Una Hora con el Senador Barack Obama

Comparto con ustedes una entrevista de una hora, realizada por Charlie Rose, al precandidato demócrata Barack Obama. La entrevista es del año 2006, y eso la hace aún más interesante.

Entrevista al economista Dani Rodrik

Comparto con ustedes una gran entrevista al economista Dani Rodrik, que encontré en www.webpondo.org. En ella se abordan temas como globalización, políticas industriales, propiedad intellectual, desarrollo económico, instituciones, entre otros.

Se las recomiendo.

A continuación posteo una de las preguntas de la entrevista:

With respect to this same paper1 we are referring to, there was a point that called our attention about it and it’s the fact that you say that the very process of economic development has to do a lot with experimentation and, in that sense, there is some active policy intervention that is necessary. And there are two points with respect to this conclusion which calls our attention. The first one is that you say that there was some kind of more optimal mix in that policy intervention in Asia in terms of “carrots and sticks” (in your terms) and we would like you to explain a bit about that combination. And also, if you are calling for active policy intervention as a consequence of the very process of economic development, what about the imperfections or the potential problems that economists so much worry about in the public sector?

When I talk about experimentation, I have two sorts of experimentation that I have in mind, and I think both are equally important. One, and what you are referring to in the first part of your question, is experimentation in the productive sphere. The other is institutional experimentation. The former is the process of figuring out where your comparative advantage lies, figuring out what you can produce profitably, and this is an activity that’s by and large undertaken by the private sector. This is not an area for the public sector to be doing. But, what I do think is that because this process of experimentation in the productive sphere (what Ricardo Hausmann, my coauthor, and I call “self-discovery”) is a process which is rife with externalities and informational shortcomings, it is also one area where the government potentially has a role to play. And we summarize that role by way of this combination of “carrot and stick” policies. You need the carrot policies so that there is a positive incentive for private entrepreneurs, private investors, to start production and investments in non-traditional activities. That requires a positive inducement. It is not generally going to be undertaken in optimal amounts simply through free market forces, because this is a process which provides tremendous social externalities. The first investor in Colombia that discovered that cut flowers could be profitably exported to the United States, created tremendous social value. And, in fact, this innovation very rapidly dissipated itself to Colombia with many, many more entrepreneurs coming and starting to produce. Economic development is fundamentally a process of this kind where at least early on you need sufficient incentives in place for this investment in new activities to take place. That’s the carrot part of the
policy.

I think the stick part, and I think that’s closely related to the doubts you were raising about the possibilities of useful intervention, the stick part of the policy has to do with ensuring that such incentive policies do not deteriorate into effectively just protecting long. I think generally economists have said that governments cannot do this. I think when economists say that governments cannot do this, they are really, for the most part, really doing amateur political science. Because there is really very little systematic analysis of when and how, or if at all, governments have the capacity to do interventions of this sort.

I think it’s clear that this is not something you can recommend across the board. Typically, you have to look for parts of the government where there is bureaucratic competence, where there is professional expertise with certain amount of autonomy. And I think, where you have those, programs like these can be undertaken. It will never look the same way from one country to another. In some country it might be a public private venture fund; in another country it might be an export processing zone; in a third country it might be tax incentives or investments in new areas. Particularly, this will depend a lot on where the capacity in the system, in the public sector, is really located. But I think it’s just empirically not true that governments cannot do this, or that any attempt to do this is necessarily
doomed to failure.

And I should emphasize one more thing: often people react to such ideas by saying, “the government can never pick winners”. The argument is not that the government has the capacity to pick winners; it is a much weaker argument that says, “the government does not have the capacity to pick winners, often it will pick losers”, but, what we need to do is design institutions that at least give the government the capacity to let go of the losers.

Gobierno anuncia la iniciativa de crear la Agencia de Calidad de Políticas Públicas (Acpp).

En la sección de Economía y Negocios del mercurio de hoy, sale un artículo sobre esta nueva agencia.

La idea está dentro de las promesas de la campaña de la Presidenta Bachelet:
Hacienda anuncia la creación de una agencia para la calidad de proyectos

Jueves 21 de febrero de 2008
La subsecretaria de Hacienda, María Olivia Recart, dice que la Dipres quedó a cargo para llevar adelante esta iniciativa.Foto:MANUEL HERRERA

La iniciativa fue incluida en la agenda de probidad y debía estar lista hace un año. Ahora se enviará al Congreso recién en 2009.


EDUARDO OLIVARES C.

En la creación de una nueva entidad gubernamental trabajan el Ministerio de Hacienda con el Ministerio Secretaría General de la Presidencia (Segpres).

Se trata de la Agencia de Calidad de Políticas Públicas (Acpp), una de las promesas más remotas de la campaña de la Presidenta Michelle Bachelet. Según anuncia Hacienda, esta idea será finalmente elaborada a través de un proyecto de ley, cuyo envío al Congreso debería postergarse hasta 2009.

"Es un trabajo que ha avanzado bastante bien. Hay unas cuatro o cinco personas que están trabajando en esto", cuenta la subsecretaria de esta cartera, María Olivia Recart (ver entrevista). Aunque hay poca claridad sobre el contenido de la iniciativa, la propia Michelle Bachelet -como candidata- dio las pistas: debía evaluar el gasto, los programas y su pertinencia.

"Para construir una administración pública de excelencia, cada decisión de política pública debe estar adecuadamente respaldada por evidencia que asegure su eficacia", dijo en su programa. Una agencia que aborde ello, dotada de capacidades, facultades y recursos, garantizaría la eficacia y transparencia en la aplicación de los recursos públicos, continuó.

Avances

Hay tres avances que involucraría esta entidad, sostuvo. Primero, las evaluaciones se extenderán a proyectos, programas y políticas públicas.

Segundo, sus resultados incidirán en las decisiones presupuestarias y en las mismas políticas públicas. Y tercero, las metodologías incorporarán sistemas participativos, de modo que los afectados por un programa tengan voz en su diseño.

El lunes 8 de agosto de 2005, la entonces candidata Michelle Bachelet propuso, ante el Congreso, la instauración de esta agencia. Incluso esbozó que el proyecto de ley respectivo estaba listo y se enviaría a tramitación parlamentaria tras asumir en La Moneda. No fue así.

Un segundo intento ocurrió con el Consejo de Probidad. En su tercer paquete de medidas, presentadas en noviembre de 2006, decía que Hacienda trabajaba ya entonces en un proyecto legal al respecto, "con miras a ingresarlo en el primer semestre del año 2007". No hubo tal.

Aparentemente, esta idea fue incluida en el programa de la Presidenta Bachelet por Mario Marcel; pero, como él no se quedó en Hacienda, no fue prioritaria.

Además, la Dirección de Presupuestos ha fortalecido sus propios programas de evaluación y de impacto.

>> Subsecretaria Recart: "Esto no será antes de 2009"

-¿Quién está viendo lo de esta agencia en el Gobierno?

"Hay un comité de dos ministerios: Hacienda y la Secretaría General de la Presidencia (Segpres). Durante 2007 se elaboró un documento inicial de trabajo y hay varias tareas que hacer. El documento debiera ser completado durante este año para evaluar qué se hace hoy, dónde se está haciendo, qué cosas pueden unirse para crear sinergias, qué cosas faltan en las mejores prácticas y qué cosas están siendo implementadas en el mundo en este tipo de agencias. Debiera haber, hacia fines de 2008, alguna propuesta más terminada".

-¿Para convertirse en un proyecto de ley?

"Sí. Mi evaluación personal es que esto no será antes de 2009".

-¿Tendrían que unirse muchas atribuciones que hoy tiene la Dirección de Presupuestos?

"No es sólo la evaluación de programas, porque evaluación de programas hay de distinta naturaleza. Hay una evaluación de programas de control de gestión y hay una evaluación de programas de impacto. La que interesa desde el punto de vista más de políticas públicas de largo plazo es para impacto, y lo que uno debiera tener ahí hoy y ya lo estamos implementando, a modo piloto, es evaluar más programas públicos del Presupuesto".

"Con eso debiéramos tener la línea base. Después de que terminan los programas, uno debiera decir 'esto es lo que ha pasado, y, por lo tanto, aquí la política pública está bien o mal focalizada'. Ese tipo de evaluaciones las hace hoy la Dirección de Presupuestos junto con la del control de gestión, pero hay más evaluaciones: de metas ministeriales -que hace la Segpres- o del Sistema Nacional de Inversión -que hace Mideplan-, y esa mirada en conjunto es la que estamos poniendo hoy para diseñar o ver efectivamente qué es lo que contiene esta Agencia de Calidad de las Políticas Públicas".

-¿Quién está viendo esto aquí? ¿La subsecretaría o la Dirección de Presupuestos?

"La Dirección de Presupuestos".

Comentarios sobre Obama en The Economist

Barack Obama

But could he deliver?

Feb 14th 2008
From The Economist print edition


It is time for America to evaluate Obama the potential president, not Obama the phenomenon

EPA


THIS has been an extraordinary week for the man who could become America's first black president. Barack Obama has now won all eight of the primaries and caucuses held since Super Tuesday on February 5th, which ended, more or less, in a dead heat with Hillary Clinton. He has won by much larger margins than most people expected, trouncing his rival not just in heavily black states, such as Louisiana, but in ones that are almost completely white, such as Maine. On February 12th he took all three prizes in the “Potomac primary”—Washington, DC, Maryland and, by a socking 29-point margin, Virginia.

Mr Obama now has more pledged delegates than his rival—and he is likely to remain the front-runner for at least another three weeks (see article). Revealingly, Mrs Clinton made her Virginian concession speech from Texas—a state which votes alongside Ohio on March 4th and is already being billed as her last stand. Mr Obama is raising money at the rate of $1m a day, twice as fast as she is; indeed, she has been forced to lend her campaign $5m of her own cash and fire the two people who run her campaign (although her husband has a big say).

Whatever happens, Mr Obama is already that rare thing—a political phenomenon. It is not just that he has managed to survive the Clintons' crude onslaught with grace. He has persuaded huge numbers of people around the world to reconsider politics in an optimistic way. To many Americans, a black man who eschews both racial politics and the conservative-liberal divide is a chance to heal the country's two deepest divisions. To many foreigners, he represents an idealistic version of America—the hope of a more benevolent superpower. Although Mr Obama's slogan “Yes We Can” has been turned into a pop video, the theme of his campaign echoes the Clintons' old tune—“Don't stop thinking about tomorrow”.

Optimism is a powerful emotion, but as that song warned, “tomorrow will soon be here.” That is why the real questioning of Mr Obama should begin now. With the brief exception of those four heady days after the Iowa caucuses, he has never been a front-runner; now he will be more fully scrutinised. The immediate focus will be on the horse race: can he win? But the bigger issue, which has so far occupied too little attention, is this: what would a President Obama, as opposed to Phenomenon Obama, really mean for America and the world?



Yes, you can; but not immediately
Begin with the horse race. Mrs Clinton is in a bad way—and deservedly so. The Clintons have fought a leaden and nasty campaign; at present, the prospect of a “Billary presidency” (even before you take into account the dynastic Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton aspect) is hardly enthralling. But Mrs Clinton is tough and smart, and now her rival will be under the media microscope. In debates she trumps Mr Obama on mastery of detail—and the race could well be a long, grinding one, perhaps decided in the end by the 796 “super delegates” from the Democratic Party's establishment. These people have tended to be loyal to the Clintons—though many might defect if polls still showed Mr Obama doing better against John McCain.

Mr McCain, whose lock on the Republican nomination looks stronger than ever following his own triple victory in the Potomac primary, is another part of tomorrow Mr Obama's euphoric supporters might think about. The Republicans are a mess, and the elderly Arizonan senator has plainly failed to stir up his party's supporters in the same way as either of the main Democrats. But Mr McCain is a brave man, with huge experience of international affairs and a much longer record of reaching out to his opponents in politics. Why should independent voters, who have often backed Mr McCain in the past, turn to the less proven man?



Of magnets and magic dust
That question is partly answered by Obama the phenomenon. His immediate effect on international relations could be dramatic: a black president, partly brought up in a Muslim country, would transform America's image. And his youthful optimism could work at home too. After the bitterness of the Bush years, America needs a dose of unity: Mr Obama has a rare ability to deliver it. And the power of charisma should not be underrated, especially in the context of the American presidency which is, constitutionally, quite a weak office. The best presidents are like magnets below a piece of paper, invisibly aligning iron filings into a new pattern of their making. Anyone can get experts to produce policy papers. The trick is to forge consensus to get those policies enacted.

But what policies exactly? Mr Obama's voting record in the Senate is one of the most left-wing of any Democrat. Even if he never voted for the Iraq war, his policy for dealing with that country now seems to amount to little more than pulling out quickly, convening a peace conference, inviting the Iranians and the Syrians along and hoping for the best. On the economy, his plans are more thought out, but he often tells people only that they deserve more money and more opportunities. If one lesson from the wasted Bush years is that needless division is bad, another is that incompetence is perhaps even worse. A man who has never run any public body of any note is a risk, even if his campaign has been a model of discipline.

And the Obama phenomenon would not always be helpful, because it would raise expectations to undue heights. Budgets do not magically cut themselves, even if both parties are in awe of the president; the Middle East will not heal, just because a president's second name is Hussein. Choices will have to be made—and foes created even when there is no intention to do so. Indeed, something like that has already happened in his campaign. The post-racial candidate has ended up relying heavily on black votes (and in some places even highlighting the divide between Latinos and blacks).

None of this is to take away from Mr Obama's achievement—or to imply that he could not rise to the challenges of the job in hand. But there is a sense in which he has hitherto had to jump over a lower bar than his main rivals have. For America's sake (and the world's), that bar should now be raised—or all kinds of brutal disappointment could follow.

Modern Policy-Making

Les recomiendo leer este documento producido por el National Audit Office del Reino Unido, donde se explica que implica generar políticas públicas modernas que generan value for money y valor público.

Las nueves características de la generación de políticas públicas modernas deben ser:

! Be forward looking (poner el foco en el futuro)
! Be outward looking (poner el foco en el exterior)
! Be innovative and creative (ser innovativas y creativas)
! Use evidence (usar evidencia)
! Be inclusive (ser inclusivas)
! Be joined up (estar transversalmente unidas)
! Evaluate (evaluativas)
! Review (revisadas constantemente)
! Learn lessons (aprender lecciones)

Si podemos: Un gran video de Obama sobre la esperanza en el cambio que une.

Si podemos

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can repair this world.

Yes we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea --

Yes. We. Can.



Celebrities featured include: Jesse Dylan, Will.i.am, Common, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Adam Rodriquez, Amber Valetta, Eric Balfour, Aisha Tyler, Nicole Scherzinger and Nick Cannon

Entrevista al economista Eric Finkelstein

Comparto con ustedes una muy buena entrevista al economista Eric Finkelstein sobre la economía de la obesidad, que al parecer revela que la obesidad debe su existencia principalmente al éxito del capitalismo.

The Economics of Obesity: A Q&A With the Author of The Fattening of America
By Melissa Lafsky

We’ve blogged about obesity at length here at Freakonomics. The health economist Eric Finkelstein has been studying the subject for years, and, along with co-author Laurie Zuckerman, has just published a book, The Fattening of America, which analyzes the causes and consequences of obesity in the U.S. Finkelstein agreed to answer our questions about the book.

Q: You state that the factors contributing to the dramatic rise in American (and worldwide) obesity, from air conditioning to restaurant portions to modern medications, are all fundamentally economic issues. What are the most significant ways modern society has made it easier to be obese?

A: Modern society is giving Americans many more incentives to gain weight than to lose it. We are, in fact, victims of our success as a nation. The two most obvious factors are: 1) the abundance of cheap, tasty foods; and 2) the new technologies that allow us to be increasingly more productive at work and at home while burning fewer calories. For example, between 1980 and 2005, the price of food fell 14 percent relative to non-food items, so it is thus not surprising that we are eating more food.

And what kind of foods are we eating? Well, consider the French fry. Fries, if made from scratch, take about 40 minutes to prepare, complete with peeling, slicing, and messy, splattering oil. Frozen French fries? Ready to eat in under 14 minutes. And that’s still a lot of work compared to just stopping at a drive-through on the way home from work. To an economist, then, it is no shocker that the average American now consumes almost 60 pounds of frozen potato products per year, more than triple the amount consumed per person in 1965.

And at the same time, we’re burning less calories. No surprise here. We all know that we are spending more time watching TV, but there are also less obvious culprits that are keeping us ensconced in our chairs. One example is that I recently had an inexpensive printer installed in my office. So now I don’t even have to walk the 100 steps to the community printer down the hall a few times a day.

But technology hasn’t just made our jobs and our lives easier; we can also pop some pills or get out clogged arteries cleaned out with relative ease, thus lowering the health costs of obesity. In fact, research by the Center for Disease Control reveals that today’s obese population has better blood pressure and cholesterol values than normal-weight adults did 30 years ago. As any economist worth his weight will tell you, if the costs of being obese go down, and there are people who like to eat and don’t like to exercise, we are bound to see obesity rates go up.

Q: Is obesity really an “epidemic”? If we were to let the current obesity rates continue unchecked, what would the outcome be?

A: Over the past three decades, the number of obese Americans has more than doubled. But whether or not we call obesity an “epidemic” largely depends on how the word is defined. If one defines an epidemic as the rapid increase in the occurrence of something, then yes, obesity is an epidemic. Of course, we also have an epidemic of flat panel TVs. My family was recently afflicted with one of those. If an epidemic requires the spreading of a disease from person to person in a locality where the disease is not permanently prevalent, as Dictionary.com defines it, then I would say no, obesity does not qualify as an epidemic.

The reality is that no matter how we label it, as long as there is a demand for labor saving devices and cheap, tasty food, there will be a significant obesity problem. The United States has the most advanced economy in the world, so we saw the obesity spike first, but other nations are quickly catching up. Of course, even in this obesity-inducing environment, many people are finding ways to stay thin and, given the large profit motive, companies are working hard to help people do so. As a result, I find it hard to believe that obesity rates could ever reach the dire levels that some have predicted. In fact, recent evidence suggests that obesity rates may be slowing among adults.

Q: From an economic standpoint, should we be diverting so many resources, public and private, to fighting obesity? Would it make more sense to let obesity rates keep rising, and focus instead on treating and preventing the medical conditions (heart disease, diabetes, etc.) to which obesity contributes?

A: This is the $93 billion question. That is how much obesity is costing the nation every year.

When it comes to the private sector, the market should be allowed to freely determine the optimal amount of resources to invest in obesity prevention and treatment. As noted above, there is a huge demand for products and services aimed at reducing rates of obesity. I am not just talking about drugs and devices, I’m also talking about cool new technologies such as Dance Dance Revolution and the Wii, which use technology to re-engineer physical activity back into our lives. I just bought these for my family.

In The Fattening of America, I make the argument that the government should revisit past policies that may have inadvertently helped promote the rise in obesity rates. I point not only to our agricultural subsidy policies for farmers, but also to zoning laws that discourage pedestrian transportation, subsidies to employers for providing health insurance, and even the existence of the Medicare program. All of these in some way blunt the incentives to invest in prevention, be it for obesity or other conditions.

I do want to point out that the government’s primary motivation is not to reduce costs to Medicare and Medicaid. If it were, they could just stop funding these programs altogether. There may be good reasons to invest in preventive care, but there is little evidence to date that document any long-term savings associated with obesity prevention efforts. If the government funds these and they do not work, they only serve to raise our taxes even more.

Q: A recent Dutch study found that it costs more to provide medical care for healthy people than the obese or smokers, who tend to live shorter lives. What do you make of these results? Are they different from, or similar to studies you address in your book?

A: I am familiar with that analysis. It is well known that smokers tend to subsidize non-smokers because the former pay so much in taxes and die before they can collect their due in social security and Medicare benefits. The researchers’ finding that
obese people also cost less is new, and probably not correct for a U.S. population.

It is well established in the U.S. that obese individuals cost more than normal weight individuals at each age of life. I have published several papers showing that result. Recent studies by Fontaine and Flegal also show a relatively small impact of obesity on mortality for BMIs less than 35 (about 70 pounds overweight). As a result, higher age-specific costs and only a slightly shorter life expectancy suggest that the lifetime costs of obesity are indeed positive for most obese adults. The same goes for overweight adults, as they do not seem to have any shorter life expectancy. So I doubt their results for obesity are accurate for the U.S. population.

But let’s suppose they were. Should we give away free Krispy Kreme donuts because obesity saves money? My son would love that, but sorry son, the answer is no. I argue in my book that high costs should motivate employers to address obesity rates, but saving money is not an appropriate reason for government intervention. If it were, then the government should be giving away free cigarettes. Moreover, when it comes to obesity, any effort by the government to encourage people to lose weight, unless it saves more money than it costs, will only raise our taxes even more, regardless of whether or not the measure is effective at getting people to lose weight. Unfortunately, cost-saving obesity interventions have yet to be identified. So until they do, obesity may be taking two significant bites out of the government coffers.

Q: How much should the government really legislate obesity? What programs/efforts would be the most beneficial? Who should they target (e.g., children, low-income adults)?

A: In my book, I talk a lot about my Uncle Al, a smart and successful attorney who also happens, not by accident, to be very overweight. In fact, he’s overweight because instead of spending his time dieting and exercising, he has spent his time building a very successful law firm. I see no reason why the government should get Uncle Al to change his behavior if he does not want to. Even for low-income individuals, any effort to force people to change their behavior will only serve to make them worse off (even if they do become thinner). So no, for adults, I do not think the government can, or even should, legislate obesity away.

In sharp contrast, children are unable to make rational choices, unlike Uncle Al. I think that the government (and parents) have a critical role to minimize the possibility of children growing up to regret the diet and exercise choices they may have made as uninformed youths. Most government interventions are focused on schools, which makes sense given that the food the lunch ladies serve up is too often not that different from the birthday fare my son receives at Chuck E. Cheese. And then, of course, there’s the school vending machines. In my book, we discuss what’s happening in America’s school cafeterias, gymnasiums, and classrooms, and what can be done to help tomorrow’s adults make informed diet and exercise choices.

Q: Can the current obesity trend be summed up as an issue of “personal and immediate benefits” versus “longterm and widespread social costs”? Why or why not?

A: People often like to compare the current obesity “epidemic” with smoking. I think the two are very different. Smokers, by virtue of second-hand smoke, impact non-smokers. As a result, the government has a clear justification for attempting to limit exposure to second-hand smoke (although, in my opinion, some of their policies have gone well beyond resolving market failures).

I see more similarities between obesity and motorcycle helmet laws. If someone wants to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, and take the risk of getting into an accident that would almost surely result in a major trauma, why do we really care? I think the answer is that we don’t want our hard-earned tax dollars to pay for this individual’s “poor” choice. It really boils down to money, and the fact that we live in a society that would not allow this person to bleed out in spite of the fact that he or she knowingly made a choice that made a major injury far more likely. So, to solve this problem, and because those who ride motorcycles are in the minority, we pass mandatory motorcycle helmet laws.

With respect to obesity among adults, I think the issue is one in the same. Nobody wants to pay for my Uncle Al’s excess weight. The primary difference is that with overweight and obese individuals representing two-thirds of the population, passing laws that limit choice, such as we did with the motorcycle helmets, is unlikely to happen any time soon.

Q: Dubner and Levitt recently discussed the unintended consequences that can result from government legislation intended to change behavior or help certain groups — what are the most likely unintended consequences of obesity-prevention legislation?

A: It is very difficult for the government to pass legislation without having unintended consequences. For example, some have suggested that No Child Left Behind may be a factor in rising obesity rates, by helping to eliminate gym class from schools and forcing kids to study harder. Truth or fiction — you get the point. When it comes to obesity legislation, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Getting junky foods out of schools, for example, will not only hurt food companies, but also reduce the revenue for schools to fund other activities. At the end of the day, the choice will be to weigh the costs and benefits to see whether the legislation is better than the status quo.

Q: Is the rise in obesity rates the result of market failures?

A: No. I would say it is just the opposite. The rise in obesity rates is resulting from market forces that are bringing us low-cost products and services that make us more productive at work and at home, and that provide us with highly valued leisure time activities.

For example, consider the microwave. While only 8 percent of American homes had microwaves in 1978, 95 percent currently have them. They make it quick and easy to get food on the table. Then take carbonated beverages. They make up 7 percent of all calories consumed. They would be more expensive without heavy farm subsidies, but not that much more. Also, how many cars today require manually “rolling up” the windows? That term shouldn’t even exist any more. Car windows, along with countless other things, are now automated.

These are a few of the thousands of examples of new products and services that allow us to save a few calories here and there, or consume a few extra calories for not much time or money. In my book, I compare our modern lifestyle to that of the Amish. We could all eschew technology and choose to live like the Amish, but who would want to? That’s a pretty high price to pay to be thin.

In my opinion, obesity is more the result of the success — not the failure — of the market. This is not to say that market failures do not exist, or should not be addressed. My only point is that were we to address them all, obesity rates would still be dramatically higher (although perhaps not quite as high) today than they were a few decades back. But on net, we are still better off.

Q: Is being obese more, less, or equally costly for individuals now than it was twenty years ago?

A: We’ve already discussed how it’s cheaper and easier to be overweight today than it was a few decades back. In addition, thanks to advances in medical technology, the health costs of obesity continue to decline. Among today’s obese population, the prevalence of high cholesterol and high blood pressure are now 21 and 18 percentage points lower, respectively, than they were among obese individuals 30 to 40 years ago. In fact, obese individuals today have better cardiovascular disease risk factor profiles than normal-weight individuals had 30 years ago.

What is driving this surge in improved health profiles for obese individuals? The answer, as you might have guessed, is a dramatic improvement in drugs and devices. Many drugs have been introduced over the past 40 years that effectively treat cholesterol, blood pressure, and other risk factors and diseases that obesity promotes. One million operations were performed in the U.S. last year to unclog clogged arteries. In the past, diet, exercise, and weight loss might have been the primary treatment to help control risk factors resulting from excess weight; today, one has the option of taking a pill or having surgery. Many individuals, including my Uncle Al, feel that diet and exercise are consequently optional.