Falling inequality in mortality in the US
voxeu.org
voxeu.org
"Underlying explanations include declines in the prevalence of smoking and improved nutrition, and a major cause is social policies that target the most disadvantaged."
It will be interesting how history treats smoking in the long term (next century). I am still interested in the solutions proposed (and defeated) in Singapore and Tasmania where persons born after 200x may not purchase cigarettes. I lean libertarian but this is one area I think government is needed. Taking (or taxing) a pleasure away from someone who has enjoyed it for years is not nice, but preventing people from falling into the trap is different.
smokers are addicts, you can't price an addict out of an addiction.
it's effectively taxing the impoverished, anyway.
the people who are scrounging to buy smokes will just take that money from elsewhere in the budget. it's food out of children's mouths, in the most literal way possible. the people who aren't scrounging will just pay the increased price without batting an eye.
the price of cigarettes had no impact on my decision to quit. I would have continued to pay whatever the cost might have been, 5 dollars a pack or 50 dollars a pack.
switching to a personal vaporizer got me to quit smoking. I spend about 25% of what I spent on cigarettes for a month's supply of juice and replacement coils for the tank I use. I'm still addicted to nicotine, though.
This has not been New Zealand's experience. In recent years our government has substantially (and steadily) increased the tax on tobacco, and sales have plummeted:
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=...
I recently learned that gay (man to man) sex is actually super dangerous - having gay sex for a year costs between 0.088 and 0.97 QALYs (due to spreading HIV). This is significantly higher than most of the estimates I've heard for a year of smoking.
https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/are_gays_or_guns_mor...
Should we adopt some of your solutions for that too? Perhaps reintroducing sodomy laws for people born after 200X?
If not, what principle distinguishes these two cases?
(Note: I'm perfectly ok with people engaging in self harm. So I obviously don't favor such solutions. I'm just pointing out that this reasoning is applied incredibly inconsistently.)
In the case of smoking, we have an industry that sells addictive items that kill you, and has a history of lies and cover ups. I'm not sure of the benefits, as I don't smoke, but I hear from people who have smoked and quit that they are happier not smoking. I'm no expert, just someone who's interested, as I said. Growing your own tobacco and smoking it would be a different thing.
If tobacco smoking was introduced today, I think it wouldn't get past the FDA and similar. Can we "turn off" a legal industry that is grandfathered in? Should we?
Your slippery slope question of sodomy is different. There are no large multinationals marketing and selling it. Just free individuals engaging.
The sale of tobacco products does seem to impose quite the externality on society. Are we willing to put up with it long term? That's the question I'm interested in.
Massive multinationals sell antiretroviral drugs and are heavily subsidized by governments across the world. They directly profit from harm men having sex with men cause to themselves and make you (and me) pay for it on top.
The average costs of such therapy is 15-50k USD a year, I googled[1], depending on strain, circumstances, etc. Wouldn't that also be quite an externality? Smokers are probably cheaper[2], because they die sooner.
[1] https://www.poz.com/article/hiv-costs-medication-19139-5119
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.97488...
The same is true of gay sex, yet you seem completely uninterested in the question of why we allow this. This makes your stated reasons for opposing tobacco seem unprincipled and probably just a rationalization/cover for something else.
If you are inconsistent then you are wrong about something. Why is that acceptable to you?
The original article explains "Underlying explanations include declines in the prevalence of smoking".
Smoking causes income inequality. That's the topic we are talking about. Smoking is highly taxed, and highly addictive, and a simple pleasure, and a massive industry.
The legal sale of tobacco products is an outlier. Let's talk consistency then: why has it not been banned already, like asbestos or other carcinogens? One in five deaths annually are caused by this industry. Why is that inconsistency acceptable to you?
If (for example) oranges were found to have the same effect as smoking, the sale of them would be banned immediately. If you wanted to grow your own oranges and eat them, no-one would stop you. You just couldn't sell them.
I'm trying to discuss a way that this could happen with smoking. You are trying to get me to ban gay sex for "consistency" and saying that I seem unprincipled as I don't equate the two things.
Why is that inconsistency acceptable to you?
It's not acceptable. I think we should legalize heroin and meth in addition to tobacco. To prevent people who consume these products from imposing harmful externalities on the rest of us, we should ban employer sponsored and state sponsored health insurance.
If (for example) oranges were found to have the same effect as smoking, the sale of them would be banned immediately.
And if oranges were found to have the same effect as gay sex (namely causing 29k HIV infections each year) they would also be banned.
...saying that I seem unprincipled as I don't equate the two things.
And that's the problem. Your stated rationale for opposing tobacco, namely the harm it causes, applies equally well to gay sex. But you've now revealed your real rationale - you dislike "Big Tobacco" and want to harm them. It turns out that protecting people isn't really your goal at all.
This is the problem: Tobacco causes 20% of deaths and is industry and lobby driven, and is discussed here as a cause of unequal mortality. That's the topic. I think that anything that causes 20% of deaths should be avoided if possible. You saying that "protecting people isn't my goal" is obnoxious and rude. Forget "harm Big Tobacco" - I don't want all those people to die prematurely if possible. How you can twist that into me being the problem is perverted.
Gay sex is a completely different issue. It's not industry driven, and it's a rounding error compared to tobacco deaths. There's no nuance. It's not relevant to the topic. I haven't stated a position on it as it is not relevant (whether you wrote a blog post on it or not). Yet you invent my position on it, and call me unprincipled. Again, obnoxious and rude.
You are committing several logical fallacies here, but most importantly: This topic is not about my position on gay sex. Not at all.
The reason this is relevant to the topic at hand is that you are making an argument that you know to be flawed. It's clear that you know it's flawed because you refuse to apply it anywhere else, and immediately retreat from "don't want all those people to die prematurely" when those people are dying prematurely from something you don't want to ban.
What do you gain from making an argument you know to be incorrect?
I'm not "retreating", I am clarifying why there is a difference between an industry whose products causes 20% of deaths and free people engaging in activities as you can't seem to tell the difference, but you are being deliberately obtuse. How can I be retreating by mentioning "unequal mortality"? That's the title of the article. You are just being silly.
You are playing games by placing words in my mouth: "I guess that inequality is ok?". Straw man. You are saying that if one form of harm could be regulated or banned, all must be. Slippery slope. "What do you gain..." - again, focusing on me instead of addressing the topic. Ad hominem.
I think you understand all of this but you are trolling. Intellectual dishonesty.
I largely agree with the article. This needs to be lauded and discussed.
Is nice to see some progress.
"Mortality inequality remains, even in 2016"
Then prescribe universal healthcare.
"Overall, these findings show that even in times of great economic inequality, inequality in health outcomes is not inevitable but is strongly mediated by policy."
Acknowledging income inequality as a problem, even if it isn't have a negative effect on whether you die earlier or not.
"...in times of great economic inequality..."
^Is intentionally sensationalized, the notion being that economic inequality in our society is generally viewed as a negative. Consider the following:
"...in times of great famine..."
Now you could try to make the argument that someone is merely stating a fact and picked an adjatiave which helps the reader picture what's going on, but I don't think anyone would assume the author considered famine to be a "neutral fact". Similarly, the end snippet is clearly addressing the elephant in the room given the title of the article, which was certainly chosen due to the subject matter, but also due the phrase which we are debating (income inequality), which is essentially another way or saying that a class of people are losing wealth to another class.
For those of us who believe economic inequality is both good and natural, this is a great rhetorical device for undermining the left -- "in this time of great economic inequality, life is better than it has ever been for the general populace."
A person on the left may use the opposite rhetorical device, "in this time of great economic freedom, people are increasingly poor."
As this is written, there is no way to know which rhetorical device they were using.
And the research drew this back to Government health initiatives which would be described as "victim blaming" by American Progressives -- healthy eating education and anti-smoking initiatives.