Soda edict meets auto MPG edict

Posted by hpayne on March 13, 2013

At the risk of inspiring New York Nanny Michael Bloomberg to even more despotism, the mayor’s mistake in regulating pop was in not regulating soda calories like the EPA regulates auto MPG.

New York State Judge Milton A. Tingling struck down Bloomberg’s 16-ounce soda ban as arbitrary (banning restaurant sodas but leaving convenience store Big Gulps in place, for example) and outside the boundaries of his executive authority. “We feel the justice’s decision was strong,” said a spokesman for the American Beverage Association, the chief plaintiff in the case.

But beverage companies should be so lucky that Bloomberg’s edict targetsconsumer choice – not soda makers. As a result, the beverage industry has consumer opinion behind them, with 60 percent of New Yorkers objecting to pols restricting their drink choices.

But imagine if Bloomberg has regulated the beverage industry – not consumer choice.

Under perverse government fuel laws, by contrast, the feds force auto companies to reduce MPG by 2015 by 40 percent to an average 35.5 MPG. That is, the government doesn’t force customers to buy 35.5 MPG cars – it forces automakers to make them. The regulations are widely popular with the public (who doesn’t want more fuel efficiency?) while forcing the automakers to pay millions in lobbying fees in order to queer the regulations lest they have nothig left but Smart cars to sell.

What if Mayor Nanny applied the MPG lesson? What if he mandated that Coca Cola make every 16-ounce drink with 90 calories (a 50 percent decrease from the current 187)?

The law would surely be popular – customers don’t know how soda is made any more than they know engines – even as soda companies understood that removing that much sugar would crater soda sales. But with public opinion against them, they would take the easy way out – just as auto companies have done. Beverage companies would hire lobbyists to negotiate loopholes and credits in the calorie mandate to ensure that popular, 187-calorie soda would still be sold.

For example? GM gets credit against the 35.5 MPG law by selling plugin Chevy Volts – so that it can keep on selling popular, gas-guzzling Chevy Tahoes. Under similar soda regs, Coke Zero might grant Coca Cola credits against the 90 calorie law – so that it could keep selling popular, sugary Coke.

And government would grow ever more powerful. And pols would get ever more lobbying money from Big Business. Let’s just hope the pols don’t figure this one out.

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