Taxing Times

 
 
 
 
There are a few things I took away from my 16 years in Catholic school. Thanks to the good sisters, I’ve got terrific penmanship and I know the multiplication tables upside down, inside out and backwards.

One lesson I’ll never forget was hammered home by my fifth grade teacher, Sister Carmencita, who lectured often on the tenets of individual responsibility. In fifth grade that amounted to being accountable for the choices you made and the things you did. She could see right through a student who tried to blame incomplete homework on a rogue stomach virus or those who accused the CCD kids of writing on the desk.

I can still recall her discourse today when I hear politicians campaigning for taxes on sugary drinks. In a metered tone that literally elicited unequivocal fear in kids, she would rant, “This is what happens when students don’t take responsibility for their actions.”

In New York, the governor and mayor of New York City have joined forces to urge state lawmakers to levy a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on soda and other sweetened beverages. About a dozen other states, including California, Kansas and Colorado, are considering similar initiatives.

And you may have heard about a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that proposes that an 18 percent tax on pizza and sodas could result in a shift in eating habits that would reduce the average American’s weight by five pounds per year.

Perhaps these efforts could go a long way toward trimming the nation’s collective waistline and reducing health-related costs tied to obesity. But is this what it’s come to? The idea of taxing pizza and soda feels as though we’re moving dangerously close to a nanny state. What happened to individual responsibility and self-restraint?

I’m the last one who wants to see a tax on sugary beverages — I don’t need my food bill to go up one more penny. And I’m telling you the only way anyone will get me to give up pizza will be to pry it from my cold dead hands.

But then again, I don’t buy soda every week; it’s a treat in my house. And while I admit to consuming more pizza than I probably should, it’s a once-a-week affair at most.

I can’t imagine any good coming from this tax for retailers, either. The 1-cent per-ounce tax could raise the price of a 2 liter bottle of soda by 50 percent and a 12-pack by 45 percent. I’m willing to hazard a guess that sales would suffer a serious blow.

What bothers me most is that you only need a modicum of intelligence to figure out that drinking mass quantities of soda and eating unhealthy food day in and day out will eventually catch up with you. If only everyone had had Sister Carmencita in the fifth grade, we wouldn’t be in this situation.