I wouldn’t mind seeing a Vermont Beverage Tax. What are your thoughts there?

Oh, so there was this proposal put out there the other day by Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell for an excise tax on sweetened beverages (like soda!) to the tune of one cent (a penny!) per ounce (there are 33 ounces in a liter, so ya know!).

Now, I’m a reasonable person.  A reasonable liberal person, in fact.  I’m not about to get up in arms about new taxes, especially one that seems so consistent with tax patterns and so in line with the good ol’ fashion ‘Merican value of “own your shit.”

So imagine my surprise as a peruse the VT political blog-o-sphere to find that some of my favorite liberal bloggers seem to be against the tax, because it is…a tax on poor people?  Even Gov-Elect P. Shumlin isn’t on board!

No no, that seems like a bit of crooked logic there:  I’m not sure what the stats are on this, but I think that the general consensus is that low-income populations consume more soda, and thus will be hit harder by the beverage tax… But there also more likely to have diet-related health issues like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity, and then are more likely to go to a doctor, who will bill their insurance company, and then increase the health-care premiums of other Vermonters, poor and rich alike.

There is a history of “vice taxes” on things like alcohol and tobacco, which are also more heavily consumed by lower-income populations.  The pattern of taxing enjoyable yet harmful products hardly seems aimed at taxing the poor, but rather aimed at reducing their usage and making sure that the users pay for the cost their use has to society.

Now, I’m no square, but I do recognize that I’d probably be healthier if I drank less beer.  People who drink TONS of beer would probably be TONS healthier if they reduced their intake, as would people who smoke TONS of cigarettes.  And people who drink TONS of sugary drinks (like soda!).

Taxing the products might just turn people away.  But then again, their will be those people who just don’t care about the 16 cent increase on a bottle of soda.  “Meh, its just 16 cents,” some might say.  Sure, but now it’s just 16 cents that can be added  to all those other 16 cents and then we can have whole dollars, and then whole hundreds of dollars, and then thousands of dollars that can go to work making sure Vermonter’s are able to make healthy choices about their diets.

Sounds like a pretty good deal to me… Thoughts?