The Carrot and the Stick

In yesterday’s blog, I suggested that–despite efforts to wage class warfare over the demise of the Twinkie–market forces were the real culprit. That prompted my cousin the cardiologist, whom I’ve quoted here before, to consider the proper role of government in promoting healthy eating. As he noted,

Studies showing that the ready availability of foods high in sugar, fat, sodium, and calories increase average body weight. Adults living closer to fast food restaurants consume such food more frequently than those who don’t and, consequently, are heavier. This is especially important for children; schools that serve more unhealthy foods or provide vending machines with unhealthy foods tend to be heavier than children whose schools do not permit such practices. Similarly adolescents who attend schools near fast food restaurants are more likely to be obese.

    Compounding these problems are other economic forces surrounding foods: The cost per calorie of healthy foods exceeds those of poor nutrient foods. In the past 30 ears, this cost disparity has increased; between 1985 and 2000, the prices of healthy foods, like fruits and vegetables, fish, and dairy products increased at more than twice the rate of prices of sugar and sweets, fats and oils, and carbonated beverages.

    Finally, we must consider portion sizes as another contributor to obesity. For children alone, between 1977 and 2006 the average portions of soft drinks, pizza, and Mexican foods increased by 34, 140, and 139 calories, respectively,. Sodas, sold originally in 6.5 oz. bottles, are now typically sold in 20 ounce containers. Studies have shown in general that increased portion sizes lead to rises in calorie intake: as a result, US adults now consume over 500 calories per day in 2006 compared to that in 1977. This trend has been further exacerbated by our increased eating away from home, for in 2008, Americans spent 49% of their food budget on food away from home compared with 33% in 1970. On average, each meal eaten outside the home increases that day’s consumption by about 134 calories, while, at the same time shifts the content toward less nutritious ingredients such as saturated fat and added sugar.

In New York, as we all know, Mayor Bloomberg led the fight to ban the sale of large sodas. I agree with my cousin that no matter how well-intentioned, efforts to have government “decree” healthy portion sizes are not the answer. Nor is the answer some “nanny state” that requires us to eat our vegetables or limit meals eaten out.

Does government even have a role in our personal eating habits? It’s hard not to sympathize with a libertarian response–“What business does the state have telling me what to eat, after all? Next thing you know, the local constable will come knocking on my door to see whether I’ve eaten my broccoli!”

Even those of us with a libertarian bent must concede that–at the very least–consumers need information upon which to make our choices. We need to know what’s in the “food” we are eating (note quotes around food); much of it has been so processed and adulterated, there’s no way to know what it contains. We depend upon government-required labels to tell us just how nutritious (or not) it is.

Can government go farther? Here’s where the battle lines get drawn. Public health officials justify added interventions by pointing to the economic consequences of the obesity epidemic, and the medical consequences of poor eating habits. Bans on large soft drinks or other sugary treats will be a hard sell, though, in a country where individual choice is prized.

From my perspective, raising tax rates on such drinks makes more sense. Since 2009, 19 states and eight cities have proposed such taxes on these drinks, according to the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The advantage of raising such taxes can be taken from that of tobacco products. Cigarettes are clearly the cause of numerous diseases, costly in both human suffering as well as expenses to society at large. Thus heavy taxes provide the dual advantage of discouraging their consumption as well as raising taxes that can aid in the care of these afflicted individuals. In the case of sugary drinks (and other similar products), taxing these products, plus providing healthier alternatives such as fruit juices in public places would move us in the right direction. A penny-per-ounce excise tax on sugary drinks would effectively raise the shelf price of these drinks by about 20%. According to a number of studies, this would result in a 14 to 20% reduction in the consumption of the taxed beverages.

Makes sense to me.

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Twinkie, Twinkie, Little Star….

RIP the Twinkie, a nauseating bit of plastic and grease masquerading as an edible treat.

Troublemakers to the end, the Twinkie and Ding-Dong and their “gang” of faux-foods have become yet another contested story in the ferocious and largely fact-free political debate over economic policy. According to the Right, the demise of the Hostess company was brought about by those dastardly unions–at least, the one that refused to accept a second major cut in wages and benefits in order to keep the struggling company afloat. Liberal blogs, on the other hand, place most of the blame on the venture capital company that bought the operation out of its last bankruptcy, pointing out that nowhere in the management structure it put in place can anyone be found who actually ever baked anything.

Now, I have to agree with the liberals that asking for a second round of wage concessions after tripling the pay of the CEO was bad form, if nothing else. Especially since the company was in bankruptcy. But come on, people–there’s plenty of blame to go around whenever a business fails. In this case, let’s choose capitalism.

Markets work because they satisfy consumer demands for goods and services. Markets are inherently risky because consumers often change their preferences, and companies that are not sufficiently nimble at meeting those changed preferences lose market share. At the end of the day, that’s what happened here.

When I still practiced law, I remember another lawyer remarking that the risks of the market system were the reason for the bankruptcy laws; in order to have a system that incentivizes risk, you need a mechanism that allows people to start over when those risks don’t pan out.

The market for snack food has–thankfully–changed. We Americans may be fatter than ever, but we’re also guiltier than ever about eating processed foods that we (now) know are terrible for us. Changes in the food industry have given us choices, including stuff that actually tastes good, and we’ve gotten more selective. The natural foods movement is growing. People actually read the nutritional panels that our socialist government requires.

It was time.

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Social Justice

I was asked to talk to a group of scholarship students yesterday about effecting social change and achieving social justice.

I began by sharing a bit of my personal history with social change (there should be some lessons to be learned from living through a significant period of American social history). In my case, I grew up Jewish during the 50s and 60s; I watched the civil rights movement “up close and personal;” I took part in the women’s  movement; and I span the time between when “gay” meant “happy” and no one ever uttered the word “homosexual” and the current fight for same-sex marriage. So I have some perspective. And as I told the students, I can attest to the fact social change is not only possible, it’s inevitable.

Change, of course, is not synonymous with improvement. I’m absolutely convinced that if we want to create progress–good change–our efforts must be framed in ways that are consistent with what I like to call our “constitutional culture.”

“Constitutional culture” is simply a shorthand for the recognition that legal systems shape worldviews. The attitudes and expectations of people ruled by the Taliban are vastly different from the attitudes of people living in a country that emphasizes values of personal liberty and political equality.

The values incorporated in the American legal system, fortunately, are entirely consistent with an emphasis on social justice.

In the wake of the horrific shooting at Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s Town Hall in Tucson, PBS’ Mark Shields made an “only in America” observation that illustrates the point. Shields said:

“This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African-American President.”

There, in a nutshell, is what most of us would consider the triumph of American culture—the fact that the nation has moved, however haltingly, toward a vision that allows all of us to be members in good standing of our society, equal participants in our national story, whatever our religious belief, skin color, sexual orientation or national origin.  What makes us all Americans isn’t based upon any of those individual identities, but upon our allegiance to what I like to call “the American Idea”—a particular worldview based upon an understanding of government and citizenship that grew out of the Enlightenment and was subsequently enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

As I told the students, my argument is pretty simple: Social justice has to be approached from within that worldview, and arguments for social change need to be framed in ways that are consistent with it—or it won’t work.

Take the recent votes on same-sex marriage. The four victories at the polls on Nov. 6th were an exciting sign that public opinion is moving in the direction of equality and social justice. Of course, fundamental rights should never have been put to a vote of the electorate in the first place.  No one got to vote on whether the government should recognize my marriage, and it is constitutionally improper to give me the power to vote on anyone else’s.

The Bill of Rights marks off certain areas of our lives where government doesn’t belong—areas where we get to make our own decisions about our lives. Very few Americans seem to understand that in our system, the issue isn’t whether the book you are reading is good or bad—it’s who gets to decide what book you read. It isn’t whether you are praying to the proper God, or praying at all—it’s who gets to decide whether and to whom you pray. Constitutionally, the issue isn’t who you marry—it’s the propriety of allowing government to decide who you marry.

It’s because our system is based upon protecting our personal autonomy—our right to decide for ourselves how we shall live our lives—that social change so often begins with the courts. When majorities insist on making decisions that are not theirs to make, we need the courts to step in and remind us that in our system, fundamental rights are not subject to popular passions. Theoretically, our courts should all be “activist” when majorities try to make decisions they are not entitled to make, but the truth is, courts inevitably reflect the social attitudes of their times. Brown v. Board wouldn’t have been decided as it was unless popular sentiment had already moved. The fact that we have a judicial system charged with protecting minorities doesn’t relieve us of the duty to create the attitudes that enable the courts to do their job.

That brings us to the importance of framing. If we want to change social attitudes, and produce a cultural environment in which desirable change can occur, we need to frame the issues in ways that appeal to our sense of what it means to be an American.

Successive groups of outsiders have done that. They’ve staked their claims as Americans to equal treatment under the law. In the process, they’ve not only won social acceptance–they’ve made America’s Constitutional culture stronger–and life better and more just for us all.

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The Silver Effect

Remember facts? Those verifiable observations about that thing we call reality?

Pinch me, because I think they may be coming back. The signs are there, although subject to alternative interpretations (making predictions is not unlike reading entrails).

First, there was Nate Silver. Silver’s dogged focus on data drove a lot of discussion during the election. That focus wasn’t new–he’d also predicted the 2010 Republican blowout–but his insistence upon empirical investigation hadn’t previously gotten noticed by people outside the world of political junkies. When the spin-meisters pooh-poohed his “novel methodology” (aka beginning with facts), they succeeded in illuminating their methodology, the technical name for which is  “making stuff up.” In the wake of the election, there has been a subtle but discernible shift in the media toward actual fact-checking.

Exhibit two: Costco. No kidding. I got my most recent Costco member’s magazine, and was leafing through it, when I came to an article titled “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” It was a story about fact-checking on the Internet. The gist was that more and more fact-checking sites are popping up to join Politifact, Snopes and Factcheck.com. This phenomenon tells me a couple of things: there’s a market for fact-checking the “information” that’s so readily available but so often misleading; and recognition of the need for verification is widespread enough to merit notice from a mass retailer like Costco.

Exhibit three: in an inventive vein, I got an email the other day advertising something called LazyTruth [link]. It’s a plug-in for Chrome that automatically scans email for information that FactCheck.org and Politifact have deemed false. If something doesn’t check out, it’ll provide a few words of correction and a link to where you can find out more. You can then easily pass that verified information on to the crazy uncle or friend who forwarded the email to you in the first place. Down the road, the developer plans to add more kinds of rumors to LazyTruth’s filter — urban myths, hoaxes, false security threats, etc. — but for now the tool is limited to political tall tales.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’ve been very concerned about the loss of journalism–real journalism that deals with verifiable facts about actual events that matter in a democratic system, that gives us the information we need to keep our government and other institutions accountable. These signs that we may be groping our way toward new ways of obtaining the facts we need  are incredibly encouraging. The return of respect for actual facts rather than desirable fabrications is more than welcome.

I think I’ll call it “the Silver Effect.”

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Exit, Stage Class-less

I understand what it is like to lose a hard-fought campaign. I’ve been there, done that. And candidly, I don’t think my concession speech, back in 1980, was a model of good sportsmanship, although I tried. So I’d be inclined to cut Romney a bit of slack for the tone of his after-the-fact ruminations.

A bit of slack, however, wouldn’t cover the graceless and defensive comments Romney reportedly made to a group of his donors during a conference call a couple of days after the election. While his actual concession speech was gracious (as my son said after hearing it, “If that Romney had run, he might have won!), these remarks underscored his contempt for  the “takers” he dismissed as mooches and worse in those widely-reported remarks about “47% of Americans.”

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest, was a big gift,” he said. “Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008.

”The president’s health care plan, he added, was also a useful tool in mobilizing African-American and Hispanic voters. Though Mr. Romney won the white vote with 59 percent, according to exit polls, minorities coalesced around the president in overwhelming numbers — 93 percent of blacks and 71 percent of Hispanics voted to re-elect Mr. Obama.

“You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge,” he said. “Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

Ah yes–those greedy, grasping poor people who want affordable health care! Those “takers” are so unlike us refined, genteel “makers” who simply want to keep our dollars  from being frittered away on public goods like clean air or highways or wasted on providing health care for the unwashed masses!

I know this is a favorite meme on the Right–the belief that people will vote for the party or person who promises them more “stuff.” Never mind those blue-collar culture warriors who reliably vote Republican because their opposition to  same-sex marriage or abortion is more important to them than their own economic well-being. And never mind the economically comfortable folks (like me and most of my friends) who willingly vote for higher tax rates that will cost us money because we believe a more equal country will be a better, healthier country.

I’m willing to support higher taxes for me, because I believe (with Henry Ford) that markets need consumers who are able to afford the goods and services those “makers” are selling. I’m also willing to pay more because I can read economic history, which shows pretty conclusively that the American economy was more–not less–robust when taxes were higher and the gap between rich and poor was not so immense.

Back in 1980, I lost an election because the voters preferred my opponent. It wasn’t because greedy or stupid or worthless people were unable to see past their own miserable selfishness to understand how wonderful I really was.

Mitt Romney lost this election for a number of reasons. The crazy wing of his party wouldn’t allow him to get real. On the stump, he projected all the charm of a robot. He was the master of the unforced error and gaffe. His campaign staff was inept, and his pollsters lived in an alternate universe. People like Akin and Mourdock kept reminding voters how crazy the right wing of the party has become.

Not to mention that voters not blinded by irrational animus to the President actually like him a lot, and believe he coped as well as could be expected after inheriting a next-to-impossible situation.

In short, there were plenty of reasons for Romney’s loss. Blaming that loss on “moochers” isn’t only inaccurate, it’s classless. But I guess class is one of those things money can’t buy.

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