Another Bureaucratic Attack on Lifestyle Quality (and Freedom of Choice)

The nanny-state crowd in DC generates red tape with big macroeconomic costs. But also quality-of-life costs.

• Inferior light bulbs
• Substandard toilets
• Inadequate washing machines
• Dribbling showers
• Dysfunctional gas cans
• Crummy dishwashers

And it seems they never rest. After making one part of our life less convenient, they search for a new target.

Next on their list is an attack on gas stoves.

This is not because these appliances are exploding.

It’s not because they lead to fire hazards.

And it’s not because they leak gas and cause preventable deaths.

Instead, the bureaucrats imagine we might possibly be at risk of something, somehow.

I’m not joking. Here are some excerpts from a Wall Street Journal editorial about the latest assault on appliance freedom.

Coercion in the cause of banning fossil fuels is no vice for the Biden Administration… The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) could soon ban gas stoves. CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. teased in an interview…that the agency plans to propose new regulations for gas stoves, which could include a ban. …Mr. Trumka isn’t worried that gas stoves might cause accidental burns—a hidden hazard for electric range-tops that stay hot long after they’re turned off. Instead, the agency’s purported concern is that gas stoves cause indoor air pollution and asthma, though there’s scant evidence to support such claims. …The real hazard isn’t gas stoves but how people use them. Not that this distinction matters to the CPSC, which has a long history of targeting products…because of accidents that are the fault of customers. In this case, Mr. Trumka wants to use indoor pollution as a pretext to advance the climate left’s goal of forcing all buildings to use electricity for everything.

In a column for National Review, Charles Cooke has a withering assessment of this hare-brained initiative.

One could advance any number of compelling arguments against the Biden administration’s reported desire to institute a nationwide ban on gas stoves. …yet to offer any of these objections would ultimately be counterproductive, insofar as it would signal an acceptance of the premise underlying the policy, which is that this is the sort of matter that a free people should expect their federal government to superintend. …That’s right. The correct response here is a rather simple one, all told: Go away. Leave us alone. Stick your ludicrous propositions where the sun don’t shine. …That is a private matter — a matter in which the powers that be ought to have no say. …most of the “science” that’s being sold by the Anti-Stove Brigade seems extremely thin to me, but, even if it weren’t, I still wouldn’t give a toss about it, because I’m an adult, and I’m aware that life is full of trade-offs. …Justifying the administration’s proposed move, CPSC commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. explained that “products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” What, I wonder, would be excluded from that definition?

Amen, especially to the point about letting adults take risks.

• Drinking can be risky, but that doesn’t mean we should have prohibition.
• Doing drugs can be risky, but that’s not an argument for the War on Drugs.
• Smoking can be risky, but that’s hardly a reason to impose a cigarette ban.
• Vaping can be risky, but it’s very misguided to restrict the freedom to vape.
• Consuming sugar can be risky, but politicians should not ban Big Gulps.

And there are lots of other activities that have produce risks of death and injury, such as scuba diving, hang gliding, skateboarding, etc.

In a free society, none of these things should be controlled by government bureaucrats.

P.S. Let’s not forget how some subnational governments are going after plastic straws.

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A Real-World Example of Why Jury Nullification Should Be Applauded

Most people I know try to avoid serving on a jury, but I might enjoy the experience if I had the opportunity to engage in “jury nullification.”

For those not familiar, jury nullification occurs when jurors decide that a defendant is “not guilty” simply because they don’t agree with the underlying law.

In my case, I would never vote to convict someone charged with victimless crimes such as drug possession, gun ownership, or prostitution.

Or the supposed crime of using common sense when raising a child.

That’s apparently now a criminal offense in Waco, TX, as documented by Lenore Skenazy for Reason.

Heather Wallace’s oldest son, 8-year-old Aiden, was driving his two brothers crazy in the car as they all returned from karate one afternoon in October 2021. Wallace asked Aiden to walk the rest of the way home—half a mile in quiet, suburban Waco, Texas—so that he could calm down. For this she was arrested, handcuffed, and thrown in jail. She was charged with endangering a child, a felony carrying a mandatory minimum of two years in prison. …She is finally able to speak out after completing a six-month pretrial diversion program to get the charges dropped. But her arrest remains on the books—easily searchable by employers—which is disastrous for someone with a Bachelor’s degree in education. …A woman one block away had called the cops to report a boy walking outside alone. That lady had actually asked Aiden where he lived, verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless. …Child services had the family agree to a safety plan, which meant Wallace and her husband could not be alone with their kids for even a second. Their mothers—the children’s grandmothers—had to visit and trade off overnight stays in order to guarantee the parents were constantly supervised. …if she went to trial and lost, she faced a minimum of two years behind bars and a maximum of 20. So she took the plea deal.

As you can see from the above excerpts, in this case there was no chance for a jury to engage in nullification.

The possibility of being locked up for a minimum of two years led the mother to cut a deal.

I can understand her choice, but if there’s another episode like this in the future and a parent resists a plea deal, I would very much hope that a Waco jury would do the right thing and immediately come back with a not-guilty verdict.

I’ll close by inviting readers to choose the worst person from this incident.

• Was it the Karen who called the cops in the first place?
• Was it the cop who arrested the mother?
• Was it the local prosecutor who did not immediately drop charges?

All three deserve to be tarred and feathered. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Events like this remind me that every decent human being should be a libertarian.

P.S. On a related issue, civil disobedience against unjust laws also should be applauded.

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Taxes, Incentives, Booze, and Liberty

I celebrate when my friends on the left stumble into economic insights.

For instance, many of them sound like Milton Friedman when they pontificate in favor of higher tobacco taxes because they want people to smoke fewer cigarettes.

As a libertarian, I don’t think it’s government’s job to control our private lives, but I applaud when people understand that higher taxes on something will lead to less of that thing.

I get frustrated, of course, that they don’t apply that insight in other areas.

After all, if higher taxes on tobacco leads to less smoking, surely it is true that higher taxes on employment leads to less work.

Or less investment, less innovation, less entrepreneurship, etc, etc.

Let’s consider a new example of how this works in the case of sin taxes.

The New York Times has an article by Ted Alcorn about whether higher taxes on alcohol are an appropriate way of dealing with the damage caused by excessive drinking.

Here are some excerpts.

Oregon also has among the highest prevalence of problem drinking in the country. Last year, 2,153 residents died of causes attributed to alcohol, according to the Oregon Health Authority — more than twice the number of people killed by methamphetamines, heroin and fentanyl combined. …policies that experts consider most effective at curbing excessive drinking have been ignored. For example, even as alcohol-related deaths soared to record highs in the last few years, alcohol taxes have fallen to the lowest rates in a generation. …The U.S. Community Preventive Services Task Force, an independent group of experts, has endorsed measures to deter excess drinking, including raising the price of alcohol. …One way that governments can influence the price of alcohol is by taxing its producers or sellers, who pass the cost on to consumers. This is comparable to taxes on tobacco, which scores of studies show to be a powerful tool for reducing smoking. A large body of evidence shows that higher alcohol taxes are associated with less excessive drinking and lower rates of disease and injury deaths.

This all sounds reasonable.

Raise taxes and you save lives.

But it’s not that simple, as J.D. Tuccille explained in Reason a few years ago.

…you don’t need an outright ban on alcohol to fuel the production of bathtub gin and its equivalents. A new report shows that the same result has been achieved in many countries through the imposition of excessively high taxes… World Health Organization (WHO) research, published in 2014 (PDF), …”illicit and informally produced alcohol accounts for nearly a quarter of the alcohol consumed globally.” …What’s the attraction of drinking the local equivalent of bathtub gin when commercially produced products are widely available? “Unrecorded alcoholic beverages are generally less costly than recorded alcohol,” WHO dryly acknowledged in 2014. The IARD report goes into a bit more detail as to why that might be, noting that “these beverages are untaxed and outside of regulated production that can increase cost,” which means there “is often a significant price difference between illicit and legitimate products, driving demand.”

In other words, governments can impose lots of taxes on alcohol, but one consequence is to encourage the black market.

My two cents on this issues is that all taxes should be low, including so-called sin taxes. That is not because I’m oblivious to the damage of drinking, smoking, drugs, or sugar.

My opposition is driven by three factors.

1. I don’t want politicians having more money to waste.
2. Sin taxes will encourage problematic black markets..
3. People should have the freedom to make dumb choices.

I’ll close by addressing a common counter-argument, which is that people who make dumb choices can impose costs on the rest of society.

But if people drive while drunk or stoned, focus on penalizing the people who make those bad choices so that they will have an incentive for more responsible behavior.

And if smokers and gluttons impose high costs on government health programs, maybe that’s yet another reason for restoring free markets in health care.

Simply stated, the answer almost always is less government rather than more government.

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Deregulate Birth Control

There are all sorts of reasons to dislike the Food & Drug Administration.

Based on the number of lives lost, the bureaucracy’s foot-dragging on drug approval would be at the top of the list.

Though the FDA’s inefficiencies also resulted in many needless deaths during the pandemic.

And let’s not overlook the other areas where the FDA has a pernicious impact.

But I’m a big believer in redemption. So I’m very hopeful that the bureaucrats will soon do something smart and allow women to purchase birth control pills without first getting a prescription.

One of the reasons I’m hopeful is that some of our friends on the left have sensible views on this issue.

The Washington Post, for instance, recently editorialized in favor of at least partial deregulation.

Paris-based HRA Pharma announced last week that it has applied to the FDA for approval to switch Opill…to over-the-counter use. If approved, it would be the first time Americans would have access to oral contraceptives without the need to obtain a prescription from a health professional. Another pill manufacturer, Cadence Health, has been discussing with the FDA switching its progesterone-estrogen combination to over-the-counter sales in hopes of also submitting an application. …The requirement for a prescription can create barriers for women who don’t have easy access to a health-care provider because of cost, lack of transportation or child care, and privacy and confidentiality concerns. Making the pill available without a prescription could be particularly helpful to women in rural, poor and marginalized communities. Oral contraceptives…are available over the counter in more than 100 countries, and clinical trials have shown them to be safe and reliable. …Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have voiced their support for making birth control pills available without prescription. …it is important that the FDA make this matter a priority.

Needless to say, libertarian-minded people are on the right side as well.

Brad Polumbo of the Foundation for Economic Education wrote in favor of reducing government intervention.

…whatever one believes about abortion, the timing of a new debate on birth control policy within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) couldn’t be more important. The FDA just received a request from a contraceptive company seeking authorization to sell its birth control pills over-the-counter—without a prescription, as is required nationwide under current laws. …the downsides of government mandates requiring a prescription are significant. For one thing, it makes birth control harder to access for people without health insurance or the time/resources to obtain professional medical care. It also adds significantly to the cost of birth control by introducing middlemen and additional steps. …Studies have shown that, in absence of a required doctor consultation, women are able to self-screen and determine if they meet any of the conditions where one shouldn’t take hormonal birth control. …Dozens of other countries don’t require a prescription for birth control, including Mexico, Portugal, India, Greece, and Brazil. …it’s a matter of who gets to decide. Can women weigh the risks and benefits of a medication and decide for themselves? Or should that decision be made for them by supposedly benevolent bureaucrats and the nanny state?

Brad answers his own question, stating that “the answer is clear” and that the FDA should “get out of the way.”

Amen. Indeed, “get out of the way” should be our attitude about almost every action by politicians and bureaucrats.

I’ll close by making the should-be-obvious point that a belief in deregulated birth control is not the same as a belief in subsidized birth control. Especially when such policies are a recipe for higher costs and corrupt cronyism.

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Economics 101 and Soda Taxes

It is not difficult to understand the economics of taxation. Simply stated, the more you tax of something, the less you get of it.

You can show the adverse impact of taxation with supply-and-demand curves (very helpful for understanding “deadweight loss“).

But you don’t need to be an economist to grasp the essential idea that we shouldn’t impose excessive penalties on productive behavior.

This is why I endlessly argue for lower tax rates on things that are very good for society, such as work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. Simply stated, governments should minimize barriers to the creation of wealth and prosperity.

But what about using the tax code to punish things that are bad for society?

Consider, for instance, taxes that are designed to discourage obesity. I personally don’t think politicians and bureaucrats should try to dictate our lifestyle choices, so I’m not overly sympathetic to imposing special taxes on things like sugar.

But I also recognize that people do respond to incentives, so maybe such taxes would work.

Though it’s also possible that we might get unintended consequences, which is the message of Baylen Linnekin’s new article for Reason.

A new study is pouring cold beer on Seattle’s soda tax. …since the city I call home adopted a soda tax in 2018, residents have swapped out soda and replaced that soda with beer. Pointedly, the study says Seattle’s soda tax “induced” consumers to buy more beer. …The PLoS study, by University of Illinois-Chicago researchers Lisa M. Powell and Julien Lader, compared sales of beer in Seattle both before and since adoption of the soda tax with comparable sales in nearby Portland, Oregon, which has no soda tax. “At two-years post-tax implementation, [the] volume sold of beer in Seattle relative to Portland increased by 7%,” the authors report. Though supporters of soda taxes claim (largely without evidence) that they’re a successful tool to combat obesity, the authors of the PLoS study note that the dangers of “excess alcohol consumption [include] higher risk of motor accidents/deaths, liver cirrhosis, sexually transmitted diseases, crime and violence, and workplace accidents.” Also: obesity. …”It’s hard to overstate the abject failure of soda taxes to deliver on their promised benefits,” Reason Foundation’s Guy Bentley wrote several years ago… “Nowhere in the world, let alone the United States, have soda taxes reduced obesity.”

Here’s a link to the study for those interested.

The obvious takeaway is that imposing an anti-obesity tax may not be very effective if consumers can easily switch to a different product with some of the same characteristics (i.e., lots of calories).

And such a tax may wind up making society worse off if the original problem (obesity) isn’t solved and new problems (drunk driving, etc) are created.

So what’s the solution? Politicians presumably will look at the results of the study and argue that beer taxes also should be increased.

And then when they learn that people will drive to different cities to buy beer and soda (as happened when Philadelphia imposed such a tax), they’ll argue for statewide tax harmonization. And when that leads to cross-state shopping, they’ll push for federal harmonization.

Maybe, just maybe, they should leave people alone. In a free society, you should have the right to control your own life, even if it means making decisions that some people don’t like.

P.S. Nobody should be surprised when Seattle politicians enact bad policy.

P.P.S. Since we now know that soda taxes backfire, you also won’t be surprised to learn that marijuana taxes backfire. And tobacco taxes.

P.P.P.S. To the extent these taxes are successful, we get more evidence of the Laffer Curve. That happened in Berkeley. And it happened in Mexico.

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Great Moments in Government Schooling

I don’t like Joe Biden being a lackey of the teacher unions, and I think the entire Department of Education should be eliminated.

That being said, intervention from Washington is the not the main cause of America’s education problems. The real problem is that we have an inefficient monopoly system that is – for all intents and purposes – run for the benefit of teachers and bureaucrats.

All of us should be upset that we see more and more money going to more and more employees, but we don’t get any progress in boosting academic outcomes.

I sometimes think the system can’t get any worse.

But then I read something that almost makes me think that politicians want the system to be a failure.

Here’s a story from Yahoo! News that I first assumed was from the Babylon Bee. But it’s not satire, it really happened.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown privately signed a bill last month ending the requirement for high school students to prove proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic before graduation. Brown, a Democrat, did not hold a public signing or issue a press release regarding the passing of Senate Bill 744…, an unusually quiet approach to enacting legislation, according to the Oregonian. …The bill, which suspends the proficiency requirements for students for three years, has attracted controversy for at least temporarily suspending academic standards… Backers argued…the new standards for graduation would aid Oregon’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.” …Republicans criticized the proposal for lowering academic standards. “I worry that by adopting this bill, we’re giving up on our kids,” House Republican Leader Christine Drazan said.

I don’t know which part of the story is more reprehensible. Should we be more outraged that state politicians wants to eliminate standards, or should we be more outraged that supporters are implicitly (at the very least) racist in thinking that minority students can’t perform?

This is equivalent to breaking your bathroom scale because you don’t like your weight.

In any event, we have more evidence that government schools squander lots of money and deliver very poor results.

Which means we have more evidence in favor of school choice.

P.S. Since I’m pointing out the failure of government schools, I can’t resist sharing a couple of older stories

Here’s a bizarre story from New Jersey (h/t: Reason).

Ethan Chaplin, a Glen Meadow Middle School student, told News 12 last week that while he was twirling a pencil with a pen cap on in math class, a student who bullied him earlier in the day yelled “He’s making gun motions, send him to juvie.” He was suspended for two days and then underwent five hours of a physical and mental exam at Riverview Medical Center’s crisis unit, his father told NJ.com.

We have another crazy example of political correctness run amok, as reported by the New York Post (h/t: Daily Caller).

Meet 8-year-old Asher Palmer, who was tossed out of his special-needs Manhattan school for threatening other kids with a toy “gun’’ — which he made out of rolled-up paper. …[His mom] was incensed that Principal Micaela Bracamonte told other staffers in an email that Asher “had a model for physically aggressive behavior in his immediate family.’’ Spadone thinks Bracamonte was referring to her husband because he served in the military during the Kuwait war. If that was the reason for the comment, she said, “I find it offensive and inappropriate.’’ As far as the toy gun is concerned, she said Asher, a first-year student, made it out of a piece of paper after discussing military weapons with his dad.

I’ve previously shared many stories of anti-gun political correctness in government schools (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). Makes me wonder whether that kind of nonsense is even more counterproductive to kids that some of the excesses of critical race theory.

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Baptists, Bootleggers, and (Pretend-) Meat

I’ve written many times about how big businesses often climb in bed with politicians to lobby for anti-market policies such as subsidies, bailouts, and protectionism.

To get these special favors, they often deploy the “baptists and bootleggers” strategy, which means finding some nice-sounding reason for special interest policies.

For instance, the big health insurance firms lobbied for Obamacare because they liked the idea of getting undeserved profits by having the government force people to buy their products.

But they pretended that their motive was more access to health care.

Another example is the way some large companies are embracing “stakeholder capitalism” to curry favor with politicians and interest groups.

Today, let’s look at an additional version of this unsavory phenomenon.

The BBC reports that the CEO of a pretend-meat company likes the idea of big tax on his more tasty competitors.

The founder of the world’s biggest plant-based meat company has suggested that a tax on meat could help tackle some of the problems from growing meat consumption. Asked if he backed a tax on meat, Beyond Meat’s Chief Executive, Ethan Brown told the BBC “the whole notion of a Pigouvian tax, which is to tax negative, you know, things that are high in externalities, I think is an interesting one. I’m not an economist, but overall that type of thing does appeal to me”. …A tax on meat consumption would definitely be beneficial to companies such as Beyond Meat because it would make their products cheaper in comparison, says Rebecca Scheuneman, an equity analyst at US financial services firm Morningstar.How much of an advantage it would give “depends how significant the tax would be”, she told the BBC.

The woman from Morningstar is quite correct that a tax on meat would help the bottom line of companies that offer competing products.

Just as I wrote in 2012 that a tax increase on small businesses would tilt the playing field in favor of big businesses.

Matthew Lesh of the London-based Adam Smith Institute wrote about a potential meat tax in an article for CapX.

Beyond Meat’s call for a meat tax is a textbook example of ‘bootleggers and baptists’: a policy supported by a coalition of profiteering rent seekers hiding on the moral high ground. …does any of that make a new meat tax a good idea? …a cost-benefit analysis conducted by the University of Bristol concluded that a meat tax “could do more harm than good”. The researchers found it would cost £242 million a year but only save £100 million per annum in reduced carbon emissions. …Then there’s the most simple argument of all – most people enjoy meat. We get satisfaction and it provides important nutrients. …most people do not want to stop eating meat and there is substantial growing demand from the rising middle class in Asia and Africa.

While he makes a good point about the costs and benefits of meat taxation, I especially like Mr. Lesh’s point about people wanting to consume meat.

This is also why I don’t want politicians imposing sugar taxes.

Or taxes on other things that fall into disfavor, such as tobacco.  Or things that rise into favor, such as marijuana.

There are plenty of things in life that are unhealthy and/or dangerous. Maybe I’m just a knee-jerk libertarian, but I think adults should be free to make their own choices about the levels of risk they’re willing to incur.

And I certainly don’t want nanny state policies that – in reality – are the result of big companies trying to get unearned profits.

Remember, only earned profits are moral.

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Another Initiative to Improve the Quality of Life from the Trump Administration

Even though I agree with the “nanny state” crowd on a few issues (sugary soda and cigarettes are not healthy, for instance), I oppose their efforts to impose their preferences using government coercion.

Especially when their initiatives lower our quality of life.

• Inferior light bulbs
• Substandard toilets
• Inadequate washing machines
• Dribbling showers
• Dysfunctional gas cans
• Crummy dishwashers

Call me crazy, but I don’t like having to flush a toilet more than once.

And I really don’t like modern gas cans that spill gas all over the place as I’m trying to refill a hot lawnmower (immolation doesn’t seem like it would be a pleasant experience).

But what’s really annoying is going to a hotel that has installed low-flow showerheads, or visiting with someone who has that type of showerhead in their home. At the very least, it means you will spend at least twice as much time as normal to get clean.

Well, we have a bit of good news.

The Trump Administration wants consumers to have the option of enjoying better showers. Here are some excerpts from a CNN story by Sam Fossum and Paul LeBlanc.

The US Department of Energy on Tuesday finalized a pair of new rules rolling back water efficiency standards on showerheads… The new showerhead rule goes after the two-and-a-half-gallon-per-minute maximum flow rate set by Congress in the 1990s. Under current federal law, each showerhead in a fixture counts toward that limit collectively — but the Energy Department’s new rule means each showerhead individually can reach the limit set by Congress. …”Today the Trump Administration affirmed its commitment to reducing regulatory burdens and safeguarding consumer choice,” Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said in a statement. “With these rule changes, Americans can choose products that are best suited to meet their individual needs and the needs of their families.” The rollbacks were quickly rebuked by environmental advocates and consumer and appliance standards groups.

If I understand correctly, we’ll still have inadequate showerheads, but we’ll be allowed to have showers that use more than one of them.

Not the ideal outcome, to be sure, but definitely better than the status quo.

But don’t get too excited. It’s very likely that the incoming Biden Administration will propose and then adopt a new regulation to overturn what just happened.

So refurbish your shower now while the opportunity exists.

Or, if you live in a grandfathered home that still has decent amenities, don’t sell.

P.S. I’m normally not in favor of more laws, but I would strongly favor legislation mandating that all politicians and bureaucrats have to retrofit their residences any time some idiotic new regulation is imposed. In other words, no grandfathering for the ruling class. They should live by the rules they want to impose on the rest of us, whether we’re looking at showerheads, taxes, coronavirus, or education.

P.P.S. The Trump Administration also has a new rule that would allow a return to better-quality dishwashers.

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A Genuine Quality-of-Life Achievement from the Trump Administration

Last year, I shared this video from the Competitive Enterprise Institute to help explain how government bureaucrats are making it harder for Americans to clean their plates, bowls, and silverware.

Washington’s dishwasher mandate is just one example of how red tape diminishes the quality of life.

Bureaucrats have concocted other ways of spreading misery and frustration.

• Inferior light bulbs
• Substandard toilets
• Inadequate washing machines
• Dribbling showers
• Dysfunctional gas cans

Call me crazy, but I don’t like spending extra time in the shower, flushing more than once, and risking self-immolation when I refill my lawnmower.

But there is a bit of good news. The Trump Administration wants to make it easier for us to clean up after dinner.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial is a good summary of the issue.

For years American homes have been stuck with dishwashers that take forever and still don’t get the job done. A new Department of Energy rule…will help change that. …Regulations on energy and water usage—tightened in 2013 by the Obama Administration—mean that dishwashers now take at least two hours to complete a full wash cycle. Dishes may still emerge with pieces of last night’s lasagna baked on. …CEI petitioned the Energy Department to allow dishwashers that would reduce the average cycle to one hour from two, while also giving better performance. CEI argued that if the aim of the regulation was to conserve water and energy, it’s unlikely they achieved their purpose. People responded to poor dishwasher performance by pre-rinsing each dish before putting it through their washers, wasting more water… The revised DOE rule is…an example of how common-sense deregulation can deliver real benefits for the public.

And Sam Rutzick of Reason explains this latest development in the battle for clean dishes.

Trump’s Department of Energy finalized a rule establishing a new product class for residential dishwashers that will have a normal cycle time of up to one hour and that can use five gallons of water per cycle. Those rules effectively roll back an Obama-era rule limiting standard dishwashers to use no more than 3.1 gallons of water per cycle. That limit forced dishwasher companies to adjust their products’ cycle lengths. And the supposedly more efficient but less useful dishwashers have been a punchline…the average dishwasher cycle time has jumped from the one-hour cycle that was common a decade ago to more than two hours today. The tighter rules didn’t lead to energy savings for customers. …they actually increased water consumption by 63 billion gallons, as households would have to run their dishwashers multiple cycles, or pre-rinse their dishes by hand, in order to get dishes actually clean.

But Rutzick’s column contains a very important caveat.

Joe Biden may reverse this important bit of deregulation.

Unfortunately, the new rules may not last. While the incoming administration has been vague about which deregulatory efforts they intend to undo, they have spoken in favor of tightening environmental regulations—and the new dishwasher rules could be a casualty. If so, that’ll be bad news for consumers. 

For what it’s worth, while he embraced some very bad policies during the campaign, I don’t think Joe Biden is a Bernie Sanders-style nutjob.

But I fear environmentalism is an area where he will push policy significantly to the left.

So I’m not overly optimistic that we’ll have better dishwashers in the future.

The only good news is that Americans, every time they do the dishes, will have an irritating reminder that government is the problem rather than the solution.

P.S. Yes, I realize better dishwashers are not as important as better tax policy (or as important as worse trade policy), but I don’t think politicians should be undermining our quality of life.

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Blue State Blues in California

If you’re a curmudgeonly libertarian like me, you don’t like big government because it impinges on individual liberty.

Most people, however, get irked with government for the practical reason that it costs so much and fails to provide decent services.

California is a good example. Or perhaps we should say bad example.

The Tax Foundation recently shared data on the relative cost of living in various metropolitan areas. Looking at the 12-most expensive places to live, 75 percent of them are in California.

So what do people get in exchange for living in such expensive areas?

They get great weather and scenery, but they also get lousy government.

Victor Davis Hanson wrote for National Review about his state’s decline.

Might it also have been smarter not to raise income taxes on top tiers to over 13 percent? After 2017, when high earners could no longer write off their property taxes and state income taxes, the real state-income-tax bite doubled. So still more of the most productive residents left the state. Yet if the state gets its way, raising rates to over 16 percent and inaugurating a wealth tax, there will be a stampede. It is not just that the upper middle class can no longer afford coastal living at $1,000 a square foot and $15,000–$20,000 a year in “low” property taxes. The rub is more about what they get in return: terrible roads, crumbling bridges, human-enhanced droughts, power blackouts, dismal schools that rank near the nation’s bottom, half the nation’s homeless, a third of its welfare recipients, one-fifth of the residents living below the poverty level — and more lectures from the likes of privileged Gavin Newsom on the progressive possibilities of manipulating the chaos. California enshrined the idea that the higher taxes become, the worse state services will be.

Even regular journalists have noticed something is wrong.

In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Heather Kelly, Reed Albergotti, Brady Dennis and Scott Wilson discuss the growing dissatisfaction with California life.

California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place many have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived. …for many of California’s 40 million residents, the California Dream has become the California Compromise, one increasingly challenging to justify, with…a thumb-on-the-scales economy, high taxes… California is increasingly a service economy that pays a far larger share of its income in taxes and on housing and food. …Three years ago, state lawmakers approved the nation’s second-highest gasoline tax, adding more than 47 cents to the price of a gallon. …service workers in particular are…paying far more as a share of their income on fuel just to stay employed. …A poll conducted late last year by the University of California at Berkeley found that more than half of California voters had given “serious” or “some” consideration to leaving the state because of the high cost of housing, heavy taxation or its political culture. …Business is booming for Scott Fuller, who runs a real estate relocation business. Called Leaving the Bay Area and Leaving SoCal, the company helps people ready to move away from the state’s two largest metro areas sell their homes and find others.

Niall Ferguson opines for Bloomberg about the Golden State’s outlook.

As my Hoover Institution colleague Victor Davis Hanson put it last month, California is “the progressive model of the future: a once-innovative, rich state that is now a civilization in near ruins.”… It’s not that California politicians don’t know how to spend money. Back in 2007, total state spending was $146 billion. Last year it was $215 billion. …the tax system is one of the most progressive, with a 13.3% top tax rate on incomes above $1 million — and that’s no longer deductible from the federal tax bill as it used to be. …And there’s worse to come. The latest brilliant ideas in Sacramento are to raise the top income rate up to 16.8% and to levy a wealth tax (0.4% on personal fortunes over $30 million) that you couldn’t even avoid paying if you left the state. (The proposal envisages payment for up to 10 years after departure to a lower-tax state.) It is a strange place that seeks to repel the rich while making itself a magnet for illegal immigrants… And the results of all this progressive policy? A poverty boom. California now has 12% of the nation’s population, but over 30% of its welfare recipients. …according to a new Census Bureau report, which takes housing and other costs into account, the real poverty rate in California is 17.2%, the highest of any state. …But that’s not all. The state’s public schools rank 37th in the country… Health care and pension costs are unsustainable. …people eventually vote with their feet. From 2007 until 2016, about five million people moved to California but six million moved out to other states. For years before that, the newcomers were poorer than the leavers. This net exodus is surging in 2020. …Now we know the true meaning of Calexit. It’s not secession. It’s exodus.

It’s not just high taxes and poor services.

George Will indicts California’s politicians for fomenting racial discord in his Washington Post column.

California…progressives…have placed on November ballots Proposition 16 to repeal the state constitution’s provision…forbidding racial preferences in public education, employment and contracting. Repeal, which would repudiate individual rights in favor of group entitlements, is part of a comprehensive California agenda to make everything about race, ethnicity and gender. …Proposition 16 should be seen primarily as an act of ideological aggression, a bold assertion that racial and gender quotas — identity politics translated into a spoils system — should be forthrightly proclaimed and permanently practiced… California already requires that by the end of 2021 some publicly traded companies based in the state must have at least three women on their boards of directors… And by 2022, boards with nine or more directors must include at least three government-favored minorities. …Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation requiring all 430,000 undergraduates in the California State University system to take an “ethnic studies” course, and there may soon be a similar mandate for all high school students. “Ethnic studies” is an anodyne description for what surely will be, in the hands of woke “educators,” grievance studies.

Several years ago, I crunched some numbers to show California’s gradual decline.

But there was probably no need for those calculations. All we really need to understand is that people are “voting with their feet” against the Golden State.

Simply stated, productive people are paying too much of a burden thanks to excessive spending, excessive taxes, and excessive regulation.

So they’re leaving.

P.S. Many Californians are moving to the Lone Star State, and if you want data comparing Texas and California, click here, here, here, here, and here.

P.P.S. Some folks in California started talking about secession after Trump’s election. Now that the state’s politicians are seeking a bailout, I expect that talk has disappeared.

P.P.S. My favorite California-themed jokes can be found here, here, and here.

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The Bizarre Attack on Vaping

Since I’ve never smoked or vaped, I have no personal interest in the the regulatory battle over vaping and e-cigarettes.

That being said, I started writing about this issue back in 2016 because it involves several important principles.

1. The libertarian argument that people should be free to do what they want with their own bodies
2. Whether the “administrative state” should be able to unilaterally grab more regulatory power.
3. The degree to which “harm reduction” or “zero tolerance” should guide government policies.

From a public health perspective, the third point is most important.

It’s a fight between those who want the Food and Drug Administration to use its self-anointed regulatory authority to ban e-cigarettes (because vaping is worse than not vaping) and those who explain that e-cigarettes are helpful (because vaping is far less risky than smoking).

This fight has a September 9 deadline. The Food and Drug Administration decided several years ago that its power to regulate tobacco somehow meant it also has the power to regulate vaping. The bureaucrats then created a system requiring future approval for marketing and sale of e-cigarettes and related products (originally to be unveiled in 2022 but a federal judge has ordered an earlier deadline).

The FDA has basically given itself the power to prohibit these products, and if you’re interested in that aspect of the battle, here are two short articles (pro and con) about that effort.

I want to focus today on whether it makes sense to impose prohibition, and it’s a simple matter of cost-benefit analysis. Some people want to enjoy nicotine, so is it better for them to vape or to smoke?

Writing for the American Enterprise Institute, Roger Bate points out that smoking is far worse.

…there is an increasing amount of evidence to support it over smoking. As Michael Siegel — a public health Professor at Boston University — says “there is overwhelming evidence that smoking is more hazardous than vaping. One of the most compelling lines of evidence is a series of studies showing that when smokers switch to e-cigarettes, they experience immediate and dramatic improvement in both their respiratory and cardiovascular health, measured both subjectively and objectively.” Cancer rates are at an all-time low partially due to the introduction of vaping and subsequent reduction in smoking.

And if people can’t vape, that leads to more smoking.

Six scholars, in a new study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that higher taxes on vaping led to more cigarette consumption.

We explore the effect of e-cigarette taxes enacted in eight states and two large counties on e-cigarette prices, e-cigarette sales, and sales of other tobacco products. …We then calculate an e-cigarette own-price elasticity of -1.5 and a positive cross-price elasticity of demand between e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes of 0.9, suggesting that e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes are economic substitutes. We simulate that for every one standard e-cigarette pod (a device that contains liquid nicotine) of 0.7 ml no longer purchased as a result of an e-cigarette tax, the same tax increases traditional cigarettes purchased by 6.4 extra packs.

If you don’t want to read an academic study, a press release from Georgia State University (home to one of the scholars) summarizes the key findings.

Increasing taxes on e-cigarettes in an attempt to cut vaping may cause people to purchase more traditional cigarettes according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health. For every 10 percent increase in e-cigarette prices, e-cigarette sales drop 26 percent while traditional cigarette sales jump by 11 percent. …“Vaping-related illnesses are a public health concern. However, cigarettes continue to kill nearly 480,000 Americans each year, and several research reviews support the conclusion that e-cigarettes contain fewer toxicants and are safer for non-pregnant adults,” said co-author Erik Nesson of Ball State University. …Michael F. Pesko from Georgia State University. “We estimate that for every 1 e-cigarette pod no longer purchased as a result of an e-cigarette tax, 6.2 extra packs of cigarettes are purchased instead,” he said. “The public health impact of e-cigarette taxes in this case is likely negative.”

Needless to say, if higher taxes on vaping lead to more smoking, one can only imagine how much additional cigarettes will be consumed if vaping is outlawed.

And that means more cancer, more heart disease, and other illnesses.

The folks who support anti-vaping policies respond by arguing that vaping enables nicotine consumption by some young people and may even be a gateway to smoking.

That’s probably true, but it’s also true that some of those young people would opt for smoking if they didn’t have the option to vape.

From a utilitarian perspective, the bottom line is that vaping saves lives.

The anti-vaping crowd might even admit that’s true, but they presumably would then argue in favor of banning cigarettes.

But why stop there? Obesity also is a major threat to health, so why not ban cakes, pies, pasta, and french fries? And big gulps (oh, wait, that’s already happening)?

And mandate broccoli consumption as well, along with a government-required five-mile jog on days that end in “y”.

At the risk of understatement, the right solution is to let adults make their own decisions. The FDA should quit its harassment campaign against vaping.

P.S. If FDA bureaucrats actually want to save lives, they should focus on their onerous rules and silly regulations that have hampered the private economy’s ability to respond to the coronavirus.

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Paternalism in the European Union

I’m not a big fan of paternalism because of my libertarian belief that people should be free to govern their own lives.

That’s true even if they make choices that I think are foolish.

Needless to say, many politicians don’t share this laissez-faire perspective.

But not all governments are equally intrusive. Epicenter has released a new version of the Nanny State Index, allowing us to see which EU nations have the most onerous rules governing private behavior.

The Index has been charting the slide towards coercive paternalism since 2016 and there is little good news to report this year. Once again, Finland tops the league table but although it maintains a strong lead, other countries are closing the gap. …Whether it is food, drink, vaping or smoking, the lifestyle regulators have the wind in their sails… In general, the story is one of a constantly expanding nanny state raising prices and trampling freedom. The blame lies overwhelmingly with domestic governments, not with the European Union. Although the EU has made the situation worse with its counter-productive policies on tobacco and e-cigarettes, it cannot be held responsible for regressive taxation, draconian smoking bans and excessive regulation of alcohol and food. The gulf between the more liberal countries at the bottom of the Index and the more heavy-handed countries at the top shows how much latitude member states have. Treating your citizens like children is, by and large, a domestic policy choice.

As you can see from this table, Finland is the worst, followed by two of the (otherwise sensible) Baltic nations.

Meanwhile, Germany gets the best score, followed by Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The report’s author, Christopher Snowdon of London’s Institute of Economic Affairs, observes that nanny-state policies don’t even achieve their putative goal of longer lifespans.

Insofar as ‘public health’ campaigners acknowledge the damage done by their policies, they argue that it is more than offset by the benefit to health – the ends justify the means. But there is little evidence that countries with more paternalistic policies enjoy greater health or longevity. As Figure 1 shows below, there is no correlation whatsoever between Nanny State Index scores and life expectancy.

Here’s the chart showing the lack of a relationship between paternalism and longevity.

By contrast, there is a correlation between economic prosperity and life expectancy.

…there is a strong, statistically significant relationship between health and wealth. Figure 4 shows the relationship between life expectancy and economic prosperity as measured by per capita GDP. This suggests that pursuing economic growth would bring much greater benefits to health than coercive efforts to control personal behaviour with bans and taxes.

Here’s the chart from the study showing the relationship between the two variables.

The obvious takeaway is that European governments should focus on policies that expand economic liberty if they truly care about the well-being of their citizens.

P.S. What about the United States? I’m not sure where we would rank in the Nanny State Index. Though we do have some indication of which states have a more laissez-faire attitude. When I wrote about Freedom in the 50 States back in 2013, I noted that Massachusetts ranked #1 in the “bachelor party” category (based on issues such as booze, hookers, fireworks, and drugs). That category doesn’t exist int he most-recent edition, but Nebraska ranks #1 in the “victimless crimes” category.

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Vaping Restrictions Are a Deadly Policy…Literally

When I want to explain that excessive government shortens lifespans, I’m going to have a new and powerful argument thanks to the Trump  Administration’s misguided efforts to restrict vaping.

The issue is very simple.

Some people want nicotine. If vaping products are not available, they will opt for cigarettes, which are vastly more dangerous.

The Wall Street Journal recently opined on the issue, echoing the point I made about how the Trump policy will open the door for higher-risk black-market products.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday announced a ban on flavored e-cigarettes…don’t think this will…make teens stop vaping. …it’s not clear how much good the FDA ban will do. It is already illegal for teens under age 18 to buy e-cigarettes, but that hasn’t stopped them. …One risk of the FDA’s flavor ban is more teens might buy e-cigarettes on the black market that are less safe. Illegal products are the main culprits in the recent cases of vaping-related lung illness.

Here’s some of what Jacob Sullum wrote on this topic.

In a wake-up call for people who claim to be concerned about smoking-related disease and death, five prominent public health scholars warn that the “tremendous” harm-reducing potential of e-cigarettes could be nullified by panicky political responses to underage consumption and vaping-related lung injuries. …”There is solid scientific evidence that vaping nicotine is much safer than smoking,” the authors note, while “evidence from multiple strong observational studies and randomized trials suggests that vaping nicotine is more appealing and more effective than [nicotine replacement therapy, such as patches and gum,] at displacing smoking.” …that displacement is not limited to adults. Fairchild and her co-authors point out that “population youth smoking rates dropped much faster in the years vaping surged the most (2013–2019) than in prior years, reaching record lows during that same period, which suggests that nicotine vape use may be replacing smoking more than promoting it.” E-cigarette prohibitionists may think they are acting “out of an abundance of caution,” but the policies they advocate look downright reckless when you consider the ongoing death toll from cigarette smoking.

In the interview, I mentioned that the United Kingdom has a far more sensible approach.

Matt Ridley wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal about his country’s policy.

Nicotine itself is far less harmful to smokers than the other chemicals created during combustion. Heavyweight studies confirm that there are much lower levels of dangerous chemicals in e-cigarette vapor than in smoke and fewer biomarkers of harm in the bodies of vapers than smokers. …In both the U.K. and the U.S. the rapid growth in vaping has coincided with rapid reductions in smoking rates, especially among young people. Yet there is a stark contrast between the two countries in how vaping has been treated by public health authorities… Many British smokers have switched entirely to vaping, encouraged by the government, whose official position is that vaping is 95% safer than smoking, an assertion now backed by early studies of disease incidence. The organizations that have signed a statement saying that vaping is significantly less harmful than smoking include Public Health England, the Association of Directors of Public Health, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society for Public Health. …The argument for harm reduction is not one that comes easily to some public-health advocates, because it means promoting behaviors that may still be harmful, just less so than the alternative. Vaping doesn’t have to prove entirely safe for it to save lives, given that it mostly replaces smoking.

Brad Polumbo adds some details in a column for the Washington Examiner.

America’s war on vaping is in full swing. But when you consider the positive approach taken in the United Kingdom, the foolishness of this new conflict is laid bare. …Vaping is much healthier than smoking traditional cigarettes. E-cigarettes do contain nicotine, but nicotine was never really the problem with traditional cigarettes in the first place — it’s essentially similar to caffeine. Rather, the enormous public health problem posed by cigarettes is due to the cancer-causing chemicals they contain, such as tar, for example. Vaping products do not contain similar chemicals, making them much, much less likely to cause cancer. …If the government is to do anything to address vaping, it should be to promote it as an alternative to smoking. This is what the U.K.’s government has done, to massive success. …A sober analysis reveals that we are doing exactly the opposite of everything we should be doing. We are putting up more barriers and restrictions on vaping, and instead, we should embrace the U.K.’s approach.

Let’s shift from international policy to state policy.

In another column for Reason, Jacob Sullum explains that awful politicians in Massachusetts want to combine two bad policies – vape bans and asset forfeiture.

Massachusetts has “the worst civil forfeiture laws in the country.” It looks like state legislators are about to outdo themselves. The Massachusetts House of Representatives…approved a bill that would ban flavored e-cigarettes, impose a 75 percent excise tax on “electronic nicotine delivery systems” (including e-liquids as well as devices), and authorize forfeiture of cars driven by vapers caught with “untaxed” products. …The bill also says a police officer who “discovers an untaxed electronic nicotine delivery system in the possession of a person who is not a licensed or commissioner-authorized electronic nicotine delivery system distributor” may seize both the product and the “receptacle” in which it is found, “including, but not limited to, a motor vehicle, boat or airplane in which the electronic nicotine delivery systems are contained or transported.” …Massachusetts is poised to deprive vapers of the harm-reducing products they used to quit smoking, then steal their cars if they dare to defy that unjust and irrational edict.

Needless to say, two negatives don’t make a positive.

Let’s close with this chart, which (in a logical world) should put an end to the debate.

Yes, it would be nice if nobody used any sort of dangerous product. But in the real world, where we face tradeoffs, I’d much prefer that people get nicotine from vaping.

P.S. And people should have the freedom to make choices that involve risk. Libertarianism is about treating people like adults.

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Government Mandates and Crummy Dishwashers

Four years ago, I wrote about how dishwashers don’t work very well because of foolish red tape from Washington.

The clever folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute put together a video on the topic.

I especially like the fake commercial at the start of the video.

But I don’t like the way my dishwasher performs.

And Jeffrey Tucker of the American Institute for Economic Research shares my disdain.

American dishwashers used to work. They were wonderful labor-saving devices. They kept our kitchens cleaner. They sanitized the dishes, helping to stop cross-contamination and generally improving health over the iffy process of handwashing. …Then one day they just stopped doing the work. What happened? …Dishwashers used to wash all the dishes in under one hour. Now they take two hours, three hours, and four hours, and still don’t get the dishes clean. …All of this is directly due to government regulations. …Now everything comes out foggy and spotted. This is true no matter which dishwasher you get. …None of this has really hurt the dishwasher industry. Sales have consistently risen for the last ten years. My theory is that people are buying replacements, thinking (rationally) that they just need a newer model. What consumers don’t know, and what manufacturers don’t want to admit, is that they no longer work. The older the model, the more likely it is to be operational.

Here’s the most astounding factoid.

One in five homes have just stopped using their dishwashers altogether.

And here’s the bottom line.

These regulations have caused an infuriating and devastating degradation of the quality of appliances and the quality of life in our homes.

I agree. In my home, I don’t bother putting items in the dishwasher until I’ve thoroughly rinsed them. Otherwise, I’ll find food residue and have to wash them again.

Here’s a chart from the Competitive Enterprise Institute on the average cycle time of dishwashers. As you can see, modern dishwashers take much longer because they do such a poor job.

Since I generally run my dishwasher before heading to bed, I’m not particularly worried about how long it takes.

I just want clean dishes at the end of the process. But that’s now much more difficult because of government.

If you want more examples of the regulatory state’s war on modern life, there are plenty of examples.

• Inferior light bulbs
• Substandard toilets
• Inadequate washing machines
• Dribbling showers
• Dysfunctional gas cans

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The Deadly Campaign Against Vaping and E-Cigarettes

Moral panics in Washington are not a recipe for good policy.

That’s why the current attack on vaping (the use of e-cigarettes) is so misguided.

Policy makers want to ban and/or restrict e-cigarettes (especially flavored varieties) for two reasons.

• Consuming e-cigarettes may cause harm to users.
• Vaping may lure some young people into using nicotine.

Both of these concerns are reasonable, at least from a utilitarian perspective.

But if we’re taking that approach, policy makers also should be looking at the other side of the cost-benefit equation (the Food and Drug Administration sadly does a lousy job of comparing costs and benefits).

And the under-appreciated benefit of e-cigarettes is that they reduce tobacco consumption, which is far more risky.

The Wall Street Journal opined recently on this issue.

A campaign against vaping products is moving at land speed records, with the Trump Administration announcing this week it will pull flavored e-cigarettes from the market. This is becoming a political pile on, and regulators risk foreclosing one of the best opportunities in public health, which is to reduce cigarette smoking. …Vaping devices include an array of products from pens to tanks. …The point is to offer the buzz of a cigarette without the combustion of tobacco that releases carcinogens and makes smoking so dangerous. …agencies like Public Health England have said such e-cigs are 95% safer than smokes. …No one wants kids addicted to nicotine, and the question is how to balance these competing equities. It is hardly obvious that banning flavors will keep teens from vaping. …A Juul executive told Congress this summer that a result of exiting convenience stores has been other actors exploiting the vacuum by selling illegal flavor pods. Expect more such unintended consequences. And if the flavor ban doesn’t reduce the number of teen vapers, then what? The next step looks like an even broader ban, which won’t be a net positive to public health. …The question is not whether vaping is healthy—it isn’t—but whether the frenzy against e-cigarettes is moving faster than the evidence. …forgotten in the rush are the 480,000 Americans who die each year from smoking.

In addition to his attacks on the twin scourges of salt and large-sized drinks, Michael Bloomberg is a leading advocate of vaping restrictions.

Jacob Sullum of Reason explains why, if successful, his efforts will cause more death.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire busybody who can be counted on to oppose individual freedom in almost every area of life, is launching a prohibition crusade against flavored e-cigarettes. …The premise of Bloomberg’s $160 million campaign, which aims to persuade “at least 20 cities and states” to “pass laws banning all flavored tobacco and e-cigarettes,” is that flavored e-liquids are obviously designed to entice “children,” because only children like them. That is demonstrably false. ..Last year, Vaping360, a site aimed at former smokers who have switched to vaping and current smokers who are thinking about it, surveyed readers about their favorite Juul pod flavors. It got more than 38,000 responses, and the top pick by far was Mango (46 percent), followed by Cool Mint (29 percent), Crème Brulée (11 percent), and Fruit Medley (8 percent). …Surveys of former smokers find that flavor variety plays an important role in the process of switching to vaping. The Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged “the role that flavors…may play in helping some smokers switch to potentially less harmful forms of nicotine delivery.” …Bloomberg has “committed nearly $1 billion to aid anti-tobacco efforts.” Now he is committing $160 million to pro-tobacco efforts, lobbying for laws that will drastically reduce the alternatives to conventional cigarettes, resulting in more smoking-related disease and death.

Robert Verbruggen also explains cost-benefit analysis in his column for National Review.

The Trump administration’s Food and Drug Administration is gearing up to ban e-cigarette flavorings besides the ones that taste like tobacco. It’s unclear if this would have any benefits for public health. …Upstart products such as e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without all the tar and other nasty chemicals that cigarettes contain, and are estimated to be 95 percent safer as a result. …even for minors it’s far better to vape than to puff Camels, and it’s not as if no adult enjoys, say, strawberry flavoring. Better taste is one reason to vape instead of smoke for pretty much anyone who has to decide between the two, and if e-cigs are limited to tobacco flavoring, this rule could push some people back toward traditional cigarettes. And if real cigarettes are 20 times as dangerous as e-cigs, it doesn’t take much switching to cancel out the benefit of a reduction in vaping.

But I also like his article because he points out that this is another example of the “administrative state” in action.

…this is not a decision that Congress ever should have left in the executive branch’s hands. …in 2009 Congress, in its infinite wisdom, gave the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products — except for all the products that were already on the market. This meant that the agency would have authority over upstart products competing with cigarettes, but the rules would not apply to cigarettes themselves. ……Congress should write laws, especially laws that ban entire product categories, not turn that power over to unelected busybodies who will opt for regulation over personal freedom every single time they encounter a choice between the two.

Best of all, he makes the libertarian argument that people should enjoy liberty.

What is clear is that it will be a disaster for personal freedom… Smoking cigarettes is one of those things that we allow adults to do even though it’s obviously bad for them, causing numerous cancers and other health problems. …It’s a free country. …One does not need to be a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian to be disgusted at this affront to personal freedom and responsibility. …Adults should be free to do what they want, so long as they take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. That includes smoking. And it definitely includes the far safer alternative of vaping fruit-flavored e-juice.

Amen.

I think the utilitarian argument for vaping is strong. As this visual from an anti-cancer group in the U.K. notes, it passes a cost-benefit test for savings lives.

But utilitarianism isn’t everything.

I can’t resist also unleashing my inner libertarian as we conclude today’s column.

The bottom line is that people should be allowed to take risks. They should even be allowed to make dumb choices.

That includes drug use, sugary drinks, gambling, over-eating, smoking, voting for socialists, hang gliding, alcohol usage, and standing between a politician and a TV camera.

It’s called freedom.

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Virtue Signaling, Plastic Straws, and Political Humor

Since I focus on public finance, I think California is crazy because of punitive taxes and reckless spending policies.

But I can understand why other people think California is crazy, period.

This is a state, after all, where politicians come up with bizarre ideas such as regulating babysitting and banning Happy Meals.

Not to mention banning other things as well.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that the Golden State is leading the way in attacking the horrible scourge of plastic straws.

Plastic straws are quickly becoming a takeout taboo. Starbucks has vowed to get its iconic green sippers completely off store shelves by 2020, while Seattle banned all plastic utensils, including straws, from bars and businesses city-wide earlier this month. San Francisco quickly followed suit this week and passed an ordinance that, once approved, will ban plastic straws beginning in July of 2019… It may seem as though the quarter-of-an-inch diameter drinking straw is the least of our worries. But environmentalists say the fight’s got to start somewhere. “We look at straws as one of the gateway issues to help people start thinking about the global plastic pollution problem,” Plastic Pollution Coalition CEO Dianna Cohen told Business Insider.

If I’m willing to claim earmarks are the gateway drug for big spending, then I can’t complain when other people come up with imaginative claims about other types of “gateways.”

In any event, there is a legitimate reason to be concerned about plastic.

Some straws drift out to sea, becoming just one more piece of the 79 thousand-ton colossal floating iceberg of trash called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Scientists who’ve studied the patch, a trash heap wider than two whole Texases that bobs somewhere between Hawaii and California, have discovered it’s essentially a watery pit of litter and illegal dumps that’s trapped in the ocean currents, and it is basically all plastic. …The anti-straw movement may have first picked up steam because…Texas A&M graduate student Christine Figgener…noticed something encrusted in the nose of one of the male turtles. …The team soon figured out it was actually a “plastic straw stuck in his nose,” and removed it, hoping the extraction might help give him some more breathing time on Earth.

But the people on the left side of the country are not actually solving this problem.

Plastic pollution is basically a problem caused by developing countries.

So the politicians in Seattle and San Francisco are making the Nanny State more intrusive without achieving anything.

A classic case of virtue signaling.

But look at the bright side. It’s already generated some great political satire.

Starting with this little girl.

I imagine the plastic straw will be a gateway for operating an unlicensed lemonade stand!

And if SWAT teams run out of harmless pot smokers to harass, they now have new target to justify their budgets.

And the gun grabbers will appreciate the importance of dealing with high-capacity straw dispensers.

Though it’s unclear how the left will deal with the danger of concealed straws.

Especially since some of those straw nuts will become dealers.

I’ve saved the best for last. For those old enough to remember OJ Simpson and the white Bronco, this image of a renegade toddler will bring back memories.

Remember, if you outlaw straws, only outlaws will have straws.

Next thing you know, they’ll try to outlaw tanks.

It’s a slippery slope!

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Great Moments in British Government

A couple of days ago, citing bizarre government policies in India, Belgium, Malaysia, Romania, and Spain, I wrote about some “great moments in foreign government.”

Today, we’re going to give special attention to the United Kingdom.

I’m not claiming there’s an above-average level of government stupidity in the United Kingdom (though that’s distinctly possible). Instead, I suspect I simply get exposed to more stories from the U.K.

Whatever the reason, let’s start with this report from the Times.

Plastic stirrers and cotton buds are to be banned alongside straws… The move, expected to come into force as early as next year, is designed to curb “society’s addiction” to throwaway products, the environment secretary writes… The UK uses 13.2 billion cotton buds a year, more than any other member of the EU, as well as 44.1 billion stirrers and 42 billion straws, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. …Mr Gove initiated plans last month to require retailers to impose a deposit on plastic bottles and has extended the 5p tax on plastic bags to smaller shops. Moves for an industry levy aimed at reducing the use of products such as takeaway food cartons are also underway in the Treasury.

Apparently, the supposedly conservative government in the United Kingdom thinks this type of green virtue signalling is a way of wooing the tiny collection of misguided Tories who oppose Brexit.

Mr Gove is said to believe that the issue helps reconnect the Conservatives with former supporters angry over Brexit.

Switching topics, here’s a bizarre story from the BBC.

Chelsea Russell, 19, from Liverpool posted the lyric from Snap Dogg’s I’m Trippin’ to pay tribute to a boy who died in a road crash, a court heard. Russell argued it was not offensive… Prosecutors said her sentence was increased from a fine to a community order “as it was a hate crime.” She was charged after Merseyside Police were anonymously sent a screenshot of her update. …The words Russell used on her account contained a racial label which some people find extremely offensive. …Prosecutor Angela Conlan said Russell’s defence also argued her profile “wasn’t public, but it had been proved in court that anyone could access it and “see the offensive language”. Russell was found guilty… She was given an eight-week community order, place on an eight-week curfew and told to pay costs of £500 and an £85 victim surcharge.

Given my utter lack of cultural awareness, I’ve never heard of Snap Dogg. I’m guessing he’s black, but I could be wrong.

In any event, this absurd story raises a couple of points.

• First, people should have the right to say offensive things.
• Second, it appears that there was no offensive intent.
• Third, this shouldn’t be an issue for government.

I’m sure that there’s still real racism in British society. I hope there is widespread scorn for people who practice that odious version of collectivism. I also support boycotts of private measures to punish unambiguous racists (the ideal goal is to have their minds changed by kindness).

Government should only step in when there’s a threat to life, liberty, or property.

Sadly, the British government is policing speech, perhaps even speech that should be considered totally benign.

Which is a good excuse to post this funny-yet-sad item from Libertarian Reddit.

Speaking of things that are funny and sad, here’s a Reason column on the latest development in the battle to leave Brits totally vulnerable to crime.

It turns out that when you pass laws disarming people in an attempt to prevent violence, criminals who habitually disregard all laws don’t make exceptions for the new rules. In London, crime still thrives despite the U.K.’s tight gun controls and the British political class is now desperately turning its attention to restricting knives. …Firearms are strictly restricted in the U.K., including a near-total ban on handguns. Nevertheless, “[i]n the 12 months to October 2017, there were 2,500 offences involving guns: a 16 per cent increase on the previous year and a 44 per cent increase on 2014,”… Criminals, it seems, are not averse to committing crimes—including the illegal acquisition of tools that help them commit more crimes. Besides illegal guns, British criminals also use edged weapons… Having failed to disarm criminals with gun controls that they defy, British politicians are now turning their attention to implementing something new and different: knife control. Because criminals will be much more respectful of knife laws than of those targeted at firearms, I guess. …Poundland (the British equivalent of a dollar store) announced last week that it will no longer sell kitchen knives in any of its 850 stores. Similar stores are being slapped with fines for selling knives to minors. British politicians propose banning home delivery of knives and police promote street-corner bins for the surrender of knives.

If you outlaw knives, only outlaws will have knives (in America, we apply that lesson to tanks).

And they’ll also have acid, as noted on Libertarian Reddit.

The cops don’t have the time and energy to concentrate on these real crimes.

Instead, they bust a girl for benignly quoting a bad word. Or they bust homeowners for harming robbers. Or harass employers who commit discrimination by advertising for “reliable” workers.

And apparently Brits also are on guard against the scourge of eggs in the hands of kids. And flour.

How embarrassing.

Today’s collection is even worse than the ones I shared in February and April.

P.S. And let’s not forget the U.K.’s creepy statism and ghoulish government-run healthcare.

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The Nanny State’s War to Lower the Quality of Life

Considering that America’s Founders created a very small central government that operated for more than 100 years without any income tax (or any other broad-based tax), it’s very disappointing that Washington is now consuming more that 20 percent of our nation’s output.

That’s bad for growth since resources are diverted from the productive sector of the economy.

But let’s also keep in mind that politicians also impose policies that may not have much impact on GDP statistics, but definitely reduce our quality of life.

I’ve written about some of these annoying bits of red tape.

• Inferior light bulbs
• Substandard toilets
• Inadequate washing machines
• Crummy dishwashers
• Dribbling showers

Jeffrey Tucker, in a column for the Foundation for Economic Education, shares my disdain for the nanny state.

Soap doesn’t work. Toilets don’t flush. Clothes washers don’t clean. Light bulbs don’t illuminate. Refrigerators break too soon. Paint discolors. Lawnmowers have to be hacked. It’s all caused by idiotic government regulations that are wrecking our lives one consumer product at a time, all in ways we hardly notice.

And he points out another item to add to our list.

We now have gas cans that don’t work nearly as well as they used to because of mindless bureaucracy.

Who would make a can without a vent unless it was done under duress? After all, everyone knows to vent anything that pours. Otherwise, it doesn’t pour right and is likely to spill. …The whole trend began in (wait for it) California. …The notion spread and was picked up by the EPA, which is always looking for new and innovative ways to spread as much human misery as possible. …So…you have not been able to buy gas cans that work properly. They are not permitted to have a separate vent. The top has to close automatically.

Environmental zealots tell us we need these poorly functioning gas cans to save the environment from vapor.

But as Tucker explains, the policy is backfiring.

…don’t tell me about spillage. It is far more likely to spill when the gas is gurgling out in various uneven ways, when one spout has to both pour and suck in air. …There is no possible rationale for these kinds of regulations. It can’t be about emissions really, since the new cans are more likely to result in spills.

Amen.

This is a never-ending nightmare when I mow my lawn. When it’s time to refill the gas tank, I know gas is going to spill regardless of how careful I am.

I can’t imagine that’s good for the environment (I’m sure it releases far more vapor than would seep into the atmosphere with a vent), but I confess that my main concern is that gas dribbles onto a hot lawnmower engine. So I’m always poised to run away from my mower if the thing bursts into flame.

Oh, the joy of red tape!

Writing for Forbes, Clyde Wayne Crews also has commented on this inane and counter-productive regulation.

…when I first tried to use these new gas cans a few months after purchase I was shocked at their new spring-loaded, Mousetrap game style…spouts. …You need three hands to operate today’s gas can spouts. You’ll start each project spilling more gas than you get into the mower, motorcycle, car or whichever. In other words, you will create more vapor emissions than you ever would have otherwise. …No gas cans available for sale anymore have vents on the opposite top-side either, so when trying to pour you get a sloshing, heaving mess, burping gasoline eruptions leaking from the complex yet flimsy spout that easily breaks.

But Wayne very helpfully proposes a solution…assuming one is willing to incur a small risk.

…in order to harm the Earth less with a normal, non-polluting spout, I was wondering about workarounds for the inhumane, vapor-spewing trick spouts the environmentally unfriendly EPA forces you to buy to increase pollution. With a bit of searching, I found so-called EZ Pour “water” jugs. Note: You and I cannot use these alternatives to pour gasoline into vehicles or equipment, since that is an illegal non-EPA bureaucrat-approved hack, but they can be used to pour “liquid,” however.

The EPA can have our EZ Pour jugs when they pry them from our cold, dead, non-polluting fingers!

I had some fun in 2013 by pointing out that when they outlaw tanks, only outlaws will have tanks. Who could have predicted we’d be saying the same thing about well-functioning gas cans?

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Sin Taxes and the Nanny State

Here are three things I’ve written about tax policy. See if you can detect a pattern:

• I’ve written that I don’t want a value-added tax because the money would be used to finance bigger government.
• I’ve also explained I don’t want a carbon tax because the revenue from such a levy would finance bigger government.
• I’ve given thumbs down to financial transactions taxes as well because I don’t want to finance bigger government.

Just in case it’s not obvious, the common theme is that I don’t want to give politicians new sources of revenue that would be used to expand the burden of government spending.

Some of my technocrat friends get upset by these writings. They argue, often correctly, that some of these taxes are not as destructive as the current tax code.

My response is that they’re making an irrelevant argument. Politicians who advocate the above taxes are not proposing to eliminate the income tax and repeal the 16th Amendment. Instead, they simply want to levy a new tax without fully repealing the awful system that already exists.

And now there’s a new tax idea gaining steam.

The Task Force on Fiscal Policy for Health…will examine the evidence on excise tax policy for health, including barriers to implementation, and make recommendations on how countries can best leverage fiscal policies to yield improved health outcomes for their citizens with the added benefit of bringing in additional revenue.

For readers who aren’t familiar with DC bureaucrat-speak, “leverage fiscal policies” means higher taxes. More specifically, advocates want higher “sin taxes” on unhealthy food and drink.

This Task Force is being spearheaded by Larry Summers (yes, that Larry Summers) and Mike Bloomberg (yes, that Mike Bloomberg), so it’s no surprise that this pair of leftists view “additional revenue” as an “added benefit.”

While my focus is on the negative fiscal and economic consequences of higher taxes and more spending, it’s worth pointing out the moral and practical argument against sin taxes.

Bill Wirtz, in a column for CapX, warns that nanny-state policies treat people as infants.

2017 has seen yet another increase in lifestyle regulations and sin taxes… Historically, it was social conservatives pushing for this kind of meddling. …How different is today’s excruciatingly irritating public health lobby…? Food and non-alcoholic drinks are…under fire, and blamed for a range of health issues. France and Ireland are now cracking down on that scourge on society: fizzy drinks. Ireland introduced a new tax on sugary drinks, while France increased the tax created in 2012 under French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Such policies are highly regressive… When Denmark introduced its controversial tax on fatty foods, consumers simply switched to cheaper – but equally unhealthy – alternatives. The country’s diet did not improve. …We are adults and we sometimes make decisions for ourselves which are unhealthy. The answer is for us to moderate our consumption, not quasi-prohibition. It’s time to stop infantilising the…consumer.

Charles Hughes of the Manhattan Institute reviews what happened with a new sin tax on sweetened beverages in Seattle.

Seattle recently became the latest major city to enact a sweetened beverage tax. …customers are reeling from sticker shock. One local reporter found that the tax added $10.34 to a case of Gatorade, bringing the final price to more than $26.00. …One of the justifications for beverage taxes is that customers will respond to price changes by reducing consumption of taxed beverages. The mechanism here is straightforward: tax something to get less of it. If people were to substitute diet sodas or other, less-harmful beverages for sugared sodas, they would be healthier.

But will such a policy work?

Many people are likely to avoid the tax by traveling to other untaxed locations to purchase groceries. Costco tells its customers about locations outside the city that are not subject to the beverage tax. …so the tax will have limited success in its health-related goals while also harming local businesses and failing to generate revenue.

Yet the fact the tax will be a failure at generating revenue isn’t stopping the city was squandering the money.

…revenue has already been allocated to a smorgasbord of causes, ranging from $500,000 for displaced worker retraining, to more than $1 million in tax administration costs, to vouchers to purchase fruits and vegetables.

While I’m glad consumers are escaping the tax by buying beverages from outside the city’s borders, in an ideal world, they would react in a bolder fashion.

If nothing else, the pro-tax crowd has a very elastic definition of sin.

They even want to tax meat.

Move over, taxes on carbon and sugar: the global levy that may be next is meat. Some investors are betting governments around the world will find a way to start taxing meat production… Meat could encounter the same fate as tobacco, carbon and sugar, which are currently taxed in 180, 60, and 25 jurisdictions around the world, respectively, according to a report Monday from investor group the FAIRR (Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return) Initiative. Lawmakers in Denmark, Germany, China and Sweden have discussed creating livestock-related taxes in the past two years.

By the way, the supposed Conservative Party in the United Kingdom is pushing sin taxes to finance bigger government.

The sugar tax was announced by Chancellor Philip Hammond in his budget statement in 2017. He said the money raised as part of the levy would go to the Department for Education. The former Chancellor said the new levy would be put on drinks companies and they would be taxed according to how much sugar was in their beverages. Two categories of taxation are set to come into force. One on the total sugar content on drinks with more than 5g per 100ml and a higher levy for drinks with 8g per 100ml or more. …The new tax could whack up the cost of a 2 litre bottle of Coca-Cola (10.6g per 100ml) by as much as 48p.

The nanny-state crowd complains that this isn’t enough.

Health campaigners have said the fizzy drinks tax should be extended to cover all chocolate, sweets and other confectionery containing the highest levels of sugar. …Action on Sugar is urging a mandatory levy set at a minimum of 20 per cent on all confectionery products that contain high levels of sugar.

Politicians in other nations also are using this excuse to extract more money from the citizenry.

Other countries have introduced similar measures and have seen some success in reducing the drinking of fizzy drinks. Mexico introduced a 10 per cent tax on sugary drinks in 2014 and saw a 12 per cent reduction over the first year. Hungary brought in a tax on the drinks companies and saw a 40 per cent decrease in the amount of sugar in the products. Brits will be joining some of our European neighbours with the move with similar measures in place on drinks in France and Finland and the Norwegians chocolate tax.

Let’s sum this up. The case against sin taxes is based on two simple principles.

1. Politicians want to seize more of our money in order to have greater ability to buy votes. Saying no to tax increases is a necessary (though sadly not sufficient) condition for good fiscal policy.
2. Politicians want to tell us how to live our lives. But that’s not their job, even in cases where I agree with the underlying advice. Coerced good behavior is not a sign of virtue.

The bottom line is that some proponents of sin taxes presumably have their hearts in the right place. But they need their brains in a good place as well. If they want to be taken seriously, at the very least they should match their proposed sin taxes with permanent repeal of an existing tax of similar magnitude.

For example, offer to trade a sugar tax for repeal of the death tax. Or suggest a fat tax accompanied by elimination of the capital gains tax.

Until we see such offers, advocates of sin taxes should be met with unyielding opposition.

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The Nanny State, Showerheads, and the Declining Quality of Life

When I write about regulation, I usually focus on big-picture issues involving economic costs, living standards, and competitiveness.

Those are very important concerns, but the average person in American probably gets more irked by rules that impact the quality of life.

• Inferior light bulbs
• Substandard toilets
• Inadequate washing machines
• Crummy dishwashers

That’s a grim list, but it’s time to augment it.

Jeffrey Tucker of the Foundation for Economic Education explains that the government also has made showering a less pleasant experience. He starts by expressing envy about Brazilian showers.

…was shocked with delight at the shower in Brazil. …step into the shower and you have a glorious capitalist experience. Hot water, really hot, pours down on you like a mighty and unending waterfall… At least the socialists in Brazil knew better than to destroy such an essential of civilized life.

I know what he’s talking about.

I’m in a hotel (not in Brazil), and my shower this morning was a tedious experience because the water flow was so anemic.

Why would a hotel not want customers to have an enjoyable and quick shower?

The answer is government.

…here we’ve forgotten. We have long lived with regulated showers, plugged up with a stopper imposed by government controls imposed in 1992. There was no public announcement. It just happened gradually. After a few years, you couldn’t buy a decent shower head. They called it a flow restrictor and said it would increase efficiency. By efficiency, the government means “doesn’t work as well as it used to.” …You can see the evidence of the bureaucrat in your shower if you pull off the showerhead and look inside. It has all this complicated stuff inside, whereas it should just be an open hole, you know, so the water could get through. The flow stopper is mandated by the federal government.

The problem isn’t just the water coming out of the showerhead. It’s the water coming into your home.

It’s not just about the showerhead. The water pressure in our homes and apartments has been gradually getting worse for two decades, thanks to EPA mandates on state and local governments. This has meant that even with a good showerhead, the shower is not as good as it might be. It also means that less water is running through our pipes, causing lines to clog and homes to stink just slightly like the sewer. This problem is much more difficult to fix, especially because plumbers are forbidden by law from hacking your water pressure.

So why are politicians and bureaucrats imposing these rules?

Ostensibly for purposes of conservation.

…what about the need to conserve water? Well, the Department of the Interior says that domestic water use, which includes even the water you use on your lawn and flower beds, constitutes a mere 2% of the total, so this unrelenting misery spread by government regulations makes hardly a dent in the whole. In any case, what is the point of some vague sense of “conserving” when the whole purpose of modern appliances and indoor plumbing is to improve our lives and sanitation? (Free societies have a method for knowing how much of something to use or not use; it is called the signaling system of prices.)

Jeffrey is right. If there really is a water shortage (as there sometimes is in parts of the country and world), then prices are the best way of encouraging conservation.

Now let’s dig in the archives of the Wall Street Journal for a 2010 column on the showerhead issue.

Apparently bureaucrats are irked that builders and consumers used multiple showerheads to boost the quality of their daily showers.

Regulators are going after some of the luxury shower fixtures that took off in the housing boom. Many have multiple nozzles, cost thousands of dollars and emit as many as 12 gallons of water a minute. In May, the DOE stunned the plumbing-products industry when it said it would adopt a strict definition of the term “showerhead”… A 1992 federal law says a showerhead can deliver no more than 2.5 gallons per minute at a flowing water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch. For years, the term “showerhead” in federal regulations was understood by many manufacturers to mean a device that directs water onto a bather. Each nozzle in a shower was considered separate and in compliance if it delivered no more than the 2.5-gallon maximum. But in May, the DOE said a “showerhead” may incorporate “one or more sprays, nozzles or openings.” Under the new interpretation, all nozzles would count as a single showerhead and be deemed noncompliant if, taken together, they exceed the 2.5 gallons-a-minute maximum.

And here’s something that’s both amusing and depressing.

The regulations are so crazy that an entrepreneur didn’t think they were real.

Altmans Products, a U.S. unit of Grupo Helvex of Mexico City, says it got a letter from the DOE in January and has stopped selling several popular models, including the Shower Rose, which delivers 12 gallons of water a minute. Pedro Mier, the firm’s vice president, says his customers “just like to feel they’re getting a lot of water.” Until getting the DOE letter, his firm didn’t know U.S. law limited showerhead water usage, Mr. Mier says. “At first, I thought it was a scam.”

Unsurprisingly, California is “leading” the way. Here are some passages from an article in the L.A. Times from almost two years ago.

The flow of water from shower heads and bathroom faucets in California will be sharply reduced under strict new limits approved Wednesday by the state Energy Commission. Current rules, established in 1994 at the federal level, allow a maximum flow of 2.5 gallons per minute from a shower head. Effective next July, the limit will fall to 2.0 gallons per minute and will be reduced again in July 2018, to 1.8 gallons, giving California the toughest standard of any U.S. state.

Though “toughest standard” is the wrong way to describe what’s happening. It’s actually the “worst shower” of any state.

P.S. I forget the quality of shower I experienced in South Korea, but I was very impressed (see postscript) by the toilet.

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Welfare, Taxes, the Nanny State, and Supply-Side Economics

What’s the right way to define good tax policy? There are several possible answers to that question, including the all-important observation that the goal should be to only collect the amount of revenue needed to finance the legitimate functions of government, and not one penny above that amount.

But what if we want a more targeted definition? A simple principle to shape our understanding of tax policy?

I’m partial to what I wrote last year.

…the essential insight of supply-side economics…when you tax something, you get less of it.

I’m not claiming this is my idea, by the way. It’s been around for a long time.

Indeed, it’s rumored that Reagan shared a version of this wisdom.

I don’t know if the Gipper actually said those exact words, but his grasp of tax policy was very impressive. And the changes he made led to very good results, even if folks on the left still refuse to believe the IRS data showing that Reagan’s lower tax rates on the rich generated more revenue.

In any event, our friends on the nanny-state left actually understand this principle when it suits their purposes. They propose sugar taxes, soda taxes, carbon taxes, housing taxes, tanning taxes, tobacco taxes, and even “adult entertainment” taxes with the explicit goal of using the tax code to reduce the consumption of things they don’t like.

I don’t like the idea of government trying to dictate people do with their own money, but these so-called sin taxes generally are successful because supply-siders are right about taxes impacting incentives.

But that doesn’t mean it’s always popular when statist governments impose such policies. At least not in Belarus, according to a story from RFERL.

Protests over a new tax aimed at reducing social welfare spread beyond the Belarusian capital, as thousands took to the streets in Homel and other towns. Along with similar protests two days earlier in Minsk, the February 19 demonstrations were some of the largest in the country in years. In Homel, near the border with Russia, at least 1,000 people marched and chanted slogans against the measure, known as the “Law Against Social Parasites.”

But what are “social parasites” and what does the law do?

…the law…requires people who were employed fewer than 183 days in a calendar year to pay a tax of about $200. …The measure is aimed at combating what President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has called “social parasitism.”

For what it’s worth, the Washington Post reports that the government had to back down.

The protesters won. On Thursday, Lukashenko announced that he won’t enforce the measure this year, though he’s not scrapping it. “We will not collect this money for 2016 from those who were meant to pay it,” he told the state news agency Belta. Those who have already paid will get a rebate if they get a job this year. The law, signed into effect in 2015, is reminiscent of Soviet-era crackdowns against the jobless, who undermined the state’s portrayal of a “workers’ paradise.”

That’s good news.

If people can somehow survive without working (assuming they’re not mooching off taxpayers, which is something that should be discouraged), more power to them. It’s not the life I would want, but it’s not the role of government to tax them if they don’t work. Or if they simply choose to work 182 days per year.

Mr. Lukashenko should concentrate instead on taking the heavy foot of government off the neck of his people. According to the most-recent Index of Economic Freedom, Belarus is only ranked #104, with especially weak scores for “rule of law” and “open markets.”

If he turns his country into a Slavic version of Hong Kong, based on free markets and small government, people will be clamoring to work. But I’m not holding my breath expecting that to happen.

P.S. While government shouldn’t tax people for not working, it’s also a bad idea to subsidize them for not working. Indeed, there’s even a version of the Laffer Curve for poverty and redistribution.

P.P.S. Given the low freedom ranking for Belarus, I suspect the real parasites in that country (just like in the U.S.) are the various interest groups that are feeding from the government trough.

P.P.P.S. On an amusing note, here’s the satirical British video on killing the poor instead of taxing them.

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Sex, Government, and the Laffer Curve

Over the years, I’ve run into oddball stories about what happens when politicians and bureaucrats get involved with matters relating to sex.

• California bureaucrats are regulating participants in porn films, as humorously described by Mark Steyn.
• The World Bank is paying poor young women so they don’t take up with sugar daddies.
• Obamacare is so costly that some young women are looking for sugar daddies.
• Obamacare also subsidizes Viagra for sex offenders.
• British taxpayers are financing sex trips to Amsterdam.
• The U.S. Tax Court has ruled that money spent on sex change operations is deductible.
• The law in Hawaii allows cops to have sex with prostitutes.
• In Germany, by contrast, prostitutes have to use parking meters to pay tax.
• A brothel in Austria offered free sex to customers to protest high taxes.
• Pakistani officials use transsexuals to encourage tax payments.
• But in Colorado, you can get busted (no pun intended) for cutting hair while topless, but not because you’re bare-chested.
• Topless dancing isn’t artistic and therefore is subject to sales tax according to a New York judge.
• The United Nations wants taxpayer-financed birth control to be a human right.
• And in Spain, porn has a lower tax rate than the theatre.

And here are two more examples. Government isn’t involved yet, but will be if statists get their way.

• Leftists concocted a crazy theory that tax havens promote sex slavery.
• And other leftists hypothesized that climate change promotes prostitution and AIDS.

Let’s add to our collection. We now have new evidence in favor of the Laffer Curve, thanks to Illinois politicians levying a tax on strip clubs.

Here are some excerpts from a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

…she and others…were expecting at least $1 million to be raised…the Live Adult Entertainment Facility Surcharge tax…went into effect Jan. 1, 2013, with the first monies collected in fiscal year 2014. For that fiscal year, the State Department of Revenue reported $405,996.62 in revenue; over the next two fiscal years, the amounts collected were a bit more — $501,334.85 for fiscal year 2015 and $532,271.46 for fiscal year 2016. The state’s newest ‘sin tax,’ which poses a tax on facilities that serve alcohol and that have live adult entertainment, includes topless, nude dancing and stripping. “They were expecting it to raise quite a bit of revenue,” McClanahan said of the tax on strip-club type facilities… “We anticipated it would be a greater number of clubs that would be paying and we would have anticipated about a million in revenue,” Poskin said. “So I don’t know if that if the tax that they’re paying is accurate and consistent with their gross receipts.”

The bottom line (no pun intended) is that politicians collected about half as much money as originally projected.

It’s unclear, to be sure, why the revenues didn’t materialize.

The clubs are probably engaging in a bit of avoidance and evasion, which is quite common in all areas of the economy when tax burdens increase.

And the clubs presumably are suffering from a loss of business because of the tax, which also is a common effect of higher tax burdens in all sectors of the economy.

Which gives me an excuse to make a broader point about the economy-wide implication of higher tax burdens.

Scott Sumner compares output in the U.S. and the four biggest European nations (Germany, U.K., France, and Italy), observes that per-capita tax collections in the U.S. are almost as high as they are in these other countries with far higher tax burdens, and has some must-read analysis about the very high economic cost of getting additional tax revenue.

…tax rates in the US are about 31% lower than in Europe, so there is a lot of scope for tax increases in the US. But how much revenue would those higher taxes actually collect—in the long run? This data suggests not very much. …we are in a region where disincentive effects are kicking in. GDP per person in these four countries is about 25.5% lower than in the US (PPP), so they only raise about 7.5% more revenue that we do, despite far higher tax rates. …The mistake that progressives make is to see the huge US GDP as a sort of piggy bank from which money can be raised for any policy objectives, without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. …it’s clear that progressivism can never succeed in America. The only question is how badly it will fail.

Looking at all this data, the one important question that must be asked is how anyone could possibly think that it’s a good idea to sacrifice 25.5 percent of our income in order to give politicians 7.5 percent more tax revenue.

By the way, for those who think Scott’s conclusions are somehow illegitimate because they’re based on back-of-the-envelope calculations, check out the very detailed and rigorous analysis from the European Central Bank that found an even larger negative relationship between tax revenue and foregone economic output.

In other words, there is a Laffer Curve. When tax burdens climb, taxable income falls. Which is just another way of stating that the cost of higher taxes isn’t just that politicians take our money. They also impose lots of damage on the economy, which means we suffer from lower earnings.

So it’s a double-whammy. They tax more, we earn less.

P.S. While I don’t want politicians involved with sex, I must confess that there’s also some compelling evidence that people don’t want economists involved with sex.

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Get the Federal Government Out of Our Stomachs

Back in 2010, I joked that the Libertarian Party should give Barack Obama a Man-of-the-Year Award because his failed policies rejuvenated interest in limits of federal power.

Though, in retrospect, perhaps the GOP should have given Obama the Award since Republicans reaped the short-term benefits.

In any event, let’s not get distracted by electoral politics. That’s because we have another tongue-in-cheek award. It’s time for the Libertarian Party to give its Woman-of-the-Year Award to Michelle Obama.

Why? Because the First Lady has single-handedly managed to discredit the federal government’s program to subsidize school lunches.

In short, there are now all sorts of federal regulations and mandates that have simultaneously made the program most costly for schools and resulted in food that is less appealing to students.

In other words, she’s helping to teach the next generation that big government makes your life less pleasant. That’s usually a lesson young people don’t learn until they get their first paycheck.

Let’s look at the results of Ms. Obama’s handiwork.

Citing a report from the Government Accountability Office, the Wall Street Journal opines on how Washington has made the school lunch program become far less appealing.

America’s youth are voting with their forks: …participation has plunged for the second year in a row by 1.4 million children, or 4.5%, as they flee inedible government-designed cuisine. …In the name of better eating habits, the USDA has published 141 memos with mandates reaching down to quotas across “vegetable subgroups” and bans on salt and sandwiches. …this cookbook…runs to some 4,700 pages and counting… GAO auditors toured 14 schools in eight states for an on-site look at how kids and cafeterias are responding, and they report that the regulatory deluge is “overwhelming.”

Though I’m glad to see that some local governments and students are engaging in civil disobedience.

“…two had nevertheless been serving pasta that was not in compliance with the whole grain-rich requirement.” …The auditors found students in two schools who carried contraband salt shakers.

Gasp! Non-compliant pasta and contraband salt?!?

Surely it’s time to sic the IRS on these scofflaws.

Or maybe we should learn a different lesson, which the WSJ succinctly identifies.

This exercise has been an epic waste of food and taxpayer money.

Some statist readers doubtlessly are saying that the higher cost is worthwhile because students (even if they don’t like it) are being forced to eat healthier.

Um…not exactly.

Amazingly, the federal government managed to decrease consumption of fruits and vegetables (FV) even though that’s one of the main goals of the new rules. Here’s an excerpt from a scholarly study.

Since 2012, the USDA’s requirement that children select FVs at lunch as part of the reimbursable school meal has been met with concern and evidence of food waste. We compared elementary schoolchildren’s FV selection, consumption, and waste before (10 school visits, 498 tray observations) and after (11 school visits, 944 tray observations) implementation of this requirement using validated dietary assessment measures. More children selected FVs in higher amounts when FVs were required compared with when they were optional (0.69 cups vs. 0.89 cups, p,0.001); however, consumption decreased slightly (0.51 cups vs. 0.45 cups, p50.01) and waste increased (0.25 cups vs. 0.39 cups, p,0.001) when FVs were required compared with when they were optional.

As reported by the Washington Examiner, even the School Nutrition Association is not exactly happy with the federal government’s nanny-state approach to school lunches.

Schools nationwide are being forced to raid their education budgets to cover the costs of federally-mandated school lunches, rejected by students because they taste bad, according to a group the represents school nutrition professionals. Once a profit center for schools, cafeterias have become a financial black hole… And the deficits are being made up by cafeteria worker firings and budget shifting, according to the School Nutrition Association.

The Washington Examiner story represents an interesting development since it’s a sign of a schism between two interest groups – government workers and nanny staters – that normally are part of the same coalition.

So further kudos to Ms. Obama for causing discord on the left.

Though when push comes to shove, the nanny staters lose.

Here’s a real-world example of how the federal government has botched the program. A Montana school board has decided it makes more sense to reject handouts from Uncle Sam.

Bozeman school board members voted 5-3 to pull the high school out of the National School Lunch Program because federal regulations on calories, fat, sugar, sodium, whole grains and other nutritional elements championed by the first lady were driving students off campus for lunch… School officials realized it was financially advantageous to forgo $117,000 in federal food subsidies tied to the National School Lunch Program to draw students back into the cafeteria, and it seems they were correct. …Across the district, the food service program is $1,441 in the black so far for the 2015-16 school year. The food service budget ended last school year $16,000 in the red… And school food service workers told board members students are now getting high quality food from local sources, rather than pre-packaged meals promoted by the government.

Let’s now shift gears and look at other ways the federal government screws up when it gets involved with what goes in our stomachs.

For years, bureaucrats in Washington have tried to tell all of us, not just students, what we should eat and drink.

Well, it turns out that they were giving us bum advice. Here are a few excerpts from some analysis in the Washington Post.

U.S. dietary guidelines have long recommended that people steer clear of whole milk… Whole milk sales shrunk. It was banned from school lunch programs. Purchases of low-fat dairy climbed. “Replace whole milk and full-fat milk products with fat-free or low-fat choices,” says the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the federal government’s influential advice book, citing the role of dairy fat in heart disease.

Was this advice helpful?

Not so much. At least if the goal is better health.

…research published in recent years indicates that the opposite might be true: millions might have been better off had they stuck with whole milk. Scientists who tallied diet and health records for several thousand patients over ten years found, for example, that contrary to the government advice, people who consumed more milk fat had lower incidence of heart disease.

By the way, it’s not just whole milk. One of my Cato colleagues, Walter Olson, points out that the government has a long track record of botching recommendations.

Previous advice from Washington about the supposed hazards of eggs and other cholesterol-laden foods, the advantages of replacing butter and other animal fats with trans fats, and the gains to be made from switching from regular to diet soda, have all had to be re-evaluated and sometimes reversed in later years.

So what lessons should we learn?

Let’s turn to David Boaz, another colleague from the Cato Institute. He succinctly explains that government shouldn’t be involved in our diets.

It’s understandable that some scientific studies turn out to be wrong. Science is a process of trial and error, hypothesis and testing. Some studies are bad, some turn out to have missed complicating factors, some just point in the wrong direction. I have no criticism of scientists’ efforts to find evidence about good nutrition and to report what they (think they) have learned. My concern is that we not use government coercion to tip the scales either in research or in actual bans and mandates and Official Science. Let scientists conduct research, let other scientists examine it, let journalists report it, let doctors give us advice. But let’s keep nutrition – and much else – in the realm of persuasion, not force. First, because it’s wrong to use force against peaceful people, and second, because we might be wrong. This last point reflects the humility that is an essential part of the libertarian worldview.

Very well said.

Let’s close with one final example to demonstrate the bad things that happen when the federal government gets involved with food.

Writing for the Foundation for Economic Education, my old buddy Jim Bovard explains how biased bureaucrats are deliberately exaggerating hunger in America.

The Agriculture Department announced this morning that 48 million Americans live in “food insecure” households. Soon you’ll hear we’re suffering an epidemic of hunger. While the federal government is already feeding more than 100 million Americans, we’ll be told that it just isn’t enough. But it isn’t true. “Food insecurity” is a statistic designed to mislead. USDA defines food insecurity as being “uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.”

But this doesn’t mean anyone is going without food, as Jim notes.

The definition of “food insecure” includes anyone who frets about not being able to purchase food at any point. If someone states that they feared running out of food for a single day (but didn’t run out), that is an indicator of being “food insecure” for the entire year — regardless of whether they ever missed a single meal. If someone wants organic kale but can afford only conventional kale, that is another “food insecure” indicator.

Needless to say, statists predictably use the federal government’s biased stats to push for…you guessed it…more government!

After the 2009 USDA food security report was released, President Obama announced that “hunger rose significantly last year. … My administration is committed to reversing the trend of rising hunger.” …USDA food security reports, by creating the illusion of a national hunger epidemic, have helped propel a vast increase in federal food aid in recent years. …The insecurity = hunger switcheroo is also fueling campaigns to compel schools to give free breakfasts to all kids after school starts each day. …USDA has never attempted to create an accurate gauge to measure actual hunger. Instead, citizens are supposed to be satisfied with federal reports that are little more than a subsidy for political grandstanding.

I know what lesson I hope people learn from the deceit, waste, and foolishness discussed today.

We should end any role for the federal government in food. That means ending all the misguided programs discussed above.

It also means abolishing the food stamp program and letting states decide whether such subsidies are desirable.

And it means shutting down the entire Department of Agriculture.

Like all sensible libertarians, I don’t like the idea of having the federal government in my wallet or my bedroom. Perhaps we also need to say we don’t want Washington in our stomachs either.

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The Foreign Edition of Great Moments in Government

It would require several people, working around the clock, to provide daily updates about the bizarre and senseless actions of the crowd in Washington.

And you’d need many additional people to monitor the foolish decisions in state capitals.

I certainly try to do my small part, sharing example of jaw-dropping vapidity by our overseers in government (especially in New York City and California).

But I don’t like to discriminate, which is why I periodically highlight inane behavior by foreign bureaucrats and politicians. And we have two perfect examples today. We’ll start north of the border.

Here are some passages from a CBC report about nanny-state overkill from Canada (h/t: Lenore Skenazy).

Clayton, 8, and Kristopher Cadieux, 10, started their business last summer, digging up worms and selling them as bait for $2.50 per dozen. But after a complaint from a neighbour, the brothers received a note from the city saying they were breaking a bylaw and had to shut down their business. The mayor of Cornwall, Leslie O’Shaughnessy, explained that the bylaw requires all personal business sales be conducted within the home, without outdoor signage. …The city told the brothers to move their business inside their home, and to take down their signs on their front lawn. …Kristopher said the worm enterprise only brought in about $34 a month last summer, and he doesn’t understand why he and his brother are being told they can’t sell worms from their front lawn.

How dare these kids display entrepreneurship.They’re almost as bad as the Canadian kid who got in trouble for stopping a knife attack.

But I still think America wins the prize for teaching kids bad lessons. After all, local government officials have heroically thwarted rogue operators of unregulated and unlicensed lemonade stands, in California, Georgia, and Oregon!

Without adequate government supervision, you never know what might happen. If you allow kids to engage in voluntary exchange, maybe that will be the gateway step to other forms of anti-social behavior. Such as snow removal without government approval. Or giving topless haircuts without a cosmetology license!

Our second example of foreign government stupidity comes from the United Kingdom, which is infamous for astounding – and embarrassing – episodes of political correctness.

But this latest example, reported by the U.K.-based Metro, represent the ultimate triumph of the P.C. culture (h/t: Amy Alkon).

…according to one school, Wonder Woman and her Golden Lasso of Truth are…not suitable lunchbox fodder. According to Redditor twines18, who posted a copy of the letter and offending lunchbox on Imgur, the lunchbox contravened the schools dress code which states children aren’t allowed to bring ‘violent images’ into the building. The letter states: ‘We have defined “violent characters” as those who solve problems using violence. Super heroes certainly fall into that category.’

Part of me is convinced this is a joke, but it seems legit.

And let’s remember this is coming from a nation where anti-gun fanaticism results in jaw-dropping displays of government stupidity.

Anyhow, here’s the letter that was sent to the parents.

So solving problems using violence is bad?

I guess that means this school doesn’t teach the kids about World War II. After all, Churchill and other U.K. leaders obviously took the wrong approach. I’m sure a big group hug would have sufficed to stop Hitler and the rest of the National Socialists.

P.S. Speaking of England, the U.K.-based Spectator reports that local universities have an unfortunate habit of filling the heads of foreign students with very bad economic theories. And when those students gain power in their home countries, you get very bad results.

Varoufakis was a product of British universities. He read economics at Essex and mathematical statistics at Birmingham, returning to Essex to do a PhD in economics. With the benefit of his British university education he returned to Greece and, during his short time in office, obliterated the nascent recovery. …But Varoufakis is not alone. Plenty of other visitors to our universities have been influenced by the teaching here and returned to their countries to wreak havoc. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of an independent India…was influenced by British intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw, a socialist, Bertrand Russell, who once remarked ‘communism is necessary to the world’, and John Maynard Keynes. He returned to India and started to put the ideology into practice with state planning, controls and regulations. This was a calamity. …Julius Nyerere, president of Tanzania,…read economics and history at Edinburgh (as did Gordon Brown). Naturally he was surrounded by leftist academics and apparently ‘encountered Fabian thinking’ in particular. The experience made it all but inevitable that Tanzania would endure a bloated bureaucracy, shortages and miserably low growth. …the London School of Economics can rightly claim more than its share, of course. Jomo Kenyatta, first prime minister of Kenya after independence, went there. …overblown, corrupt state industries and attempted import substitution took their toll, so that GDP growth per capita was low and, in some years, negative. …Pierre Trudeau…came to the LSE for his doctorate. He did not finish it but the LSE nonetheless gave him a finishing course in leftist economics. Under his rule, Canada introduced wage and price controls while inflation, unemployment and the national debt all rose. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, variously president and prime minister of Pakistan, went to…Oxford. …once he had gained power, declaring ‘socialism is our economy’, he nationalised the steel, chemical, cement and banking industries along with the flour, rice and cotton mills. Economic growth slowed to a crawl.

Wow, what a rogue’s gallery of statist politicians.

Though, to be fair, I don’t think you automatically get bad ideas by studying economics in the United Kingdom. It’s a function of being “taught” be misguided professors.

After all, just think what must happen to foreign students in America who take classes from Paul Krugman. If these examples (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) are any indication, they probably experience un-learning.

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The Regulatory State’s War against Modern Life

When writing about the burden of regulation, I often share big numbers about aggregate cost, job losses, time wasted, and foregone growth.

But I sometimes wonder if such data is effective in the battle for good policy.

Maybe it’s better, at least in some cases, to focus on regulations that affect quality of life for regular people. Lots of ordinary citizens, for instance, are irked that they’re now forced to use inferior light bulbs, substandard toilets, and inadequate washing machines because of regulatory silliness from Washington.

And it looks like we’ll now be forced to use dishwashers that don’t clean dishes thanks to proposed regulations that will reduce water use (which is in addition to a 2012 regulation that already restricted water use).

The Hill reports on the Nanny State’s latest salvo in the war against modern civilization.

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers is accusing the Department of Energy (DOE) of a politically motivated drive to increase dishwasher efficiency standards, which are so bad that they would cause consumers to re-wash dishes, erasing any efficiency gains. Rob McAver, the group’s head lobbyist, said regulators are going too far and the new rules will allow only 3.1 gallons to be used to wash each load of dishes. …They then ran standard tests with food stuck to dishes. “They found some stuff that was pretty disgusting,” McAver said. …“The poor performance that would result would totally undercut and go backwards in terms of energy and water use, because of the need for running the dishwasher again, or pre-rinsing or hand-washing, which uses a lot of water,” he said.

Great, another bone-headed step by the government that will make life less enjoyable.

I’m already one of those people who rinse my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher because I hate the idea that they won’t be fully clean afterwards.

So I can only imagine how bad it will be if this absurd example of red tape is imposed and I have to buy a new dishwasher.

I guess I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that my current dishwasher doesn’t break down.

Especially since the rules make new dishwashers more expensive.

Ernest Istook, former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, wrote in a Washington Times piece that complying with the 2012 rule, based on DOE estimates, added roughly $44 to the cost of each machine. “Now their 2015 proposal will add another $99 to the price tag, even by DOE’s own admission,” he wrote.

Julie Borowski has the right assessment. Her column for Freedom Works is from 2012, but it’s very appropriate still today.

Are you disappointed in every shower head that you purchase? Does your toilet have trouble flushing? Have you noticed that your dishes are still dirty after the dishwasher cycle is completed? …Some of us may be quick to blame the manufacturer of these home appliances. But the manufacturers are just abiding by the costly regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy.

What’s really frustrating is that these regulations reduce the quality of life without even reducing water usage.

…it has only led to people hacking their shower heads to remove the intrusion that is blocking water flow in order to have a more relaxing shower that actually gets them clean. There is no proof that the water restrictions have actually saved water because many people just end up taking longer showers than they otherwise would.

Amen. Every so often I wind up at a hotel with restricted-flow showerheads and it’s a hassle because I probably spend twice as long in the shower.

Not to mention problems government has created elsewhere in bathrooms.

…water restrictions are also the reason that our toilets have trouble flushing. Many of us have become accustomed to flushing the toilet multiple times before the toilet bowl is clear. The 1992 Energy Policy Act states that all toilets sold in the United States use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush. These water restrictions are the reason why we have to use plungers far more often than we used to.

I won’t torment readers with a TMI moment, but I will say that I now routinely flush at the halfway point when seated on a toilet. And even that doesn’t necessarily preclude a third flush at the end of the process.

The only good news is that this gives me a daily reminder that government has far too much power to micro-manage our lives.

Speaking of excessive government, here’s another example of the regulatory state run amok.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the federal milk police? Well, now we’ll have the federal pizza police, as explained by The Manhattan Institute.

Pizza makers could face fines and prison time under a new Food and Drug Administration rule for failing to provide calorie counts for their billions of combinations of pizza orders. …FDA’s menu labeling rule will go into effect on December 1st, 2016… If a company does not perfectly comply with the mandate, food may be rendered “misbranded” under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a violation that carries criminal penalties. Failure to comply with the regulation could lead to government seizure of food, a maximum $1,000 fine, and a one-year prison sentence. …Revising systems under strict compliance with the regulation’s guidelines is expected to cost Domino’s $1,600 to $4,700 per restaurant annually. In general, the rule is expected to cost businesses $537 million, losses that necessarily must be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

And I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that all this coercion and red tape will have no positive effect.

Several studies on the effectiveness of calorie displays suggest the mandate will have little to no effect on the public’s choices. In one study on menu-labeling in New York City, Brian Elbel, a professor at New York University, found that only 28 percent of people who saw calorie labels said that the information influenced their choices. There was no statistically significant change in calories purchased. In another study, Lisa Harnack of the University of Minnesota examined whether knowledge about calorie counts of menu items would influence how much a person ate, even if the information did not change ordering habits. A lab study revealed that, overall, consumers did not change how much they ate after receiving information about their food’s caloric content.

Which is why, when writing about this topic last year, I predicted “If this regulation is implemented, it will have zero measurable impact on American waistlines.”

P.S. Keep in mind we already have the federal bagpipe police, the federal pond police, and the federal don’t-whistle-at-whales police.

P.P.S. As I repeatedly warn, if the answer is more government, someone’s asked a very silly question.

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The U.S. vs U.K. Wimpiness Contest

It’s time for an updated version of the U.S. vs U.K. government stupidity contest.

This ongoing series has featured amazing feats of inane government, including the world’s most pointless road markings, photo-ID requirements for drain cleaner purchases, and a government so incompetent that it couldn’t give money away.

Today’s contest, though, is going to focus on examples of wimpiness from both sides of the Atlantic.

Here’s an excerpt from a story out of the United Kingdom. Apparently, one neurotic mother thinks her son is some sort of incompetent misfit.

OMG, he’s going to become a serial killer!!

A mother was left horrified after her 10-year-old son returned form Tesco’s supermarket with a pumpkin carving kit which included a sharp serrated blade. Natalie Greaves from Sheffield in South Yorkshire described her reaction to Shay returning home with the one pound kit: ‘I went berserk when he came home with it. ‘I couldn’t believe that he could pick that sort of thing up as a child – there should have been an age restriction on it.’

“Horrified”? “Beserk”? You must be kidding. If there’s someone in that family who shouldn’t be allowed around sharp objects, it’s the mother.

It’s almost enough to make me think the kid would be better off in foster care, notwithstanding my libertarian instincts that even bad homes are oftentimes better than state control.

But I also wonder what this says about the entire nation. Back in 2012, I shared some laughably pathetic examples of anti-gun political correctness from the United Kingdom and wondered how such inane behavior could exist in a country that “once ruled half the world.”

Needless to say, this story doesn’t reflect well on our cousins across the ocean.

But Americans are in no position to make fun of others since there are plenty of examples of brain-dead political correctness in the United States.

After all, you don’t want to throw stones if you live in a glass house. And when it comes to absurd anti-gun hysteria, government schools make Americans look like infantile idiots.

Here are parts of a story from a local news outlet in Alabama.

A Mobile mother is not happy about a controversial Mobile County School contract her daughter signed without her consent. The contract promises that her daughter will not kill or injure herself and others. …She said E R Dickson school officials crossed the line when they had her daughter sign a Mobile County Public Safety Contract without her being present.

This sounds serious. Are we talking about a 16-yr old gang member? A 17-yr old with psychiatric issues? A 15-yr old with a history of violence.

Ummm…not exactly.

The student, a 5-yr old girl named Elizabeth, was playing like a normal kid. Here are some of the details.

School officials told Rebecca they had to send Elizabeth home after an incident in class.  “They told me she drew something that resembled a gun,” said Rebecca. “According to them she pointed a crayon at another student and said, ‘pew pew,” said Rebecca. She said her child was given a questionnaire to evaluate her for suicidal thoughts. “[They] Asked her if she was depressed now,” said Rebecca. Without her permission, Rebecca said her child was given the Mobile County Public School Safety Contract to sign stating she wouldn’t kill herself or others. “While I was in the lobby waiting they had my 5-year-old sign a contract about suicide and homicide,” said Rebecca. …Rebecca is pushing to have the incident removed from her child’s record. She said school officials have requested Elizabeth see a psychiatrist.

As I’ve argued before, in cases like this it’s the school bureaucrats who need counseling.

So which nation wins the prize for the worst example of P.C. wimpiness?

I’m ashamed to say that the United States probably deserves that dubious honor. After all, the story from the U.K. involves one weird parent while the U.S. story involves a deliberate decision by an arm of government.

Though I will point out that it’s not just one screwy parent in the United Kingdom. Wimpiness appears to be pervasive.

The mum-of-three checked online and found similar carving kits with restrictions allowing only people over-18 to buy it. A Tesco spokesperson responded to this mother’s anger… ‘We were concerned by this incident and acted immediately to ensure all pumpkin carving knives will trigger an age restriction till prompt.’

So maybe the U.K. story belongs in the U.K. vs. U.S. private sector political correctness contest.

P.S. Let’s shift to a different topic. I recently wrote that the jihad against tobacco at the U.N.’s World Health Organization was a classic (and tragic) case of resources being diverted from something that genuinely matters, such as fighting deadly infectious disease.

A column in the Wall Street Journal makes the same point, only it identifies the silly crusade against sugar as the main example of mission creep.

The WHO’s record of handling epidemics over 30 years reveals a health system that is getting worse, not better. On at least four occasions the U.N. organization has failed to deal with major outbreaks of communicable disease. …The list of internal problems that cause the WHO to fumble when faced with an epidemic is no secret. …an array of disparate programs within the WHO—such as the current crusade against processed sugar and sugar beverages—have diverted time, attention and money from higher priorities, such as tracking and responding to epidemic diseases.

And the Washington Examiner has opined on the same issue.

Years of dramatically overstaffed city agencies, over-generous retirement promises to public employee unions, and white-elephant development projects had left the city unable to police its streets, keep street lamps on, maintain parks, or provide other basic government services, no matter how much the city government raised taxes. The lesson of Detroit is one that governments everywhere can learn: In a world with finite resources, governments that try to do too much end up neglecting even the essential. Detroit’s case is a microcosm of what Americans are now experiencing nationwide in several different areas — the evident inability of public health officials to manage the Ebola scare competently is just one of them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency that instructed a mildly symptomatic patient with known exposure to Ebola to board a commercial flight this week, spends millions annually on bonuses for top employees, bicycle paths, farmers markets, and other luxuries. …Even if they enjoy using the money the nation has for disease control and vaccine research to fund instead research on origami condoms and to appease politically active bicyclists, public health bureaucrats might do better in the future putting their massive budgets toward basic preparedness for precisely the kind of emergency the CDC was created to address.

I realize I’m being repetitive, but the moral of the story is that big government is incompetent government. As Mark Steyn has humorously explained, “our government is more expensive than any government in history – and we have nothing to show for it.“

The link between small government and effective government is something Calvin Coolidge understood. Needless to say, that’s not the attitude of the current occupant of the White House, which is why this bit of humor is worth sharing.

I think the unintentional video on Obama’s new Ebola Czar is even funnier, but whoever put this together gets high marks for cleverness.

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Great Moments in Government, from Banning Bake Sales to Limiting Mistresses

Michelle Obama wants the federal government to tell us what kind of food to eat.

I actually wouldn’t object if she merely used a bully pulpit to encourage healthier eating. But the busy-body crowd in Washington has a hard time distinguishing between giving advice and engaging in coercion.

So we now have legislation that gives Washington the power to interfere with food in local schools.

But not everybody is rolling over, particularly when federal rules are coercing states into banning bake sales. The National Journal reports on growing resistance to this absurd example of nanny statism from Washington. Here are some excerpts.

…states are…fighting nutrition standards that would considerably alter one of the most sacred rituals of the American public school system: bake sales. Twelve states have established their own policies to circumvent regulations in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 that apply to “competitive snacks,” or any foods and beverages sold to students on school grounds that are not part of the Agriculture Department’s school meal programs, according to the National Association of State Boards of Education. Competitive snacks appear in vending machines, school stores, and food and beverages, including items sold at bake sales. …The pushback is not about students’ taste buds, but their wallets. Food fundraisers are a crucial source of revenue for schools, state education officials say. “Tough economic times have translated into fewer resources and these fundraisers allow our schools to raise a considerable amount of money for very worthwhile education programs,” the Georgia Department of Education wrote in a recent press release. …The statement called the federal guidelines on fundraisers “an absolute overreach of the federal government.”

Kudos to the Georgia officials who complained about government overreach.

But don’t forget that local governments certainly are capable of overreach as well, as this cartoon illustrates.

If you think banning bake sales is an example of government run amok, then you’ll be equally perturbed by what’s happening in California.

According to the Associated Press, some residents are being put in a no-win situation of being fined by either state or local government based on whether or not they water their lawns.

I’m not joking. Check out these blurbs from the story.

Laura Whitney and her husband, Michael Korte, don’t know whether they’re being good citizens during a drought or scofflaws. On the same day the state approved mandatory outdoor watering restrictions with the threat of $500 fines, the Southern California couple received a letter from their city threatening a $500 penalty for not watering their brown lawn. …They’re among residents caught in the middle of conflicting government messages as the need for conservation clashes with the need to preserve attractive neighborhoods. “My friends in Los Angeles got these letters warning they could be fined if they water, and I got a letter warning that I could be fined for not watering,” Whitney said. “I felt like I was in an alternate universe.”

It’s not an alternative universe. As Andy Johnson, Anthony Smelley, Charlie Engle, Tammy Cooper, Nancy Black, Russ Caswell, Jacques Wajsfelner, Jeff Councelller, Martha Boneta, Salvatore Culosi, and James Lieto can atttest, governments routinely abuse innocent people.

But at least we can take comfort in the fact that governments outside of America engage in equally silly actions.

Though I confess I’m not sure how to categorize the news that’s being reported by the BBC. As you can see from these excerpts, there’s apparently now a rule in China limiting public officials to no more than three mistresses.

We’ve heard a lot about China’s far-reaching anti-corruption campaign at the behest of President Xi Jinping. …But according to a report in the English-language newspaper China Daily, “adultery” is now banned for party members. …But just when you thought the party was taking a puritanical stand, the newspaper said that when authorities had previously accused officials of “moral corruption” they defined this as having more than “three mistresses”.

The Princess of the Levant didn’t allow me to engage in any field research on this issue during my recent trip to Shanghai, so I can’t comment on the accuracy of the story.

Though I wonder whether Chinese officials got any advice from America’s 42nd president before imposing these rules?

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Pot Legalization: A Common-Sense Way of Fighting Organized Crime

I have some bad news and some good news.

The bad news is that politicians have come up with another proposal for an additional tax.

Some people like prohibition

The good news is that they can only impose this new tax if they ease up on the silly Drug War.

That creates a bit of a quandary if you believe in freedom and small government.

But, on net, it’s a move in the right direction.

We have two examples to share. The first is from South America, where the government of Uruguay seems poised to legalize marijuana. Here are some blurbs from an AP report.

Uruguay is pushing ahead to create a legal marijuana market… The Senate planned to debate the pot plan Tuesday, with approval by the ruling coalition widely expected before the night is over. Because senators turned away all requests for amendments after it passed the lower chamber, their vote will be final.

One reason for this proposed reform is to fight organized crime.

President Jose Mujica says the point is not to promote marijuana use, but to push out organized crime. The government hopes that when licensed growers, providers and users can openly trade in the drug, illegal traffickers will be denied their profits and go away.

Let’s give President Mujica an A+ for economics. He recognizes that criminalization creates a black market.

But Uruguay politicians are not exactly dreamy-headed libertarians. Big government would be involved.

Socialist Deputy Julio Bango, who co-authored the proposal, told The Associated Press that “this is not a law to liberalize marijuana consumption, but rather to regulate it. Today there is a market dominated by drug traffickers. We want the state to dominate it.”

And the article also mentions that legalization would be accompanied by heavy taxes. I don’t like that part, but there’s no question this would be a net plus for liberty and crime reduction.

Some lawmakers in New York also seem to understand that prohibition is illogical. Here are some excerpts from a local news report.

State Sen. Liz Krueger’s measure — the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act — would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana under state law. “It will take the market in marijuana away from the criminal enterprises, just as happened when alcohol prohibition was ended,” she said at a City Hall press conference.

Kudos to Krueger for her grasp of incentives. The Drug War is just as foolish – and just as good for criminals – as prohibition.

Though I wonder whether Sen. Krueger is being too greedy.

“It would establish an excise tax of $50 an ounce of marijuana and authorize localities to charge a sales tax on retail sales if they wish to,” Krueger said. …Liu estimates that a pot tax would generate $431 million in New York City alone.

I’ve never done drugs, so I’m not familiar with the market, but I do know that if the tax is too high on a legal product, you create a black market.

That happens with cigarettes, for instance, and we examples of excessive taxation causing less revenue from Bulgaria, Romania, and Ireland. And we’ve even seen this Laffer Curve effect in Washington, DC.

Last but not least, we should never forget that the Drug War is a horrifying example of Mitchell’s Law, with one bad policy leading to another bad policy.

The War on Drugs, for example, is the reason why politicians imposed costly and ineffective anti-money laundering laws. As well as disgusting and reprehensible asset forfeiture laws.

P.S. Libertarians are not the only ones to think the drug war is foolish. Yes, you find libertarians such as John Stossel and Gary Johnson on the list of those who want to end prohibition. But you also find John McCain,  Mona Charen, Pat Robertson, Cory Booker, and Richard Branson.

But maybe you disagree with all those people and would rather be on the same side as Hillary Clinton.

P.P.S. This is not an issue of whether you approve of pot use. You can be strongly against drugs, like me, but also realize that it makes no sense for government to get involved. Particularly since criminals are the ones who benefit.

P.P.P.S. The Drug War gives the government immense powers to engage in bad policy.

• The DEA trying to confiscate a commercial building because a tenant sold some marijuana.
• The government seeking to steal a hotel because some guests sold some marijuana.
• The feds grabbing cash from innocent bystanders in legal cases.
• The government arresting a grandmother for buying cold medicine.

Or sometimes the Drug War merely exposes government stupidity.

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The Two Types of Child Victimization at Government Schools

You would think the bureaucrats who run government schools would want to focus on the basics, such as teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.

After all, no nation spends more per pupil on education than the United States. And based on some Cato Institute research, I suspect the OECD estimate of about $15,000 per student is a low-ball estimate of the burden on American taxpayers.

So what do we get for all this money? To be blunt, the results are miserable, with Americans ranking well below average compared to our overseas competitors.

Here are some comparisons on both literacy and numeracy from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. You’ll have to click the images to get an enlarged view. But maybe you won’t want to do that since it’s depressing to see that Americans are near the bottom for math skills and well below average for verbal skills.

Geesh, this is embarrassing. I like Slovaks, but I don’t want Americans to be less intelligent. I also like Belgians, but why are they kicking our tail? And I really like Estonians, but they’re putting us to shame.

So how is the education establishment dealing with these dismal results?

Well, they keep asking for more money. But as this remarkable chart from the Cato Institute illustrates, throwing more money at the system is a great way of building bureaucracy. But it sure doesn’t do much for kids.

So you could say this is a form of child abuse. But that would trivialize the plights of kids who are grossly mistreated. So let’s say that the sub-par education provided by government schools is a form of child victimization. Or mistreatment. Or some word that signifies how they are not well served by the government’s education monopoly.

But let’s also remember that sub-par education is not the only bad thing that happens in government schools.

We also have amazing (in a bad way) episodes of intrusive and abusive political correctness.

Here’s a story from Massachusetts about a student being punished for doing the right thing.

It’s tough for Eleanor Cox to talk about how heartbroken her daughter Erin is over the punishment she received for doing what she thought was right. …Two weeks ago, Erin received a call from a friend at a party who was too drunk to drive. Erin drove to Boxford after work to pick up her friend. Moments after she arrived, the cops arrived too and busted several kids for underage possession of alcohol. A North Andover High School honor student, Erin was cleared by police, who agreed she had not been drinking and was not in possession of alcohol. But Andover High told Erin she was in violation of the district’s zero tolerance policy against alcohol and drug use. In the middle of her senior year, Erin was demoted from captain of the volleyball team and told she would be suspended from playing for five games. …the parents of Erin’s teammates have started a petition to support her.

I’m dismayed, of course, that the school wants to punish someone who didn’t do anything wrong, but what really irks me is that the school wants to regulate and control behavior that takes place off school property and outside of school hours.

To be blunt, it’s none of their you-know-what business. Parents should have primary responsibility for their kids and law enforcement has a role if they’re breaking the law.

Let’s now travel down south and read part of a report about how some mindless school bureaucrats punished an autistic student because he drew a picture of a bomb and brought the drawing to school.

…it all started when her son had made the hand-drawn picture of the bomb during the weekend at home. Parham said Rhett is a fan of the video game Bomber Man and drew the cartoon-ish like explosive. She told FOX Carolina on Monday that her son took the picture to Hillcrest Middle School, and that’s where problems arose. Parham said she was told that her son showed the picture to some older children, who reported him to school administration. …She said her son was suspended indefinitely by the school.

Fortunately, the government backed down after the story generated some unfavorable attention for the bureaucratic drones.

But we should ask ourselves why it even got to that stage. And perhaps get some counseling for the little brats who snitched on him. Sounds like they’re future IRS agents in training.

Sadly, this is just part of a pattern we’ve seen in government schools, with bureaucrats hyperventilating over normal kid behavior. Here are some other examples.

• Bureaucrats suspended a little boy for taking bites out of a pop tart in such a way that it was shaped like a gun.
• Bureaucrats suspended a 7-year boy for pretending to throw a non-existent grenade on the playground.
• Bureaucrats suspended a 6-year old boy in Maryland for making a gun shape with his finger.
• Bureaucrats busted a 5-year old girl in Pennsylvania for having a pink plastic gun that shoots bubbles.
• A teacher in Rhode Island caught an 8-year old boy with some plastic toy army men.
• Bureaucrats evacuated a school because an 11-year old boy made a motion detector for his science experiment.
• Bureaucrats in Florida kicked an 8-year old boy out of school for a year because he had a plastic gun in his backpack.
• A dual award in Virginia, with half the prize for the bureaucrats who suspended a 10-year old boy for a toy gun and half the prize for the cops who then arrested the kid.
• A third-grader got in trouble for having toy army men on his birthday cupcakes.
• Two second-graders got suspended for holding pencils like they were guns.
• Bureaucrats suspended a kindergartener for having a lego-sized toy gun.
• Bureaucrats wanted a deaf child to change his sign-language name because it required him to shape his fingers in a way that resembled a gun.
• Bureaucrats suspended two boys for playing with toy guns while off school property.

Now ask yourself to key question: Do we want to maintain and perpetuate a failed government school monopoly, or should we implement school choice to get better results and less political correctness?

Heck, we should be able to reform our schools if there’s already choice in countries such as Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

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Question of the Week: What’s More Worrisome, Big Brother Monitoring Where You Drive or Big Brother Controlling How You Drive?

If you don’t like the NSA collecting and monitoring all your communications, you probably won’t be thrilled about new technologies that will give government power to monitor where you drive and control how you drive.

Let’s look at a couple of options and then ponder which is more offensive.

We’ll start with government monitoring of where you drive. Here’s part of what Holman Jenkins wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

…the real threat to our autonomy gathers speed. “Autonomous” vehicles are part of the threat—because they won’t be autonomous at all. This column has warned for years about plate-recognition cameras, increasingly armed with face-recognition capabilities, that will make it impossible to go anywhere or do anything in public without being monitored. …The population is aging. An older, more timid society is likely to be in favor of penning up fellow citizens in a mesh of monitoring to regulate routine behavior. The authoritarianism of the weak, always a problem in society, will find an ally in the bureaucracy’s craving for resources.

Holman cites a few examples.

Traffic cameras…overwhelmingly ring up drivers for offenses that wouldn’t trouble a cop. New Jersey is just the latest state scandalized by discovery that yellow lights are set below the state minimum in order to yield more red-light camera tickets. …In some future discrimination or hate-crime lawsuit, will vehicle records be called up to show you locked your doors in a minority neighborhood but not in a white neighborhood? Will the state decide to raise your ObamaCare copays because a face-recognition camera also recognized a cigarette dangling from your lip? When our every action in space and cyberspace can be monitored and policed, we no longer police ourselves to any meaningful extent. We become not citizens but children. The state is our parent. The real threat is that many of our fellow citizens will like it this way.

This sounds very Orwellian and very bad, but there are other ways for government to make driving an unpleasant experience.

Let’s see what the UK-based Daily Mail is reporting about an obnoxious European proposal to give government control over your gas pedal.

Drivers face having their cars  fitted with devices that slam on the brakes if they go over the speed limit, under draconian new road safety measures being drawn up by  officials in Brussels. All new cars would have to include camera systems that ‘read’ the limits displayed on road signs and automatically apply the brakes. And vehicles already on the road could even be sent back to garages to be fitted with the ‘Big Brother’ technology… The EC’s Mobility and Transport Department hopes to roll out the ‘Intelligent Speed Adaptation’ technology (ISA) as part of a new road safety programme.

And how will this big-brother system work?

The ISA technology works in one of two ways – either through satellites, which communicate limits automatically to cars from databases, or by using cameras to read road signs. It then deploys one of three controls to slow drivers: ‘advice’, in which the motorist is simply notified of the speed limit by an alarm, giving them the opportunity to slow down; ‘driver select’, which arrests the car’s speed but gives the driver the option of disabling the device; or ‘mandatory’, which would not let a driver breach the speed limit under any circumstances. …A spokesman for the AA said at lower speeds the new technology could actually create dangers. He said: ‘If you were overtaking a tractor and suddenly needed to accelerate to avoid a head-on collision, you would not be able to.’

I’m glad people from the Automobile Association are warning that the system poses risks, but opposition should be based on more than utilitarian arguments. How about the freedom to be left alone and not monitored and pestered while you travel?

But let’s set that issue aside and contemplate whether it’s worse to have the government track where you drive or worse to have the government control how you drive.

Maybe this makes me a bad libertarian, but I’m not overly worried about the first option. Perhaps this is because I have a relatively staid life. I drive to work and I drive to softball. Every so often, I drive to the grocery store or to an airport. The bureaucrats tracking me would go crazy with boredom. Heck, I’d probably feel some pressure to spice up my social life simply because I’d feel sympathy for them.

Maybe they’ll force us to drive green cars?

By contrast, I would be very irritated if the government got control over my accelerator. It’s already annoying that revenue-hungry local governments and anti-automobile greenies conspire to set speed limits considerably below safe and efficient levels. But at least there’s very little risk if you drive within 10 miles of the limit and you always have the choice to drive even faster if you’re willing to take a chance that some random cop will pull you over. But if the government imposes some system that forces my car to stay within the speed limit, I won’t be a happy camper.

I’ll be very curious to read the comments for this post. In the meantime, I’m going to close with a few optimistic words.

Simply stated, government may have the technology to spy on us, but that doesn’t mean they have the brains, ability, or manpower to make much use of this power.

Money laundering laws are a good example. It’s rather offensive that the government has set up a system that forces banks and other financial institutions to spy on all of our financial transactions.

But other than imposing high costs on the financial sector, this system doesn’t have much impact on the average person. To be sure, some poor people lose access to the financial system. And, yes, there are horror stories about people who have their accounts frozen because they’ve engaged in an unusual transaction, but most of us will live our lives without ever noticing that the government has created this Orwellian regime.

Likewise, I don’t think the monitoring and collection of traffic data will impact our lives. At least not until the point the government uses its power in some of the ways described by Holman Jenkins. But I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.

I’m also somewhat hopeful that car-control technologies won’t get abused. At least not right away. Local governments, for instance, would probably oppose a system to control travel speeds for the simple reason that they want to maintain the revenue from speeding tickets.

Moreover, I bet many Americans would rise up in revolt if the government tried to take control of our gas pedals. Politicians who pushed for such a scheme would lose election and bureaucrats who tried to impose such a system via regulation would get slapped down.

We’ve lost some of our freedoms and fighting spirit, but there are some lines the government still can’t cross. Driving faster than the government allows is as American as apple pie.

P.S. Speaking of American traditions, what about the young (and not-so-young) people who sometimes do a bit of romancing while in their cars? Maybe the bureaucrats (motivated by this Obama-NSA joke) will insist that we also install internal cameras in our vehicles.

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