EPTUK Politics Mega-thread - Page 395
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sc-darkness
856 Posts
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KwarK
United States44203 Posts
On October 24 2017 04:32 sc-darkness wrote: Well, exactly. If you lower cost of smoothies and healthy food, then that will be MUCH better in my opinion. It will make healthier lifestyle more attractive. Reduce their VAT as a start. A) Smoothies aren't especially healthy, it's mostly sugar B) A specific tax break is no different than the government paying people to drink smoothies C) Tax breaks are weird to give out, everybody gets creative in deciding whether they should qualify for them and you can't easily take them back Sin taxes are rational and they work. It's good policy. | ||
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Artisreal
Germany9235 Posts
To make up for the losses in vat collection we can tax the not yet sufficiently taxed stuff like fizzy drinks, petrol, non renewable energy, airplane tickets, riding a bike and so on. Though riding a bike should be taxed via council tax or something along those lines where it actually benefits the region. Though I suspect that riding bikes doesn't really damage the cycleway so it'd be ridiculously low. Still a good thing so car enthusiasts can't hide behind their false equivalency of paying taxes = being king of the road anymore. Prevention over intervention. E: kwark, smoothies from McDonald's may be full of sugar, if you combine whole fruit and ice you'll have like 2 of your 5 a day, I'm pretty sure. | ||
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sc-darkness
856 Posts
On October 24 2017 04:36 KwarK wrote: A) Smoothies aren't especially healthy, it's mostly sugar B) A specific tax break is no different than the government paying people to drink smoothies C) Tax breaks are weird to give out, everybody gets creative in deciding whether they should qualify for them and you can't easily take them back Sin taxes are rational and they work. It's good policy. Do you differentiate between fructose and refined sugar? Both are processed at a different pace. | ||
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kollin
United Kingdom8380 Posts
On October 24 2017 04:43 sc-darkness wrote: Do you differentiate between fructose and refined sugar? Both are processed at a different pace. You aren't really answering his point. This policy, with specific reference to alcohol, is shown to work and it's hard to see how you can dispute that unless your main concern is not making the population healthier/reducing the burden on the health service. | ||
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sc-darkness
856 Posts
Well, what's the point? I don't see it. Sugar isn't an apocalypse. You NEED it. You just need less refined sugar and more of that natural sugar. I don't see the problem here. NO doctor says no to fruits and vegetables which is essentially what you get out of smoothie if you make it right (whole food). | ||
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Artisreal
Germany9235 Posts
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kollin
United Kingdom8380 Posts
On October 24 2017 04:45 sc-darkness wrote: Well, what's the point? I don't see it. Sugar isn't an apocalypse. You NEED it. You just need less refined sugar and more of that natural sugar. I don't see the problem here. NO doctor says no to fruits and vegetables which is essentially what you get out of smoothie if you make it right (whole food). His point is that giving tax breaks on specific items doesn't work. I don't think the point of contention is whether or not a smoothie is healthy. | ||
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sc-darkness
856 Posts
On October 24 2017 04:47 kollin wrote: His point is that giving tax breaks on specific items doesn't work. I don't think the point of contention is whether or not a smoothie is healthy. Why not? Is it tried? Certainly it works in StarCraft - if you buff some units, people find a reason to use them. If you nerf them, then you see the opposite effect. What you do about cigarettes is the latter. I know life isn't StarCraft balance patches but I don't see why you can't incentivise people to buy more of something if it costs less. | ||
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KwarK
United States44203 Posts
On October 24 2017 05:31 sc-darkness wrote: Why not? Is it tried? Certainly it works in StarCraft - if you buff some units, people find a reason to use them. If you nerf them, then you see the opposite effect. What you do about cigarettes is the latter. I know life isn't StarCraft balance patches but I don't see why you can't incentivise people to buy more of something if it costs less. Care to explain what you feel the difference, in real terms, is between giving negative tax treatment to something you wish to discourage and positive tax treatment so something you want to encourage while accepting that tax treatment is essentially arbitrary and that there is no default natural state. | ||
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kollin
United Kingdom8380 Posts
On October 24 2017 05:31 sc-darkness wrote: Why not? Is it tried? Certainly it works in StarCraft - if you buff some units, people find a reason to use them. If you nerf them, then you see the opposite effect. What you do about cigarettes is the latter. I know life isn't StarCraft balance patches but I don't see why you can't incentivise people to buy more of something if it costs less. Because healthy eating and alcohol abuse are two separate strands of a wider issue with public health. Besides the objections that Kwark made about the problems with tax breaks that you have still not really addressed, making healthy food cheaper is not going to make anyone say 'well I guess instead of going out, drinking 12 pints and eventually getting hospitalised I'll just have a salad and a smoothie instead'. | ||
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mahrgell
Germany3943 Posts
On October 24 2017 05:42 kollin wrote: Because healthy eating and alcohol abuse are two separate strands of a wider issue with public health. Besides the objections that Kwark made about the problems with tax breaks that you have still not really addressed, making healthy food cheaper is not going to make anyone say 'well I guess instead of going out, drinking 12 pints and eventually getting hospitalised I'll just have a salad and a smoothie instead'. Or simply put: Crowd size "I would eat healthy, if it was cheaper" is way smaller than crowd size "I have to stop consuming all that junk it it costs twice as much" That's why the punishment is more effective. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11933 Posts
On October 24 2017 05:31 sc-darkness wrote: Why not? Is it tried? Certainly it works in StarCraft - if you buff some units, people find a reason to use them. If you nerf them, then you see the opposite effect. What you do about cigarettes is the latter. I know life isn't StarCraft balance patches but I don't see why you can't incentivise people to buy more of something if it costs less. Isn't that totally contrary to your original point, namely that a law increasing the cost of alcohol does not decrease the problems that alcohol leads to? Generally speaking, yes, a law decreasing the cost of something (f.e through tax breaks) will probably increase the amount of people that buy it. But that is very specific. But a tax break for smoothies seems weirdly specific and runs into a lot of problems. Firstly, how exactly do you define a smoothy. Secondly, why do you want people to consume a lot of smoothies, as opposed to water, juice, drinks, fruit, vegetables, etc...? Usually this kind of thing leads to one weird thing being inexplicably cheap for no real reason whatsoever, because you can't make laws for every single item. If you find that something is damaging, you can either make it more expensive or everything else cheaper. One of those is rather simple to do, the second is really hard. So if you think that sugary drinks are a health problem, put a tax on sugary drinks, don't put a tax break on all other drinks. Firstly, it is probably easier to define an unhealthy sugary drink in a way that doesn't allow unhealthy sugary drinks to pass by the sugar tax, secondly if you have lots of different defined tax break items, someone will figure out a loophole that allows coke to be sold as a smoothy. Of course it feels weird to have something suddenly cost a lot more than you are used to by law, but it is established that that actually makes people use that thing less, and there are a bunch of things that people could use of. You are still allowed to drink alcohol or buy sugary drinks or smoke or whatever, it just becomes more expensive, so more people choose not to do that thing. Which is statistically a good thing. You can even do a double wammy and invest the money from that tax into either more prevention, or in dealing with the consequences of people drinking too much alcohol. | ||
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Deleuze
United Kingdom2102 Posts
"Food and drink for human consumption is usually zero-rated but some items are always standard-rated. These include catering, alcoholic drinks, confectionery, crisps and savoury snacks, hot food, sports drinks, hot takeaways, ice cream, soft drinks and mineral water." https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-of-vat-on-different-goods-and-services#food-and-drink-animals-animal-feed-plants-and-seeds | ||
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farvacola
United States18866 Posts
Generally speaking, taxes are a poor means of affecting formation of consumption desires, but are pretty good at getting people to act on them differently. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18387 Posts
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MoonfireSpam
United Kingdom1153 Posts
On October 24 2017 04:16 KwarK wrote: The goal isn't necessarily to reduce the number of people smoking or becoming obese, though that's certainly also desirable. Rather it is to push costs associated with these choices back onto the people making the choices. In a country with socialized medicine smoking represents an individual benefit but a collective cost. By adding a cigarette sin tax the economic incentives and costs can be correctly distributed to the individuals making the choice, rather than being externalized. It is simply a matter of rationally distributing costs. That makes sense. Doesn't stop me being salty about making sugar more expensive since I'm controlled enough to not eat piles of sugar all the time. Supermarket judging of shoping trollies vs size makes me think the obese tend to favour ready meals / crisps (chips) / chips (fries) / take out rather than bowls of sugar. | ||
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Razyda
1048 Posts
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/24/universities-mccarthyism-mp-demands-list-brexit-chris-heaton-harris | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On October 24 2017 16:48 Acrofales wrote: It tastes fine wherever I have been. Though in some parts of the country there can be a very strong mineral taste due to water hardness, but I imagine that's the same wherever you go. Most people drink tea or coffee anyways. If Barcelona water tastes horrible, perhaps there is something degrading in the pipes, or they add too much chlorine or something.Is the tap water in all of the UK fit for human consumption? I don't just mean drinkable, I mean not completely foul tasting: the water here in Barcelona is technically drinkable, but usually tastes awful. So most people drink mineral water or have a specific water filter installed. Putting a VAT on mineral water is fine if it's a luxury, but weird if that is what people actually have to drink because tap water tastes vile (I know that in Holland, for instance, it's a frivolous luxury to drink mineral water). | ||
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Artisreal
Germany9235 Posts
On October 24 2017 06:15 Deleuze wrote: Sigh. The lack of informed debate in this thread is disappointing. Food generally already IS zero VAT, unhealthy food isn't: "Food and drink for human consumption is usually zero-rated but some items are always standard-rated. These include catering, alcoholic drinks, confectionery, crisps and savoury snacks, hot food, sports drinks, hot takeaways, ice cream, soft drinks and mineral water." https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-of-vat-on-different-goods-and-services#food-and-drink-animals-animal-feed-plants-and-seeds I did not know that. It's different in the rest of the EU, though that shall not excuse my not knowing. E: most is the rest xD | ||
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