The “No Sugar-Tax” Ad Shows We’re Not Pure Libertarians

Have you seen it? It’s the series of ads with the “average mom” walking into a home concerned that raising the price of sugary foods will break the family budget. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out below:






The ad is run by the Americans Against Food Taxes, with a mother agonizing against taxes on sodas and juice drinks, as if it’s the only beverages available at the store. (Full disclosure—AAFT is a consortium of mostly large convenience stores and fast food places that depend on sugar for revenue.) If times are tough, maybe it will require us to cut back on the sugar, you know? I’m pretty agnostic on the issue—if the taxes go up on soda from 1.50 to 1.75, dah well.

I see why the government has decided to propose “mini-taxes” here and there. I’ve never really been anti-tax, but the taxes have to be sensible. If you’re simply raising my taxes to build a monument in your district, then no dice. However, if we’re trying to come up with a way to keep me from paying far higher taxes down the road, then I’ll listen to you.

We as a society don’t fully subscribe to the “live and let live” mantra politicians put forth. We’ve decided that we’re not going to let people die in the street if they didn’t save enough for retirement, or if they are strung out on drugs, or if they don’t keep themselves healthy. Most of us have a rugged individualist streak, but when things go wrong, we turn to others to bail us out of bad lifestyle choices. And now that the economy has gone sour, people are looking to the government, which means they (read: WE) will foot the bill for expensive health-related problems, and entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. It’s a choice that we’ve implicitly made.

Such choices have to be paid for—and people are living longer (but not necessarily healthier), which taxes the entitlement systems which is growing to include near-universal health care. We can talk all day about prevention and education on the dangers of consumption of unhealthy foods and drinks in excess, but as the folks over at the Radical Rationalist say:

For some reason, logical arguments based on medical facts do not convince Americans to curtail economically disruptive, physically harmful or just plain stupid activities. What works? Money.

Pretty much.