Posted on 09/30/2017 6:11:55 PM PDT by 198ml
n this city, a petri dish of progressivism, a prevailing theory is that when you raise the price of something, people will buy less of it, except when they do not. A related theory is that constitutional and statutory texts should be construed in the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche: There are no facts, only interpretations.
The city council has voted to impose a tax, effective next year, on sugary soft drinks, raising the price of a 2-liter bottle of soda about $1.18. Presented as a public health measure to combat obesity, the tax is projected to generate about $15 million a year, although the aspiration of sin taxes (e.g., Seattle’s taxes on guns and ammunition) should be zero revenues because chastened consumers will mend their benighted ways. Still, proponents of the tax are confident that it will make people behave better by consuming less of the disapproved drinks.
Three years ago, the city council, adhering to another current tenet of progressivism, voted unanimously to increase the city’s minimum wage incrementally from $9.47 to $15 an hour. The council rejected the contention that when the price of entry-level labor increases, employers buy less of it.
The city commissioned a study from six University of Washington economists ranging from left to right, presumably expecting their findings to be congruent with other studies purporting to show that the demand for such labor, unlike the demand for sugary sodas, is price-inelastic. (And unlike in Denmark, where the minimum wage increases 40 percent when a worker turns 18, and the employment of young workers declines one-third.)
(Excerpt) Read more at unionleader.com ...
George Will?
He’s dead.
George “swamp creature” Wills
” Seattle City Councilman Tim Burgess introduced the tax in 2015. It puts a $25 tax on every firearm sold in the city and up to 5 cents per round of ammunition. The measure easily passed and took effect January 1, 2016.
Comparing the first five months of 2017 with the same period before the gun tax went into effect, reports of shots fired are up 13 percent, the number of people injured in shootings climbed 37 percent and gun deaths doubled, according to crime statistics from the Seattle Police Department.”
They expected to raise up to $500,000 in increased taxes. Estimates place it just at over $100,000 for the year. But the city won’t release any numbers. Or any numbers on their expenditures for where the revenue is supposed to go - increased education on gun safety and health.
It’s costing Seattle more to keep the tax on guns and ammo than what they’re getting in tax revenue since the gun shops moved just outside city limits.
George “I’m not interested in that sort of thing” Will, was
asked why he never wrote a word about Fort Marcy Park
or Vince Foster.
FBI: Violent crime up in Seattle and Washington in 2016, but murders specifically down
Tax those clingy pants that so many fat people wear.
Ha,Ha, that would pay for the National debt, LOL.
Hahaha, that true?
Yep. Just over the city limits. Now it’s costing them $$$ just to administer the program where nothing comes in.
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