A Stitch in Haste

Paul Krugman takes on the obesity "epidemic" --

One answer is to focus on the financial costs of obesity, and the fact that many of these costs fall on taxpayers and on the general insurance-buying public, rather than on the obese individuals themselves.
...
It is more important, however, to emphasize that there are situations in which "free to choose" is all wrong — and that this is one of them.

For one thing, the most rapid rise in obesity isn't taking place among adults, who, we hope, can understand the consequences of their decisions. It's taking place among children and adolescents.
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Above all, we need to put aside our anti-government prejudices and realize that the history of government interventions on behalf of public health, from the construction of sewer systems to the campaign against smoking, is one of consistent, life-enhancing success. Obesity is America's fastest-growing health problem; let's do something about it.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Some hasty stitches:

--The notion that "other people pay for obesity" is totally circular and obnoxious. Keep the true nature of this argument in perspective: The nanny-state central planners decide to provide public health care benefits, of whatever flavor, which are by definition paid for with public money (i.e., taxpayer money). They then turn around and tell those very same taxpayers that, since it's "the public's" money and not theirs, the government can therefore impose controls on the public's behavior to compensate for the resulting mismatch — that the government itself created! — between the "public" that pays for the benefits and the "public" that receives them.

The government creates the moral hazard in the first place, then turns around and decries it — all the while escalating the tax-and-regulate, tax-and-subsidize, tax-and-ban, tax-and-control spiral and all the while defending the practice with Orwellian economic double-talk.

--The analogy to "successful" government-run public health programs such as sanitation and anti-smoking crusades is 100% invalid. There is no such thing as "healthy smoking" or "healthy raw sewage," but there is obviously such a thing as "healthy eating" and there can even be "healthy eating of junk food." As Krugman reluctantly concedes, the problem is not one of eradication but rather moderation (which he sidesteps in two ways: first by saying that lack of dietary self-control is ubiquitous, as if Snickers bars were equivalent to nicotine or crack cocaine, and second by invoking that perennial bromide, "it's all about the kids").

--Speaking about the kids, it has been objectively and historically shown, ad nauseum, that childhood obesity is increasing not because children are eating more but because they are exercising less (see also here). Blame TV if you want, or video games or school gym budgets or the Internet, but it is demonstrably invaild to blame the problem on junk food or sugared sodas.

Other responses to Krugman at Atlantic Blog and Lifelike Pundits.