January 27, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

This post from Radley Balko is a good.

Politicians love the protect-me-from-me mentality. For instance, they criminalize marijuana. They do it, in part, to create goodwill from the multitudes, but it’s also a method to push their preferences on the rest of society. Too much of this nanny-state mentality and people will revolt and lose respect for the state in general. Count me as one of those people who have lost respect for the government. Let’s permit informed and competent individuals to make their own decisions, although we know they will sometimes make poor decisions. Besides, people will tend to just ignore laws that they perceive to be unjust.

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January 27, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

There is little to no systematic evidence that poverty-linked undernutrition–malnutrition caused by too little food intake–is an actual problem in America. “Food insecurity” numbers batted around by the FDA do not mean that people actually went hungry; they mean that people worried about going hungry, or changed their diet–usually by altering the composition of the diet, not by forgoing food–to avoid going hungry. But of actual sustained hunger, there is no evidence.

There is, on the other hand, a lot of evidence of obesity among the poor; their obesity rate is estimated at 36%, and the obesity rate among poor children seems to be about twice the rate among non-poor children. The poor people are eating more calories than they need. Yet we propose to stimulate the economy by giving the poor money that can only be spent on more food.

(HT: Glenn Reynolds)

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January 27, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Steven Landsburg on why the stimulus package won’t help you.

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