Where in the World is Tony?

This is my response to an interesting thread over at Marginal Revolutions regarding how Americans are now seeing themselves as skinnier, despite not having lost any actual weight.

This being a Marginal Revolutions post, there are the inevitable conservatives, and below is my response towards one who bemoaned the typical ‘leftist’ response of blaiming a restaurant on your obesity.

My riposte:

Of course people are responsible for eating that extra cheeseburger. Yet, the same purveyors of said food always fight tooth and nail against disclosure about how bad their product is. (usually comically…the health of their product, not the efforts to hide said information)

I honestly don’t know what you think, so here is a legit question:

Is it better that smokers know the dangers of cigarettes now, or was it better before the flood of health data came out?

If Mad Men is to be believed at some point between now and then people got more information and were able to make their best rational choice based on a cost-benefit analysis)

Do you feel current consumers of the ubiquitous ‘fast-food’, are rationally making purchasing decisions more akin to current smoking patterns, or Mad Men smoking patterns?

Either Krugman is getting less wonkish, his writing is getting better, or my basic knowledge of econ is expanding, but I actually understand why current fiscal expansion is not ‘crowding out’ private investment, a standard current conservative complaint of Obama’s policy…

At least I think I get it