Tiny Bubbles, Big Business: How Seltzer Became the Hot New Drink
Struggling to decide between healthy but boring water and sweet, sugary soda, Americans are increasingly turning to fizzy water to quench their thirst.
Although soda remains the leader in the soft drink category, soda consumption has fallen for the 10th year in a row, to the lowest level since 1986, according to The Wall Street Journal. Americans have been dropping sugary soda for years due to health concerns, but lately even diet soda has been losing popularity over worries about artificial sweeteners.
Sales of fizzy water — the category includes such well-known brands as Perrier and San Pellegrino — have grown to about $1.5 billion a year, more than doubling since 2010, according to data from industry research firm Euromonitor quoted in The Washington Post.
Related: How Coke Beat Pepsi in the New Cola Ad War
One of the top new brands is National Beverage’s LaCroix Sparkling Water, whose dozen flavors of bubbly H20 seem to be aimed at millennials in particular. The brand’s bright, colorful cans convey an alternative vibe, and the drink’s Instagram is loaded with attractive young people hoisting a can at pools, beaches and other relaxing places.
National Beverage credited sparkling water as the main factor that grew the company’s stock 75 percent over the last five years. Sales of the LaCroix brand alone have grown to $175 million, almost tripling since 2009.
Another rapidly growing brand, Sparkling Ice, owned by Talking Rain Beverage Company, saw sales boom to more than $384 million in 2014 from $2.7 million in 2009.
Gary Hemphill, managing director and COO of research at Beverage Marketing, sees the sales of seltzer and sparkling water only increasing as consumer demand for healthier refreshments grows.
Chart of the Day: Boosting Corporate Tax Revenues
The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.
Chart of the Day: Discretionary Spending Droops
The federal government’s total non-defense discretionary spending – which covers everything from education and national parks to veterans’ medical care and low-income housing assistance – equals 3.2% of GDP in 2020, near historic lows going back to 1962, according to an analysis this week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Chart of the Week: Trump Adds $4.7 Trillion in Debt
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this week that President Trump has now signed legislation that will add a total of $4.7 trillion to the national debt between 2017 and 2029. Tax cuts and spending increases account for similar portions of the projected increase, though if the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Republican overhaul are extended beyond their current expiration date at the end of 2025, they would add another $1 trillion in debt through 2029.
Chart of the Day: The Long Decline in Interest Rates
Are interest rates destined to move higher, increasing the cost of private and public debt? While many experts believe that higher rates are all but inevitable, historian Paul Schmelzing argues that today’s low-interest environment is consistent with a long-term trend stretching back 600 years.
The chart “shows a clear historical downtrend, with rates falling about 1% every 60 years to near zero today,” says Bloomberg’s Aaron Brown. “Rates do tend to revert to a mean, but that mean seems to be declining.”
Chart of the Day: Drug Price Plans Compared
Lawmakers are considering three separate bills that are intended to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Here’s an overview of the proposals, from a series of charts produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. An interesting detail highlighted in another chart: 88% of voters – including 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans – want to give the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies.
