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Do “sin taxes” work?

economist.com

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Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#91

Post by tribesman »

gspetr wrote: post #84
closeparen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing a minor source of income is usually considered unethical and illegal. Minimum wages were adopted explicitly to curtail piecework that paid only a few pennies per item. Recycling programs knowingly target the most vulnerable in society to work without protections like minimum wage, overtime, and health insurance. Yet it seems they have political support from many of of the same people who advocate labor prot…

Unethical and illegal? Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland do not have minimum wages. Yet none of them were overwhelmed by the abuse of homeless labor.

>Yet none of them were overwhelmed by the abuse of homeless labor.

These countries seem homogeneous. Can you give any such example for a Cosmopolitan country?

Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#92

Post by smittywerben »

"Sin taxes" misses most of the problem of the availability in the first place.

In lax states I end up paying half (i.e. $25 for a $50 bottle).

That substantial difference is not taxes alone. I'd guess 15% is due to blocking private stores from entering the market.

So I would rather pay higher taxes if my total cost for liquor goes down, if that makes any sense.

Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#93

Post by coldtea »

stuaxo wrote: post #90
yason wrote: post #19

From the article: Sin taxes are blunt policy instruments. People who only have the occasional drink are not taking on any great health risks, yet they are taxed no differently than serious alcoholics. But surely the alcoholics are taxed way more than people who have an occasional drink because of the sheer volume? If you drink or smoke a lot, the taxes do accumulate into significant amounts annually. Policymakers sho…

Smokers damage others through secondary smoke. People that work in pubs and clubs after a smoking ban must see a big benefit. Everyone old enough to have gone out in the UK in the early 2000s can tell you that pubs and clubs were totally full of smoke and you would come home smelling like an ashtray. Bit of a weak argument the article makes.

>Smokers damage others through secondary smoke.

Do they really, or is that an old wives tale from non-reproducible research, the way the anti-fat scare was?

"The largest and longest study (Enstrom & Kabat) followed more than 35,000 subjects for almost 40 years and found no significant risk associated with second-hand smoke. Similarly, the World Health Organization spent seven years at a dozen research centers in seven countries and came to the same conclusion".

Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#94

Post by coldtea »

dsr_ wrote: post #77
closeparen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing a minor source of income is usually considered unethical and illegal. Minimum wages were adopted explicitly to curtail piecework that paid only a few pennies per item. Recycling programs knowingly target the most vulnerable in society to work without protections like minimum wage, overtime, and health insurance. Yet it seems they have political support from many of of the same people who advocate labor prot…

Only people who are not served by better programs will spend time picking up cans for recycling value. I can simultaneously want to make sure that nobody goes hungry or homeless, and still recognize that we aren't doing that today, so in the meantime having that recycling income available is better than not having it.

>Only people who are not served by better programs will spend time picking up cans for recycling value.

The inverse is more true: people will continue not serving others by better programs if they can have them work for them for pennies...

Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#95

Post by coldtea »

gspetr wrote: post #84
closeparen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing a minor source of income is usually considered unethical and illegal. Minimum wages were adopted explicitly to curtail piecework that paid only a few pennies per item. Recycling programs knowingly target the most vulnerable in society to work without protections like minimum wage, overtime, and health insurance. Yet it seems they have political support from many of of the same people who advocate labor prot…

Unethical and illegal? Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland do not have minimum wages. Yet none of them were overwhelmed by the abuse of homeless labor.

No, but they have union agreements for minimum wages (enforced across sectors) and they have excellent welfare for those without a job (to the point that being a bastard boss and merely giving people scraps wont going to land you many workers).

Plus, as societies they have a basic decency, absent from other more exploitative societies.

Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#96

Post by IMTDb »

refurb wrote: post #65
manicdee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cost more money per year to keep alive while they're dying, and they contribute less to the economy (because they die early). The indirect costs of their mortality are far greater than the direct savings.

Why would they cost more per year when dying? Lung cancer can be pretty swift versus other diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Speaking from europe where healthcare is basically free.

Medical care for these patients is extremely expensive. Each surgery costs around 50 to 60 thousand euro and it's not uncommon to get 2 or 3 of those before dying. Add to that the frequent visits to the doctor's office, the oxygen tanks if needed, the medications, etc. The other option would be to just "let them die" but that's not what we decided to do as a society.

The trend is that we are now able to keep them alive slightly longer, ( at a higher cost) and that they start developing symptoms slightly later thus reducing the potential "benefit" for society.

Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#97

Post by Ntrails »

exabrial wrote: post #83
bskap wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's milk-based drinks that are excluded, not Starbucks specifically. So it doesn't apply to things like chocolate milk, milkshakes, or milkshakes with a small amount of coffee in them.

What's so better about a drink with milk with tons of sugar than a drink without milk with tons of sugar? The drink without milk probably has fewer calories. This is just an example of a corporation buying out a local government.

> This is just an example of a corporation buying out a local government.

I gotta question whether it's realistic to say that Starbucks bought out local government with it's infinite resources but McDonalds couldn't afford to?

I'd love to see the actual/official reasoning behind the exclusion though

Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#98

Post by nherment »

coldtea wrote: post #93
stuaxo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smokers damage others through secondary smoke. People that work in pubs and clubs after a smoking ban must see a big benefit. Everyone old enough to have gone out in the UK in the early 2000s can tell you that pubs and clubs were totally full of smoke and you would come home smelling like an ashtray. Bit of a weak argument the article makes.

> Smokers damage others through secondary smoke. Do they really, or is that an old wives tale from non-reproducible research, the way the anti-fat scare was? "The largest and longest study (Enstrom & Kabat) followed more than 35,000 subjects for almost 40 years and found no significant risk associated with second-hand smoke. Similarly, the World Health Organization spent seven years at a dozen research centers in sev…

Both the CDC[1] and the WHO[2] disagree with what you just wrote.

> Since the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report, 2.5 million adults who were nonsmokers died because they breathed secondhand smoke [1]

> While the tobacco industry continues to claim that the evidence that passive smoking causes disease – particularly lung cancer – is controversial, every independent authoritative scientific body that has examined the evidence has concluded that passive smoking causes many diseases. [2]

Also, the Enstrom & Kabat study is widely criticised [3] + [4]:

> incorrect definition of passive smoking exposure as a “nonsmokerʼs marriage to a smoker” [3]

> A severe error in the study was the failure to establish a control group of nonsmokers who were unexposed to secondhand smoke. [4]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/seco...

[2] http://www.who.int/tobacco/research/secondhand_smoke/about/e...

[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236833718_Critique_...

[4] [PPT] www.econ.wayne.edu/agoodman/7550/week14/Second-hand_Smoke.ppt

Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#99

Post by stone-monkey »

closeparen wrote: post #82
stone-monkey wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that frame of reference make sense for a recycling program though? The deposit system is a zero sum system that isn't designed for the purpose of making money - the deposit is to discourage consumers from throwing recyclables away and instead get their money back. It seems like more of a side effect that low income workers use it as an income stream more than anything. It's like a metaphorical form of picking up…

>isn't designed for the purpose of making money It saves taxpayers and sellers a boatload of money compared to paying for proper employees with health insurance, mileage reimbursement, etc. to clean up their streets / source their raw material / deal with their waste. Parks and community centers aren't designed for the purpose of making money, either, but we generally expect the people cleaning their toilets to have…

> How is that different from the gig economy?

It's different because the purpose of the deposit isn't to crowdsource people to exploit via underpaying them to recycle, whereas that is exactly the case for the gig economy. Uber, Airbnb, etc. rely on individual contractors being cheaper than their regulated equivalent (Taxis, hotels) while also putting the risk on them. The purpose of the deposit is harm reduction - incentivize people to stop littering their recyclables by charging them money for the bottles/cans.

If we were to remove the deposit system and instead replace it with paid workers, why would any particular individual care about not littering? After all, our taxes pay for workers to clean it up. I'm not saying I espouse that belief, but when you increase the convenience factor of something like littering, people will do it more often. When it hurts people's pocketbooks to litter, they do it less. Take, for example, plastic grocery bags. Everyone knows plastic grocery bags create a huge waste problem and a little bit of thoughtfulness (bringing reusable bags with you) can mitigate the amount of bags used. However, it wasn't until we started charging a fee for grocery bags that usage numbers dropped significantly.

Re: Do “sin taxes” work?

#100

Post by theriddlr »

In the UK, to avoid the sugar levy, soft drinks manufacturers have added sweeteners to their recipes to reduce the sugar content. Lose-lose for all of us – wouldn't mind paying more for sugary drinks but instead we get the yuckier sweetener versions.
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