NOTE: This is an occasional and experimental piece unrelated to the weekly economic analysis piece that is circulated over the weekends, which will, of course, continue.

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April 12th,  2015

Weight Regulation Is Around The Corner

       Weightier matters no longer have to wait, to paraphrase the great Stephen Sondheim. Or weight is about to be regulated, caught in a pincer movement. A report from Richard Dobbs, a director of the McKinsey Global Institute, and Boyd Swinburn, -- get this -- the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Melbourne, notes that -- get this -- The Global Burden of Disease Study by the World Health Organization and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation says humanity passed an important milestone a few years ago. It seems that in 2010 obesity became a bigger public-health problem than hunger: two-and-one-half times as many adults and children are "obese or overweight" than are malnourished, knocking $2 trillion per year, or 2.8% off world GDP. Here's the really bad news, except for creationists: "Relying on knowledge about obesity and will power is not enough to offset" -- get this -- "the evolutionary instinct to overeat."

       Conclusion: more research is needed. The sort that experience with another discovered global threat, warming, teaches inevitably precedes regulation. There is "a strong case for experimenting with interventions," write Dobbs and Swinburn. So look for, first, more research; second, Michelle Obama-like "suggestions" on proper diets; third, a table of weight limits for people of various heights; fourth, taxes and other means of coercion to make it painful to exceed those limits. Appropriate appeals processes will be put in place, of course.

       That's one part of the pincers. The other comes from France. The National Assembly has passed a bill setting minimum body mass requirements for models, the rule working out in practice to a minimum weight of about 120 pounds for a woman 5-feet, 7-inches tall. Fall below the skinniness limit, and unless an appeal based on bone structure and other factors offered in defense of skinniness succeeds, the model and her agent can be fined €75,000 ($83,000) or jailed for six months. "Malnutrition is a major health issue," says Dr. Oliver Véran, a Socialist deputy described by The NYT as "the legislator and neurologist who championed the bills." Non-models will also be affected. The law, if approved by the senate, is expected to remove skinny fashion models from the runways, ending their reign as role models for young French women. When that doesn't work, broadly applied rules aimed at preventing skinniness will be set by government health authorities, aka regulators. French legislators point out that they are merely following in the footsteps of Israel and Spain.

       There you have it. International organizations will tell you when too much is too much, and France, Spain and Israel are leading the way to rules telling you when too little is too little. If the obesity regulators don't get you, the skinniness regulators will. Both obesity and skinniness will be eliminated as health hazards, and one size will fit all, or almost all. George Orwell was one of the first to spot the trend now unfolding. In 1948, shortly before his death, he warned that "totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere."

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All's Well With America's Young

       Start with those old enough to be graduating from law school. The law business ain't exactly what it used to be -- so hungry for new lawyers that anyone with a law degree could find work and earn enough to start chipping away at his or her student loan, unless responding to government incentives to wipe the loan from the books seemed more attractive. Those halcyon days may never return, but the worst seems to be over. Law school enrollment is down almost 30% from its 2010 peak, meaning that even without any growth in demand for lawyers, reduced supply should create some upward pressure on starting salaries and better chances of landing a job for graduates. Last year 93.2% of the graduates of Georgetown Law School found work, 60% in the private sector, where the median salary was $160,000. For lesser-regarded schools the figures are lower, but not disastrous. And long-term prospects are good: the American Bar Association reports that lawyers who graduated in 2000 with low grades from low-ranked law schools were earning median incomes of between $85,000 and $95,000 in 2012.

       Younger students, mostly undergraduates, are also finding life more congenial. According to a NYT headline, they are succeeding in "Hiding From Scary Ideas." Find a debate upsetting? Students at Brown University set up a "
safe space" to which students who attended a debate about sexual violence but found it "damaging" could repair for cookies, coloring books, Play Doh, calming music, a video of frolicking puppies and advice from "A sexual assault peer educator" who "was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs." NYT contributing opinion writer Judith Shulevitz notes that "Now students worry rather any acts of speech or pieces of writing may put them in emotional peril...." Many university administrators cancel debates "citing threats to their [students'] stability." So all is well at universities where never is heard a destabilizing word.

       Finally, as we move down the scale to high school students, we find even greater serenity. The Wall Street Journal reports that sellers of prom dresses now keep registries to ensure that no two identical dresses are sold for the same event. "Dress registries are the new norm for dance-going teenagers from New York to California.... Some [shops] refuse to sell the same style, regardless of color."

       So young lawyers can look forward to better job prospects, undergraduates can repair to safe spaces with crayons and Play Doh, and teen agers can be sure, as one vendor put it, that "everyone can look amazing" because every girl will have a different dress at the prom. As my father was wont to say, "Only in America."

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Soft Power Can Be A Joke -- Or Make A Mayor

       Harvard's estimable Joe Nye has argued for decades that an important component of America's ability to  influence world affairs is soft power -- a culture and values that coopt other nations and makes them want to follow our lead. A notion beloved of liberals who forget that Nye also mentioned the need for hard power. Never mind. It seems that for all that ails our country as the world spins out of control, we are winning the soft power battle, with the possible exception of a couple of million folks who spend a lot of time praying for the second coming of the  Caliphate, and slaughtering unbelievers just in case prayer alone won't do the trick. "American comedy", says Gary Silverman in the FT, "is becoming global.... It is evidence of the triumph of American soft power.... The U.S. still enjoys a natural comparative advantage when it comes to the production of laughs." Proof: the decision of HBO to give Britain's John Oliver his own show, and of Comedy Central to fill the departing Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" to a South African comic, one Trevor Noah. All's well, then. Never mind that this month Toyota outsold all American car manufacturers, that Wal-Mart is a display case for the output of subsidized Chinese factories, that Vladimir Putin has escalated provocative flights by his war planes and is musing about using nuclear weapons, which will soon be part of Iran's arsenal. Or that Noah has a fondness for jokes that have great appeal to the rising number of anti-Semites in the world, or that our "production of laughs" includes the snickering our overseas adversaries permit themselves when our President proclaims victory in Yemen. Our soft power conquers all.

       To be fair, soft power -- creating a desire by other countries to emulate us -- has it triumphs. Boris Johnson, the tousled, popular mayor of London is stepping down to run for Parliament and position himself to knock David Cameron off his Tory leadership perch at the earliest opportunity. Talk in London is that an ideal successor would be none other than Mike Bloomberg, fresh from three terms as mayor of New York City. Bloomberg's former wife and children are British citizens, Mayor Mike holds an honorary knighthood granted by Her Majesty for his "prodigious entrepreneurial and philanthropic endeavours" in Britain, serves on several charitable UK boards and, says The Sunday Times (London), "regards Britain as his second home" -- of which he owns one, a £20 million mansion abutting Harrods. Alas, the legal residency requirement only allows British subjects and citizens from EU countries to run for London mayor -- France's president, Francois Hollande, soon to be out of work after helping to wreck his country's economy with a 75% tax on the rich, many of whom fled to Britain along with 400,000 young French men and women disparate for jobs, would be eligible for a shot at the Boris' old post: after all, London is France's sixth largest city. But not Mike. Enter soft power, which presumably explains Londoners' desire to emulate New Yorkers. Talk is that the Home Secretary will decide that the £500 million Bloomberg has invested in Britain, plus the skyscraper being built to house the European headquarters of Bloomberg LP, warrant waiving meddlesome rules. Which she might well do in a bow to the soft power of, well, billions of pounds of investment unencumbered by Russian and Arab owners.

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Germany Uber Alles -- Well, Not Alles

       The German Chancellor bestrides Europe like a colossus. She sets economic policy for the 18-nation eurozone. She says "If the euro goes, Europe goes", by which she means that the currency's value favors German exports to her eurozone partners, and makes it more difficult for them to sell their olives, wine and cars in Germany. Europe trembles on brink of deflation while she insists on snuffing out any sign of inflation that rears its -- to Germans -- historically terrifying ugly head. Her fellow eurlanders, quite sensibly, according to many economists, fear the growth-stifling effects of deflation and rather hope to see a bit of inflation in their near-term futures. Merkel tells Greece how many civil servants it may have, how to levy and collect taxes, and how to restructure its labor market, all the while ignoring their demands for repayment of the loans one of her long-ago predecessors imposed on them. France can run deficits in excess of 3% of GDP because Angela Merkel "suggests" to the Brussels bureaucracy to temper its justice with mercy, a boon she declined to extend to Ireland, Portugal or Spain. She leads negotiations with Vladimir Putin, making certain that sanctions do not bite too deeply into her country's sales to and investments in the New Russia. Angel Merkel, the iron hausfrau, is on a roll.

       But she can't cope with Frankfurt's pigeons or the coming onslaught of Americans, as we once again hit the beaches of Europe, this time armed with sunscreen and dollars. First, the pigeons. The Wall Street Journal reports that Frankfurt's pigeons have virtually taken over that city's rail station. Rather like the flying vermin have taken over Trafalgar and St. Mark's Squares. But also different -- these birds appear in droves three stories underground, in commuter corridors, buzzing passengers on escalators, and settling in kiosks deep underground. And giving such as station manager Gudrun Stürmer an opening for a bit of leftish cant: "People don't like them because they're so much like us," she says. "They're hungry and there are many of them." In Merkel's super-prosperous Germany, the economic engine of Europe? Surely an overstatement with which the Chancellor must disagree.

       But there is no "perhaps" about the coming invasion of American tourists. Just follow the money: the mighty dollar has made European vacations a bargain for Americans. So the Americans are coming. Which bodes ill for the Germans who are accustomed to storming the beaches early in the morning, tossing down their towels to reserve the best spots before very irritated Spaniards and Frenchmen and their families show up. One of our souvenirs from years in Europe is a large beach towel distributed by a leading tabloid, with a screaming headline printed on it, "I got here before the Germans." Which few European tourists, given to late-night reveling, ever succeed in doing. But history teaches that Americans approach the beaches of Europe a bit more purposefully than do Europeans, and that Germans are not especially successful in heading them off.

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The New York Times: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

       Finally, for your further enlightenment, two news stories on page one of last Sunday's NYT. One begins a long report on California's water problems, attributed to a drought rather than bureaucratic mismanagement. A list of past "catastrophes" that state has survived ends with " budgetary collapse that forced years of devastating cuts in spending." The immediately following sentence describes that devastation, "These days, the economy is thriving, the population is growing, the state budget is in surplus and development is exploding from Silicon Valley to San Diego; the evidence of it can be seen in the construction cranes dotting the skylines of Los Angeles and San Francisco." Forgive them, dear reader: they know not what they say. Or that the national economy might benefit from a dose of such devastating spending cuts.

       Then there is Israel, whose democratically elected prime minister is coming between our democratically elected president and the somewhat less democratically chosen leaders he is courting in Iran. "G.O.P.'s Israel Support Deepens as Political Contributions Shift." A brief reference to the fact that Republican support is "partly a result of ideology" is followed by citation to many Jewish contributors -- "pro-Israel Republican billionaires and other influential American donors" -- who seem to have bought support for Israel from such as Senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham. That'll teach these Republicans that they will face the wrath of the Old Grey Lady, and be charged with selling their souls for a mess of Jewish contributions  if they follow the decades-long lead of Democrats and worry about the security of Israel.

       No relief on Monday, when the editors bemoaned the fact that Colorado voters, beguiled by "the seductive argument that government needs shrinking", have inserted into their constitution a provision prohibiting tax increases that "rigidly constrains taxes and spending" -- note especially the "rigidly", as if there is any constraint, rigid or otherwise, that the editors of the NYT would accept. When legalizing the sale and use of marijuana, legislators ignored this constraint, and are now faced with the prospect of returning the heavy taxes leveled on the industry. "But lawmakers don't want to give the money back," note the editors. No surprise there. Lawmakers and "concerned citizens", say NYT editorial writers, want the unconstitutionally collected taxes to be "usefully spent" to "fund pressing public needs, like infrastructure and education, or to save for rainy days." The only good news is that Colorado has made impressive gains in setting up a new industry and maintaining impressive support for it -- no mention of Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper's complaint that use of pot will reduce the IQs of the state's youngsters, or suits by neighboring Kansas and Nebraska where about half of the pot sold in Colorado seems to end up despite the fact that it is illegal there. And, proving that liberal inconsistency has no limits, the editors go on to point out that Colorado's accomplishment has come despite "the ominous threat of federal intrusion". You know, the sort of federal intrusion that prevents states from controlling immigration and the behavior of illegal immigrants, or developing their own rules for access to the privilege of voting. Nothing ominous about those, I guess.


For Questions or Comments please email Irwin Stelzer at irwin@stelzerassoc.com  

 

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