While I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of taxation, I do agree that it'd be a bit silly to introduce a tax for as long as there are subsidies still in place. Otherwise the consumer is effectively being taxed twice. I definitely think there's a certain order in which I would want to tackle certain issues depending on specifically where we're talking about tackling them.

Again, circumstances are somewhat different in different parts of the world. The idea of a sugar tax I think would have a lot more traction in places like New Zealand for example than in the States, because there are no such subsidies in NZ. In addition, NZ already has similar taxes on things like cigarettes and alcohol, so for us a sugar tax is really not such a big leap as it might seem elsewhere.

But I guess that only makes the point about abolishing subsidies that much more important in places where they do still exist. By all means give the free market its opportunity to sort things out naturally. That, plus the right sort of changes to the guidelines to introduce some official endorsement of the LC WOE, might be all that is actually needed to induce real societal change, without the need for taxation at all. And I wouldn't mind in the slightest if that actually turned out to be the case.