Prohibition Returns!

Reason Magazine's cover story this month is about the new prohibitionary movement gaining momentum across the US. They lead off with a story about a woman who was pulled over in DC after having a single glass of wine. Her BAC was .03, or less than half of the level of intoxication. She was arrested and ordered to attend a 12 week alcohol counseling course. When she refused, her license was suspended. Then the tale of a man in Pennsylvania who had his license taken after he told his doctor that he drank a six pack of beer a day. "State law requires doctors to report any of a patient's physical or mental impairments if the doctors think it could compromise his ability to drive safely" He had no convictions, his work attendance record was good, he had exhibited no history of anti-social behavior except drinking. From the article:

Neoprohibitionists aim to muddle the distinction between drunk diving and driving after drinking any amount of alcohol. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) endorsed the idea at a Senate Environment and Public Committee hearing way back in 1997, contending that we "may wind up in this country going to zero tolerance, period." Former MADD President Katherine Prescott concurred, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, where she stated "there is no safe blood alcohol, and for that reason responsible drinking means no drinking and driving."

I highly recommend reading the whole thing, especially the part about police in Fairfax county VA asking a woman in a restaurant who had just finished dinner and was enjoying her first drink to come outside and take a sobriety test.

I can only stress that as our government takes over our decision making process and becomes responsible for more of our lives, they will only continue to become more meddlesome. Already people justify these kinds of actions by saying that "we" pay for the hospital bills of people injured in accidents, so "we" have a responsibility help prevent drunk driving. As the state assumes new duties, it will use them to justify new powers.

EU vs US Revisited

In the past we have pointed to studies that rank EU nations against individual States in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Normally the EU nations come off poorly by comparison, ranking on average near Alabama or West Virginia.

Now Political Calculations has published an interactive, sortable, table of this data.

Fun Fact: Italy has about half the GDP per capita as Wyoming.

HT Carpe Diem

Is The Ban on Internet Taxes a Subsidy?

Economist Dean Baker has written an article claiming that Amazon owes its success to government subsidies.

Amazon reported higher than expected third quarter profits and a 41 percent increase in revenue, a good enough showing to push its stock price back to tech bubble peaks. One item missing from the accounts of Amazon's good news is the continuing subsidy that it gets from taxpayers.

While most stores must charge customers state sales tax, Amazon and other Internet retailers enjoy a special subsidy. They need not charge sales tax except in the states where they have a physical presence. (I believe that list is Washington and Utah.) That's great news for Amazon, if we assume that state sales taxes would average 4 percent on annual sales of $15 billion a year, then taxpayers are subsidizing Amazon to the tune of $600 million a year, more than its annual profits.

Rather than try to come up with something intelligible to say to this nonsense, I will merely quote TechDirt, which has published a nice response.

Some states don't have sales taxes at all, but no one would consider that a taxpayer subsidy. My local Wal-Mart benefits from a variety of state and local government services here in the St. Louis area, such as police and fire protection, and roads and other infrastructure. At least in part, sales taxes go to cover the costs of providing those services. Amazon uses few if any services from state or local governments in Missouri, so it's hard to see anything unfair about the fact that it doesn't have to collect sales taxes here.

On the other side of the ledger, sales tax collection would be far more burdensome to Internet-based businesses than to their brick-and-mortar competitors. A mom-and-pop retail store only has to learn about the tax rules in one jurisdiction. Most likely, there's just one tax rate, one set of rules about which goods are taxable at that rate, and one set of reporting requirements. In contrast, a small e-commerce site would have to familiarize itself with the rules in thousands of different jurisdictions. The state of Missouri, for example, allows municipal governments to tack a variety of local taxes onto the state sales tax. As a result, the tax rate varies from city to city. Even worse, different states have different rules about which goods and services are taxable. Missouri, for example, exempts custom software (but not boxed software), farm equipment, and medical grade oxygen, among other things. Colorado has exemptions for bingo equipment, cigarettes, food, fuel and oil, machinery and machine tools, newsprint, precious metal bullion and coins, and more. Each of the other 40-some states with sales taxes have their own lists of what's taxable. Many states exempt food and clothing from taxes, but the precise definitions of "food" and "clothing" varies from state to state. For example, in Wyoming, bagels are considered tax-exempt food unless they're sold with cream cheese and a knife, in which case they become taxable "prepared foods."

Inefficient Public Schools

We all know that the Public School System is a well practiced money waster. Cape Diem, however, has run some numbers on just how much money they waste and produced a series of posts on the subject.

Here he points out that spending per student in constant dollars has grown by 10x since 1929. But this post shows where that money is being spent. Quoting Cato's Saving Money and Improving Education, he notes:

Student enrollment in public schools grew by 13% between 1979 and 2000. During the same period the total number of school employees grew by 61%, and the number of teachers grew by 35%. Nationally, public schools now have about 1 employee for every 8.1 students, and teachers make up only 40% of total school employees

As a side note, my favorite part of the post is the comparisons he makes at the end.

1. The Chicago Board of Education, which has 3,300 employees, is larger than the entire Japanese Ministry of Education.
2. The New York City public schools system has 250 times as many administrators as the New York Catholic school system (6,000 administrators in public school system versus 24 in Catholic school system), even though New York public schools have only four times as many students as the Catholic schools.

In this final post, he shows that because Public Schools have so many more administrators than teachers, they cost much more per pupil than their private counterparts. In contrast to the common perception that private schools are elite organizations awash with old money to trow at their privileged students, they operate with budgets of, on average, 1/3 to 1/2 the size per student.

Average private school tuition ($6,600) was about 1/3 less than the spending per pupil in public schools ($9,620) in 2003-2004 (the most recent year available), and average Catholic school tuition ($4,254) was less than half of public school spending per student.

Not only was the average private school tuition between 1/3 and 1/2 less than the cost per public school student, the private schools had on average 18% more teachers per 1000 students (72.25 in private schools vs. 61 in public schools) in 2003-2004.

Yet our money continues to be funneled into the Public Schools, reinforcing their failure with increased spending. If parents were free to spend that money on the school of their choice they could procure a better education for their children while saving the taxpayer a whole lot of money.

Shock of the Week: Low Tax Nations Have More Money

The Business has a great article pointing out that of the top 20 richest nations, most of them are enclaves of low taxes.

What are the three richest countries in the world? You might be tempted to answer America, maybe Switzerland, or perhaps even Ireland. The right answer, however, is Luxembourg, Bermuda and Jersey in that order.

The Top 20 also includes: Equatorial Guinea, Guernsey, Ireland, the Cayman Islands, Andorra, Hong Kong, the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man, San Marino and Switzerland.

The wealth of some of those territories is striking. Luxembourg and Bermuda have a GDP per capita of $71,400 (£35,072, E50,250) and $69,000 respectively. By contrast, America, the wealthiest of the mainstream industrial economies, has a GDP per capita of $44,000. Even the worst-off low-tax nation, Switzerland, has a GDP per capita of $33,000. And Britain, despite the endless boasting from Gordon Brown about the brilliance of its economic record, ranks only 28th in the world, at $31,800.

Seems like there could be a lesson here.
HT Cato-at-liberty

And The New Largest Corporation In The World Is:

Cape Diem has created this chart to show just how big the Chinese national oil company is. Summary: huge.

Usury?

Reason on why loans with 80% interest are a great thing. Thank you School of Salamanca!

Yet Another Country Which Is Not The USA Cuts Corporate Taxes

From Canadian Financial Post:

The Conservative government delivered a mini-budget yesterday that lowered the Goods and Services Tax for a second time and reduced corporate taxes by one-third over the next five years as part of a $60-billion multi-year package of tax cuts.

The plan was contained in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's fall update, which was a budget in all but name given the myriad tax relief measures introduced. The minority government's political opponents issued fierce denunciations of the plan, but Liberal leader Stéphane Dion said his party would not oppose the measures, ensuring they receive Parliamentary approval as early as today.

When Liberal Canadians are not opposing corporate tax cuts, it makes you wonder what kind of world we live in, and why our rates are still so high.

HT Cato

I Don't Care Who He Is, My Mind Is Made Up!

From the WSJ, via Luskin:

Pollster Scott Rasmussen notes that when he surveys head-to-head matchups between Hillary Clinton and any of the eight potential GOP candidates, Mrs. Clinton scores between 46% and 49% against all of them.

"When we polled her against Rep. Ron Paul, a non-mainstream libertarian, she got 48% of the vote. When we polled on Ron Paul among people who knew who Ron Paul is, she got 48% of the vote. When we polled among people who didn't know who Ron Paul is, she got 48% of the vote," he says.

It apparently doesn't matter who runs against Hillary, the outcome will be the same.

Campaign Finance by Colbert

HT: Club for Growth

Social Security Poll

During a Kudlow & Company debate (video available here at Club for Growth), the issue of a recent poll saying most Americans favor maintaining Social Security benefit levels and raising taxes, this gem of a quote came up:

"This poll is ridiculous. You're asking people who make, on average, $40,000 a year whether they think people making $100,000 a year should subsidize their future Social Security benefits. That's like asking three wolves and sheep to vote on who's for dinner."

Economic Ignorance

CNN is reporting that 46% of Americans believe the US is in the midst of a recession. Be sure to check out the comments to the article, including:

"I don't care what people think about the economy. The bottom line is the economy can me measured by GDP, real income, employment, etc. The actual poll question should be: How many people are duped into thinking the economy is bad?"(emphasis added)

"Wow!! The mainstream media machine should be quite proud of keeping 46% of Americans that ignorant. We've had incredible economic growth in the last 3 or 4 years in spite of record oil prices and the sub-prime mortgage debacle and yet the left-wing media salivates at every opportunity to tell Americans how miserable our lives are. You can say what you want, but I choose not to take part in your "recession" - I know better."

"Where are the poll numbers for the "Pelosi Do Nothing Congress"? 11% approval rating I beleive. The lowest in history.This recession talk just goes to show that if you tell a lie long enough people will beleive it."

"While many people may believe that the U.S. is in a recession, the fact remains that we are not.

This just shows the lack of economic education of the geberal public and the ability of the major media to capitalize on this ignorance for their own purposes.

This story is an attempt to create a story instead of reporting.

I wonder why the story has not corrected the public opinion with the facts?"

"It is stunning how people could possibly think we are in a recession. This poll shows the danger of the negative economic focus of the mainstream news outlets that has clearly misled the public into this false belief. I know people have to also be responsible for their own ignorance, but when their sources of information are misleading it is hard to fault the fools of this poll."

"This story is ridiculous, at the very least a good journalist should include in here that we are definitely NOT in a recession, that the economny has been growing for something like18 straight quarters."

etc.

I read over half of all the comments posted as of my reading of the article. I skimmed the rest. I didn't see one favorable comment. That's at least one good thing :-)

Nerd

Japanese Post Office

From BBC Article:

"Japan has started the privatisation of its postal service, forming the world's largest commercial bank in the process.

"Under a 10-year plan, Japan Post is being split into four firms to run its banking and insurance operations, mail deliveries and post offices.

"Japan Post's banking unit has 400 million accounts and assets of 349.8 trillion yen ($3 trillion; £1.5 trillion), the world's largest.

"The banking and insurance units should float on the stock exchange by 2010."

Business Extinction

MSNBC has an article about 10 industries that are "facing extinction" in the next ten years. While I think the article is worth reading if you have three minutes, I think the author needs to check the definition of "industry." Here's the list:

• Record Stores
• Camera Film Manufacturing
• Crop Dusters
• Gay Bars
• Newspapers
• Pay Phones
• Used Book Stores
• Piggy Banks
• Telemarketing
• Coin Operated Arcades

Philadelphia Property Taxes

This is . . . . . oh, I give up, I don't know what it is:

"Earlier this month, when Mayor Street announced an aggressive new city plan to go after tax scofflaws, he warned: "We will spare no one."

"He could have started by looking in the mirror.

"Until last week, Street was $4,798.99 in arrears on his property-tax bills for two North Philadelphia properties. He paid up Thursday, shortly after a Daily News reporter asked him about the debt.

"Street spokesman Joe Grace said yesterday that Street did not know taxes were owed on the properties.

"'The mayor did not receive any notices. He did immediately satisfy the bill when it was brought to his attention,' Grace said.

Neither of the properties is Street's primary residence."

...

"Grace said the mayor's experience raised the concern that owners of more than one property could be in arrears and not know it if delinquency notices aren't sent to the primary address.

"He urged owners of more than one property to contact the Department of Revenue at 215-686-6442 or revenue@phila.gov to ensure that notices are sent to the correct address.

"When Street announced the stepped-up delinquent-tax collection program earlier this month, he predicted it would generate $235 million over the next five years, to be split between the city and the school district.

"About 25 staffers will be added to the city Law Department to manage the program."

...

"Grace said he was 'reasonably confident' that the collection firm or the Law Department would have sent a letter to Street's primary residence before the properties were seized." (Emphasis added)

HT: Fark Headline

Lead Toys and the Regulators Who Need More Money to Stop Them

MSNBC has an infuriating article about how the Consumer Product Safety Commission has told Congress it needs more money to ensure that lead tainted toys don't make it into the country:

"Leaders of the agency responsible for protecting consumers from faulty products said Wednesday that Congress should increase their budget and power in the wake of huge recalls of lead-contaminated toys.

...

"One of the agency's commissioners said 'we are all to blame' for a system that allowed children to be exposed to lead-tainted toys. That includes 'those who stood by and quietly acquiesced while the commission was being reduced to a weakened regulator,' said Thomas H. Moore, in the first of two days of hearings before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

...

"'Our small agency has been ignored by the Congress and the public for way too long,' said the acting chairman, Nancy A. Nord. 'Our laboratory desperately needs to be modernized.'

...

"Nord noted that the recalls, mainly of toys manufactured in China, have had the intended purpose of goading the entire toy industry into changing practices to prevent such violations in the future.

"It has also inspired the introduction of several bills to increase the authority and budget of the CPSC and better monitor imports from China."

So, in other words, the agency thinks that we should not leave such issues to market forces (even though it acknowledges that such forces are working to correct the problem) but rather that the agency should ensure safety - even though it supposedly doesn't have laboratory equipment sufficient to test for lead and apparently never thought "gee wiz, if we're the one's supposed to be doing this and we can't, maybe we should raise a red flag to someone else in the bureaucracy."

The problem is not that the agency doesn't have enough money or power. Rather the problem is that a) there is no reasonable way that a centralized agency could possible test every batch of every product imported into the country (not to mention those originating inside the country) for every known harmful substance; and b) not only is the agency ill conceived to begin with, it is apparently run and staffed by a bunch of completely incompetent bureaucrats whose solution to their agency failing to perform perhaps the most basic of all of its supposed functions is, of course, more money and more power.

Finally, I would like to point out that the entire article was apparently written by an author who can't think critically about anything. The entire thing is a puff piece about how the agency needs more money. The only salient point is that of the last sentence which states: "Several lawmakers said Mattel blocked committee staff members from visiting the company's plants in China and talking to the Hong Kong executives who oversee those facilities," which, if true, is a big deal. But, regardless of the importance of this point, the author doesn't see fit to pursue
the merits of the claim nor its implications.

Are Product Definitions a Proper Function of Government?

This article regarding the fact that Mars Inc. says that using a certain amount of vegetable oil in place of cocoa butter - even if such a change were allowable under the official definition of chocolate - would be a mistake made me start thinking about the fact that we have a government dictated definition of certain products.

It seems to me that the purpose of having government set definitions of certain products is so that consumers can be confident that, when they buy a chocolate bar, they are actually getting a certain product, namely, chocolate, as opposed to some soft brown stuff on which a company has slapped a label reading "chocolate." I expect that the problem, the argument would go, is that consumers would not be able to tell the difference between chocolate made with only 95% cocoa butter as opposed to 100% and, thus, would be exploited.

It seems to me, however, that having the government define certain products in terms of percentages of ingredients is trying to solve the same problem with two different solutions - after all, there are already penalties for false advertising / inaccurate labeling. If consumers are concerned about the percentage of cocoa butter in something labeled chocolate, companies using higher levels of cocoa butter would certainly want to put that prominently on their packaging. Companies not using high amounts of cocoa butter would probably just put nothing to that effect on the packaging. Thus, consumers would just have to check the packaging. Anything inaccurate in that regard would be discouraged by the aforementioned penalties for false advertising.

This setup, though, would probably be accused of placing a "burden" on consumers. The obvious response to that would be "Oh, come on." One argument in favor of it would be that it would be one less thing that government is involved in. On the other hand, this seems to be an awfully trivial matter in the grand scheme of things and, thus, is it that big of a deal (other than on principle) that government is involved?

Also, it seems to me that, if the government were to change the definition of chocolate to allow a certain percentage of vegetable oil, certain companies are going to be putting their cocoa butter content on their packaging anyway - because it will be a competitive advantage for them. Thus, it seems that, unless government definitions involve 100% purity (of whatever critical ingredient of whatever product we're talking about), then a government definition is redundant anyway. Also, in cases where there are multiple critical ingredients (and, thus, no one can have a 100% value without the exclusion of the others), e.g., certain types of wine, there is almost (if not) always a range of tastes such that defining a certain proportion of percentages would be to chose one group's taste over another's. Thus, again, it would seem that packaging would be informative in this regard in any event.

Thus, whether a certain product involves one or more critical ingredients, a government definition seems redundant because companies are going to have an incentive to include ingredient information on their packaging as a selling point anyway. Again, assuming that it is redundant and the only disadvantage to government definition is that, when the government does set the percentage of the critical ingredient to 100% (since, again, when it is something else, companies are going to put this information on the packaging anyway), consumers don't have to read the packaging, it is a valid use of government?

Indiana Police - Take Two

More excellent police work in the State's quest to best Illinois.

Judicial System +1

I'm pleased to read a ruling that I find well reasoned.

Constitution Day

Today is Constitution Day and The Heritage Foundation has a nice article regarding the formation of the constitution. Worth the read if you are already familiar with the historical narrative of that convention (of which this is a brief refresher). If you are not, I recommend becoming so.

Indiana Police

Indiana, apparently jealous of Illinois' fine police work, produces some of its own. Be sure to watch the "RAW VIDEO: David Snyder taken down, arrested during Roseland council meeting" clip.

HT: Fark

CEO Pay

Townhall has a good, one page article entitled "In Defense of CEO Compensation" in which the author presents a nice, concise overview of the defense of high CEO pay. Money quote:

"It's sad that this is the level of economic literacy among the media. If the press ignored advances in other scientific fields as much as they do in economics, we'd see weathermen advising readers to offer sacrifices to the rain gods."

Also, as an extra added bonus, the author takes an off-the-cuff shot at unintended consequences of government regulation vis-a-vis corporate raiders.

Farm Lobby Civil War?

This might be the only time I hope someone in the farm lobby gets heard in Congress.

Secret Economic Force in Currency Exchange Market: Japanese Housewives

If you have five minutes today, read this article from the New York Times about the trend of Japanese housewives investing some of the country's huge amounts of savings in foreign currency exchange.

Ethanol Strikes - Vol. IX

The latest victim: wheat (and everything made from it)

Chicago Police

That's some darn fine police work there, Lou.

HT: Fark

#1: The French, #2: Rapidly Becoming The Canadians

The Premier of Ontario apparently needs the intervention of a clue-by-four:

"Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday that he does not want to see the provinces' schools resort to installing metal detectors and having uniformed security officers patrol the halls in the wake of Tuesday's fatal stabbing at a Toronto high school.

"Such a move, he said, would amount to the Americanization of schools in Ontario.

"'I see that as an absolute last resort,' Mr. McGuinty told reporters during an election campaign stop.

"Instead, he said, Ontario needs to distinguish itself from the United States by imposing an outright ban on hand guns.

"'Let's ban handguns in Ontario,' he said. 'Let's ban handguns across the country. Let's declare war against handguns.'"

I don't even know where to begin. Should I begin with the most obvious point that a ban on handguns (even if it were effective - which it wouldn't be) wouldn't stop people from stabbing each other? What about the absurd premise that the solution to the problem (assuming that there is an underlying problem other than that society includes people who are willing to kill other people using whatever means they can obtain) has to be Un-American first and effective second? Once I decide where to begin, though, what next? Should I mention how later in the article the inevitable funding issue comes up?

I think I'll just stop here before I give myself an ulcer.

HT: Fark

We Should Just Stop Ordering So Much Health Care

Robin Hanson has written a fascinating essay at Cato Unbound in which he claims that Americans are not really being ripped off by anyone when they over-spend on health care, but that they are simply demanding too much of it.

Car inspections and repairs take a small fraction of our total spending on cars, gas, roads, and parking. But imagine that we were so terrified of accidents due to faulty cars that we spent most of our automotive budget having our cars inspected and adjusted every week by Ph.D. car experts. Obsessed by the fear of not finding a defect that might cause an accident, imagine we made sure inspections were heavily regulated and subsidized by government. To feed this obsession, imagine we skimped on spending to make safer roads, cars, and driving patterns, and our constant disassembling and reassembling of cars introduced nearly as many defects as it eliminated.

This is something like our relation to medicine today. Our public today is like a king of old whose military advisors spent most of their time and budget reading omens and making sacrifices, to gain the gods' favor, instead of hiring soldiers and talking battle strategy. These advisors knew omens and sacrifices mattered little, but they saw the king was comforted, and feared losing favor by talking of battle strategy. A truly loyal advisor would have told the king what he did not want to hear: "You are obsessing about the wrong thing."

I have said before that the main cause of our "health care crisis" is that we expect "insurance" to cover all health care costs. Car insurance only kicks in when we manage to inflict more damage on our cars than the deductible will cover. Most people go years between making an insurance claim on their cars, but use their health insurance many times a year. Hanson is claiming that demand for health care has increased to absurd levels, and that the best way to reduce costs is to simply cut back on how much of it we buy. He sites a number of studies that show that most medical spending results in no significant difference in actual health, and in many cases can cause adverse effects. I recommend reading the whole thing, even though it is rather long and detailed. No, in fact I recommend reading the whole thing because it is long and detailed.

Society has been placing more emphasis on health lately, insisting on healthy eating, healthy kitchen appliances, healthy exercise, healthy soda. All this has apparently changed our priorities enough that we now spend one sixth of our income on health.

Personally, I prefer to spend my money on things that don't involve pills and needles.

UPDATE: EconLog is saying that Hanson is more mainstream than one might think.

Corporate Taxes

Here is a video on corporate taxes that I consider a must see for anyone not entirely acquainted with the issue. HT: Club for Growth.

NAR and Spin

The Motley Fool has a fun little article on how the NAR has been spinning the decline in housing sales.

OECD on BioFuels

Reuters reports that the OECD has stated that biofuels may

"offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to heal."

"The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits.

"When acidification, fertilizer use, biodiversity loss and toxicity of agricultural pesticides are taken into account, the overall environmental impacts of ethanol and biodiesel can very easily exceed those of petrol and mineral diesel."

"The OECD said tax incentives put in place in many regions, including the European Union and the United States, to encourage biofuel output could hide other objectives. 'Biofuel policies may appear to be an easy way to support domestic agriculture against the backdrop of international negotiations to liberalize agricultural trade,' it said." (Emphasis added)

"Instead it encouraged members of the World Trade Organization to step efforts to lower barriers to biofuel imports to allow developing countries that have ecological and climate systems more suited to biomass production.

...

"The OECD, which said in July that it saw biofuels keeping prices at high levels into the next decade, said it would lead to an unavoidable 'food-versus-fuel' debate.

"'Any diversion of land from food or feed production to production of energy biomass will influence food prices from the start, as both compete for the same input,' it said."

Zoned: NFF-1

LA is considering putting a moratorium on fast food restaurants in South LA - a portion of the city with a disproportionate number of fast food establishments per capita, as well as more obesity per capita.

"'The people don't want them, but when they don't have any other options, they may gravitate to what's there,' said Councilwoman Jan Perry, who proposed the ordinance in June, and whose district includes portions of South L.A. that would be affected by the plan."

So, apparently, people don't want to eat at fast food joints, but they do because there aren't other options . . . right.

"'While limiting fast-food restaurants isn't a solution in itself, it's an important piece of the puzzle,' said Mark Vallianatos, director of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College."

"This is 'bringing health policy and environmental policy together with land-use planning,' he said. 'I think that's smart, and it's the wave of the future.'"

As Fark would say, "This should end well."

"Fast-food restaurants haven't missed the cue: From their menus, diners can choose salads over burgers, yogurts over shakes and grilled over fried these days. And many food manufacturers have reconfigured their recipes to eliminate trans fats, the most unhealthful unsaturated fats made of partially hydrogenated oils."

So, do people choose those options when they are presented with them or do they keep buying the worse-for-you burgers and fries? If the answer is the later, guess what will happen when they are presented with establishments that sell nothing but better-for-you food.

"The state enacted legislation last year to increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables to be sold in corner stores in lower-income communities.

Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) introduced a bill in Congress in June that, among other things, would try to increase the availability of nutritious foods in economically depressed areas."

So, when these don't actually end up doing any good, will the problem be lack of funding?

The Welfare State (Not) At Work

1 in 5 people in the UK have no reported income other than government handouts.

Link

Debt to Society?

MSNBC has an interesting article regarding the ruling of a South Korean appeals court that the CEO of Hyundai Motor Corp. should not serve a three year prison term for being found guilt of embezzling $100 million into a lush fund because he is too important to the country's economy:

"South Korea - An appeals court suspended a three-year prison sentence for Hyundai Motor Co. Chairman Chung Mong-koo on Thursday, saying the tycoon is too important to South Korea’s economy to go to jail for embezzlement.

...

"Presiding Judge Lee Jae-hong told the packed courtroom that Hyundai Motor has great influence over the nation’s economy and Chung, its hands-on leader, is the symbol of the company.

"'I am also a citizen of the Republic of Korea,' Lee said. 'I was unwilling to engage in a gamble that would put the nation’s economy at risk.'

...

"But Park Wan-gi, an activist with the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice, denounced the ruling, saying it reinforced the perception that the rich can avoid jail.

"In a similar case, the Seoul High Court in 2005 suspended a three-year prison term for accounting irregularities handed to Chey Tae-won, CEO and chairman of South Korea’s leading oil refiner, SK Corp., now SK Energy."

Hyundai is currently the world's sixth largest car manufacturer and, combined with Kia, constituted 72% of automobiles exports, which, as a whole, represent 13% of total national exports.

The larger question here seems to be whether it is a valid principle (abstracting from particular South Korean law, etc.) that persons who are extremely important to a society (let's take for granted that he is) in one way or another (economically, culturally, diplomatically, etc.) should be spared jail time for a crime of which they were found guilty assuming that such a sentence would be detrimental to the common good of the nation.

I suppose it would depend on how one looks at punishment. If the goal of punishment is to reform the person for his own good, then the decision would be that between the private good and the common good. If punishment aims at retribution, then such a decision would be unjust by definition. If punishment aims at fulfilling a debt to society incurred by means of the crime, then it seems as if the question would be between which will provide society at large with a larger "pay off" - jail for the offender or the various benefits that they would otherwise be able to generate for society.

Missing from that paragraph is the corresponding cost of commuting a sentence even if there are substantial gains to be had for society, e.g., moral outrage or discouragement on the part of common people at the unequal way justice handles citizens.

Thoughts? Comments?