrong” and “misleading.” The mayor apparently thought the city council could impose a major new tax on businesses, and that customers somehow wouldn’t be affected.

In other words, it’s probably safe to say that Mayor Kenney has no regrets about the soda tax. He’s just not pleased that he can’t blame merchants for the price increase.

The International Monetary Fund, by contrast, may actually have learned a real lesson that higher taxes aren’t always a good idea. That bureaucracy is infamous for blindly supporting tax increases, but if we can believe this story from the Wall Street Journal, even those bureaucrats don’t think additional tax hikes in Greece would be a good idea.

IMF officials have said Greece’s economy is already overtaxed. New taxes that came into affect on Jan. 1 are squeezing household incomes further. Economists say even-higher income taxes—in the form of lower tax-free income allowances—could add to a mountain of unpaid taxes. Greeks currently owe the state €94 billion ($99 billion), equivalent to 54% of gross domestic product, and rising, in taxes that they can’t pay.

Here are some stories to illustrate the onerous tax system in Greece, starting with a retired couple that will probably lose their house because of a new property tax.

…the 87-year-old former economist and his 81-year-old wife are unable to repay the property tax imposed on their 70-year old house, a family inheritance. The annual tax is around ‎€33,000, but Mr. Kokkalis’s pension—already cut by half—is €28,000 a year. The couple borrowed money when the tax was imposed, initially as a temporary austerity measure in 2011. But they are already behind on nearly €200,000 of tax payments and can’t borrow more. Mr. Kokkalis says the state is calculating tax based on outdated property prices that have since collapsed, and that if he tried to sell the house now, nobody would be interested. “They impose taxes on an imaginary value,” Mr. Kokkalis says. “This is confiscation.”

I’ve already written about this punitive property tax. The good news is that property taxes generally are transparent, so people know how much they’re paying.

The bad news is that the tax in Greece is far too onerous.

And I’ve also noted that small businesses are being wiped out in Greece as well. The WSJ has a new example.

Tax increases under previous rounds of austerity have put a middle-class lifestyle beyond reach for many. “Our only goal now is survival,” says arts teacher Mimi Bonanou. Until recent years she also made a living as a practicing artist, selling her works in Greece and abroad. But increasingly heavy taxes that self-employed Greeks must pay at the start of each year, based on the state’s often-ambitious forecast of their incomes, have forced her to rely on teaching alone.

All things considered, Greece is a painful example that a country can’t tax its way to prosperity (though some politicians never learned that lesson).

Moreover, it’s nice to have further evidence that even the IMF recognizes that Greece is on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve.

And if a left-leaning bureaucracy is now willing to admit that excessive taxation can lead to less revenue, maybe eventually the Republicans on Capitol Hill will install people at the Joint Committee on Taxation who also understand this elementary insight.

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A Left-Wing Tax Victory that Is Actually a Triumph for Supply-Side Economics

Our statist friends like high taxes for many reasons. They want to finance bigger government, and they also seem to resent successful people, so high tax rates are a win-win policy from their perspective.

They also like high tax rates to micromanage people’s behavior. They urge higher taxes on tobacco because they don’t like smoking. They want higher taxes on sugary products because they don’t like overweight people. They impose higher taxes on “adult entertainment” because…umm…let’s simply say they don’t like capitalist acts between consenting adults. And they impose higher taxes on tanning beds because…well, I’m not sure. Maybe they don’t like artificial sun.

Give their compulsion to control other people’s behavior, these leftists are very happy about what’s happened in Berkeley, California. According to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, a new tax on sugary beverages has led to a significant reduction in consumption.

Here are some excerpts from a release issued by the press shop at the University of California Berkeley.

…a new UC Berkeley study shows a 21 percent drop in the drinking of soda and other sugary beverages in Berkeley’s low-income neighborhoods after the city levied a penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. …The “Berkeley vs. Big Soda” campaign, also known as Measure D, won in 2014 by a landslide 76 percent, and was implemented in March 2015. …The excise tax is paid by distributors of sugary beverages and is reflected in shelf prices, as a previous UC Berkeley study showed, which can influence consumers’ decisions. …Berkeley’s 21 percent decrease in sugary beverage consumption compares favorably to that of Mexico, which saw a 17 percent decline among low-income households after the first year of its one-peso-per-liter soda tax that its congress passed in 2013.

I’m a wee bit suspicious that we’re only getting data on consumption by poor people.

Why aren’t we seeing data on overall soda purchases?

And isn’t it a bit odd that leftists are happy that poor people are bearing a heavy burden?

I’m also amused by the following passage. The politicians want to discourage people from consuming sugary beverages. But if they are too successful, then they won’t collect all the money they want to finance bigger government.

In Berkeley, the tax is intended to support municipal health and nutrition programs. To that end, the city has created a panel of experts in child nutrition, health care and education to make recommendations to the City Council about funding programs that improve children’s health across Berkeley.

In other words, one of the lessons of the Berkeley sugar tax and the 21-percent drop in consumption is that the Laffer Curve applies to so-called sin taxes just like it applies to income taxes.

But the biggest lesson to learn from this episode is that it confirms the essential insight of supply-side economics. Simply stated, when you tax something, you get less of it.

Which is something that statists seem to understand when they urge higher “sin taxes,” but they deny when the debate shifts to taxes on work, saving, entrepreneurship, and investment.

I’m not joking. I debate leftists all the time and they will unabashedly argue that it’s okay to have higher tax rates on labor income and more double taxation on capital income because taxpayers supposedly don’t care about taxes.

Oh, and the same statists who say that high tax burdens don’t matter because people don’t change their behavior get all upset about “tax havens” and “tax competition” because…well, because people will change their behavior by shifting their economic activity where tax rates are lower.

It must be nice not to be burdened by a need for intellectual consistency.

Speaking of which, Mark Perry used the Berkeley soda tax as an excuse to add to his great collection of Venn Diagrams.

P.S. On the issue of sin taxes, a brothel in Austria came up with an amusing form of tax avoidance. The folks in Nevada, by contrast, believe in sin loopholes. And the Germans have displayed Teutonic ingenuity and efficiency.

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Get the Federal Government Out of Our Stomachs

Back in 2010, I joked that the Libertarian Party should give Barack Obama a Man-of-the-Year Award because his failed policies rejuvenated interest in limits of federal power.

Though, in retrospect, perhaps the GOP should have given Obama the Award since Republicans reaped the short-term benefits.

In any event, let’s not get distracted by electoral politics. That’s because we have another tongue-in-cheek award. It’s time for the Libertarian Party to give its Woman-of-the-Year Award to Michelle Obama.

Why? Because the First Lady has single-handedly managed to discredit the federal government’s program to subsidize school lunches.

In short, there are now all sorts of federal regulations and mandates that have simultaneously made the program most costly for schools and resulted in food that is less appealing to students.

In other words, she’s helping to teach the next generation that big government makes your life less pleasant. That’s usually a lesson young people don’t learn until they get their first paycheck.

Let’s look at the results of Ms. Obama’s handiwork.

Citing a report from the Government Accountability Office, the Wall Street Journal opines on how Washington has made the school lunch program become far less appealing.

America’s youth are voting with their forks: …participation has plunged for the second year in a row by 1.4 million children, or 4.5%, as they flee inedible government-designed cuisine. …In the name of better eating habits, the USDA has published 141 memos with mandates reaching down to quotas across “vegetable subgroups” and bans on salt and sandwiches. …this cookbook…runs to some 4,700 pages and counting… GAO auditors toured 14 schools in eight states for an on-site look at how kids and cafeterias are responding, and they report that the regulatory deluge is “overwhelming.”

Though I’m glad to see that some local governments and students are engaging in civil disobedience.

“…two had nevertheless been serving pasta that was not in compliance with the whole grain-rich requirement.” …The auditors found students in two schools who carried contraband salt shakers.

Gasp! Non-compliant pasta and contraband salt?!?

Surely it’s time to sic the IRS on these scofflaws.

Or maybe we should learn a different lesson, which the WSJ succinctly identifies.

This exercise has been an epic waste of food and taxpayer money.

Some statist readers doubtlessly are saying that the higher cost is worthwhile because students (even if they don’t like it) are being forced to eat healthier.

Um…not exactly.

Amazingly, the federal government managed to decrease consumption of fruits and vegetables (FV) even though that’s one of the main goals of the new rules. Here’s an excerpt from a scholarly study.

Since 2012, the USDA’s requirement that children select FVs at lunch as part of the reimbursable school meal has been met with concern and evidence of food waste. We compared elementary schoolchildren’s FV selection, consumption, and waste before (10 school visits, 498 tray observations) and after (11 school visits, 944 tray observations) implementation of this requirement using validated dietary assessment measures. More children selected FVs in higher amounts when FVs were required compared with when they were optional (0.69 cups vs. 0.89 cups, p,0.001); however, consumption decreased slightly (0.51 cups vs. 0.45 cups, p50.01) and waste increased (0.25 cups vs. 0.39 cups, p,0.001) when FVs were required compared with when they were optional.

As reported by the Washington Examiner, even the School Nutrition Association is not exactly happy with the federal government’s nanny-state approach to school lunches.

Schools nationwide are being forced to raid their education budgets to cover the costs of federally-mandated school lunches, rejected by students because they taste bad, according to a group the represents school nutrition professionals. Once a profit center for schools, cafeterias have become a financial black hole… And the deficits are being made up by cafeteria worker firings and budget shifting, according to the School Nutrition Association.

The Washington Examiner story represents an interesting development since it’s a sign of a schism between two interest groups – government workers and nanny staters – that normally are part of the same coalition.

So further kudos to Ms. Obama for causing discord on the left.

Though when push comes to shove, the nanny staters lose.

Here’s a real-world example of how the federal government has botched the program. A Montana school board has decided it makes more sense to reject handouts from Uncle Sam.

Bozeman school board members voted 5-3 to pull the high school out of the National School Lunch Program because federal regulations on calories, fat, sugar, sodium, whole grains and other nutritional elements championed by the first lady were driving students off campus for lunch… School officials realized it was financially advantageous to forgo $117,000 in federal food subsidies tied to the National School Lunch Program to draw students back into the cafeteria, and it seems they were correct. …Across the district, the food service program is $1,441 in the black so far for the 2015-16 school year. The food service budget ended last school year $16,000 in the red… And school food service workers told board members students are now getting high quality food from local sources, rather than pre-packaged meals promoted by the government.

Let’s now shift gears and look at other ways the federal government screws up when it gets involved with what goes in our stomachs.

For years, bureaucrats in Washington have tried to tell all of us, not just students, what we should eat and drink.

Well, it turns out that they were giving us bum advice. Here are a few excerpts from some analysis in the Washington Post.

U.S. dietary guidelines have long recommended that people steer clear of whole milk… Whole milk sales shrunk. It was banned from school lunch programs. Purchases of low-fat dairy climbed. “Replace whole milk and full-fat milk products with fat-free or low-fat choices,” says the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the federal government’s influential advice book, citing the role of dairy fat in heart disease.

Was this advice helpful?

Not so much. At least if the goal is better health.

…research published in recent years indicates that the opposite might be true: millions might have been better off had they stuck with whole milk. Scientists who tallied diet and health records for several thousand patients over ten years found, for example, that contrary to the government advice, people who consumed more milk fat had lower incidence of heart disease.

By the way, it’s not just whole milk. One of my Cato colleagues, Walter Olson, points out that the government has a long track record of botching recommendations.

Previous advice from Washington about the supposed hazards of eggs and other cholesterol-laden foods, the advantages of replacing butter and other animal fats with trans fats, and the gains to be made from switching from regular to diet soda, have all had to be re-evaluated and sometimes reversed in later years.

So what lessons should we learn?

Let’s turn to David Boaz, another colleague from the Cato Institute. He succinctly explains that government shouldn’t be involved in our diets.

It’s understandable that some scientific studies turn out to be wrong. Science is a process of trial and error, hypothesis and testing. Some studies are bad, some turn out to have missed complicating factors, some just point in the wrong direction. I have no criticism of scientists’ efforts to find evidence about good nutrition and to report what they (think they) have learned. My concern is that we not use government coercion to tip the scales either in research or in actual bans and mandates and Official Science. Let scientists conduct research, let other scientists examine it, let journalists report it, let doctors give us advice. But let’s keep nutrition – and much else – in the realm of persuasion, not force. First, because it’s wrong to use force against peaceful people, and second, because we might be wrong. This last point reflects the humility that is an essential part of the libertarian worldview.

Very well said.

Let’s close with one final example to demonstrate the bad things that happen when the federal government gets involved with food.

Writing for the Foundation for Economic Education, my old buddy Jim Bovard explains how biased bureaucrats are deliberately exaggerating hunger in America.

The Agriculture Department announced this morning that 48 million Americans live in “food insecure” households. Soon you’ll hear we’re suffering an epidemic of hunger. While the federal government is already feeding more than 100 million Americans, we’ll be told that it just isn’t enough. But it isn’t true. “Food insecurity” is a statistic designed to mislead. USDA defines food insecurity as being “uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.”

But this doesn’t mean anyone is going without food, as Jim notes.

The definition of “food insecure” includes anyone who frets about not being able to purchase food at any point. If someone states that they feared running out of food for a single day (but didn’t run out), that is an indicator of being “food insecure” for the entire year — regardless of whether they ever missed a single meal. If someone wants organic kale but can afford only conventional kale, that is another “food insecure” indicator.

Needless to say, statists predictably use the federal government’s biased stats to push for…you guessed it…more government!

After the 2009 USDA food security report was released, President Obama announced that “hunger rose significantly last year. … My administration is committed to reversing the trend of rising hunger.” …USDA food security reports, by creating the illusion of a national hunger epidemic, have helped propel a vast increase in federal food aid in recent years. …The insecurity = hunger switcheroo is also fueling campaigns to compel schools to give free breakfasts to all kids after school starts each day. …USDA has never attempted to create an accurate gauge to measure actual hunger. Instead, citizens are supposed to be satisfied with federal reports that are little more than a subsidy for political grandstanding.

I know what lesson I hope people learn from the deceit, waste, and foolishness discussed today.

We should end any role for the federal government in food. That means ending all the misguided programs discussed above.

It also means abolishing the food stamp program and letting states decide whether such subsidies are desirable.

And it means shutting down the entire Department of Agriculture.

Like all sensible libertarians, I don’t like the idea of having the federal government in my wallet or my bedroom. Perhaps we also need to say we don’t want Washington in our stomachs either.

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Corporate Tax in Japan, Benefits for American Veterans, and Overweight British Kids

The title of this post sounds like the beginning of a strange joke, but it’s actually because we’re covering three issues today.

Our first topic is corporate taxation. More specifically, we’re looking at a nation that seems to be learning that it’s foolish the have a punitive corporate tax system.

By way of background, the United States used to have the second-highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.

But then the Japanese came to their senses and reduced their tax rate on companies, leaving America with the dubious honor of having the world’s highest rate.

So did the United States respond with a tax cut in order to improve competitiveness? Nope, our rate is still high and the United States arguably now has the world’s worst tax system for businesses.

But the Japanese learned if a step in the right direction is good, then another step in the right direction must be even better.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Japan will be lowering its corporate tax rate again.

Japan’s ruling party on Tuesday cleared the way for a corporate tax cut to take effect next year… Reducing the corporate tax rate, currently about 35%, is a long-standing demand of large corporations. They say they bear an unfair share of the burden and have an incentive to move plants overseas to where taxes are lower. …Business leaders want the rate to fall below 30% within the next few years and eventually to 25%… The Japan Business Federation, known as Keidanren, says tax cuts could partly pay for themselves by spurring investment. Japan’s current corporate tax rate is higher than most European and Asian countries, although it is lower than the U.S. level of roughly 40%.

If only American politicians could be equally sensible.

The Japanese (at least some of them) even understand that a lower corporate rate will generate revenue feedback because of the Laffer Curve.

I’ve tried to make the same point to American policymakers, but that’s like teaching budget calculus to kids from the fiscal policy short bus.

Let’s switch gears to our second topic and look at what one veteran wrote about handouts from Uncle Sam.

Here are excerpts from his column in the Washington Post.

Though I spent more than five years on active duty during the 1970s as an Army infantry officer and an additional 23 years in the Reserves, I never fired a weapon other than in training, and I spent no time in a combat zone. …nearly half of the 4.5 million active-duty service members and reservists over the past decade were never deployed overseas. Among those who were, many never experienced combat. …support jobs aren’t particularly hazardous. Police officers, firefighters and construction workers face more danger than Army public affairs specialists, Air Force mechanics, Marine Corps legal assistants, Navy finance clerks or headquarters staff officers.

So what’s the point? Well, this former soldier thinks that benefits are too generous.

And yet, the benefits flow lavishly. …Even though I spent 80 percent of my time in uniform as a reservist, I received an annual pension in 2013 of $24,990, to which I contributed no money while serving. …My family and I have access to U.S. military bases worldwide, where we can use the fitness facilities at no charge and take advantage of the tax-free prices at the commissaries and post exchanges. The most generous benefit of all is Tricare. This year I paid just $550 for family medical insurance. In the civilian sector, the average family contribution for health care in 2013 was $4,565… Simply put, I’m getting more than I gave. Tricare for military retirees and their families is so underpriced that it’s more of a gift than a benefit. …budget deficits are tilting America toward financial malaise. Our elected representatives will have to summon the courage to confront the costs of benefits and entitlements and make hard choices. Some “no” votes when it comes to our service members and, in particular, military retirees will be necessary.

The entire column is informative and thoughtful. My only quibble is that it would be more accurate to say “an expanding burden of government is tilting America toward financial malaise.”

But I shouldn’t nitpick, even though I think it’s important to focus on the underlying problem of spending rather than the symptom of red ink.

Simply stated, it’s refreshing to read someone who writes that his group should get fewer taxpayer-financed goodies. And I like the idea of reserving generous benefits for those who put their lives at risk, or actually got injured.

Last but not least, I periodically share stories that highlight challenging public policy issues, even for principled libertarians.

You can check out some of my prior examples of “you be the judge” by clicking here.

Today, we have another installment.

The New York Times has reported that a mom and dad in the United Kingdom were arrested because their kid was too fat.

The parents of an 11-year-old boy were arrested in Britain on suspicion of neglect and child cruelty after authorities grew alarmed about the child’s weight. The boy, who like his parents was not identified, weighed 210 pounds. …In a statement, the police said that “obesity and neglect of children” were sensitive issues, but that its child abuse investigation unit worked with health care and social service agencies to ensure a “proportionate and necessary” response. The police said in the statement that “intervention at this level is very rare and will only occur where other attempts to protect the child have been unsuccessful.”

So was this a proper example of state intervention?

My instinct is to say no. After all, even bad parents presumably care about their kids. And they’ll almost certainly do a better job of taking care of them than a government bureaucracy.

But there are limits. Even strict libertarians, for instance, will accept government intervention if parents are sadistically beating a child.

And if bad parents were giving multiple shots of whiskey to 7-year olds every single night, that also would justify intervention in the minds of almost everybody.

On the other hand, would any of us want the state to intervene simply because parents don’t do a good job overseeing homework? Or because they let their kids play outside without supervision (a real issue in the United States, I’m embarrassed to admit)?

The answer hopefully is no.

But how do we decide when we have parents who are over-feeding a kid?

My take, for what it’s worth, is that the size of kids is not a legitimate function of government. My heart might want there to be intervention, but my head tells me that bureaucrats can’t be trusted to exercise this power prudently.

P.S. I guess “bye bye burger boy” in the United Kingdom didn’t work very well.

P.P.S. But the U.K. government does fund foreign sex travel, and that has to burn some calories.

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Anti-Obesity Efforts Mean More Bloated Government, not Better Health

Back in 2009, I wrote about various schemes to impose taxes on unhealthy food. At the time, I was primarily concerned about the risks of giving politicians a new source of revenue that would be used to increase the burden of government spending.

The folks at Reason TV look at the issue from a different angle and explain how government anti-obesity efforts won’t achieve their supposed goals.

One of the frustrating aspects of this debate is that failure will be used to justify even more intervention (aka, Mitchell’s Law). Politicians in New York City have already banned bake sales, for instance, yet that didn’t stop Mayor Bloomberg from unleashing a nutty new plan to prohibit large sodas.

And as explained in the video, the statists will respond to the failure of current anti-obesity efforts by arguing they need even more power to control and tax. And when those new efforts fail, they’ll argue for additional authority. Lather, rinse, repeat.

P.S. I assume this cartoon was designed to show why a value-added tax is a bad idea, but it’s very appropriate for this topic as well.

P.P.S. This issue helps explain the dangers of government-subsidized healthcare. Politicians make taxpayers pick up the tab for other people’s medical expenses and then claim that they should have the power to regulate private behavior in order to reduce costs.

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“We Have You Surrounded. Drop the Big Gulp and Come Out with Your Hands Up”

Mayor Bloomberg is a wretched human being. He’s an ultra-rich limousine liberal who wants to impose his views on ordinary people.

I’ve previously written about his statist efforts to ban bake sales, and I’ve noted with mixed feelings his proposal to tell food stamp recipients what they’re allowed to buy.

Now he wants to criminalize large sodas. Holman Jenkins writes about this silly idea in the Wall Street Journal.

Mike Bloomberg’s move to regulate the size of sodas sold in his city illustrates why it’s a good thing he is a mayor of New York and not the czar of all the Russias. American big cities tend to be one-party states to begin with, but at least their totalitarian impulses end up being merely cute because they’re so easy to evade. Under the Bloomberg plan, any cup or bottle of sugary drink larger than 16 ounces at a public venue would be verboten, beginning early next year. You’ll still be able to buy as much Coke as you want in a supermarket. Go home and pour yourself a bucketful. As Mr. Bloomberg himself was the first to note, you’ll also still be free to buy two medium drinks in place of today’s Big Gulp at ballgames, theaters, delis and other venues where the ban would be in effect.

But Mr. Jenkins doesn’t just mock Bloomberg for being a food nanny. He also makes an important point about public policy.

Here is the ultimate justification for the Bloomberg soft-drink ban, not to mention his smoking ban, his transfat ban, and his unsuccessful efforts to enact a soda tax and prohibit buying high-calorie drinks with food stamps: The taxpayer is picking up the bill. Call it the growing chattelization of the beneficiary class under government health-care programs. Bloombergism is a secular trend. Los Angeles has sought to ban new fast-food shops in neighborhoods disproportionately populated by Medicaid recipients, Utah to increase Medicaid copays for smokers, Arizona to impose a special tax on Medicaid recipients who smoke or are overweight. …So perhaps the famous “broccoli” hypothetical during the Supreme Court ObamaCare debate was not so fanciful after all. It flows naturally from the state’s fiscal responsibility for your health that it will try to regulate your behavior, even mandating vegetable consumption.

Or, to summarize, the view of politicians is that the government can tell you how to live because it is paying for your healthcare. This is Mitchell’s Law on steroids! One bad government policy leading to another awful government policy.

And it’s not just Mayor Bloomberg pushing these policies. Other politicians have similar proposals, though it’s quite likely that their main motive is to collect more tax revenue since they are focused on how to tax various “bad” foods.

But let’s try not to be overly depressed. Here’s an amusing cartoon on the topic.

I’m glad that people are mocking Mayor Bloomberg and the rest of the Food Nazis. And it’s good to see that the soft drink industry is fighting back, as seen by this Super Bowl commercial.

Maybe some day we’ll get to the point where people have to smuggle food past government agents. This may sound absurd, but it’s already happening in Norway.

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Big Government Causes Crime, the Norwegian Version

I’ve written several times about the foolish War on Drugs, which has been about as misguided and ineffective as the government’s War on Poverty.

So when I saw a news report about a couple of Swedes getting busted for smuggling 200-plus kilos of contraband into Norway, and then another story about a Russian getting caught trying to sneak 90 kilos of an illicit substance into the country, I wondered whether these were reports about cocaine or marijuana. Or perhaps heroin or crystal meth.

Hardly. Norway’s law enforcement community was protecting people from the horrible scourge of illegal butter.

Sounds absurd, but there’s been an increase in the demand for butter and high import taxes have created a huge incentive for black market butter sales. Here’s a video on this latest example of government stupidity.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you outlaw butter, only outlaws will have butter. Or perhaps butter is the gateway drug leading to whole milk consumption, red meat, salt, and other dietary sins. Surely Mayor Bloomberg will want to investigate.

By the way, the United States is not immune from foolish policies that line the pockets of criminals. Here’s a video from the Mackinac Center revealing how punitive tobacco taxes facilitate organized crime.

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The Best Super Bowl Commercial of 2011

I don’t know if this commercial was broadcast nationally, but I saw it in northern Virginia. A very smart, anti-politician message.

The worst commercial (this is a no-brainer) was from Chrysler. Not because the advertising was bad, but because the company is mooching from the taxpayers.

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Nanny State Alert

I can’t believe I missed this stary from last October. The food Nazis in New York City have banned bake sales. This cripples fundraising for student groups, but that presumably is a small price to pay so that politicians get an opportunity for a few hollow sound bites about childhood obesity. Of course, if the politicians really want to do something about overweight kids, they could arrest the parents and destroy all televisions sets, video games, and computers in private homes. But maybe I shouldn’t give them any ideas. The New York Times has the odious details:

There shall be no cupcakes. No chocolate cake and no carrot cake. According to New York City’s latest regulations, not even zucchini bread makes the cut. …the Education Department has effectively banned most bake sales, the lucrative if not quite healthy fund-raising tool for generations of teams and clubs. The change is part of a new wellness policy that also limits what can be sold in vending machines and student-run stores, which use profits to help finance activities like pep rallies and proms. …Unsurprisingly, the rationale is getting a cool reception among students. At Fiorello H. La Guardia High School on the Upper West Side, students are used to having bake sales several times a month. Now, Yardain Amron, a sophomore basketball player, laments that his team will not be able to raise money for a new scoreboard. Another La Guardia student, Eli Salamon-Abrams, 14, said that when the soccer team held a bake sale in May, his blueberry muffins sold out in 15 minutes. He said of the ban: “I think it’s kind of pointless. I mean, why can’t we have bake sales?” The new policy also requires that vending machines, which generate millions of dollars for school sports, be supplied with snacks such as reduced-fat Baked Doritos and low-sugar granola bars. A new vending machine contract is expected to be approved on Wednesday by the Panel for Educational Policy, the school oversight board. Student stores will be able to sell only approved snacks bought from the new vendor, rather than obtain the food themselves, as they once did. …Department officials are suggesting that teams use walk-a-thons and similar activities as a way of raising money and doing something active.

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Sugar Nazis Want Higher Taxes on Soda and Snacks

A report at CBSnews.com highlights the growing interest among politicians and bureaucrats in new taxes on sugary drinks, including sports drinks such as Gatorade. This is a reprehensible example of nanny-state intervention, of course, but it shows the risk of having government involved in health care since politicians then assert the right to tell us how to live:

…one of the proposals put before the committee received a nod of approval from health officials today: taxing soda. The [Senate Finance] committee — the last congressional panel expected to produce its own recommendations for health care reform – listened to arguments earlier this year both for and against imposing a three-cent tax on sodas as well as other sugary drinks, including energy and sports drinks like Gatorade. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a three-cent tax would generate $24 billion over the next four years, and proponents of the tax argued before the committee that it would lower consumption of sugary drinks and improve Americans’ overall health. …CDC chief Dr. Thomas Freiden said increasing the price of unhealthy foods “would be effective” at combating the nation’s obesity problem… The American Beverage Association, which strongly opposes the tax, told the Wall Street Journal the tax would hit poor Americans the hardest.  

The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, has a similar report about politicians wanting a tax on foods that supposedly lead to obesity. The reason for their interest, not surprisingly, is that a 10 percent tax on such foods may lead to more than $500 billion, which doubtlessly is leading to lots of salivating on Capitol Hill:

Key among the “interventions” the report weighs is that of imposing an excise or sales tax on fattening foods. That, says the report, could be expected to lower consumption of those foods. But it would also generate revenues that could be used to extend health insurance coverage to the uninsured and under-insured, and perhaps to fund campaigns intended to make healthy foods more widely available to, say, low-income Americans and to encourage exercise and healthy eating habits. …a 2004 report prepared for the Department of Agriculture suggested that, for “sinful-food” taxes to change the way people eat, they may need to equal at least 10% to 30% of the cost of the food. And although 40 U.S. states now impose modest extra sales taxes on soft drinks and a few snack items, the Urban Institute report suggests that a truly forceful “intervention” — one that would drive down the consumption of fattening foods and, presumably, prevent or reverse obesity — would have to target pretty much all the fattening and nutritionally empty stuff we eat: “With a more narrowly targeted tax, consumers could simply substitute one fattening food or beverage for another,” the reports says. …Conservatively estimated, a 10% tax levied on foods that would be defined as “less healthy” by a national standard adopted recently in Great Britain could yield $240 billion in its first five years and $522 billion over 10 years of implementation — if it were to begin in October 2010. If lawmakers instituted a program of tax subsidies to encourage the purchase of fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, the added revenue would still be $356 billion over 10 years.

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