Wednesday, March 13, 2013

"Nanny" Bloomberg and the Soda Rebellion

As you know by now, NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his Department of Health were foiled in their absurd scheme to ban giant-sized sugary drinks.  As this blog noted recently, the bureaucracy behind the move was maddening, especially in the realm of coffee drinks.   A few interesting points worth continuing discussing. 

First, it was interesting to observe Bloomberg's comments on the issue of obesity in poorer neighborhoods in the city, neighborhoods with less access to healthier food choices.  Basically, he told the public that such poor people have to be looked after because they are unable to look after themselves.  Now, I know what he means, but it sure comes across as condescending.  What he means is that in these economically depressed neighborhoods, with higher rates of crime, higher rates of high school dropouts, and limited opportunities, poor people will make the easier choice of ordering a Number Five from McCrapola with a Super-Sized Soda.  It may or may not be true, but I suppose it's easier to take away such options instead of, well, making sure that public school kids have adequate phys ed classes instead of cutting them down

Yep that's right.  The Mayor is concerned about kids' obesity, but providing more gym classes -- and hiring more gym teachers -- is not an option. Banning the super-size is. 

Second, I'd like to respond to a video post from my friend over at the Lancaster Newspapers, Gil Smart, who commented on the soda snafu this week.  

In his video, Gil mocked conservatives who are outraged at Bloomberg's nanny-like position on the soda ban.  And it's true that this is evidence of government run amuck, and yes, if they can take away our super-size drinks, then taking away our super-sized weaponry can't be far behind, I'm sure.  The New York Post ran an image of Bloomberg as Mary Poppins after the ban was defeated, and we all know that the beverage industry lobbied hard to get the public to tell the Mayor where to go on this deal. 

But I know more than a few liberals who also thought this ban was a stupid way to solve the problem of obesity in the city.  And some of them aren't soda drinkers, either.  They just see that this kind of approach is only slightly more rational than Prohibition.   (I also hate to see something like this passed because it only further strengthens the anti-government nuts' arguments about intrusive public policies, and I'd rather they not have any rhetorical ammo.)

The thing that makes the soda ban absurd its uneven application. As I noted last post, convenience stores are exempt from the ban, and you can still buy the two-liter bottles of soda at a grocery store or supermarket, while Domino's can't deliver you the same amount of soda with your pizza.   So some businesses will benefit from the ban, and others will be hurt by it.  (Restauranteurs went crazy over the smoking ban, afraid they'd lose business, especially from foreign tourists who love to smoke. I suspect that those businesses that have gone under in the last five or ten years did so because the economy took a bad turn, not because Europeans refused to come to New York.)

While Gil mocked the conservative cry of "freedom!" over the right to have a 48-ounce Mountain Dew, he also says that he understands the anger they feel over the "nanny state" that the soda ban represents.  But in a general sense, a government is supposed to protect people from all kinds of troubles, from terrorism to tuberculosis.  Right now, there's an issue about horse meat being sneaked into our beef supply.  The government's role is to investigate this, as it would about bacteria.  (Only the meatpacking industry owners might like to go back to the days before Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.)  Obesity is a problem, as is diabetes.  And national and local departments of health should be trying hard to solve these problems as they would for other illnesses that may not be connected to lifestyle but by genetic chance. 

Remember this:  one of the really despicable behaviors of the tobacco industry was to bury concrete evidence linking smoking to cancer.  The other was manipulating levels of nicotine in the product to keep people hooked.  Imagine if the government hadn't come down on the industry like it did, and that people were smoking cigarettes not knowing about these manipulations and machinations.    Sure, people might be the ones who choose to light up, but the playing- and knowledge- fields are not equal; the pusher from tobacco country knows that cigarettes are cancer sticks and that the nicotine levels are altered to keep the smoker coming back for more.  Imagine the auto industry without government pushing it to provide better safety measures.  You get the idea.

As Gil points out, we often end up paying for people's poor food choices anyway, as we did with people's poor smoking choices.  Employers lost productivity from workers and paid lots of health care costs related to smoking employees, and taxpayers also provide health care through their taxes for people who can't afford health care but smoke and drink too much soda.  But one solution adopted regarding cigarettes can and should be adopted regarding sugary drinks: tax the shit out of them. (Gil says "hell" but I've been saying "shit" from the first day I heard about this ban.) 

Right now, most of what people pay for cigarettes is in the form of taxes.  Those funds go directly into public healthcare insurance.  You may be funding your own lung cancer treatments next time you light up.  And that's what should be done with sodas. Tax the shit of them.  You can hit pretty much everyone, supermarkets, groceries, and restaurants.  (oh, I'd also tax the diet sodas, because that NutraSweet crap is really really bad for you.)  The revenue generated could go to fund low-cost health-insurance in the city and/or state, as tobacco taxes are.  This is an important economic philosophy: when calculating cost, you ought to calculate its long-term effect.  If we taxed cars made with internal combustion engines the way we tax cigarettes, Detroit would be making only electric cars by now.   

I'm glad the ban didn't go into effect.  I doubt very much I will be ordering a super-size soda anyway.  I too looked at my pictures at my high school reunion -- standing right next to Gil in one or two of them -- and I'm trying to lose the damn weight too.   But the method of solving a serious problem by banning certain size, to borrow from Frank Zappa's comments on labeling music for its content, is kind of like solving the problem of dandruff by decapitation. 

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