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Point well taken but, given the obesity epidemic, is lowering prices for sugar a good idea from a public health perspective?

Would you buy more sugar or products with sugar if the price was lower?

This program has and does put huge amounts of tax dollars into the pockets of a few super-wealthy. It’s about time someone did something about it.

I generally oppose the Nanny State, but if we want to discourage the consumption of sugar by increasing its price, the right way to do it is to put an across-the-board tax on it. The current program just funnels dollars into the pockets of a few favored producers.

My Midwestern town used to have a factory that produced a certain well known brand of candy. It moved to Canada a while back, taking several hundred jobs with it. Seems sugar’s cheaper there.

I’d prefer my sweetened things to have sugar rather than corn sweeteners. I know there’s no proven link between corn sweeteners and any particular health problem, but I have my idiosyncratic ideas about it. Having a choice between sugar- vs. corn-sweetened things, I’ll always choose the sugar–beet or cane, I don’t care.

There’s clearly a market for sugar- rather than corn-sweetened products. Some manufacturers make a point of differentiating themselves on the matter. Others, like Pepsi and its ‘Throwback’ see a niche as well. As it is, I’ll generally buy Mexican-produced, sugar-sweetened Coke over the more available–and cheaper–corn product.

While sugar subsidies help my state (FL) with its tax income, thus providing a benefit to me, they hurt me in my wallet, too, as I pay more than I should be paying.

In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.

There probably are other, better, ways of discouraging heavy use of sugar – I’m no proponent of this kind of mis-structuring of industry – but, yes, there is reason to believe that people will buy more sugar if the price is lower. The article itself says that lowering the price of sugar will increase employment of confectioners.

Kinda sad to see the good folks at Cato treating this piece of garbage as if it was actually a meaningful piece of news.

The real headline should be “Lugar Targets Federal Sugar Racketeers For Dollars”.

The sub would be “Needs Campaign Funds; Harrumphs In The General Direction Of Fanjuls That He Expects A Check In The Mail”.

Check Lugars next SEC filings for contributions from South Florida. Then hold your breath until anything actually gets done about Big Sugar or until Jesus comes back. (Here’s a hint – He’ll be the one with the halo.)

What a great idea, but why is he stopping with just sugar. End all federal subsidies, the corn for gasoline would be a great place to start, end them all. Then we could eliminate the human subsidies like Welfare, Aid to Dependent Children, Medicaid. And why are we subsiding foreign countries?

“The article itself says that lowering the price of sugar will increase employment of confectioners”

Could that be because now there will be increased competition for the existing sugar products market?

I’ll change my original question – what sugar products do you currently not buy because of the price?

Frank
Soda sweetened with sugar, since Coke, Pepsi, et al (excepting a few bit players) used HFCS in lieu of the more expensive sugar.

So, the answer is: soda