Sugar Tax to pay for free dental
Free dental from a wealth tax is great if the wealth tax works.
The Greens have set the targets too low on their wealth Tax, where as Grant Robertson and David Parker’s Wealth tax is better, but the Greens could find a place to gain the extra revenue for free dental with a sugar tax.
The Māori Party want to remove GST off all supermarket food, which can be done WHILE increasing a 10% fizzy drink tax.
Ringfence a sugar tax revenue for Dental and you promote better oral health while forcing Big Sugar to pay for the damage their product causes.
it’s time to seriously consider a sugar tax because the University of Otago are pretty damning in their conclusion…
A sugary drink tax will have a number of impacts/benefits including:
1. A price signal to the consumer to reduce consumption (makes an impact reduce obesity rates by around 1%, not massive but has an impact
2. A price signal to the industry to reformulate (i.e. reduce sugar content to move products down a tier). The health gain from this mechanism is probably twice that of the price signal to the consumer.
3. The incentives on industry to change marketing to less sugary drinks.
The researchers also refute a recent New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) report that argues against taxing sugary drinks. “This report, commissioned by the Ministry of Health, has some serious flaws,” says Professor Blakely.
“There have been at least nine good studies including a thoroughly researchedAustralian Grattan Institute report. Unfortunately the NZIER chose to include only one of the studies,” says Blakely.
Blakely says a soft drinks industry levy is something that could be put in place right now in New Zealand and would not tip the apple cart in light of macro-level rebalancing of our total tax system.
The World Health Organization recommends taxing sugary drinks. And here in New Zealand, the NZ Medical Association and the Heart Foundation recommend taxing sugary drinks.
…big sugar (and big oil) have had it too good for too long – the time is now to start taxing them!
Expect a fight, but it’s the courageous thing to do. Remove GST, put on a sugar tax on soft drinks.
Use the existing systems to generate economic justice and better societal outcomes.
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As far as dental care goes, sugar is only one of the main offenders. Any carbohydrate stuck in your teeth will promote decay.
According to a retired dentist friend, one of the scourges of the underclass is mums feeding their babies soft drink in a bottle instead of milk and even worse, leaving the kid over night with a bottle. Thus, ensuring the baby’s teeth are exposed to acidic, sugary solution for hours on end. He’s done ‘full clearances’ (all teeth removed) for kids at age 11, poor little sods.
Andrew So where’s dad ? Surely you men know how to hold bottles other than ones full of booze.
That is THE big issue everyone tries to ignore.
Over several decades we have created a social system whereby solo motherhood/men shooting through is financially incentivized when we should have been incentivizing the nuclear family. Both major parties are guilty in this regard: Labour for promoting these well-intentioned but corrosive incentives and National for not having the balls to tackle it.
It’s not an “ either/or” situation, but you do dump on single mothers a lot. Motherhood is not a walk in the park, and it’s the irresponsible males who should be called to account here. A man who abandons his own offspring isn’t fit to be called a man. Nor does everybody ignore it, decent people compensate one way or another for the negligence of such swine.
Andrew. There is no way that a baby’s mouth can, or will stay clamped to a bottle for hours on end. It just doesn’t happen. Even on the breast it doesn’t happen: they may comfort nuzzle, and even chew, or do a little reflex suck, but little mouths and little faces do not stay still all thru’ the night the way that, for instance, a drunken man’s might. The baby who stays obligingly still for a solution to drip in for “ hours on end, “ has not yet been invented. Your “ underclass “ fantasising once again showcases your ignorance more than you may realise.
100% correct. All carbohydrates are metabolically identical to sugar. A tax on bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, flour products (e.g. pies and pizza) etc is what is actually called for.
Mathematics and business social compliances are not highly thought of skills here with removing GST.
As for a sugar tax – I agree with Martyn on this one.
Why only the beverage industry? To lower healthcare costs and improve productivity, you want a situation where meat/poultry/fish and green vegetables are very cheap, and things like cane sugar and the grains are not.
The food industry would be forced to stop packing their products full of sugar, corn syrup and cheap fillers, and start innovating to use low-calorie artificial sweetening, protein-based flour substitutes, etc. The continuing collapse of local grocery manufacturing can also be averted by applying tariffs to related imported products.
Also, why is anyone defending the G.S.T. at all? The labour movement was always against this regressive tax, which the public never supported in the first place.
Exactly.
The public wanted Jim Andertons Financial transactions tax but the banks and finance institutions wouldn’t play ball so we got landed with GST which let the finances houses off the hook.
Potentially good environmental results, too, from reducing sugarcane planting, not that the effects will be felt too. I’m all for it (in an ideal world I’d support a tax on carbohydrates in food), but there are potential negative consequences if it pushes people towards drinks with dodgy artificial sweeteners instead.
Um sugar free soft drinks are just as acidic and just as bad. The problem here is peoples oral hygeine is crap. Brushing and flossing makes a big difference.
If we can believe the NZ Beverage Council “fizzy” drinks make up only 4% of the beverages we consume every year (water 27%, followed by coffee tea and milk) and we only spend $284m.(on all fizzy including i guess zero sugar options) So even a 100% tax wouldn’t raise much but it might reduce consumption. But you could still buy a no brand 1.25 litre cola for $2.
Dental care might be free up to age 18 but removing all of the ‘murder houses’ from schools destroyed dental care for those who need it most.
We are all addicted to sugar though.
Excellent idea! Would the sugar tax also apply to Hollywood movies?
Just like tobacco excise does already, a sugar tax would hit the poorest really hard where it hurts the most – their pocket. There are other incentives besides tax to achieve things.
Or just like tobacco you consume a whole lot less. Recent info suggests smoking rates in Māori women are plummeting. I am sure there’s a vape role in that but messaging and the fact that cigarettes cost a fortune probably helps.
It would be nice to see the Greens and TPM suggest their ideas get paid for by increase productivity rather than taxing the rich who get rich by increasing production in their businesses.
If heaven forbid Greens get in power and push this policy of higher tax to pay for free dental then they will be taking from the dentists to pay them for their work .
How would they decide this payment .Would a dentist in Gore get the same as a dentist in Auckland or Wellington.
All carbohydrates (i.e. potatoes, pasta, bread, rice, etc) are made from complex sugars. Within 20-30 minutes, your glucose level spikes exactly the same as it would after eating straight sugar. There is no real metabolic difference between sweet sugars and complex carbohydrates. So unless this tax is also put on ALL carbohydrates (not just sugar) then there will not be a positive health outcome from this policy. BTW, there is no such thing “essential carbohydrates”, and you can consume zero of them and suffer no negative health issues (in fact you’ll only suffer positive health benefits in the form of moderate weight loss.
Comrade – you are of course correct about the mechanics of biological reaction to carbohydrates, but with all due respect, your comparison is utterly misjudged and misguided, because the difference between fizzy drinks and potatoes, rice, pasta and pies is that the drink can be consumed far easier by drinking it than food can be consumed!
You understand the biological mechanics of sugar, but you aren’t considering the ease with which you can drink sugar compared to eating it. Fizzy drinks are far worse than those foods and as such should get taxed hard