Philadelphia aims to raise $91M for 'fighting poverty' by imposing sugary drink tax on low-income consumers

Friday, June 24, 2016 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: Philadelphia, beverage tax, sugary sodas

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(NaturalNews) In Philadelphia, the price of most beverages is about to go up. Cashing in on the city's sugar addiction, the Philadelphia city council just passed a new law taxing all sugary drinks 1.5 cents per ounce. This new levy will affect all canned, bottled and fountain sugary drinks. According to the city council, it's all part of Philadelphia's strategy for "fighting poverty." The bureaucracy's goal is to raise 91 million dollars annually.

And 91 million dollars will be an easy goal to reach. Most consumers are so addicted to their favorite sodas and energy drinks that they won't mind paying an extra quarter when they grab a drink at the gas station. The city will start collecting the tax on January 1, 2017. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent over $1.6 million to lobby in support of the plan.

Initial proposals would have slapped a 3 cent per ounce tax rate on the beverages, but a compromise was ultimately reached, and the council believed that a 1.5 cent per ounce tax would be the best way forward. Beverage distributors will take the first hits as the tax slowly works its way down to consumers.

Consumers being locked into a cycle of dependency

Will the law affect consumer purchasing habits? Not very likely, since the tax will also apply to diet drinks. This new beverage tax is really just a way for the city to redistribute people's money to take away their freedom and control their lives a little bit more. The tax transfers the health responsibility from the individual to the collective visions of government bureaucrats, who think they know how best to manage everyone's lives.

As the government takes advantage of people's sugar addictions to "fight poverty," what the government will likely end up doing at some point with the siphoned money is to bolster subsidies to lobbying junk food companies so that they can continue to rule people's lives with food chemicals, more added sugars and brain-damaging artificial sweeteners. After all, when the people start backing off from buying expensive sugary drinks, the government will need to make it easier again for junk beverage companies to advertise and hook people on the beverages (so the government can continue to collect their revenue and provide their programs.)

The people that were siphoned from will ultimately choose government food or education programs (that continue to feed the junk food to them, thus creating a steady revenue stream and setting the people up with chronic disease.)

When it's all said and done, any extra money could be used to set people up to receive affordable prescription drugs and vaccines that they must take so they can manage their lifelong conditions of type-II diabetes and susceptibilities to illnesses.

When the government starts taxing personal decisions, it's always going to lead to corruption. In this way, it's a rigged game.

Philadelphia mayor Kenney is calling the new beverage consumption tax his first major political victory, capable of "changing the narrative of poverty in our city." Apparently he's one of the economically illiterate politicians who cannot understand that taking people's money and redistributing it never generates wealth, responsibility, opportunity or freedom. It always leads to more corruption, more control, at the same time increasing urgency for more redistribution and control, until all production and personal responsibility is drained out of the population, leading to a collapse in society.

While this is usually the dark result of increased taxation, supporters of the law see this consumption tax as an opportunity to punish bad behaviors and promote healthier ones. Some of the money the city siphons through the beverage tax could be used to hand out tax credits for businesses that sell healthy beverages. Some of the money is also being earmarked to create pre-kindergarten programs and community schools within the city.

As these programs are set up in this way, the government will be counted on to continually find ways of capitalizing on people's personal decisions to provide them with the services the government promised them. In this way, corruption and control will grow exponentially in the city of Philadelphia, and in any other city that goes down this slippery slope.

Sources include:

Philly.com

Science.NaturalNews.com