NZ Initiative cares more about junk-food barons’ bottom lines than it does about Kiwis getting sick @KevinHague https://t.co/8umZza6UnW
— Green Party NZ (@NZGreens) April 20, 2016
#MorganFoundation errors about @nzinitiative’s Health of the State – part 2
23 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, economics of regulation, health economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: anti-market bias, do gooders, meddlesome preferences, Morgan Foundation, nanny state, political psychology, rational rationality
#MorganFoundation errors about @nzinitiative’s Health of the State – part 1
22 Apr 2016 3 Comments
in economics of information, economics of regulation, health economics, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: Aaron Director, alcohol regulation, economics of obesity, economics of prohibition, economics of smoking, meddlesome preferences, Morgan Foundation, nanny state
The Greens have joined that Morgan Foundation in playing the man rather than the ball on the recently published report of the New Zealand Initiative on sin taxes. Green Party health spokesperson Kevin Hague said:
The New Zealand Initiative cares more about junk-food barons’ bottom lines than it cares about Kiwis who are getting sick and dying because of obesity-related illnesses
The Morgan Foundation was just as keen to argue that their opponents on sin taxes are both ignorant and steeped in moral turpitude as a way of avoiding substantive argument:
The New Zealand Initiative are not interested in reducing obesity, or preventing the looming diabetes crisis where 1 in 3 Kiwis will have the disease. They make no attempt to understand the causes, and don’t propose any way to deal with these issues…
Is there no room for honest disagreement and different views on the ability of further government intervention to be a net benefit? As Aaron Director said:
Laissez-faire is no more than a slogan in defence of the proposition that every extension of state activity should be examined under the presumption of error.
One of the specific claims by the Morgan Foundation that seems to be in error is:
In fact, the report seems devoid of any research outside a narrow economic focus. The food industry has funded an enormous amount of psychological research on how to influence people to eat more junk food through packaging, advertising, product placement etc, much of which is publicly available, but which the New Zealand Institute has roundly ignored. Ironic, given that they funded by the same organisations that funded this psychological research.
The Food industry’s own research shows our choices are hugely influenced by the environment that surrounds us, but the New Zealand Institute conveniently prefers to cling to the oversimplification that we are all rational economic units – known as homo economicus.
The report of the New Zealand Initiative has a nice discussion of the limitations of rationality which did not weigh as heavily as it should in the critique by the Morgan Foundation part of which is in the snapshot below:
Source: Jenesa Jeram, The Health of the State, The New Zealand Initiative ( April 2016, p.10).
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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