Everyday Politics Blog

The Beverage Tax

by Laura McKenna

One of the many proposed policies aimed at reducing obesity is a beverage tax. New York State has proposed a one cent tax on sugary drinks.

In Diane Sawyer's documentary of Appalachia, she has a long discussion of how the huge consumption of Mountain Dew in that area results in horrible tooth decay by age 30. 

There's a 7/11 about 50 yards from my son's middle school. After school, hundreds of kids load up on Slurpies everyday on their way home. A good number of them drink Slurpies for breakfast before school as well. 

Jane Brody from the New York Times reports, "In the last half-century, consumption of sugars by the average American has increased by more than 24 pounds a year, expanding waistlines and crowding out more nutritious foods." She discusses the latest research on the problems with soda.

Coca Cola and their lobbying group, the American Beverage Association, are actively fighting the beverage tax. They've been running commercials about how this is going to cost working families more money and how they're putting in better options into the soda machines at schools.

Supporters say that a beverage tax is no different than the tax on cigarettes, which has helped reduce smoking. It can raise billions of dollars that can be used for good programs. If the tax money that is raised goes directly to the communities that consume these beverages, then it's not a poor tax, like the lottery.

They argue that a one cent tax alone isn't going to change consumption habits and probably won't make anyone thinner, but it will raise some good money and help raise awareness that soda shouldn't be an everyday habit.

Other ideas include pressuring fast food restaurants to not make soda the default drink in combo specials, removing soda machines from schools, and giving children the same anti-soda messages in health class at school, similar to anti-smoking messages that they already receive.

Where do you stand on this issue? Do believe that soda is a harmless beverage that is American as baseball and hotdogs and that it is wrong to impose a tax on it? Would this tax impose an unfair burden on families? Should government be discouraging the consumption of soda given the well documented health risks? Are sugary drinks the new cigarette?

The Politics of Public Health

by Laura McKenna

Thanks to Michelle Obama and Jamie Oliver, everybody is talking about obese children and what government can be doing differently. Fatty school lunches, the need for exercise programs, the possibility of a soda tax, and the creation of food awareness classes are all on the table The discussion has gone beyond fat kids to talking about fat adults.

Even as the discussion of the obesity epidemic has picked up, KFC has introduced a new sandwich, the Double Down -- two Original Recipe fillets, Swiss and pepper jack cheese, Colonel sauce, and bacon. Still, it may not be as horrible for you as other fast food sandwiches. Nate Silver runs the numbers.

Libertarians are generally suspicious of all public policy, because they reject the notion that government can make a positive impact on people's lives. The less government, the better. When government gets involved in people's lives, the outcome is usually expensive and results in unexpected outcomes. Welfare creates dependency, for example.

Libertarians especially hate governmental programs that push people to change their behavior regarding their health. For all but a radical fringe, they accept mandatory vaccinations for kids, but they aren't enthusiastic about other programs, which restrict a person's individual freedom to kill himself. I have a Big Mac, and I'm going to eat it. Efforts to reduce smoking and the availability to fast food is beyond the scope of government. They say that when government wades into these matters, it becomes a "nanny state" and adults should be able to make their own decisions about the Big Mac v. Tofu.

Liberals, on the other hand, say that obesity is expensive. Obesity-related diseases cost the public billions of dollars in healthcare costs. People don't really have the choice of a Big Mac v. Tofu, because tofu isn't available to most people and they don't know how to cook it. The Big Mac is cheaper than a good salad. The current system is rigged to make the Big Mac the most popular option and that isn't fair. Let's give people some real choices and, thus, increase their freedoms.

Liberals also say that children can't make the same choices as adults. They need guidance. If the parents and the community can't provide them with better options, then government must step in to help out. It's immoral to allow this generation of children to fill themselves up on Slurpies and candy bars. They believe that government can do better.

Which side do you agree with, the liberals or the libertarians? Do you think that government can create laws to make us healthier? Do you believe that laws governing our behavior are an infringement on our liberties?

Anti-Poverty Laws and Ideology

With the recent downturn in the economy more people are relying on food stamps to feed themselves and their families. Blue collar workers, especially those tied to the auto industry, have been forced to apply for services. (Check out the interactive map in the New York Times to see the numbers of recipients in your county.)

Some facts about Food Stamps:

• 1 in 8 Americans and 1 in 4 children are on Food Stamps
• 36 million Americans receive benefits
• In some counties, half of all children receive benefits.
• Only 2/3rd of those who are eligible have applied for the benefits. 15 to 16 million more could be getting services.
• Now nearly 12 percent of Americans receive aid — 28 percent of blacks, 15 percent of Latinos and 8 percent of whites. Benefits average about $130 a month for each person in the household, but vary with shelter and child care costs.
• Almost 90 percent of beneficiaries nationwide live below the poverty line (about $22,000 a year for a family of four).

Americans are divided about how government should approach anti-poverty programs, such as the Food Stamp program. In general, liberals believe that government should provide services to assist the poor  either by providing direct payments or by providing subsidies for education or job training. Conservatives believe that welfare programs create a class of people dependent on government money and eliminate the incentive to find work. They believe that volunteer organizations and local churches can provide food for the hungriest Americans, and government should not be involved. 

In the 1980s, President Clinton revamped the welfare program in this country. He famously claimed that we were going to end welfare as we know it. Work requirements and time limits were placed upon  welfare beneficiaries. As a result, the number of people on welfare has declined, however little research has been done to examine the full impact on families and children.

The Food Stamp program has been less controversial than other anti-poverty programs, because few people are willing to let people starve in the streets. The actual cash payment per family is relatively small. The debates around the Food Stamp program have largely been about how to eliminate fraud. How do you make sure that a mother is really using the money to buy rice and beans for her children and not trading in the vouchers for money that will spent on drugs or alcohol?

What laws or policies do you believe should be put into place to help the poor in America? Is government or the community responsible for making sure that children aren't starving? Should government be spending more time coming up with laws that get at the root of poverty? Should they be setting up job retraining programs in the neediest areas? Do you believe that fraud is a big problem with Food Stamps? Has your local community been hard hit by the economic downturn? What policies or programs would you like to see in your area?

Madison and Health Care

By Scott Lemieux

One of our fellow political scientists over at The Monkey Cage discusses Thomas Friedman's diagnosis of why the American political system seems unable to address major problems (most notably global warming.)  He identifies five potential reasons:

1. “the wild excess of money in politics”
2. Gerrymandering of congressional districts
3. the 24 news cycle
4. a permanent presidential campaign
5. the emergence of a blogosphere that “at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world” (I’m going to assume he’s talking about The Monkey Cage in the former part of that quote).

Tucker has a good account of some of the work political scientists have done on these questions.   I, however, was struck by the omission of what strikes me as the most obvious explanatory variable: the structure of American political institutions.   For better or worse, the system was designed so that major legislation was going to be the exception rather than the rule, and this is exactly how it's worked in practice.     

Relatedly, Friedman refers to the saying that the American system was "designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots."   This is essentially a restatement of Madison's famous argument in Federalist #51 that "[i]f angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."   As the first version suggests, Madison's statement is sometimes interpreted to mean that he didn't see political leadership as being especially important, but this is a misreading.    More accurately, Madison wanted to structure the government that couldn't do too much damage if bad leaders where at the helm, and his structure was an ingenious means to that end.   But it's the other implication of these structures that creates the dilemma that concerns Friedman: structures that make it hard for bad people to enact policies also make it hard for all political leaders to enact major reform policies, even if there's something like a consensus that the status quo is unacceptable.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing, of course, depends on your political values.   But it's not surprising that the American government has been slower to respond to problems like global warming than other comparable democracies.  

Online Petitions

by Laura McKenna

When I was a kid, the running joke was that dad always stole our black magic markers. We had every other color in our art kits, except for black. Why? Because dad used them to make protest signs. And then he would round up the three of us to march around in a circle with other people protesting something or another.

Before he was a marker-stealing dad, he attended civil rights marches and anti-war rallies in DC. He even had a confrontation with Dan Rather, because Rather chose to interview the long haired hippies at the rallies instead of the clean cut college kids, who were the majority of the protesters. Later, after we arrived, he got involved in local politics. He became involved in environmental policy and ran for office on a third party.