Sinner taxes

The "Soda tax" is rearing it's ugly, irrational head again. As is my role as the Skeptic, I offer no answers, only questions.

Correlation does not mean causation, we're always told, so correlative studies, such as the ones that show a link between soda consumption and obesity, are only hypothesis generating, not causation proving. How would you prove that soda consumption causes obesity? Well, you could either find people who don't drink soda and give them soda, or, alternatively, do what one of the studies cited in the above article did. Take soda away from some and see if they get thinner.

They didn't.

Yet, the argument for a soda tax continues? That's because it was never about the cause - correlation is all you need for intolerance and discrimination. Whether or not soda causes obesity, there's enough evidence out there to simply associate it with the obese, which is enough for most people to argue for taxing it.

Isn't it hate the sin, love the sinner? Yet when science shows that drinking soda is not, in fact, sinful, it becomes clear that we were pretty much always out to screw the sinner anyway. Every crisis needs a scapegoat, and our health care crisis is no different.