Union Bosses Trade Blows Over Philly Soda Tax

GUY BENTLEY

5/29/2016

The president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees is urging Philadelphians to support a tax that would hit the poor much harder than the rich.

Henry Nicholas, president of District 1199C, expressed his dismay at Philadelphia Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell’s decision to oppose the mayor’s 3-cents-per-ounce tax on soda in the pages of the Philadelphia Tribune.

“A tax on sugary drinks is the fairest solution to the inequity that has plagued our communities for decades. That’s why I’m standing with 14 unions, representing over 100,000 members in support of Mayor Kenney’s plan,” Nicholas wrote. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney proposed the tax to fund pre-kindergarten education.

The policy has been lambasted by democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders as an attack on the poor. According to a research note from the UK’s Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Sanders is correct to say a soda tax will place the biggest burden on the poor.

This is because the poor spends a greater share of income on the bare necessities, and any taxes targeting these goods will have a disproportionate impact.

“We can easily avoid it by buying one of the dozen other tax-exempt products at the local corner,” Nicholas writes.

But if people were to change their behavior in response to higher taxes, consumers could just switch to cheaper brands or buy their groceries from lower quality stores. “This leads to the consumption of inferior goods rather than the consumption of fewer calories,” writes the IEA’s head of lifestyle economics Christopher Snowdon.

The IEA’s previous work on these “sin taxes” shows the poorest 20 percent of UK households spend roughly $2,000 per year on sin taxes, amounting to around 11.4 percent of their disposable income

Sugar taxes may not even have an impact on people’s health, besides the economic harm it could do to the poor. “No impact on obesity or health outcomes has ever been found,” Snowdon writes. “Early evidence from Mexico suggests that a ten percent tax on sugary drinks led to an average daily decline in consumption of 36ml per person.”

“As Tom Sanders, a professor of nutrition and dietetics, notes, this is the equivalent of 16 calories and is ‘a drop in the caloric ocean. Long-term reductions in total energy in the range of 300-500 kcal/d are probably needed to prevent obesity.'’’

Snowdon cites a systematic review of 880 studies that found “the public health case for using economic instruments to promote dietary and physical activity behavior change may be less compelling than some proponents have claimed.”