Taxing Tuesday: Betting on Tax Policy? Plus: Soda Tax Retrospective!
Trying out substack's new toy ... plus remembering Cook County soda tax... thooooose were the days
The issue with having a very long-term blog is that betting markets don’t really work well with the sort of thing you look at.
When Substack announced that they were partnering with Polymarket to allow embeds of their prediction markets, I went to see if there was anything relevant to my interests:
As I write this, the betting market for “Capital gains tax increase before election day” stands at 3%. Seems a bit high to me.
Similarly, “Unrealized gains tax passed before election day” stands at 3%. Maybe 3% is the floor for these bets, because it seems this one is even less likely as its constitutionality is questionable.
I tried searching on “death” and “mortality”, but all I got was this:
The contract for "Will 2024 be the hottest year on record?” started in January 2024 and will close around March 2025 (estimated). Here’s the price record thus far:
It started around 64% chance.
The “record” for “hottest year on record” is this file, apparently.
The problem with these embeds is that I don’t know what happens when the “maturity date” passes. Do I get broken images then?
[Alas, I have broken images in my old blog due to both link rot and broken code.]
I wonder if substack is looking in the couch for loose change, as they’re hurting for revenue. I may be writing because this is my hobby (yes, I am weird), but I know substack is a business for them.
Speaking of hunting for loose change….
Blast from the fun past: Cook County soda tax!
This was a whole thing in 2017, and Toni Preckwinkle, President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, pushed this as WON’T YOU THINK OF THE CHILDREN ploy (it was really a revenue grab)… and it sunk her bid as Chicago mayor in 2019.
While I pushed my own posting as “Toni, help me help you”….
…okay, I was laughing my ass off, because it was a politically stupid move for Preckwinkle, and more specifically, if you’re going to do a soda tax, they did it in an incredibly stupid way.
25 July 2017: Illinois and Chicago Round-Up: Soda Taxes, Holding Legislation Hostage, Tiffs over TIFs and More!
6 Aug Sunday Dumpery: Cook County Soda Tax, Chicago Pension Funding, and More
17 Aug Cook County Soda Tax: Look Who’s Come to Save the Day!
18 Aug Cook County Soda Tax: Persuasion and Comparisons – Why Not Tax Juice?
20 Aug Sunday Dumpery: Yes, It’s The Soda Tax – What’s It To You?
27 Aug Sunday Silliness: Soda Tax, Sierpinski Spreadsheet, and Swinish Puns
3 Sep Sunday Silliness: Cook County Soda Tax Keeps Limping Along
20 Sep Soda Tax Soda Tax, oh Soda Soda Tax: Bah Dumb Dumb Dumb
23 Sep Soda Tax Follies: The Backstory of Preckwinkle and More
You can tell from the sheer number of posts I was having fun, but I also knew it would be short-lived. It’s not just that it was a stupid idea, but Cook County had a particularly stupid way of imposing this tax.
And I did a final Cook County Soda Tax post here: Pour One Out for the Cook County Soda Tax , when the Cook County soda tax finally stopped in December 2017.
My favorite comment I made during the saga: on a post titled Soda Tax: I BETTER POST THIS WHILE IT STILL EXISTS (from October 2017)
Nobody was ever fooled that it was about the children, an evil right-wing conspiracy, or whatever.
It’s all about money.
It usually is.
But by all means, attack fellow Democrats for being in the pocket of BIG SODA. I think that will be a fabulous tactic.
(I may not have your political interests in mind, Preckwinkle. Just in case it wasn’t clear.)
Other places have imposed “soda taxes”, but not have bungled it so completely as Cook County did.
They ran afoul of federal law when they tried to impose the tax on items that SNAP benefits or WIC covered. They had all sorts of operational issues when stores, trying to follow their rules, were imposing the tax on sugarless drinks, like sparkling water (no sweeteners of any sort).
Then people noticed that these sodas had higher taxes than alcoholic beverages, and I’m like: PARTAY!
While I think soda taxes are stupid when one is claiming to try to help people lose weight (as an obese person who doesn’t drink soda) — I mean, come on. The sole intent is to raise revenue. Stop lying.
That said, there are jurisdictions with soda taxes right now. Some places seem to have been successful with soda taxes, but mainly successful as a revenue source. Not in making people lose weight. This page covers the pros/cons, but seriously, speaking as a fat person, it’s not soda that made me fat. (It’s yummy yummy food.)
The soda tax saga came at a good time for me, as August 2017 was when Stu was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer.
Right now, the issues aren’t as acute, but we still have stuff to deal with, so let us remember the idiocy that was soda taxes in Chicago and Cook County in general.