To lose weight I have to sit/work/play and be hungry at the same time, for a couple hours a day I need to experience hunger. Now if I’m fun stuff time flies, but when I’m bored, or grumpy your super aware of hunger, so it’s “fixed” by eating.

Will the price of food change much, nope. I’ll still be unhappy when I’m unhappy. Maybe if prices doubled/tripled for junk food I’d rethink. But I suspect they not thinking of the much tax.

So now the “poor/fat people”, are we trying to help them, or just help our future selves from perceived costs of “those poor people”.

We all make different life choices, and sometimes the hand we are given are not the best, but I heard an really interesting EconTalk about Education, but the point was that the Education researcher where the type of person that can sit still for years working hard to get good grades, and do a doctorate program then move on to research positions, these people have a huge amount of self control, and I assume the same is true for Health researchers. So as a person with mild self control, I find it funny the solutions are Information, and tilting the decision process, and then people will do the right thing, yet this only makes sense if you have good self control in the first place.

It’s the same funny BS as the first home buyers problem, people have been parting for 5+ years, and then think ‘time to by a house’, and have no money for a deposit, so cannot get one. Verse how much money/deposit was consumed while living the high life in their twenties, verse acting in there best longer term interest and saving.

So my points, I’m not sure, but maybe it’s related to when at school 20+ years ago, there was talk that some people were getting fat due “too many pies” so pies might get dropped from the school food shop, which super annoyed me, because when I, once a month got to buy my lunch a “god dam super fatty pie” was what I wanted because it was a treat for me.

So when as a “normal user” of a service, it is made worse to protect others from themselves, I get mad at the “wise caring saviours”. So a lot of health policy I see from Otago winds me up.

Hi Geoff, great to see you here 😉

My first point is that communicating genuine concerns about obesity in the way noted in the above quotes from Stuff is a mixture of misleading and bullying – I walked into my coffee shop to be greeted with a front page story stigmatizing people on their weight, rather than positively describing how we can help individuals improve their wellbeing. As Dan notes in the comments, this is largely the way of the media – which is a pity. However, the way public health discusses these issues – by stretching the definition of externality, communicating idea about the responsibility as being in the hands of the state, and ignoring benefits – doesn’t help matters. Think I accidentally communicated that point more clearly here (and it is a point that holds for all discussion using aggregates) http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2014/06/12/discussion-thursday/

The second point, which I should have gotten too more quickly, was that the policies chosen and described are specifically about imposing restrictions on the poor – I am uncomfortable with doing that, especially if we haven’t discussed what is going on to reduce wellbeing, as they are the most vulnerable group.

Given your response I believe you figured this out even if I wasn’t clear 😉

Yar, it isn’t just the Spirit Level guys who are at fault – economists own obsession with measures like “GDP” or “productivity” can be equally as unhelpful if they are communicating trade-offs in a way that gives the public misinformation about said trade-off. I have written similar posts about all these types of aggregates, and it is a bit of a pet hobby horse of mine.

Fully agree on education, and the ethics of the tax – ultimately, I can imagine society saying they support a tax on junk food even if the measured externality is negative (due to early death) because they view it as a “choice” to become obese and so don’t want to subsidise health in the way they do for genetic conditions! Not saying this is my view, but I think it can be justified.

That takes us to the stigma though – your description involves people’s genetic predisposition driving their choices and whether they become obese (and how quickly they metabolize food). In that case, having social insurance through standard healthcare appears more “fair”, and the user pays argument gets a bit harder for me.

I’m a big fan of these types of discussions, and fleshing out causes – and how government can provide mechanisms to help people improve their wellbeing (when I get a chance I want to do a post on that). I am just concerned that the way we describe these issues in public, and the way we sell them, leads to an increase in social stigma, and inadvertent punishment of the poor – in the worst case scenario this sort of thing can lead policy makers towards overly simplistic policy prescriptions that are heavily focused on the “easy to catch” poor, eg the very high tobacco taxes we have now that have gone well beyond any semblance of an externality tax.

The ultimate target is wellbeing, rather than a level of obesity or a type of behaviour. It is just so important we make sure policy is pinned to that root issue of wellbeing and capability, rather than claiming victory from shifting statistical aggregates around.

I have the same problem as you with the poverty conversation and Spirit Level – separating correlation and causation is pretty difficult. With food, it isn’t actually more expensive to eat healthily, you just need the skills and time to prepare food. It is the cash poor and time poor I feel for most, and there are a few of those.

You have said you don’t really have a problem with the policies, but I want to touch on them briefly. Education, better labelling and no advertising to kids is a no brainer for a functioning market in my opinion – the old perfect information condition. That isn’t happening now and IMHO is a complete travesty that is overlooked by the media (in part I have been told by contacts because of a conflict of interest – media can’t discuss advertising bans!).

Where the ethics of this gets difficult is on the tax. You can argue that if people want to kill themselves, they should be allowed to do so. With smoking society tries to stop them – I see no difference with junk food. I see it as much closer to user pays, given we have a public health system. Of course, then you can argue that unhealthy people save us money on super… meh. Essentially it comes down to your perspectives on freedom of choice. But at least be consistent – if you oppose a tax then you should apply the same approach to cigarettes/ alcohol, and you should probably back a privatised health system (which is dumb for a whole host of reasons). To me a junk food tax is the best approach, in the world of messy second best options.

As for the stigma, I agree but for a different reason to the one you put forward. And this relates to the ‘freedom of choice’ point above. All the evidence suggests that once people are adult they have very little ‘choice’ over their size. Two people can eat the same thing and their bodies react differently. Powerful hormones dictate energy intake and expenditure, and these are set by genes, time in the womb and early experiences/ habits. So by the time someone is an adult they can only control their weight within a given range. This is why losing weight is so tough, and why 80% of diets fail. So I agree we should not stigmatize fat people, because they have little choice. We should point the stigma to modern fake food which makes us eat more (bigger portion sizes, increased energy density, lower levels of fibre and protein, higher levels of refined salt, sugar and fat, greater convenience). This is why I think we should tax junk food, not fat people.

I am all for information and education, provide people with the information they need, help them understand why it matters and then let them make their own choices.

There is a general undercurrent, maybe not even undercurrent, that people who make what other people think are poor choices are not paying their way, not doing what is in their best interest etc. I actually think a lot of it smacks of intellectual snobbery and elitism.

Whilst not wanting to come across preachy, ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ (pun intended).

I think the general level of debate, reporting and analysis in the MSM is very poor.

The humorous quote used recently in the Herald about alcohol, ‘if alcohol were a communicable disease, a national emergency would be declared’, is a classic example (as was the article). No balance. no counter view, no investigation, just repeating the communication objective of the originator. I directed the reporter to Eric’s blog to see some alternative analysis and reporting. Whether this changes future reporting, who knows.

As a parent, I teach moderation to my child, Coke is fine, MacD’d is fine, just not every day. Exercise is great etc.

I like personal responsibility and informed decision making. We should be promoting that not taxes and bans.

~ thought often, never said

Ok, VMC. What happens then if we find that it’s those healthy exercise people who cost the system more, on the whole, because they live longer (costing the superfund) and consume health services over a longer period?

Be careful wanting to tax all the fiscal externalities. You might not like where it leads.

Yar, make it a user-pay scheme through a tax perhaps. But there are a couple of things here:

1) Good nutrition costs more than bad nutrition
2) Jim Mann means well

On the first one, I’m not sure that this is the case. And if it is – well then we have a question of income adequacy. Making people poorer doesn’t change that!

One the second point I don’t disagree – hence why I said at the bottom I am certain that this comes with the best of intentions. But intentions and outcomes aren’t the same thing, and imposing costs on the poor to make them “do what we want” because it is “for their own good” is a touch uncomfortable.

People make poor life choices, sure. How much is the individual responsible for this, and how much is the rest of society responsible? Can we really justify violating people’s property rights over their own bodies/choices about their own bodies because we don’t think they are making the right choices.

These questions are very hard when considering children and mental and physical disabilities – very hard. When considering all of society they are also very hard questions. The best we can do is to make the choice judgments very very clear – and this sort of rhetoric simply hides them, and takes away agency from individuals. I am very uncomfortable with this.

Many of the public health experts would recommend these initiatives using the same types of arguments (as noted in the previous “rhetoric” post) – and the quote about the nanny state is directly from one.

However, your point is a fair one – and doesn’t change my concern about this type of rhetoric. It is still very uncomfortable and inappropriate 😉