If you live in the Philadelphia media market, you’ve heard or seen the ads. Pretty ubiquitous. The ads talk about a “grocery tax”, which is not actually correct, in an effort to drum up support against the proposed Philadelphia soda tax of 3 cents per ounce. All sugar sweetened beverages would be assessed the tax if they are bought in the city of Philadelphia. A few numbers:

• Liter bottle of soda – costs perhaps 99 cents on sale. The tax would add $ 1.01.
• 6-pack of 12 ounce cans – tax of $2.16 (I have no idea what the raw product costs)

It’s a lot of money if you live on limited funds. The idea is health. From that slippery slope of ever increasing cigarette taxes, to alcohol taxes…the “sin” taxes. They are regressive taxes as they hurt the poor the most as a percentage of income. And yeah, sugar is bad for you. BUT…

Personally, I’m not a soda drinker, but when I throw parties, I buy several liter bottles of soda. From my perspective, if the cost doubled, it wouldn’t be that big a deal because the soda part of the full cost of the food and beverages is minimal. But there are a lot of people who like a soda. Perhaps they prefer it to an adult beverage, or want to use it as a mixer — that one drink to celebrate the end of the work week when they worked two jobs, have one day off and it all starts again. Likely, those people don’t have cars to drive out to the ‘burbs to spend less, and don’t have the time even if they had the car. If they’re making minimum wage (which is nowhere near $15/hour but I digress) that extra buck is a lot of money proportionally to their income. Continue Reading...