Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Nannystatish Food-Control Neo-Puritanism backfires?

So San Francisco tried to ban the Happy Meal.
Because clearly parents were helpless and happless at raising children and the State had to come in to keep that eeeevvvviiil Clown from bribing kids with those nefarious toys.

Turns out... their law didn't quite work the way they intended it to.

It turns out San Francisco has not entirely vanquished the Happy Meal as we know it. Come Dec. 1, you can still buy the Happy Meal. But it doesn't come with a toy. For that, you'll have to pay an extra 10 cents.

Huh. That hardly seems to have solved the problem (though adults and children purchasing unhealthy food can at least take solace that the 10 cents is going to Ronald McDonald House charities). But it actually gets worse from here. Thanks to Supervisor Eric Mar's much-ballyhooed new law, parents browbeaten into supplementing their preteens' Happy Meal toy collections are now mandated to buy the Happy Meals.

Today and tomorrow mark the last days that put-upon parents can satiate their youngsters by simply throwing down $2.18 for a Happy Meal toy. But, thanks to the new law taking effect on Dec. 1, this is no longer permitted. Now, in order to have the privilege of making a 10-cent charitable donation in exchange for the toy, you must buy the Happy Meal. Hilariously, it appears Mar et al., in their desire to keep McDonald's from selling grease and fat to kids with the lure of a toy have now actually incentivized the purchase of that grease and fat -- when, beforehand, a put-upon parent could get out cheaper and healthier with just the damn toy.

That's right.

What did this smugly touted and bragged about law accomplish? It made happy meal toys a bit more expensive and it made the happy meal itself (the very part they were worried about) mandatory.

That prettymuch sums up the nanny state in a nutshell, condescending, expensive, and counter productive. Remember these same Statists thought they knew how to better feed children than their own parents, and yet they couldn't get this law right.

But at least they had good intentions!

Via Top Headlines on Ace

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