Posts tagged ‘Chile’

Worst Law I Have Seen In A While

From San Francisco, of course! via Market Power

Prop. G obligates the
Planning Commission to conduct a hearing for any chain store (also
known as "formula retail") proposed in neighborhood commercial

Formula retail is defined as any retail sales establishment with 11
or more stores in the United States that maintains two or more
signage or a trademark.


  • Equal protection?  Anyone?  Buehler? 


I Told You So (Health Care Edition)

For about a year now, I have been arguing that public funding of health care will be used as a Trojan Horse to introduce a near fascist micro-regulation of our lives.  I argue that if the government is funding health care, then they will claim a financial stake in your health, and begin regulating everything from your food intake to your exercise habits, even your risk choices (e.g. snowboarding).  I made this argument here and here, among other places.  The general reaction has been, "gee Coyote, nice theoretical argument but you can put your tinfoil hat away now.  You are being paranoid."

Well, check this out:    (via Reason)

Another doctor who examined the journal report was Dr. Brian
McCrindle, a childhood obesity expert and professor of pediatrics with
a pediatric hospital in Toronto.

He warned that the looming problem must be addressed.

"The wave of heart disease and stroke could totally swamp the public health care system," he said.

He warned that lawmakers had to take a broader view of the looming
problem "â€ and consider doing things such as banning trans fats and
legislating against direct advertising of junk food toward children.

"It's not going to be enough any more just to say to the consumer 'You have to change your behavior,'" he said.

Notice that he left the second half of his last sentence unsaid.  That second half is "the government is going to have to force them."  Of course, none of this is an issue if we all have personal responsibility for our own health care costs and therefore for the consequences of our own decisions.

Postscript:  By the way, for anyone older than 30 who grew up in the sixties and seventies when all the intelligentsia were painting pictures of Malthusian starvation nightmares, this is GOOD news:

The percentages of overweight children also are expected to increase
significantly in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Mexico, Chile,
Brazil and Egypt have rates comparable to fully industrialized nations,
James said.

He estimated that, for example, one in five children in China will be overweight by 2010.

The reason for this is not because of some evil corporate conspiracy (though that's what the article attributes it to) but due to the fact that these kids are simply not starving to death any more.  I am absolutely sure that the public health "crisis" from these overweight kids is less of a problem than the public health crisis of 30 years ago, when they were all malnourished and dying of being, well, severely underweight.  I mean, are there any of you out there in the over 40 crowd who didn't get the "there are starving kids in China" guilt trip growing up when you didn't eat your dinner?

Free Trade Rules

Free trade, despite it enormous benefits, is constantly under attack.  Yesterday I heard a radio ad, with the sound of a toilet flushing, and the a voice over saying something like "that is the sound of 3 million jobs being lost due to NAFTA".  Since the US unemployment rate when NAFTA was passed was over 7% and is currently under 5.5%, its hard to figure out just how they did their math.  The problem is that it is relatively easy to spot job losses due to foreign competition (cars, apparel, memory chips) and much harder to find the jobs that were created due to lower cost materials supplies and increased exports.

Virginia Postrel has a really nice article in the NY Times (yes, reg required) on how industries and jobs have prospered due to NAFTA.

Economists argue for free trade. They have two centuries of theory and experience to back them up. And they have recent empirical studies of how the liberalization of trade has increased productivity in less-developed countries like Chile and India. Lowering trade barriers, they maintain, not only cuts costs for consumers but aids economic growth and makes the general public better off. 

Even so, free trade is a tough sell. "The truth of the matter is that we have one heck of a time explaining these benefits to the larger public, a public gripped by free trade fatigue," the economist Daniel Trefler wrote in an article last fall in The American Economic Review.

If you don't want to register, she has a longer excerpt at her site here.