It’s easy to label it as a “Nanny-state issue.” It’s much more difficult to find a solution to the rapid increase in diabetes, obesity, and health costs and how it relates to the American diet.
I don’t know how we can have a legitimate conversation about the diet in the U.S. without talking about the corn subsidies, oil subsidies in the form of military actions in the Middle East, and the power of the Monsantos of the world.
There’s a reason that corn syrup and water are inexpensive to produce and ship around the country and it’s not market forces.
I’d contend that the solution to the health problems you list shouldn’t be a state solution. If it should be true (and it is), as you note, that state subsidies have distorted market choices, the answer is an end to government subsidies for Big Agriculture, etc.
Without subsidies, Sebelius’s action would be one level of mistaken intervention; with subsidies, it’s intervention upon intervention, mistake upon mistake.
With or without subsidies, however, I’d say people have a right to make mistakes, and eat poorly. A clear case is tobacco: it’s dangerous, but I’d neither ban it nor advocate government funds to dissuade its use.
It’s easy to label it as a “Nanny-state issue.” It’s much more difficult to find a solution to the rapid increase in diabetes, obesity, and health costs and how it relates to the American diet.
I don’t know how we can have a legitimate conversation about the diet in the U.S. without talking about the corn subsidies, oil subsidies in the form of military actions in the Middle East, and the power of the Monsantos of the world.
There’s a reason that corn syrup and water are inexpensive to produce and ship around the country and it’s not market forces.
I’d contend that the solution to the health problems you list shouldn’t be a state solution. If it should be true (and it is), as you note, that state subsidies have distorted market choices, the answer is an end to government subsidies for Big Agriculture, etc.
Without subsidies, Sebelius’s action would be one level of mistaken intervention; with subsidies, it’s intervention upon intervention, mistake upon mistake.
With or without subsidies, however, I’d say people have a right to make mistakes, and eat poorly. A clear case is tobacco: it’s dangerous, but I’d neither ban it nor advocate government funds to dissuade its use.