A Griffith University study published in BMJ Public Health on Wednesday found a levy applied to non-alcoholic drinks with added sugar, such as soft drinks and most juices, could prevent 3.7 million cases of tooth decay, 191,000 cases of gum disease, and 115,000 cases of complete tooth loss across Australia over the next 25 years.
How about taxing gas exports
Hey let’s tax the working class some more!
How about terminal deadness from being overweight?
You are massively more likely to die of a preventable cause of death is you are on a low income. Increasing taxes on low income earners is only going to make them poorer and sicker.
So why not increase taxes on companies and higher income earners and increase wages and benefits?
Would prefer increased taxes on hoarded wealth assets than people who earn a “high” income. The asset hoarding class typically have near zero taxable income.
You’re not wrong there, but making coke more expensive is hardly going to make anyone poorer.
Increasing taxes on low income earners is only going to make them poorer and sicker.
The article is literally about how a study found a tax on sugary drinks “could prevent 3.7 million cases of tooth decay, 191,000 cases of gum disease, and 115,000 cases of complete tooth loss across Australia over the next 25 years.”
That’s people being less sick.
I’d also note that making people less sick also makes them less poor, because they don’t have to pay the cost of dental and other health care (yes, it should be free, but it’s not)
If revenue raised by the tax is used to provide services to low income earners - e.g. subsidised dental care, subsidised fresh food - then low income earners could come out ahead.
That’s people being less sick.
Only if they no longer buy soft drinks, which means they don’t pay the tax, which means it doesn’t raise revenue.
Or they keep buying soft drinks, pay the tax, and end up even poorer which will increase the likelihood of further health issues.
Only if they no longer buy soft drinks, which means they don’t pay the tax, which means it doesn’t raise revenue.
You seem to be assuming a binary choice in consumption, but the modelling in the study was that those numbers for dental outcomes would be produced by a 24% reduction in consumption of sugar sweetened beverages.
From the SBS article:
Assuming a 20 per cent tax is passed on in full to consumers, the study predicted the price increase would result in a 24 per cent reduction in consumption.
So there would still be tax revenue from the remaining 76% of consumption. But it’s a public health measure, just via a tax, so if it produced no revenue that would (from a public health perspective) be considered a huge success. It makes sense that the amount of revenue you raise and can spend on dental health would scale in proportion to the amount of consumption and dental harm. It’s a way of partially de-externalising the health externalities of the sugar-sweetened beverage industry.
It’s of limited imparting also note that (1 + 0.2) x (1 - 0.24) = 0.912. So with a 20% tax, modelled to reduce consumption by 24%, on average people will be spending 9% less on sugar-sweetend drinks.
Or they keep buying soft drinks, pay the tax, and end up even poorer which will increase the likelihood of further health issues.
As pointed out by @observes_depths@aussie.zone, if the revenue is directly tied to funding dental care for poorer citizens, care which someone who maintains 100% of their consumption is more likely to need, then they may end up less poor than otherwise. Not only is their tax contribution going into that funding, but revenue from wealthier consumers and those who have reduced their consumption and are less likely to need dental care.
I’ve also seen proposals where the money is spent on subsidising fresh food, so that the average weekly shop comes out to the same dollar figure even if behaviour doesn’t change, while people are doubly incentivised to make healthier choices.
The SBS article also mentions that the tax can be designed to encourage reformulation of drinks, with drinks below a certain sugar concentration exempted from the tax, as happened in the UK:
In 2018, the United Kingdom introduced a tax of 19.4 or 25.9 pence per litre, depending on the sugar content of beverages.*
It led to a 46 per cent reduction in the sugar contained in soft drinks, the UK government said, with nearly 90 per cent of the market now containing sugar below the level at which the tax applies.*
So in the UK 90% of drinks are no more expensive to the consumer, but tax-incentivised reformulation has meant sugar consumption from sweetened beverages has decreased by nearly half! (Again, revenue raising is not the aim, the tax is just a policy ‘stick’.)
The study the SBS article is about also modelled for a similar level of reformulation:
The health impact of the SSB tax is up to three times larger with 50% reformulation as compared with the base case and nearly five times with 100% reformulation.
A 300% greater health impact over the ‘base case’ (20% tax, 100% passed-on), and it’s hip-pocket neutral 90% of the time!
Your arguments can equally be applied to the tax on tobacco, but we know that applying a tax (to a point, it seems!) reduces tobacco consumption and the associated health harms, and provides revenue that makes up for the cost of tobacco-related disease to our health system.
A sugary beverages tax like the ‘base case’ (20% tax, 100% passed-on) would be similar to the tobacco tax and could be used to similar effects, but, as I hope I’ve made clear above, there’s lots of options.
Ok, but now there’s all this extra money from the sugar tax and even more from heath care savings, and that can be used to make a meaningful difference helping the poor.
Heavy emphasis on “can”. It’s a tax that punishes the poorest in our society today, with the promise that we might help them tomorrow. Both major parties have repeatedly shown that they do not care about these people, so I’m not sure why anyone would believe that a tax with the promise of reinvestment into low income health services is a believable answer.
The theory goes, If packaged junk food was more expensive then people would eat healthier packaged food. A tax on sugary drinks and a cap on bottled water prices is along those same lines.
Australian government sources say low income Australians are over 2 times more likely to die from preventable deaths than wealthier Australians. So the obvious way to improve health is remove regressive taxes, increase their incomes to track cost of living increases and do something about rents.
There are always classist do-gooders. Taking indigenous kids from their families. Putting welfare payments on cards to control spending. What they never want to do is lower rents and utilities or raise wages or benefits. The data is very clear. Poverty kills. Put a tax on one junk food and I guarantee supermarkets are going to increase their margins on healthier alternatives to match leaving everyone worse off. Shareholders are the only ones who benefit.
I agree colesworth would take advantage to increase profits.
I was living in the Alice when that basics card came in. The card would only work at grocery stores apparently but the truth was the grocery stores started selling things that were no longer groceries just to cash in on a captive market.
Levels of greed never cease to surprise.
FFS another working class tax, target the rich you fucking cunts!
It’s not proposed as a revenue raiser, it’s intended as a public health measure.
The idea is that people buy less sugary drinks and have better dental health.
Your concerns raise a valid point, though, that revenue raised (and $1.4B isn’t nothing) should be directly funneled into new programmes that benefit the working class. The study suggests that the money go into dental and other health services, but I’ve also seen proposals for using the revenue to cross-subsidise fresh food.
Either way, the working class could see a net benefit to their bottom line from government subsidies (which benefit from efficiencies of scale) and because they’ll have less need of dental and other health services if they reduce their sugar intake.
Look man, they can use all the fancy words they want to try to convince me it’s for the greater good or whatever. It really doesn’t matter to me, all I hear is ‘another thing you enjoy is going to rise in price’ and these days that’s all I fucking hear. Sick of it mate.
What if this meant something you like gets cheaper as a result? Say the extra revenue went to subsidising something else, fresh food maybe?
It still won’t be equal. No more tax that targets working folk, tax wealth!! There’s so much of it that Australia could very easily create the richest citizenry in the entire world just by nationalising the rocks we mine. Imagine if Gina and Clive and all those fat fucking rapists actually had to pay their fair share? Imagine the utopia that could fund! But no, instead let’s make yet another working class luxury become more expensive. Fuck this place.
Would you support removing the tax on tobacco and alcohol? Why/why not?
I think a reduction is sensible yeah, any tax that targets working class consumers during a cost of living crisis is immoral IMO. The government has access to so many levers to generate wealth that doesn’t involve fucking us battlers in the ass, they can pull from one of those if they need the dosh.
So this these “initiatives funded by the tax”, this will be dental in medicare?….right?
No no you see, we can’t have that, for, reasons (profit). We have to make realistic decisions. We’re responsible…
My view is we need to make healthcare completely public, the Medicare private rebate model sucks and will leave us forever chasing our tail with out-of-pocket costs.
Nah, these always go into general revenue. End up in the hands of KPMG, some politician’s family child care, job seeker business, or a religious enterprise. Can’t have free dental because we have to buy submarines that won’t be delivered so we can have a war with our biggest trading partner.
Not a bad idea in theory. But sweet, carbonated beverages (on the shelf; the refrigerated bottles are kinda expensive) are one of the last, somewhat inexpensive products in supermarkets. And let’s not pretend that most of the companies will shift to alternative sweeteners… Possibly causing different ill effects on the gut… Yeah, I dunno.
But sweet, carbonated beverages (on the shelf; the refrigerated bottles are kinda expensive) are one of the last, somewhat inexpensive products in supermarkets.
That’s exactly the problem it’s intended to address. It’s cheap to buy, and expensive in its consequences.
I’ve seen it proposed that revenue from such a tax be used to subsidise fresh food, so that’s another option that would double the nudge towards healthier options while being hip-pocket-neutral for shoppers (the devil is always in the detail, of course).
I understand that. But let’s not pretend that people are going to switch to fresh produce. They’ll find a way to afford the now more expensive sodas at the literal expense of malnutrition. Some may, yes, I won’t deal in absolutes. This could be seen as an education problem (which it definitely is, in part) so perhaps that’s where the money could also be spent? Shit’s just expensive and I’m mad about it 😅
Direct link to the published study: https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/4/3/e002110
So this is why who can’t buy soft drink that doesn’t taste like grass clippings?
Stevia is the most disgusting flavour ever created. And don’t give me any crap about it being “Natural”. There are plenty of natural compounds that are sweet and poisonous!
Yay, more sugar alcohols causing allergies, stomach cramps and the shits. Millions of people suffering reduced productivity and lower quality. But we got to punish the poor/fat people for being poor/fat.
I’ve always believed that just like some people hate coriander (cilantro), some people hate certain sweeteners. Like it’s a genetic thing where they can taste things others cannot. Most people I speak to seem to enjoy Stevia and Aspartame for some reason, but I can’t stand it
I’m one of the people who find that coriander (cilantro) soapy, but I have grown accustomed to it.
I’d believe it - aspartame has an effect on me like fucking cocaine. Ramped up speed monster. I avoid the hell out of it
Taking glucose-fructose out of drinks and replacing with sweeteners accomplishes nothing. The rush of insulin starts from the sensation of sweetness, before blood glucose levels spike. The brain signals the pancreas to be ready.
The US switched to sweeteners and diabetes rates skyrocketed decades after. The actual safety of amino acid analogs is still suspect but it’s a massive industry corrupt with governments.
What needs to be regulated is the bliss point of how much sweetness is allowed in drinks, and to tax sweet drinks, including juices and use the money to subsidize flavored fizzy waters with no sweetness, and just water. It is INSANE what we allow Nestle to charge for water.
Not sure how they could implenent this without the companies just passing it on to consumers. They put sugar and corn syrup in everything, even things that don’t need it.
We already had this in the UK. All the drinks got reformulated, often without alternative, with cheap artificial sweeteners. If you like an occasional sugary drink hit you’re shit out of luck (except for classic coke at least).
The levy as outlined in the article, as @blind3rdeye@aussie.zone pointed out, is intended to be passed on to the consumer, with the price increase causing people to consume fewer sugary drinks. If they didn’t pass it on, it would have no effect on dental health.
From the article:
Assuming a 20 per cent tax is passed on in full to consumers, the study predicted the price increase would result in a 24 per cent reduction in consumption.
However, there are ways you can design a policy like this to reduce the cost to consumers while still having an effect on dental health. In the UK, their levy is only applied to a drink “if it contains at least 5 grams (g) of sugar per 100 millilitres (ml) in its ready to drink or diluted form.” As as result, the UK soft drink industry reformulated their drinks to fall below that amount (often by partially substituting non-sugar sweeteners) so that they wouldn’t have to pay the tax at all and they wouldn’t need to pass it on to consumers or absorb it.
From the article:
In 2018, the United Kingdom introduced a tax of 19.4 or 25.9 pence per litre, depending on the sugar content of beverages.
It led to a 46 per cent reduction in the sugar contained in soft drinks, the UK government said, with nearly 90 per cent of the market now containing sugar below the level at which the tax applies.
The study (https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/4/3/e002110) actually modelled the effect of reformulation, too:
To explore the impact of possible industry responses, we also modelled product reformulation scenarios with 50% and 100% sugar reductions (and no consumer response) and 50% and 80% pass through scenarios.
The health impact of the SSB tax is up to three times larger with 50% reformulation as compared with the base case and nearly five times with 100% reformulation.
Since the UK’s policy has resulted in a 46% reformulation, we have a clear real-world template for bringing about a 50% reformulation and the health benefits that would accompany it.
I think passing it on to consumers is an assumed part of the idea; discouraging people from consuming drinks with added sugar, and thus discouraging companies from making and marketing such drinks.
One would hope so, yes. I don’t disagree. But personally I think it’s gonna go the same way as cigarettes and alcohol. Sugar is in everything, so the price of everything wil go up.
Sugar is in everything, so the price of everything wil go up.
You don’t have to apply the levy to everything. The proposal the article is about is specifically “a levy applied to non-alcoholic drinks with added sugar, such as soft drinks and most juices”.