City of Philadelphia Propsing Taxes on Trash and Soda

In yet another desperate grab for cash, the City of Philadelphia is reportedly floating around 2 ideas: Taxing you to have your trash collected and taxing sugary drinks. Both are stupid, idiotic, horrible ideas. Lets find out why:

1. The Trash Tax Will Fail

It's actually pretty simple: Philadelphia has been, over the years, become a city of haves and have-nots. The haves are able to get by day-to-day and not worry about losing everything without missing a paycheck. The have-nots are barely getting by, and one missed paycheck means the end of their world.

Now throw in a fee for a basic city service.

The idea of a fee for garbage collection city-wide has been tossed around before and shot down for the same reason, especially since it was based on the idea of paying BY THE BAG. The idea never made it pass the drawing board.

2. The Soda Tax = Tax on Fun

As you may now, over the past few months, there's been a massive movement towards comparing soda to cigarettes and tobacco products. Now, other than the fact that its a bad argument, the reasoning tends to be that people drink too much of it and that its bad for you. Here's the problem with that argument: It basically states that people don't have any common sense, thus the government needs to swoop in and stop you.

Lets get something straight: The idea of taxing soda is not to help with you health, its to raise cash, and nothing more.

Not only that, but when it has been discussed in the past, it was always agreed a portion of the money would go towards health care costs. In this case, the only public health talk has been towards using propaganda to make it seem like the tax is for the public health when, in reality, its just to raise more money for the city.

Also, this is yet another tax on the poor.

Many argue that those in poor areas need to stop drinking soda the most and, in turn, need to drink more water. These people are basically saying there needs to be a tax on soda because they don't really deserve soda.

In my case, I don't have any real vices. I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, and save caffeine, I'm almost "straight edge". My vice, my lone pleasure in life? Soda.

More than anything, this tax says that adults shouldn't be treated like adults. We have a perfectly legal thing, something we all enjoy, but because a few of us have taken it and gone too far, it must be taxed?! It starts with soda, but what next? Candy? Snacks?

Does the fact that fast food is already taxed stop people from eating it so much?

These ideas and taxes must, and hopefully will, fail. Instead of fixing the way real estate taxes are done in the city, going after the biggest tax cheats in the city, or cracking down on people who owe the city thousands, if not MILLIONS, of dollars, we instead get stupid ideas for taxing people down to the bone!

If this is given serious motives, I wouldn't doubt seeing a few Soda Parties in this city.