Stupidity and Taxes
The City of Philadelphia passed a soda tax, charging $0.015 cents per fluid ounce of sugary beverages.
As anybody with a partially functioning brain could tell you, people in Philly have tried to avoid the increased costs in soda by going shopping outside the city limits. The effects in Philly have been “devastating.”
The city estimated $7.6 Million per month in revenue, but collected only $2.3 Million. The decrease in sales has hurt grocers and distributors, who are most likely going to be cutting jobs. The city already spent the money it was expected to raise and so the tax shortfall of $5.4 Million per month is hurting the city’s budget.
Liberal Democrats in Philly are apoplectic about this.
According to the Mayor of Philadelphia, the problem isn’t the reality of economics but greedy businessmen.
“I didn’t think it was possible for the soda industry to be any greedier,they are so committed to stopping this tax from spreading to other cities, that they are not only passing the tax they should be paying onto their customer, they are actually willing to threaten working men and women’s jobs rather than marginally reduce their seven figure bonuses.”
The thing is, this EXACT scenario has played out twice before for Liberal Democrats in recent years with other pet political projects.
New York City kept bumping taxes on cigarettes to curb smoking. They wanted people to smoke less. Their scheme worked and many people quit smoking, others bought cigaretts outside NYC. The reduction in cigarette taxes has cost NYC $400 Million in lost revenue. Now the city it bitching because it is having a budget shortfall.
Liberal Democrats wanted people to stop driving gas guzzling SUVs for the environment. The government passed tax cuts for hybrids to encourage people to drive them. It worked. But hybrids don’t consume as much gas per mile and so the excise and sales tax revenue on gasoline is down. Now Liberal regions are scrambling to come up with a new tax structure to tax drivers of hybrids for the miles they drive to make up for lost revenue.
This is why the Dems have lost over 1,000 local and state seats. They have proven time and time again that the most basic rules of economics are out of their intellectual grasp. Anybody who isn’t blinded to reality by having their head shoulder deep up their own ideological asshole could see this coming. Not these nitwits.
Maybe the unionized employees about to lose their jobs to this stupid soda tax should have a nice long talk with the Dems in Philly about how economics really works. If that doesn’t convince them, maybe some “peaceful protests” are in order.
