Boston City Councillors have proposed a tax on sugary beverages, and on Tuesday, John Klar argued against it — fighting on a battleground defined by the adversaries.
Let’s start with first principles: There is no “public health.” The public is not a body and does not have a health. All “we” have are statistics involving disease, death, and lifespan. Trying to manage people by the numbers is what consistently drives government toward one-size-fits-all solutions, as we saw in spades during Covid, when even Donald Trump was persuaded that avoiding a pesky chest cold was a higher value (for everyone) than retaining control of your life and business, voting in person, and letting the kids learn and grow up.
Moreover, citizens show by their actions that they don’t value health highest. I know people who prefer tobacco, alcohol, promiscuity, and skiing over maximum statistical longevity. “There are no solutions, only trade-offs,” and trade-offs must be decided by each person according to his values; otherwise, we are dictating values.
It’s popular to say that health should be everyone’s highest value. That doesn’t mean it is true, anymore than trying to eradicate a virus or get control of scary weather; only that it’s a good chance for lefties to argue that everyone must comply. They even play their hole card, assuming that government does or will fund all medical care: You Conservatives ought to support “public health legislation” because You Conservatives are all about penny-pinching, so spend now or spend more later. We have suffered defeats against Obama-care, the last few against ourselves, but we ought never accept this premise: It is the end of all liberty.
On the proposed tax, I agree with John Klar that the federal government, with subsidies and barriers to imports, already meddles massively in the price of sweeteners. John mentions early on, but lets slide, that the goal of the tax is to “improve health, advance equity, and increase [Boston’s] coffers”. This is notable for mushing together all the left’s good intentions. John in fact adopts the other side’s rhetoric, that this “sin tax [avoids] the true sinners” (the bottlers) and describing “sickening” corn syrup, though its consumers are not sickened.
Why is sugar in soda pop to begin with? Because it’s sweet, it imparts quick energy, and the human body knows it. Soda makers put it in to satisfy the customer and induce future sales; not indeed to add something “sickening” or harm the customer. One can adjust to artificial sweeteners, after an unpleasant few weeks; but removing 100 calories from a can simply makes you hungrier later in the day and, all other things being equal (that is: unless a person has a plan, a diet), you will satisfy the hunger.
John seems to accept the left’s premise that the government should dictate to us to make us healthier (now, what exactly does RFK Jr. believe?), also that tax policy needs to be designed to favor poor people (and, according to Councillor Mejia, certain races) and merely argues that the tax is not the best solution to solve the problem. Indeed, the left continually “helps” the poor by removing their options. So John’s solution is not a new tax but more nagging by the city (“educational initiatives” or coupons that restrict the consumer), or even earmarking 100% of the loot into Roxbury to prove our Remedial Racism bona-fides. What would be better is to reject Boston City Council’s busybody mindset entirely.
John repeats a Councillor’s mention of five Democrat-run cities with a sugary-beverage tax, but omits the effects. We know what happened in Philadelphia: evasion. Supermarket revenues took a big hit as shoppers crossed the city limits to where they could buy what they want without penalty — and bought their penalty-free groceries in the suburbs too. Many made Pepsi runs for their neighbors (smuggling) and saw the instant utility of evading the law.
When lefties propose to improve health at gunpoint — especially proposing a tax made pleasant by solving a societal problem — we ought not to reach across the aisle and merely argue that there is a better way to achieve the left’s goals. The left’s goals are wrong-headed.
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