The problem Guapo is that once the government agrees that they will take care of someone who is sick regardless of their ability to pay then complete freedom of the individual is lost. I don't think people should be left to die due to their economic situation, so the government is stuck footing the bill. That means they have to be able to put restrictions on the individual because otherwise the rest of us will be stuck paying more and more taxes to subsidize the care of those people who have health care costs they cannot pay for. Either you refuse treatment to those who cannot pay or you have to have the ability to curtail behavior that leads inevitably to higher health care costs.

freeman2 wrote:The problem Guapo is that once the government agrees that they will take care of someone who is sick regardless of their ability to pay then complete freedom of the individual is lost. I don't think people should be left to die due to their economic situation, so the government is stuck footing the bill. That means they have to be able to put restrictions on the individual because otherwise the rest of us will be stuck paying more and more taxes to subsidize the care of those people who have health care costs they cannot pay for. Either you refuse treatment to those who cannot pay or you have to have the ability to curtail behavior that leads inevitably to higher health care costs.

So under this argument you would support government outlaw all fast food? I mean it has been pretty positively linked to the obesity epidemic.

Or supporting outlawing all video console game systems since decreased physical activity has also been linked to the obesity epidemic.

Seriously Freeman, where does one draw the line?

You know I'm gonna reach across the aisle here and agree that 20oz sounds like a proper pint.

The soda companies seem hell bent on pushing hellish quantities of their product. They're always mega sales going on, like buy x2 24case and get x3 24case free.

Archduke Russell John wrote:

freeman2 wrote:The problem Guapo is that once the government agrees that they will take care of someone who is sick regardless of their ability to pay then complete freedom of the individual is lost. I don't think people should be left to die due to their economic situation, so the government is stuck footing the bill. That means they have to be able to put restrictions on the individual because otherwise the rest of us will be stuck paying more and more taxes to subsidize the care of those people who have health care costs they cannot pay for. Either you refuse treatment to those who cannot pay or you have to have the ability to curtail behavior that leads inevitably to higher health care costs.

So under this argument you would support government outlaw all fast food? I mean it has been pretty positively linked to the obesity epidemic.

Or supporting outlawing all video console game systems since decreased physical activity has also been linked to the obesity epidemic.

Seriously Freeman, where does one draw the line?

Whoa! ;) I agree. Hey, didn't Philly enact a similar law a few years ago? I'm curious to know if places like Bensalem have picked up the slack. My grandfather lives in Parkwood, which is a stone's throw away from Bensalem, and the laws were enacted just as I came back to the free state (if you're white) of Arizona

Neal Anderth wrote:You know I'm gonna reach across the aisle

here here. although, when it comes to the state, a reach around may be superior to a reach across

Neal Anderth wrote:You know I'm gonna reach across the aisle here and agree that 20oz sounds like a proper pint.

When it's a proper pint of proper ale, we can talk Oddly, the difference comes down to booze. The British gallon is defined as being 10lbs of water, and is derived from the 'ale gallon'. American colonists used the smaller 'wine gallon', which is equivalent to about 8lbs of water.

Basically, it's down to your effete wine sippin' ways.

The soda companies seem hell bent on pushing hellish quantities of their product. They're always mega sales going on, like buy x2 24case and get x3 24case free.

Don't soda companies also derive a large benefit from cheap, state subsidised, corn syrup?

Perhaps the government should stop paying towards making these drinks so cheap before adding a new laws. Of course, it's a different government...

Danivon:

Don't soda companies also derive a large benefit from cheap, state subsidised, corn syrup?

Perhaps the government should stop paying towards making these drinks so cheap before adding a new laws. Of course, it's a different government...

It's always nice (and unfortunately rare) when we agree.

I doubt it's that rare, it's just that we rarely get to discuss stuff we do agree on. I understand that we disagree on the economic solutions to our economic problems, but there's more to the world than that.

Eliminating subsidies on corn production would slightly rise the costs of soft drinks and fast food.
The market for food has been artificial for years becasue of these enduring and needless subsidies making lousy nutritional chocies cheaper and widening the cost gap between good nutritional choices.

The Ban idea, is stupid. But also impossible to effectively police.

At the movies I often take my giant Coke Zero in with me ....and 45 minutes into the movie regret the choice.... By the way, is he considering banning giant diet drinks too?

Guapo wrote: Hey, didn't Philly enact a similar law a few years ago? I'm curious to know if places like Bensalem have picked up the slack. My grandfather lives in Parkwood, which is a stone's throw away from Bensalem, and the laws were enacted just as I came back to the free state (if you're white) of Arizona

Mayor Nutter tried to initiate a "soft drink" tax as part of his budget proposal in 2010 and 2011 but it was shot down both times. He announced a couple of months back that his 2012 budget would not include it

danivon wrote:I doubt it's that rare, it's just that we rarely get to discuss stuff we do agree on. I understand that we disagree on the economic solutions to our economic problems, but there's more to the world than that.

Yes, I think we share very similar values, but with one critical difference, which is that I think that capitalism is magic, and you see it as much worse than that. That's a tough bridge to cross.

Well, I don't believe in magic, only that 'magicians' are very good at tricks.

I see capitalism as just a system, one which works fairly well most of the time for certain purposes, but has major flaws such as tendency to short-termism, effect on society, difficulty in handling externalities and mainly that the central purposes is to use money (an abstract concept) to generate more money, regardless of how or why.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the role of public education in this matter. The big bad gov'ment already had public schools and PSAs in a variety of media to employ. Instead of writing stupid laws why not try to teach people to avoid what's bad for them.

I call the law "stupid" because as Bloomberg admits (and some below have noted) it's not a ban on soda merely an annoyance - you have to make multiple purchases to attain more than X quantity. You'd think that in this day and age g'ment would be smarter than to go about making an intentional annoyance of itself. The people are already thoroughly annoyed by/with the g'ment. Passing "annoyance laws" is just bad salesmanship.

PS: hi. Newbie.

This appears to be yet another example of the 'nudge' philosophy that's currently fashionable in political circles. The idea is to seek to effect dramatic changes in people's behaviour through the use of many small bits of legislation that provide incentives for behaviour that's deemed socially acceptable and disincentives for those which are not. It's an extraordinarily patronising way to govern, assuming that people are morons who have to be shunted in the 'right' direction and that the state is better qualified than the individual to know the correct lifestyle choices people should adopt.

I'm really not surprised that Michael Boomberg has bought into this concept, since his time in office has been characterised by a remarkable degree of fussy interference into the private choices of the electorate 'for their own good'. The closest equivalent in the UK we have to this guy would be the SNP government in Scotland, who since they came to power a few years ago have banned half the traditional pleasures of the Scottish people and introduced laws to make the rest more expensive.

I can't support this at all. Obesity is not an 'epidemic' it's a product of individual lifestyle choices, and people should be free to eat whatever they wish at whatever cost to their own health. If the state wants to lecture us on out choices then I guess I can tolerate it, but when they start to 'nudge' us then it crosses the line. My body, my business.

Sassenach wrote:I'm really not surprised that Michael Boomberg has bought into this concept, since his time in office has been characterised by a remarkable degree of fussy interference into the private choices of the electorate 'for their own good'. The closest equivalent in the UK we have to this guy would be the SNP government in Scotland, who since they came to power a few years ago have banned half the traditional pleasures of the Scottish people and introduced laws to make the rest more expensive.

Examples of SNP banning? I'm aware that they are introducing a miniumum price for alcohol, but what have they actually banned, and what else have they made more expensive?

By the way, the UK PM, David Cameron, has also talked about using 'nudges' in public policy.

I can't support this at all. Obesity is not an 'epidemic' it's a product of individual lifestyle choices, and people should be free to eat whatever they wish at whatever cost to their own health. If the state wants to lecture us on out choices then I guess I can tolerate it, but when they start to 'nudge' us then it crosses the line. My body, my business.

Well, when (as in the UK) the health problems of people are largely paid for by the public via the state, it does change things a bit. This does present a case for pushing prices up, because the state is saying essentially "if you want to do X which leads to higher costs, you pay for it - if it costs you too much, well, luckily you'll be healthier as a result". Other measures do make sense, although 'maximum portions' are not what I'd call the most common sense approach.