Economic Moron: Philly Mayor Jim Kenney - Granite Grok

Economic Moron: Philly Mayor Jim Kenney

Bloomberg soda ban blocked
“I have to go back for the Burrito”

When you lay down policies that would have adverse results on a given business, Democrat politicians get upset when it’s shown that these same Democrats:

  • Keep failing the Law of Unintended Consequences
  • Can’t do math
  • Don’t understand that almost all businesses are going to act in their own self-interest.

So, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney was all aflitter about “saving his city’s citizens” from the most WORST plague imaginable:

Soda

Pop, Fizzies.  Or, as they used to say when I was growing up – tonic. Yep, after solving all of his city’s problems of great import, he decided that he had to save them all from themselves. Regardless of whether they thought that they “needed” to be saved.  Once again, the Progressive “tell” of “You don’t need that.” From Reason the sad tale of “I will social engineer you to make you better”:

Philly Mayor Blames ‘Price Gouging’ for Outrage Generated by City’s New Soda Tax
Businesses are passing along the cost of the tax to consumers, because that’s how taxes work. Someone get Jim Kenney an economics textbook.

After driving up the cost of soda and other sugary drinks with a new tax, the mayor of Philadelphia is now trying to blame businesses for charging higher prices (and for the outrage those prices have generated).

Funny, I thought he was elected to run the city – not their lives.  But that’s what Progressivism is.

So he gets his panties in a wad because the local businesses are just reacting to the arbitrary rules change Kenney had implemented? Emphasis mine

To understand Kenney’s reasoning, you have to know that the new tax  is applied at the wholesale level. That is, the city is charging a tax on the transaction that takes place when a business, like a sandwich shop or grocery store, purchases soda (or the syrup used to make soda in a fountain) from a distributor. In the mayor’s mind, it seems, distributors and retailers are supposed to eat the cost of the tax and continue selling their products at the same price as before the tax went into effect.

And how MUCH was that tax?

Newswork’s Katie Colaneri visited Carbonator Rental Services in Philadelphia to break down the math. The distributors sells five-gallon boxes of syrup that can be used in soda fountains, and each box costs a retailer about $60. Thanks to the city’s new tax, though, retailers have to pay $57.60 in taxes for each of those boxes of syrup.

So Government just decided to DOUBLE the price of something that people want and Kenney thinks nobody should complain simply because “I know what’s better for you than you do”?  And the retailers are rebelling because?

Pincus says he can’t absorb the tax because he makes less than $20 in gross profit—the difference between how much he paid for the box of syrup and how much he sells it for—on each box. Out of that money, he has to pay all his employees, buy gas for delivery trucks, and cover all the other costs of doing business. So, he increased the price he charges to retailers buying syrup from his business. Those retailers, who are operating under similarly small margins, are doing the same thing and increasing prices charged to consumers.

This is why politicians are hated – passing laws and regulation that don’t pertain to them but DO affect others negatively?  In other words, they avoid the consequences that don’t affect them.

So what has happened?

Some of them have posted signs to inform customers why drink prices have skyrocketed.

Kenney doesn’t like that. He called those efforts “wrong” and “misleading” and suggested that it could be an extension of the expensive fight put up by soda companies, retailers, and even the city’s Teamsters Union in a failing effort to prevent the tax from passing in the first place.

I think that posting signs are a GREAT idea and especially if they have his name front and center!  If I go into a store expecting to pay a buck for something and get smacked with a $2 bill, I’d be giving the hairy eyeball to the store management.  Why should politicians be given a pass and avoid the same (simply because they believe “we know what’s better for you than you do” – yeah, repetez avec moi over and over again).  It should be incumbent upon all of us to tell these yahoos to go stick it and stick to actual business.  There is a difference between governing and ruling but Democrats seemed to forget that.

Kenney can fight the grocery stores and soda distributors opposed to the tax—though it was probably wrong for him to assume they would just go along with things after it passed against their wishes—but he can’t fight the laws of economics.

King Canute – or is he Obama writ small? They DO expect passivity and get a hair across when they are questioned or challenged.

Just another example of Democrats living their mantra “The Personal is politics…Politics is personal” and just can’t leave OUR personal lives out of their political ones.

 

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