George Will Says Paternalistic Health Measures are Bad Policy and Don't Work

The context is efforts to limit the consumption of sugary soft drinks, which Will assures us will not work and are a waste of government money. Will is appalled that the Centers for Disease Control gave a $3 million grant to the State of Rhode Island to study how procurement strategies in schools and other public institutions can be altered to reduce the consumption of sugary soft drinks.

It would be difficult to determine whether this $3 million grant (approximately 0.00008 percent of federal spending) was well used. However the Center for Disease Control reports that more than one-third of adults are obese, which adds $147 billion a year to national health care costs each year (@ 50,000 times the size of the grant).

While Will is confident that the government cannot do anything to reduce consumption of sugary drinks, it is worth noting that self-reported smoking rates fell from over 40 percent in the 70s to just over 20 percent today. It may not be easy to design a strategy that will be as effective in reducing the consumption of sugary drinks, but given the enormous financial costs and health costs associated with obesity, it is not obviously foolish to use a small portion of the federal budget to experiment with various alternatives.

Does Will think the country would be better off with no cigarette taxes or anti-smoking campaigns, even if it meant that 40 percent of adults were still smoking?

But ...
written by David, August 23, 2012 4:57

George Will is not obese. Therefore the government should not spend money addressing the problem. Now, mental health or compromised cognitive function, why, yes.

Sugar, Ethanol and Big Government
written by Robert Salzberg, August 23, 2012 5:27

In 2003, the World Health Organization caused quite a stir when they recommended that no more than 10% of daily intake come from sugar. Sugar is a huge factor in causing not only obesity but type II diabetes and heart disease which are the king and queen of preventable diseases.

The United States has subsidized the sugar industry for decades largely because of a tiny group of farming families in south Florida to the detriment of the American waistline and the destruction of much of the everglades.

From 2 Republicans (Lugar & Toomey) and 1 Democrat (Shaheen) in the Senate:

"Congress talks a lot about saving people money — and now we have a chance to put our money where our mouth is. That’s why we are pushing for bipartisan, commonsense reform to an extravagant sugar price-support program that costs consumers and businesses an estimated $3.5 billion and 20,000 jobs each year."

http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/242651-sugar-subsidies-out-of-date

Currently, the U.N., environmental groups and humanitarian groups worldwide are calling on the U.S. to scale back or eliminate our ethanol mandate because of rising food prices and the increased poverty and starvation it causes.

Ethanol has never been viable environmentally and costs more oil to produce than it yields.

Using food for fuel is fundamentally wrong.

George Will is Correct: Americans Have Choices, Let Them Make Them
written by Last Mover, August 23, 2012 5:36

Sugary soft drinks are part of the life blood of fructose and sugar cane farmers. Why should they get subsidies and import protection on the production side then face contradictory restrictions on the consumption side?

Regulations to reduce consumption are useless anyway. For example if NYC bans large bottles of soda pop customers will just buy two small ones anyway.

The least America can do in these times of depression and drought is to allow the fructose and sugar farmers of Big Agriculture on welfare to use schools and other public places to sell their products to captive customers.

-1

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written by JSeydl, August 23, 2012 8:14

Will and the rest of his pals friends are now backing away from Pigovian taxes/regulations because they're learning how broad the taxes and regulations can be. For example, you could obviously makes the case that a financial-transactions tax (FTT) is a Pigovian tax because it would correct the market failure resulting in so many scientists joining hedge funds instead of producing valuable research. And everyone knows FTTs are anathema to the conservative base. The worst is Mankiw, who never wants to talk about Pigovian taxes anymore. Not one mention of them in the Romney campaign's white paper.

Foolish liberals
written by Nick, August 23, 2012 8:59

As always, you liberals are missing the point.

"It would be difficult to determine whether this $3 million grant (approximately 0.00008 percent of federal spending) was well used. However the Center for Disease Control reports that more than one-third of adults are obese, which adds $147 billion a year to national health care costs each year (@ 50,000 times the size of the grant)."

What you liberals don't get is that it's tautologically impossible for the government to make a good investment on anything, ever, because it lacks the sufficient Hayekian modesty of the free market. ALL HAIL THE FREE MARKET

"Does Will think the country would be better off with no cigarette taxes or anti-smoking campaigns, even if it meant that 40 percent of adults were still smoking?"

Yes, but freedom! Liberty! Let's make America America-y again!

-3

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written by liberal, August 23, 2012 9:44

JSeydl/b],

Funny you should mention Pigouvian taxes.

While I like the idea of eliminating incandescent light bulbs, in practice having a flat-out ban is pretty irritating, since there are simply some instances where they're a better choice. It would have been much better to institute a tax on them.

will, soft drinks & obesity
written by mel in oregon, August 23, 2012 1:26

poor george has always been so angry that he missed the sex, drugs, & rr of his era. he could be right on soft drinks, however let's see if the study works. we know over consumption of sweets is the leading cause of diabetes, obesity, & probably heart attacks & strokes. & cmon nick you're just showing how stupid you are. the government does thousands of things better than the market which isn't free by the way. ask the millions of un/under employed people because of outsourcing by the market or the $10 trillion lost by americans on their homes because of wallstreet speculation.

sarcasm punctuation
written by millionsknives, August 23, 2012 7:40

It would be nice if this blog supported irony punctuations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation

Dean sez,
written by diesel, August 24, 2012 8:12

"It may not be easy to design a strategy that will be as effective in reducing the consumption of sugary drinks...", comparing this to the antismoking campaign "in (which) self-reported smoking rates fell from over 40 percent in the 70s to just over 20 percent today".

And yet as any former smoker will tell you, quitting cigarette smoking was the hardest habit to kick--harder than compulsive consumption of coffee, alcohol, sugary desserts (I can't speak for the rest) so there's no reason to believe that an anti-sugary-beverage campaign would be doomed to failure right out of the blocks and every reason to try it, for all the reasons listed in comments given above.

George Will Says Paternalistic Health Measures are Bad Policy and Don't Work

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