Tax the poor!

An article in today's USAToday talked about the possibility of taxing sodas and other sweet drinks as well as alcoholic beverages with an additional excise tax (meaning one you'll never see). They cite health reasons for wanting to do this. The fact that sodas have been linked to increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity. You know what? I agree entirely that sodas have been linked to these things and therefore, I have chosen not to drink a lot of soda. Most of my drinking diet is made up of water and juice (100% juice, not sugar water). In addition, we rarely give soda to our children. This is a free choice we've made as individuals and as parents. Placing an excise tax on these products however means that we will buy even less soda. All that said, this is a horrible idea, especially at this time. After all, who drinks soda, beer, sugar water pretending to be juice, etc.? That's right, it is primarily a product sold to the lower classes in this country. It makes perfect sense to me to go out and tax the poor to pay for health care all the while claiming you are doing exactly the opposite, taxing the rich. Similar taxes were tried during the New Deal era as well. They disproportionately affected the poor then too. History teaches that if you tax the people who buy products, thereby taking away their ability to buy products, you succeed in deepening the economic downturn you are in rather than pulling people out of it. In fact, history teaches that the way to end an economic downturn is to lower taxes, not raise them, so let's all continue to cheer this administration who wants to create all these new and "useful" programs to make us all more and more dependent on the government in the name of health care and environmental friendliness. Oh yes, we are definitely headed down the road to prosperity now. Three cheers for Obama, Congress and the Democrats!