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NOW, A 10-CENT espresso tax might not sound like a big deal to you. Let’s face it, espresso is an effete luxury item that smacks of internationalism (it’s from Europe, for pete’s sakes!) and elitism (people pay $4 for one ounce of espresso and lots and lots of milky foam). But in Seattle, espresso is, simply put, the bread of life. The Space Needle city is home to only a half-million adults, but an estimated 200,000 shots of espresso are downed every single day. No wonder there are so many people sleepless in Seattle.
Given espresso’s grip on Seattle, there’s something profound in the notion that citizens would willingly tax their most-beloved local product to fund valuable social programs (in this case, early child education). Early polls indicate that Initiative 77 (as the espresso tax is officially known) has a real shot of passing. But consider this: If Seattleites tax their town’s signature product to generate revenue, where does it end? Los Angeles taxing traffic jams to pay for a new Dodger Stadium? Paris taxing tiny little dogs to pay for medals for Woody Allen? New York taxing unfeeling, uncaring, unneighborly behavior to pay for middle-income housing?
Clearly, it was time for one of my famous fact-finding tours. To begin with, I started drinking espresso rather than coffee in the morning. These have not been good mornings. Espresso is thick and grainy, like someone left a coffee-flavored piece of chalk in the pot overnight. Given my distaste for espresso, it’s no wonder I leaned towards the tax. Then again, this column has a well-stated position on taxes: They should be higher, especially on the income of the wealthy and on the luxuries that make our lifestyle one of the most excessive, wanton and gratuitious on the planet. Naturally, I’m in the minority on this one. In fact, most Americans are genetically hard-wired to view any new tax as a slippery slope towards Armageddon. “What’s next?” asked Robert Nelson, president of the National Coffee Association. “Is there going to be a salmon tax to pay for literacy programs?” (Now that’s just fear-mongering; everyone knows that the salmon tax will fund obesity programs!)
But one thing did bother me about the espresso tax: why espresso and not regular coffee? Why not those bottled mochachinos (which taste like Yoo-hoo mixed with a few drops of liquid smoke)? Why not bottled water, the ultimate luxury item? Why not, for that matter, bowling?
I put this question to John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, which came up with the idea for the espresso tax—and his answer should send shockwaves through every urbanite.
“There just aren’t enough lanes in Seattle to provide a reliable funding stream,” he said. I submitted to Burbank that the lack of bowling lanes is a far bigger public policy problem than the child-education programs that suffered a $67-million state cut last year, but Burbank really wanted to stay on the subject rather than indulge a somewhat gratuitous bowling digression.
Burbank, who downs a couple of $3 lattes a day, explained that espresso was selected because it’s a luxury item (meaning that the tax will spare the poor) and you can’t just drive across the city line and buy 10 cases to avoid the tax. Besides, Burbank said, espresso drinkers can easily drink regular drip coffee, which is not subject to the tax.
Time for an environmental impact statement! Lost in the debate about the tax and the beneficial programs it would fund is this central fact of coffeehouse life: a standard one-ounce shot of espresso has roughly 50 milligrams of caffeine, while a standard eight-ounce cup of coffee has 200 milligrams. Do the math. If the espresso tax forces espresso drinkers to shift in droves to regular drip coffee, tens of millions more milligrams of caffeine will be coursing through Seattle’s collective bloodstream.
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To consider the ramifications, I called Bennett Weinberg, author of the seminal, pro-coffee text, The Caffeine Advantage: How to Sharpen Your Mind, Improve Your Physical Performance and Achieve Your Goals—The Healthy Way. Weinberg reminded me that caffeine is a wonder drug that increases verbal accuity and productivity. But higher productivity is the last thing Seattle needs! A city that had a tiny 2.9-percent unemployment rate in 1998 now has 7.2 percent of its adult-aged population out of work. Higher productivity from those who actually have jobs would only worsen the unemployment situation.
And, Weinberg pointed out, as a “sin” tax, the espresso levy is counter-productive. “Usually, taxes on alcohol, cigarettes or gasoline are meant to discourage their use, but in this case, a tax on espresso will actually result in more caffeine being consumed,” he said. “I don’t think the government should be in the business of increasing drug consumption. That’s a person’s own choice.”
This is not, as you can imagine, the principal argument against the espresso tax. The Seattle Chamber of Commerce created a pseudo-grassroots group called JOLT (Joined in Opposition against the Latte Tax) to push the anti-tax agenda. The argument: early child education is a good thing, but why tax another good—and wholly unrelated—thing to pay for it?
“It’s not even taxing coffee, it’s taxing a way to make coffee,” pointed out JOLT organizer Stephanie Bowman. “The only difference between espresso and coffee is whether you force the water through the coffee at high pressure or just let it drip through a coffee-filled filter.”
And, Bowman pointed out, if everyone does indeed shift to regular coffee, all the tax revenue that funds the valuable social program will evaporate like spilled coffee on a hot warmer. And in a random call to a Seattle coffehouse, the owner told me he wouldn’t bother charging the 10-cent tax. “I’ll just ignore it,” he said. “And if they ask, I’ll claim that all I sell is drip coffee these days. How are they gonna know?”
I called up Burbank, already on his second espresso drink of the day, who said that the revenue stream will remain as deep and rich as the foam on a cappuccino because of all the tourists, “who come to Seattle not just to look at Mt. Rainer, but to drink our espresso.” (Is it that good, I asked Burbank. “It’s that good,” he said.)
Plus, Burbank doubted that Seattleites would shift to the pedestrian cup of joe. “In fact, people are going to drink more espresso, not less, because they won’t have to feel guilty about drinking it.”
And that, even more than a few thousand kids who will benefit from early childhood instruction, makes this a feel-good tax.
Gersh Kuntzman is also Brooklyn bureau chief for The New York Post and prefers drip coffee to espresso. His website is at www.gersh.tv
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
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Perspectives
