There are a few facts that everyone can agree on with respect to the Philadelphia School District budget wars: The school district is operating at a deficit. The school district can’t open its doors without staff. Nobody likes to pay taxes. What everyone can’t agree on, however, are how those facts are going to intersect….
How high would taxes have to boost the cost of a pack of cigarettes before you’d stop smoking? $5 a pack? $10 a pack? $15 a pack? What about $20? That’s the plan in Australia if the government gets its way. As part of the National Tobacco Strategy, the policy framework for the Australian Government…
And we say there’s no “magic bullet” to fix the economy… A Cook County official has proposed a surtax on the sale of every bullet and firearm in the nation’s second-largest county. The tax was proposed as part of the upcoming budget in an effort to quell escalating gun violence in the Chicago area. The…
Light up, California! You have no worries. It turns out that, with just a few days left to count and certify ballots, proponents of Proposition 29 are officially conceding that the measure will not pass. The measure, which landed on ballots this month, would have increased the state tax on tobacco in the Golden State…
Sin taxes are all the rage these days – with votes pending to tax cigarettes an extra dollar per pack in the state of California to a proposed license fee in Richmond, California, on businesses selling sweetened drinks. So it makes me wonder, just for fun: What’s your vice? And would you be willing to…
If New York City Mayor Bloomberg gets his way, it will soon be a lot more expensive to light up in California. Yes, that Mayor Bloomberg, the same one that proposed a ban on sugary sodas this week. And yes, that California, three thousand miles away from New York City. On Tuesday, California voters will…
This morning, I passed a runner on the trail carrying an open can of Mountain Dew. And you know what I was thinking, right? How had she not spilled it on herself? The actual beverage didn’t phase me at all. I could care less if she felt the need to drink a big can of…
Americans love their soda. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (report downloads as a pdf), in 2004, the average American consumed 37 gallons of carbonated, non-diet soft drinks. That works out 59,000 calories – or roughly the equivalent of 17 pounds in one year. In good news for the soda industry,…
I am actually waiting for my coffee to cool down this morning. I can barely sip it – it’s so hot out. The temps are slated to creep back up to the 90s again today – the 90s. Remember, folks, I’m in Philly and it’s just the first couple of days of May. It’s not…
A study out of the Rand Corporation has concluded that “small taxes” on soda do little to reduce soft drink consumption or prevent childhood obesity. Economist Roland Sturm and his teams analyzed how more than 7,300 fifth graders ate, drank and moved. The children were asked, as part of the study, how many sodas and…