The article seems to be shittily written in my opinion but I figure if you watch the video (about a minute) it will get the point across.
My question lies in, do you think this will benefit the health of the people moving forward, or do you fear it being weaponized to endorse or threaten companies to comply with the mention of Kennedy being tied to its future as mentioned in the end of the article
Half of them are only cheap because of heavily subsidized corn being heavily processed into an inordinately cheap sugar substitute.
Taxes aren’t really raising prices so much as undoing the subsidies distorting the market.
Then remove the fucking subsidies! What you’re proposing is that taxpayer money in the form of subsidies goes into the pockets of wealthy agricultural corporations, and then more tax payer money in the form of sin taxes goes to the government to purchase those products, which the government turns around and gives right back to the same corporations. Sheesh! Should we tip them too while we’re at it?
“Repeal farm subsidies” is one of the few things you could walk into congress and have overwhelming opposition to from both sides.
I didn’t propose anything.
But your summary makes absolutely no sense. A tax on manufactured corn syrup after subsidizing corn is functionally the same thing as removing the subsidy for just corn used to make corn syrup.
Farm subsidies do have an important goal, and that seeming contradiction still supports that. It’s important for any society to ensure a relatively stable and productive food industry. Subsidies help farmers stay in business and producing at least enough, even if they are giant agribusinesses. It’s important that we always have enough of staple crops like corn. How can we tune that to deemphasize corn syrup, and support bigger and cheaper supply chains for healthier foods?
How do you support corn but not corn syrup? One way is to subsidize corn production but add a tax to that portion that turns into corn syrup
Yeah, that’s basically what I’m saying.
I didn’t make the argument about the value of subsidies because the actual details of how they encourage domestic farming is above my pay grade, but subsidizing then taxing the specific use that’s damaging is way more “removing the active incentive to do harmful stuff” than it is [whatever his argument is?].
So your saying the sales taxes are like tariffs, as they are being used to spread the cost to all purchasers without reguard to income making them harm lower and middle class people more, without ever having to raise taxes back to reasonable levels for the high income members of society. (3 million a year+)
I’m not saying anything about sales tax.
I’m saying that if you tax foods high in corn syrup, you’re just making it cost what it’s supposed to cost. You’re literally subsidizing the least healthy food at the moment.
Yeah tax on food is strange. It’s 0% in Florida for unprepared food, 10% in Tennessee.
In Florida corn syrup isn’t taxed at 0% it’s taxed below 0% because it’s already gone through layers of subsidies.
I think that’s common. Here in Massachusetts, sales tax does not apply to food ingredients, but prepared food is taxed, and in many places they add a ”hospitality tax” to fleece the tourists and anyone going someplace popular