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through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc I'm genuinely curious whether this is actually the case. Can you cite some examples? My google-skills don't seem

through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc I'm genuinely curious whether this is actually the case. Can you cite some examples? My google-skills don't seem to be adequate.

cmurf 11y ago
google: 'sugar subsidies''corn subsidies''milk subsidies' In particular, sugar should be taxed like tobacco, with a sin tax, rather than subsidized. But that's not what we do.
- briandear 11y ago
  Why should sugar be taxed? Why not just eliminate sin taxes altogether? You people that want to tax everything that you feel isn't "good" is just obnoxious. There's something called freedom. Ridiculous nanny state proponents that want to use taxes to discourage behaviors that they consider 'bad' yet like to consider themselves 'pro choice' or interested in 'diversity.' --except when they disagree with those choices. Everything should either be taxed equally or by at all. The American system is about protecting people's rights and protecting freedom. The Founders never had any intent to become the parents of the American people. I sure as heck don't appreciate Washington, DC telling me how I should live my life, including dictating a diet using taxation as a tool. It's nobody's business what I eat.
  - digler999 11y ago
    > Everything should either be taxed equally or by at all. So cigarettes and alcohol should be taxed equally with baby formula ?
    - SwellJoe 11y ago
      Well, to be fair, having kids does have a negative impact on the environment, and some studies indicate that having children makes people unhappy, so maybe it should be discouraged via taxation. (I'm joking. I think.)
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      Yes. They absolutely should. Once you start playing these games with the tax code, you end up with the laughable system we have now that only benefits tax accountants and politicians.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    > There's something called freedom. There's also something called short-sightedness, which involves people exercising their freedom to predictably do stupid things to themselves and those around them. There's also this concept of "coordination problems", which explains how people choosing out of self-interest what looks like the best for them, when aggregated, end up creating misery for everyone, including themselves. Then finally there's this realization that life is a PvP game, not PvE. There are countless of professionals who earn their living by convincing you to exercise your freedom in a way that hurts you. Many have near-infinite budgets and apply state-of-the-art technology and research into psychology and neuroscience to achieve their malicious goals. (Surprisingly, this is not only legal, but also considered a respectable career path.) Given all that, it's naïve to expect that a civilization, especially as complex as ours, will run itself well if you just leave everyone to do anything and everything they want. I'm not saying that sugar tax in particular is a good idea. But there are many benefits in taxing specific things, and we're all better off because of them.
    - briandear 11y ago
      The problem is that the people making the decision on what to tax don't always have agendas that are altruistic. Elected officials can't be trusted to decide what's 'right' for me to consume or not to consume. Remember, these are the same elected officials that marijuana illegal yet make being fat a 'disability.' The government has no business telling me what to eat. If it costs 'society' more, then charge people for the actual cost at the time the cost is incurred. Sugar isn't 'bad' any more than alcohol is 'bad.' However if you drink so much that it causes liver failure, then charge people for the liver failure.. Don't spread that cost among the responsible people who don't drink to excess. Higher insurance rates for gay people and alcoholics -- absolutely. Higher prices for alcohol to effectively punish everyone for the irresponsible actions of the few.. Completely anti-freedom.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > The problem is that the people making the decision on what to tax don't always have agendas that are altruistic. Elected officials can't be trusted to decide what's 'right' for me to consume or not to consume. I agree that their agendas are often problematic, but then again people can't exactly be trusted to decide what's good for them either. Regulating food may be too much, but check out things like e.g. vaccines, effectiveness of which depends on everyone who can taking them, whether they like it or not. For the most prominent examples of people who absolutely should not be let to decide what they can or cannot do, see drivers. The flippant attitude to traffic laws is what causes lots of unnecessary deaths and injuries, as well as economic losses in unnecessary traffic jams. > If it costs 'society' more, then charge people for the actual cost at the time the cost is incurred. It's complicated. Sometimes charging at the point of purchase is exactly the right way. For instance, taxing fuel is a good idea, because it's directly related to the environmental damage it causes. A CO₂ emission tax would be a great way to internalize the cost of externalities, have the price reflect the true costs for everyone. Other times, it may be a choice between what's "most free" and what's most effective. You're right that as a responsible person you should not be punished for irresponsible actions of the few. It seems fair to put the cost of e.g. alcoholism on the people who actually suffer from it. But I'd argue that in practice, it's too late. The goal should not be to wait for the irresponsible people to get in trouble, but to prevent them from it in the first place. Prevention is more effective than a cure; not to mention that there's no point in charging an alcoholic extra for treating liver failure - they won't be able to pay it anyway. By the way, how is the society supposed to know that you are the responsible person and you won't become an alcoholic? It can't. Some people become alcoholics every year and others don't, but we can't tell beforehand who will be in which group. So the simple approach will be probabilistic - assuming that everyone has the expected-number-of-alcoholics/total-alcohol-consumers probability of becoming one, and taxing this fraction of the costs out of everyone. Where to best put that tax? On alcohol purchase directly; that way you fairly exclude people who don't drink at all, and thus will never cause costs to other people because of an alcohol problem. Could we make it "more fair"? Probably, by means of making it more complicated. But complicated means overhead and inefficiency, which is something you want to limit too. Finally, I disagree with the idea that the government has no business telling you what you can or cannot do. I get that it has to be limited as much as possible for citizens to be happy, but in the end, bossing people around is the sole and only reason we have a government. It's their raison d'être. Solving coordination problems and seeking globally optimal outcomes involves infringing on peoples' individual freedoms - or to turn it around, living in a society involves giving up some of individual freedoms. It's the so-called social contract.
  - cmurf 11y ago
    Oh you can still eat sugar, that's your freedom. But freedom!=no additional cost. Ultimately we all have a monetary stake in everyone's health, so it's completely reasonable to establish offsets for demonstrably unhealthy behavior. If we weren't collecting some additional fee for such things, it would amount to a subsidy of unhealthy behaviors. So go ahead and think it's obnoxious. We're even. Seeing as the vast majority at that time had no say in the political process because they didn't have a penis, or land, and weren't white, it's a pretty ignorant and obnoxious appeal to authority you're making via The Founders who were fat white rich men.
- CountSessine 11y ago
  Are small farms barred from participating in these subsidy programs?
  - cmurf 11y ago
    Sugar plantations are huge, they're well established, there's essentially no one entering that market so you'd call getting into it as a having a high barrier to entry.
SwellJoe 11y ago
I replied to a similar question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10824205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10824205
digler999 11y ago
abuse of crop insurance: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-09/farmers-boost-revenue-sowing-subsidies-for-crop-insurance http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-09/farmers-bo...

through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc I'm genuinely curious whether this is actually the case. Can you cite some examples? My google-skills don't seem to be adequate.

cmurf 11y ago

google: 'sugar subsidies''corn subsidies''milk subsidies' In particular, sugar should be taxed like tobacco, with a sin tax, rather than subsidized. But that's not what we do.

briandear 11y ago
Why should sugar be taxed? Why not just eliminate sin taxes altogether? You people that want to tax everything that you feel isn't "good" is just obnoxious. There's something called freedom. Ridiculous nanny state proponents that want to use taxes to discourage behaviors that they consider 'bad' yet like to consider themselves 'pro choice' or interested in 'diversity.' --except when they disagree with those choices. Everything should either be taxed equally or by at all. The American system is about protecting people's rights and protecting freedom. The Founders never had any intent to become the parents of the American people. I sure as heck don't appreciate Washington, DC telling me how I should live my life, including dictating a diet using taxation as a tool. It's nobody's business what I eat.
- digler999 11y ago
  > Everything should either be taxed equally or by at all. So cigarettes and alcohol should be taxed equally with baby formula ?
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    Well, to be fair, having kids does have a negative impact on the environment, and some studies indicate that having children makes people unhappy, so maybe it should be discouraged via taxation. (I'm joking. I think.)
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    Yes. They absolutely should. Once you start playing these games with the tax code, you end up with the laughable system we have now that only benefits tax accountants and politicians.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > There's something called freedom. There's also something called short-sightedness, which involves people exercising their freedom to predictably do stupid things to themselves and those around them. There's also this concept of "coordination problems", which explains how people choosing out of self-interest what looks like the best for them, when aggregated, end up creating misery for everyone, including themselves. Then finally there's this realization that life is a PvP game, not PvE. There are countless of professionals who earn their living by convincing you to exercise your freedom in a way that hurts you. Many have near-infinite budgets and apply state-of-the-art technology and research into psychology and neuroscience to achieve their malicious goals. (Surprisingly, this is not only legal, but also considered a respectable career path.) Given all that, it's naïve to expect that a civilization, especially as complex as ours, will run itself well if you just leave everyone to do anything and everything they want. I'm not saying that sugar tax in particular is a good idea. But there are many benefits in taxing specific things, and we're all better off because of them.
  - briandear 11y ago
    The problem is that the people making the decision on what to tax don't always have agendas that are altruistic. Elected officials can't be trusted to decide what's 'right' for me to consume or not to consume. Remember, these are the same elected officials that marijuana illegal yet make being fat a 'disability.' The government has no business telling me what to eat. If it costs 'society' more, then charge people for the actual cost at the time the cost is incurred. Sugar isn't 'bad' any more than alcohol is 'bad.' However if you drink so much that it causes liver failure, then charge people for the liver failure.. Don't spread that cost among the responsible people who don't drink to excess. Higher insurance rates for gay people and alcoholics -- absolutely. Higher prices for alcohol to effectively punish everyone for the irresponsible actions of the few.. Completely anti-freedom.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      > The problem is that the people making the decision on what to tax don't always have agendas that are altruistic. Elected officials can't be trusted to decide what's 'right' for me to consume or not to consume. I agree that their agendas are often problematic, but then again people can't exactly be trusted to decide what's good for them either. Regulating food may be too much, but check out things like e.g. vaccines, effectiveness of which depends on everyone who can taking them, whether they like it or not. For the most prominent examples of people who absolutely should not be let to decide what they can or cannot do, see drivers. The flippant attitude to traffic laws is what causes lots of unnecessary deaths and injuries, as well as economic losses in unnecessary traffic jams. > If it costs 'society' more, then charge people for the actual cost at the time the cost is incurred. It's complicated. Sometimes charging at the point of purchase is exactly the right way. For instance, taxing fuel is a good idea, because it's directly related to the environmental damage it causes. A CO₂ emission tax would be a great way to internalize the cost of externalities, have the price reflect the true costs for everyone. Other times, it may be a choice between what's "most free" and what's most effective. You're right that as a responsible person you should not be punished for irresponsible actions of the few. It seems fair to put the cost of e.g. alcoholism on the people who actually suffer from it. But I'd argue that in practice, it's too late. The goal should not be to wait for the irresponsible people to get in trouble, but to prevent them from it in the first place. Prevention is more effective than a cure; not to mention that there's no point in charging an alcoholic extra for treating liver failure - they won't be able to pay it anyway. By the way, how is the society supposed to know that you are the responsible person and you won't become an alcoholic? It can't. Some people become alcoholics every year and others don't, but we can't tell beforehand who will be in which group. So the simple approach will be probabilistic - assuming that everyone has the expected-number-of-alcoholics/total-alcohol-consumers probability of becoming one, and taxing this fraction of the costs out of everyone. Where to best put that tax? On alcohol purchase directly; that way you fairly exclude people who don't drink at all, and thus will never cause costs to other people because of an alcohol problem. Could we make it "more fair"? Probably, by means of making it more complicated. But complicated means overhead and inefficiency, which is something you want to limit too. Finally, I disagree with the idea that the government has no business telling you what you can or cannot do. I get that it has to be limited as much as possible for citizens to be happy, but in the end, bossing people around is the sole and only reason we have a government. It's their raison d'être. Solving coordination problems and seeking globally optimal outcomes involves infringing on peoples' individual freedoms - or to turn it around, living in a society involves giving up some of individual freedoms. It's the so-called social contract.
- cmurf 11y ago
  Oh you can still eat sugar, that's your freedom. But freedom!=no additional cost. Ultimately we all have a monetary stake in everyone's health, so it's completely reasonable to establish offsets for demonstrably unhealthy behavior. If we weren't collecting some additional fee for such things, it would amount to a subsidy of unhealthy behaviors. So go ahead and think it's obnoxious. We're even. Seeing as the vast majority at that time had no say in the political process because they didn't have a penis, or land, and weren't white, it's a pretty ignorant and obnoxious appeal to authority you're making via The Founders who were fat white rich men.
CountSessine 11y ago
Are small farms barred from participating in these subsidy programs?
- cmurf 11y ago
  Sugar plantations are huge, they're well established, there's essentially no one entering that market so you'd call getting into it as a having a high barrier to entry.

SwellJoe 11y ago

I replied to a similar question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10824205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10824205

digler999 11y ago

abuse of crop insurance: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-09/farmers-boost-revenue-sowing-subsidies-for-crop-insurance http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-09/farmers-bo...