Philadelphia's New Soda Tax: Everything That's Wrong With Modern "Liberalism"
For the last two decades, we've been seeing one of the most dramatic resortings of political coalitions that the republic has ever experienced. It couldn't have been more clear in the World War II era until the dawn of the Clinton era.....young professionals voted Republican and steelworkers and coal miners voted Democrat. The flipping of these coalitions has been playing out at a healthy clip over the last quarter century but is really accelerating in the Trump era, with many of the arguments that used to be made by Republicans now being made by Democrats and vice versa. We've seen it play out a great deal this weekend in response to a majority of British voters who cast a ballot in favor of leaving the European Union. Conservatives at home and abroad are cheering on the kind of populist peasant uprising based on the principles that used to be attributed to liberals....while liberals are looking down their noses at the disproportionately working-class demographics who chose to rebel against the "too big to fail" elites who have wired the global economic spider web in a way that is working for fewer and fewer people. It would be harder to know who the good guys are right now if one side wasn't being led by a puerile, demagogic huckster of the highest order like Donald Trump, but moving forward beyond 2016 I really see self-identified "liberalism" continuing to move away from people like myself who are interested in public policy that lifts up the working class rather than sees their life choices and priorities as a pox on society that has to be civilized and neutered by the "enlightened".
But there's been one sphere of public policy where liberals have made great strides in recent years, and that's recognizing the ruinous effects of growing income inequality. There have been a number of proposals put out there to help ameliorate this growing chasm--most prominently higher minimum wages that force profitable companies to spread their own wealth to their workers rather than pass on the costs to taxpayers vis a vis public assistance--but the same subset of policymakers are also staining these efforts with regressive proposals that are as contradictory to the goal of reducing income inequality as they are monstrously cynical. And the best encapsulation of this trend so far this year occurred in the city of Philadelphia earlier this month, where the city council voted 13-4 to separate disproportionately low-income residents from the City of Brotherly Love from $91 million a year of their money.
That's right....the same policymakers who have made income inequality the centerpiece of their policy platform have decided that the poorest residents of one of America's largest city who have limited access to supermarkets with healthy food alternatives should pay $1.02 more for a two-liter of root beer and $2.16 more for a 12-pack of ginger ale. The proceeds from this scheme were originally intended to pay for education in general and more specifically universal pre-K, creating a perverse incentive curve where adequate funding for worthy education goals is dependent on robust sales of the very sugary beverages we're told are such a scourge on society. But lo and behold, at the last minute before the vote, the cynical assholes of the Philadelphia City Council decided they could raid this new pinata full of blood money for general fund purposes if they so desire as well. Charming.
There are so many things wrong with this brand of policymaking it's hard to know where to begin, but my most fundamental takeaway is the degree to which society's elites deem their own constituents' lifestyle choices are censure-worthy, something to be preyed upon for their own ends. It wasn't so long ago that the political left was aghast at the "religious right" for attempting to commingle public policy with social engineering to cleanse the unwashed masses of their sins, but when it comes down to it, the consensus opinion of the left is little different, albeit on a different subset of issues, weaponizing public policy in the most regressive possible way to keep the misbehaving proletariat on a short leash. Yet for all for their embarrassment at the lifestyles of these peasants, they are desperately hoping the embarrassing lifestyles continue so their universal pre-K is fully funded.
Tobacco users have been on the receiving end of this treatment for generations, and particularly in the last 10 years or so. My home state of Minnesota was arguably even more cynical than the city of Philadelphia, with its pseudo-"liberal" legislature and Governor of 2013 bankrolling a new welfare stadium for billionaire Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf through a massive cigarette tax paid for by the low-income workers, abuse victims, and mentally ill that make up the primary demographics of modern tobacco users. It was only a matter of time until tobacco taxes yielded diminishing returns and cynical policymakers moved onto new "naughty" pastimes of the working-class to prey upon for path-of-least-resistance revenue streams, and the Philadelphia City Council marks the official transition to the public's dietary habits as a way for the state to impose financial punishment.
It's obviously hard to draw a straight line from the peasant uprising in Britain on Thursday and the City of Philadelphia's soda tax, but it's hard not to miss the tone-deafness of elitist policymakers facing their comeuppance at the hands of the people who they are not only failing to deliver a higher standard of living for, but are wagging a righteous finger at for being the cause of the problems. Neither a soda tax or a cigarette tax--or whatever their next incarnation may be (fast food tax, cookie tax, ice cream tax, Mr. Freeze tax)--will individually elicit the kind of peasant uprising seen in Britain, but the success of Donald Trump in tapping into the frustrations of the downscale is indicative that there's a collective boiling point that at some point in the not too distant future will be reached. If the left wants to get there more quickly, nickel-and-diming micromanagement on every minutia of the lifestyles of an already agitated voting public seems like a fantastic way of doing it. Whether it be a peasant rebellion of the existing economic order in Britain or resistance to poor people paying double what they used to for a two-liter of Pepsi, the political left would be well advised to figure out that blaming downscale voters for everything that's wrong in society is not a wise course.
But there's been one sphere of public policy where liberals have made great strides in recent years, and that's recognizing the ruinous effects of growing income inequality. There have been a number of proposals put out there to help ameliorate this growing chasm--most prominently higher minimum wages that force profitable companies to spread their own wealth to their workers rather than pass on the costs to taxpayers vis a vis public assistance--but the same subset of policymakers are also staining these efforts with regressive proposals that are as contradictory to the goal of reducing income inequality as they are monstrously cynical. And the best encapsulation of this trend so far this year occurred in the city of Philadelphia earlier this month, where the city council voted 13-4 to separate disproportionately low-income residents from the City of Brotherly Love from $91 million a year of their money.
That's right....the same policymakers who have made income inequality the centerpiece of their policy platform have decided that the poorest residents of one of America's largest city who have limited access to supermarkets with healthy food alternatives should pay $1.02 more for a two-liter of root beer and $2.16 more for a 12-pack of ginger ale. The proceeds from this scheme were originally intended to pay for education in general and more specifically universal pre-K, creating a perverse incentive curve where adequate funding for worthy education goals is dependent on robust sales of the very sugary beverages we're told are such a scourge on society. But lo and behold, at the last minute before the vote, the cynical assholes of the Philadelphia City Council decided they could raid this new pinata full of blood money for general fund purposes if they so desire as well. Charming.
There are so many things wrong with this brand of policymaking it's hard to know where to begin, but my most fundamental takeaway is the degree to which society's elites deem their own constituents' lifestyle choices are censure-worthy, something to be preyed upon for their own ends. It wasn't so long ago that the political left was aghast at the "religious right" for attempting to commingle public policy with social engineering to cleanse the unwashed masses of their sins, but when it comes down to it, the consensus opinion of the left is little different, albeit on a different subset of issues, weaponizing public policy in the most regressive possible way to keep the misbehaving proletariat on a short leash. Yet for all for their embarrassment at the lifestyles of these peasants, they are desperately hoping the embarrassing lifestyles continue so their universal pre-K is fully funded.
Tobacco users have been on the receiving end of this treatment for generations, and particularly in the last 10 years or so. My home state of Minnesota was arguably even more cynical than the city of Philadelphia, with its pseudo-"liberal" legislature and Governor of 2013 bankrolling a new welfare stadium for billionaire Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf through a massive cigarette tax paid for by the low-income workers, abuse victims, and mentally ill that make up the primary demographics of modern tobacco users. It was only a matter of time until tobacco taxes yielded diminishing returns and cynical policymakers moved onto new "naughty" pastimes of the working-class to prey upon for path-of-least-resistance revenue streams, and the Philadelphia City Council marks the official transition to the public's dietary habits as a way for the state to impose financial punishment.
It's obviously hard to draw a straight line from the peasant uprising in Britain on Thursday and the City of Philadelphia's soda tax, but it's hard not to miss the tone-deafness of elitist policymakers facing their comeuppance at the hands of the people who they are not only failing to deliver a higher standard of living for, but are wagging a righteous finger at for being the cause of the problems. Neither a soda tax or a cigarette tax--or whatever their next incarnation may be (fast food tax, cookie tax, ice cream tax, Mr. Freeze tax)--will individually elicit the kind of peasant uprising seen in Britain, but the success of Donald Trump in tapping into the frustrations of the downscale is indicative that there's a collective boiling point that at some point in the not too distant future will be reached. If the left wants to get there more quickly, nickel-and-diming micromanagement on every minutia of the lifestyles of an already agitated voting public seems like a fantastic way of doing it. Whether it be a peasant rebellion of the existing economic order in Britain or resistance to poor people paying double what they used to for a two-liter of Pepsi, the political left would be well advised to figure out that blaming downscale voters for everything that's wrong in society is not a wise course.
posted by Mark at 10:32 AM
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