After Cook County scraps soda tax, try a tax on deceit

 
     When ordinary politicians lie, and the lie blows up in their faces, do they shake their fists to the sky and exclaim, "But it looks so easy when Donald Trump does it!"?
     I should call Toni Preckwinkle and ask.
     The Cook County soda tax was never about battling obesity or diabetes. Rolled out Aug. 2, the penny-an-ounce tax was met with public outcry stoked by ferocious advertising by the soft drink industry.
     The Cook County Board president kept insisting that, rather than a bald cash grab, the tax was instead a basic health measure, like flossing. Your kids are too fat, Preckwinkle told voters, and since you can't keep the little brats from guzzling Mountain Dew, I'm going to help you by picking your pockets.
    And to think people objected.
     But all those TV commercials, some $5 million worth paid for by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ignored one simple fact, and I wish I had thought to check this a month ago: These taxes don't cut obesity.
     Cook County isn't the only fiefdom to attempt this stunt. About five years ago, over in Europe, nanny-state governments made a push to cut obesity. Turns out —who knew? — Europeans are also too fat, just like Americans. So Britain, France and other nations dabbled with jacking up taxes on fats and sugars, closely observed by an army of clipboard-wielding academics.
     What did they find?
     "The overall impact of a soft drink tax on calorie consumption is likely to be small," concluded "The Effects of A Soft Drink Tax in the UK" published in the May 2015 issue of Health Economics.
     Not only don't the taxes cut obesity but—and this is so delicious, were it not so sad—when it comes to poor consumers in particular, increasing taxes on unhealthy foods like sweetened soda has one of those counterintuitive effects that make human nature such a delight to ponder.
     A new study found that increasing tax on unhealthy food decreased the consumption of . . . wait for it . . . healthy food, as low-income consumers cut down on lettuce so they can continue to enjoy the junk they like best.
     "A nontrivial number of respondents in the low-income group (39 percent of the total) behaved in a manner opposite to the intention of the policy," noted "Distributional Impact of Fat Taxes and Thin Subsidies," published last month in The Economic Journal, referring to a study in France. "They allocated a larger share of their budget towards unhealthy food and a smaller share towards healthy food"
     Ah people, God love 'em.
     Of course there are lots of studies and, not being a politician, I must be fair and mention some studies support such taxes; Denmark, for instance, seems to have blunted butter consumption with a high tax. But still, it's most pronounced effect is not improving health but raising money.
     And that's an important effect. Cook County is broke, and somebody has to pony up money to run the place. Though why the burden should fall unduly on the shoulders of poor people who bring pleasure to their lives with Coca-Cola on a hot day is beyond me. Plus, I have to mention, from firsthand knowledge, that the tax was also a logistical and PR nightmare for groceries, who had to administer the tax.
     Customers were alienated. I still can hardly slink guiltily into Sunset Foods without feeling like the assistant manager is giving me the stink eye for trying to get back the Cook County tax they unfairly charged me on a case of flavored, though not sweetened, bubbly water.
     Now the soda tax is pretty much cooked, with 12 of the 17 commissioners on the County Board Finance Committee pledged to repeal the tax when the it meets Tuesday. The full board is scheduled to vote Wednesday.
      I guess the finance committee will just have to find something else to tax. A shame they can't conjure up a way to tax lying; the receipts would be enormous, though I imagine our political leaders would complain of their cost to their pocketbooks. To which we say: Well boo-hoo, just suck it up. It's for your own benefit.

Sixty-four thousand

Drug users, Lower Wacker Drive, December, 2016

      64,000.
      You aren't supposed to start a sentence with a number, never mind a stand-alone sentence or paragraph. 
      Maybe it should have been:
      Sixty-four thousand.
      Either way it looks wrong, which is fitting, since 64,000 is the number of Americans who died from drug overdoses last year. That just seems wrong, and is, though the figure is accurate.
      News to me. I'd have guessed the number half as much. But deaths from drug overdose have shot up—compare that figure to some 40,000 Americans who died in highway accidents in 2016, and that was a particularly bad year on the road, due to more texting and more driving in general, because of lower gas prices.
    The figure popped out of this fine New York Times story about Dr. Thomas A. Andrew, the former medical examiner in New Hampshire, the state hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, who quit his post after 20 years and entered the seminary in the hopes of steering young people away from using and dying from drugs instead of cutting them up after they already have.
      Overdoses, the article pointed out, are the leading cause of death among people under 50, and the problem is so severe that OD deaths have actually cut two months off life the average life expectancy for Americans.      
     As terrible as was the killing of 58 people a week ago in Las Vegas, that is the death toll from drug overdoses about every eight hours in America, 365 days a year. If only we could focus our attention on the daily, pervasive problem as intently as we focus on this relatively rare one. But that is our way—scared of sharks while shrugging off heart attacks. 
     And as with gun deaths, drug overdoses have powerful financial interests, in this case pharmaceutical companies, that encourage pervasive use while ignoring, more or less, inevitable misuse of their products
     The problem can only be expected to get worse, as our government tries to fight drug use through increased punishment, and because of our general inability to admit to social problems, never mind do anything about them. 

Metra raises a stink

     Two stories:
     1) Twenty-five years ago, my wife and I were in Paris, getting ready to take the TGV down to Cannes for a mid-winter sojourn at the Carlton (I've been waiting a quarter century to write that sentence). 
     The evening before, we thought we would buy some provisions for the trip, some bread and cheese, and went to Fauchon, the great supermarket. I bought a can of lime tea, my tribute to Proust, which I still have, and we tried several cheeses and settled on one.
     Then we returned to our hotel.
     Within an hour or two, the cheese we had bought began to reek. The odor filled the room. We had to put the cheese in a garbage can and set it in the hallway.
     The next day, settling into our seat for the high speed journey to the Cote d'Azure (TGV stands for "Train à Grande Vitesse" or "very fast train") when we took a breath and recognized the smell of the same cheese from the night before, the meal of the people directly behind us. 
     We looked at each other and laughed.
     2) Then last week, I was getting onto the Metra train, pressed the black oblong on the door, stepped into a train and caught the distinctive miasma of McDonald's—McStench. I looked down, saw a woman digging into a big red cardboard pouch of French fries. Feeling nothing toward the woman but pity, I span 180 degrees on my heel and found another car. 
    These two episodes would never had emerged from the bog of memory and fused in my mind were it not for this sign, glanced stepping off of the 5:12 at Northbrook on Friday. If you can't read the words, the message from  P. Ewe says "Ticket. Check. Stinky food. Check. Annoyed fellow passengers. Check!" 
     Granted, Metra is famous for confusing, pointless and counter-productive communications—from announcements of trains arriving that have already arrived to the garbled station announcements to various glyphic signs and symbols. 
    But this one takes the cake, so to speak. Four flaws come to mind:
    First, this sign, to the degree it is directed at anybody, is intended to shame would-be carriers of stinky food, encouraging them to consider their fellow riders. Question: who thinks of their food as "stinky"? Answer: nobody in the world. "Stinky" is an assessment that others, who are not consuming the food in question, make. The people eating the food like that kind of thing. They don't notice anything objectionable, or they wouldn't be eating it.
    Second, the most common offender, the smelliest food found on Metra trains is ... what? The aforementioned McDonald's of course, whose oil is as rank and distinctive as a corpse. And where do Metra passengers typically buy their putrid-smelling food? At the McDonald's at Union Station. Metra is urging you not to buy the food they're selling at the train station (which, I know, is not owned by Metra, as the railroad always points out when some part of it falls on the heads of commuters. But still. Why put up signs? Go yell at Amtrak.)
     Third, punctuate much? How about "Ticket? Check. Stinky food? Check. Annoyed fellow passengers? Check!" Question marks are free.
     And finally, have you ever been annoyed at somebody on a train because of how their food smelled? Oh, as in 25 years ago in France, you might notice it. You might even be bothered by it, like last week. But trains are big, long places. There's always somewhere else to go. No need to expend energy getting angry at somebody. So the posters are appealing to people who don't know they're being addressed, for the benefit of easily-annoyed parties who might not even exist. Nice work Metra. Your dollars at work. 

Rich Cohen's "Story of a Curse" captures Cubs glory

Rich Cohen, right, at Harry Caray's on Kinzie.

     Rich Cohen is having a better life than I am. He's younger, handsomer and his books sell better. Keith Richards thinks Rich Cohen is cool. The only whisper of coolness I can claim is that I know Rich Cohen.
     Most galling, he's a better writer than I am. His recent book — he's written 11 — was about the Rolling Stones. I ate it up, even though I have no interest in the band. That's the definition of a good writer: someone who can hold your attention on a topic you otherwise care little about. I had zero curiosity about Lyndon Johnson until Robert Caro hooked his fingers into my nostrils and led me through three thick books about LBJ like a drover pulling an ox with a ring through its nose.   

     Before the Stones, Cohen wrote "Monsters" about the 1985 Bears. I enjoyed that, and know little about football and care less. I spent more time reading Cohen's book about the team than I've spent watching Bears games over the past decade.
     How does he do it? Sharp writing spiked with fascinating facts, like the unexpected connection between the name "Bears" and the Cubs, the topic of his latest book, published Wednesday, "The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse.
     In it, he offers three things: first, a history of the team filled with amazing trivia — Zachary Taylor Davis was the architect of both Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park — and unexpected juxtapositions. I knew Hack Wilson lost a ball in the sun, and I knew he had a great season, hitting 56 home runs. But I didn't realize one followed the other, that the standout season was poor, sodden Wilson's desperate attempt to erase the shame of missing that ball.
     Second, Cohen, who grew up in Glencoe, chronicles his own lifelong love of the Cubs, despite their curse, "a futility that lasted so long we turned it into a religion."

To continue reading, click here.

"Thoughts and prayers ain't enough"

 

    Cynicism comes so easily nowadays. The country is divided by hatred and mutual incomprehension, our divisions longstanding and entrenched, our leaders paid off or impotent. Lies spewing from corrupted news sources, with no agreement which is fair, which foul. Our president is a superannuated infant, reflecting the worst among us, astounding even the most jaded every single day with his bottomless baseness and continual bad faith. 
     What hope for progress is there? Haven't we been steadily deteriorating for years, decades? 
     Umm no, not really. Fifty-eight Americans were killed Sunday by mindless violence. When I was growing up, that was a good week's casualty list in the Vietnam War. The last administration did actually catch the will-o-the-wisp of health care, not in an ideal form, but one much improved, available to millions of people, heretofore cut-off. The unexamined hate that used to be just accepted, the stage convention of our public life, the curtains and the scenery, now seems glaring wrong, in many quarters, and is challenged. We can't avoid the horrors, they fill our vision. But the good is there too, if we look for it.
    Or bumble upon it. I was walking the dog Tuesday morning and there was Lee Goodman, who lives a few blocks down my street. Writing on his garbage can. Which is something he does, getting the word out. Lee quit his practice as a lawyer a couple years back to devote his energy, full time, along with his wife Nancy, to repealing the 2nd Amendment.
    A quixotic quest, in an era when even discussion of the possibility of discussion is shouted down by paid lackeys in government and their duped constituents. But he's doing it. He wrote a book, outlining his ideas. Tuesday he emblazoned his garbage can with a sign: "Thoughts and prayers ain't enough," a rebuke to the hypocritical pro forma pieties that our leaders mouth in lieu of actually doing or saying anything. 
     In one light, a futile act. How many people go down Center Avenue and see a garbage can? In another, a testament of faith in the ultimate victory of rationality, of goodness. The internet has raised communication to a howl, where reaching a million pairs of eyes is nothing. Only a start. Still, there are those quiet voices speaking to anyone who will listen. Even an empty street.
     We talked a bit. The new Dick's Sporting Goods on Skokie Blvd., he said, is carrying long guns. He led a protest there the night before, and was pleased with the turn-out. Hunting rifles and shotguns are not the problem, in my view, and opposing them only gives credence to the right wing canard that the left wants to ban all guns everywhere. Lee goes over the line, sometime, in my view, such as when he protested the installation of an old Army howitzer by Village Hall. 
     But Lee's committed anti-gun, no half measures thank you very much, and I understand the purity of his stand. If all the people pushing for silencers and armor-piercing bullets can cash their checks and mail out their hyperventilating fundraising appeals, then Lee can organize his quiet protests and deliver his trash day messages. If there were more people like him, then maybe our country wouldn't be in the mess it's in.
     He isn't bowing his head in resignation at our national disgrace, but is doing whatever he can to combat it, and I have to respect that, and add what little boost I can, barely more than a sign on a garbage can, but it's all I've got.
     After I wrote the above, I noticed this tweet, from my friend Rory Fanning, which sums up what I was trying to say better than I could manage:

Before Americans can talk gun control they have to have empathy

     Hiking is fun. It's exercise amid nature, among trees and birds.
     There is also the sense of being far from civilization. Though that was blunted Saturday at Starved Rock State Park, where there is a problem with visitors blundering off cliffs. So many boardwalks and railings have gone up that I felt, at times, not so much like a pioneer striding through virgin forest as a cow being herded through a chute into a slaughterhouse.
     As we walked, talk turned to the constant staccato pops drifting from across the Illinois River. "What is that?" a trail mate wondered. Small explosions in a quarry, maybe? he ventured.
     "Gunfire," I replied. "Some big gun range with people blazing away at old refrigerators." Bingo, I later discovered, online. The Buffalo Range Shooting Park in Ottawa, with rifle and pistol ranges, skeet and trap, and a shooting pit.
     Also fun. Though it was eerie Monday to hear that exact sound — the stutter of automatic weapons — on the videotapes from Las Vegas, where a deranged man fired on a country music festival, killing 59 and wounding 525, the worst mass shooting in modern American history.
     Facebook immediately lit up with people wondering whether this latest horror is enough to nudge us, finally, toward meaningful gun control. It was all I could do not to start time-wasting Facebook spats by jumping in with, "No, of course not."
     Why? Well, it never is — not in recent years — though sensible gun laws would still be useful, and sponsors of a bill loosening restrictions on silencers pulled it, for now. I'd like to imagine restricting high-capacity magazines might come next, but I doubt it. It's imaginable.      While firing streams of bullets at old washing machines is certainly fun, balancing that fun against increasingly common slaughters, a unified and rational country might come to that decision, the way we decided to require seat belts even though, at the time, men complained they rumpled their suits. I don't like the chutes at Starved Rock, but I understand their purpose.

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You can hear me talk about this column with WGN's Justin Kaufman here.

The Monty Hall Problem

     Monty Hall died Saturday, a fact I learned after it was posted on the Facebook page of my brother-in-law, a retired math professor.

      And if you're wondering the connection between the host and creator of "Let's Make a Deal" and mathematics, then you are not familiar with The Monty Hall Problem, a simple yet vexing statistical puzzle. 
    Simple, if you see it, and vexing, if you don't, particularly for those trying to explain it.

     Remember the show: Would-be contestants in the audience came to see the show in outrageous costumes, waving signs and props, hoping to catch Monty's attention and be selected to compete. They would swap what they had brought, bartering their way higher and higher, hoping to get to the final challenge, which involved three doors, cleverly named Door No. 1, Door No. 2, and Door No. 3.  Behind one of the door was a new car.

     The lucky contestant would be asked to pick one of the three doors—let's say she picked Door No. 1. 
    Then Monty would announce that he would let that contestant stick with the door she picked, or choose another door. But first, he'd say, let's see what is behind one of the doors you didn't pick. He would open, let's say, Door No. 3, and reveal a burro, or a goat, or some such thing.

    Now, Monty would say, do you want to stick with the door you picked, Door No. 1? Or would you like to take your chances with Door No. 2?

    What should the contestant do?

    The average person trying to puzzle through the problem might say, "Okay, the chances of getting the new car are one in three at the beginning and, tossing one door out, become one in two, but that holds for either door, so it doesn't matter whether you stick or switch. 

    That's wrong.  

    According to statistics, the contestant should always switch. The odds are better with the other door, and not just a little better, but twice as good. 

    How can that be?

    The quick trick to understanding is to imagine two types of strategies: Always Stick, and Always Switch. 

     In order to get the car, what must Mr. Always Stick pick in order to end up with the new car? He must pick the door hiding the car because later, given the chance to switch, he won't, and is left with his initial choice. To get the car, he has to pick the car right off of the bat.

    And what are the chances of picking the car first thing? One door in three, or 1/3.

    Now thinks about Always Switch. How does Miss Always Switch get the car? By picking the car? No, because if she picks the car, she'll later switch away from it. So to get the car, she has to pick one of the donkeys. And what are the chances of picking a donkey? Two in three, or 2/3. 

     So Always Stick's chances are 1/3, and Always Switch 2/3, or twice as good.

     Do you see it? No? Don't feel bad. My experience is that people often don't. A lot of people. Twenty-five years ago, after "Ask Marilyn" columnist Marilyn vos Savant presented the problem, up to then the stuff of obscure mathematical journals, in her popular column in Parade Magazine, readers deluged her with mail claiming she was wrong. 

      Many people I've tried to explain the problem to just can't get it, to my eternal frustration. What throws them off is the final choice, between two doors, seems like it should be 50-5o, because they know one door has a car and one a burro. They are forgetting the winnowing process, the throwing out of the third door, which affects the odds for switching. The odds for sticking remain what they were at the beginning—one in three; but tossing out one remaining door changes the odds considerable for taking the door that isn't thrown out.

      Let's put it another way. I am going to give you a choice between two wallets, and your goal is to find the wallet stuffed with cash. Wallet A is picked from a pair of wallets, one containing cash, one empty. Wallet B is selected from a group of a hundred wallets, only one of which contains cash. Of the two wallets I offer, which wallet should you pick? Even though you are being presented with two wallets, you should always pick A, because the odds of B containing any money are very small. Thus can the odds of picking between two things not be 50-50.

     Very confusing, I know. And I probably should have addressed the slaughter in Las Vegas instead. But honestly, at least this problem has an actual solution that can, with the application of brainpower, be solved. The other one seems merely impossible, at least for now and the foreseeable future.