why is the sugar tax bad??

should be banned on the name alone

but yes, it's toxic and bad for you,

It is a great name, don't you love the smell of rape in the morning?

I wouldn't know what it smells like


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And children from bad parenting.

like why is it bad for people to be healthy???

Disproportionately affects the poor. Is a blunt instrument, no one would contest that tonic water is damaging peoples' health. Milk based drinks are exempt, so milkshakes escape. Targets only drinks, not fast food etc.

Everybody outside politics knows that adding a tax is not effective in changing behavior, but it will just generate revenue from those who drink sugary drinks the most, who might happen not to be the political class. Adding 20p on to the price of a litre of coke will not stop people buying it. For various reasons, humans cannot be treated rational economic actors which this measure attempts to do.

Aside from generating revenue, it will not work.

Disproportionately affects the poor. Is a blunt instrument, no one would contest that tonic water is damaging peoples' health. Milk based drinks are exempt, so milkshakes escape. Targets only drinks, not fast food etc.

Everybody outside politics knows that adding a tax is not effective in changing behavior, but it will just generate revenue from those who drink sugary drinks the most, who might happen not to be the political class. Adding 20p on to the price of a litre of coke will not stop people buying it. For various reasons, humans cannot be treated rational economic actors which this measure attempts to do.

Aside from generating revenue, it will not work.

Because the sugar tax alone will not make a difference. Do you think that someone is going to walk away from a fizzy drink simply because it costs a few pennies more than it did yesterday? Nada.

Invest in community centres. Encourage people to exercise. etc etc

Without reading the 6 pages of posts, here is my take on why the Sugar Tax is bad:

- There is little evidence that it actually works
- Fizzy drinks only represent between 15-20% of sugar consumption; what about the other 80%?
- It disproportionately affects poor people; it's a regressive tax in that sense
- The rationale is a bit questionable; as a government we don't want you to consume something, so we will tax you more in hope that you are no longer part of the equation. Of course, this logic is only effective on the poorest in society - after all, if you're affluent, paying an extra few pence for a fizzy drink is no problem

The plastic bag charge is about protecting the environment for everyone.

The sugar tax is about protecting adult citizens from their own decisions.

Their own decisions which make then unhealthy and therefore impact on everyone else.

Their health is none of everyone else's concern. Providing government funded healthcare does not give everyone else the right to get involved in individuals' lifestyle choices.

Of course it is, a country benefits in many ways when its citizens are healthy. It's not everyone else getting involved, it's the government getting involved.

The government has no business getting involved in this sphere. A country benefits when its citizens are free and able to govern their own lifestyles.

Our difference is rooted in the fact that you appear to see individual citizens purely as a means to some abstract collective end, whereas I see the preservation of their autonomy and freedom from outside interference into their lives as an end in itself.

The government not getting involved in serious health issues would be a pretty worrying situation. Citizens are awful at governing their own lifestyles in this sphere. They've got themselves into a position where two thirds of them are overweight, they've failed.

Presumably if it was down to you we'd have no tax on alcohol or cigarettes, and there'd be a whole lot more people dying from liver cirrhosis, lung cancer and drunk driving.

'Failure' requires an objective reference frame. As far as an individual's lifestyle goes, there isn't one. There are simply choices, which are the individual's to make.

I've made quite clear that I do not consider government 'protection' of an adult from his own decisions justified or desirable. So far as drink driving goes, that is illegal and should continue to be so. This is because it poses a risk to others.

Because the sugar tax alone will not make a difference. Do you think that someone is going to walk away from a fizzy drink simply because it costs a few pennies more than it did yesterday? Nada.

Invest in community centres. Encourage people to exercise. etc etc

They're not just choices though, they're choices that cost the government huge amounts of money, so there's nothing wrong with being charged some of that money through tax.

I wasn't saying anything about drink driving being made legal? But anyway, the poor state of people's health does pose a risk for others, it takes resources away from them, leading to more deaths.

It doesn't necessarily cost government anything. I return to my original point: the government's decision to act in providing taxpayer funded healthcare cannot justify its intrusion into the private lives of private citizens. It does not make sense to justify the extension of the government's remit by reference to the government's own policy.