Posts by william blake
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http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/budget-2016-george-osborne-sugar-tax-mixed-response
"Manufacturers will have to decide whether to absorb the cost, pass it on to consumers or reduce the amount of added sugar in their products. The Office for Budget Responsibility expects firms to start stripping out excess sugar."
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James, if there is a tax put on sugar at the wholesalers end between say Chelsea and GF Watties, specifically aimed at reducing the use of sugar, why would the manufacturer not change the formulation of their product rather than increasing their price? (Wattie baked beans now have 6 teaspoons of sugar in each can a 100% increase over 15 years)
This seems to be a practical approach, in contrast to your ethical "regardless of weather it works" way. The poor will get diabetes just the same as the rich.
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By taxing the manufacturer it becomes their job to reformulate the food, with less sugars, fats, pesticides etc, which is the objective here.
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Same but different.
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"But: if it is, then taxing sugar is going to hit the people with the least money hardest, which is a bit crap."
Which is why we should tax the manufacturer and not the consumer, which is less crap. This tax can be directly sent to the health services like road taxes for roads.
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I agree that the consumer should not pay a sugar or fat tax, that would be penalising the victims of the consumerist hegemony. The manufacturers of products that cause the harms should be given the hospital bills, accrued from an aggregation of the costs of diabetes, heart failure, cirrhosis etc.,as a tax deductible cost of manufacture. This would be reflected in having the true cost of the product on the shelves, not one that is already massively underwritten by the taxpayer through the health system.
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It is odd that NZ journalists were left out of the loop since we feature so prominently in the story. More so since Nicky Hager did so much work on a similar story with the ICIJ that looked at NZ trusts but was scuppered by a rogue Guardian journo. It's great these guys are working collectively to shine light onto such murky and complex issues.
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Toi Ora live art in Putiki St along Gt Nth Rd from Karangahape Rd.
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That Economist graph. The plunge of the left follows the rise if ISIS and the GFC is a short slippery plateau on the way down, which is odd as it is the equivalent to the Berlin Wall coming down for capitalism. It seems to prove that the fall of the left is not economic.