MARK BITTMAN, the New York Times' resident food guru, wants the government more heavily involved in engineering Americans' diets by taxing bad and subsidising good food. I'm not going to pretend this sort of officious paternalism doesn't annoy the hell out of me, but for Xenu's sake if we're going to do this, we ought to do it right. Which is to say, not as Mr Bittman proposes:





We could sell those staples cheap—let's say for 50 cents a pound—and almost everywhere: drugstores, street corners, convenience stores, bodegas, supermarkets, liquor stores, even schools, libraries and other community centers.

Before getting to the problems with Mr Bittman's price-fixing plan, let's ask why this might be thought a legitimate function of government? Mr Bittman says:

[P]ublic health is the role of the government, and our diet is right up there with any other public responsibility you can name, from water treatment to mass transit.

"Our diet"? Interesting. Try this: Our pattern of sexual conduct is a public responsibility. Or: Our convictions are a public responsibility. Right up there with dog-catching, even! After all, one can come down with a killing disease rogering the wrong lad or lass. Moreover, wick-dipping is the leading cause of new citizens, many of whom will turn out to be a net drain on the public purse. Can we afford to continue allowing just anyone to inseminate just anyone? To ask this question is almost to answer it. And how about our convictions?! If folks get their heads full up with wrong notions, they might want to invade Yemen, vote Republican, draw to an inside straight, or eat a Twinkie, to the detriment of us all.

Anyway, if public health is the role of government, let's not get bogged down in this nonsense about rigging the relative prices of arugula and Ho-Hos. Let's just raise the price of being unhealthy. Because why punish a lean fellow who runs 45 miles per week just because Chocolate Black Cherry Mr Pibb happens to be his personal ambrosia? And what happens if the paleo-diet fanatics displace our current cohort of diet experts and inflict upon us $10 loaves of bread and subsidised Slim Jims? What then? Free government venison, that's what.

I modestly propose Americans be made to file an annual health audit with the Department of Health and Human Services for the purpose of assessing health-related tax credits and penalties. A low body-fat percentage, low (bad) cholesterol, low resting pulse rate, and whatever else that's really good for a body wins the taxpayer a handsome tax credit. Being fat, having high cholesterol, being in lousy cardiovascular condition, and whatnot is rewarded with higher taxes, which rise with increasing corpulence and functional decrepitude. (Parents with "husky" children will do hard time.) The health-audit system is manifestly superior to a scheme of soft-paternalist price manipulation because it protects consumer sovereignty, which not only preserves the full dignity of free human agency, but also avoids the costly distributional conflict inherent in government winner-picking.

I may jest, but I'm only sort of kidding. If the bulk of Americans become persuaded of Mr Bittman's unwholesome idea that the state not only may but must nudge its wards away from bulk, let's forget about kale subsidies and just punish fat people. But it needn't come to that. In the interests of collective mental hygiene, I propose a 50% tax on any publication that publishes Mr Bittman. Our beliefs are far too important to leave to the callously unfettered marketplace of ideas.

(Photo credit: AFP)