We’ve covered a multitude of arguments against soda taxes. Speaking recently at the Rotary Club of Atlanta, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent gave his own take (and perhaps the pithiest argument yet):
I have never seen it work where a government tells people what to eat and what to drink. If it worked, the Soviet Union would still be around.
Today, Investor’s Business Daily noted the significance behind the quote:
Muhtar Kent knows a thing or two about guts. His father was a Turkish diplomat who in 1943 risked his life physically intervening to save 80 Turkish Jews, as cattle cars railroaded them from Marseille to a Nazi concentration camp.
So when your father has defied the Gestapo, maybe standing up to Uncle Sam is a piece of cake. With the president considering a tax on sodas and other non-diet soft drinks to fund Congress’ designs on the health care system, and to try to reduce obesity, the Coke chairman refused to go flat.
