The battle of the utilitarian & the moral

Addiction Economy Thought for Today - the complexity of policy making in areas of the Addiction Economy - interesting from Aveek Bhattacharya here in New Statesman. Worth a read.

I'm just researching the background to Hogarth's Gin Lane to ponder the comparisons and smiling as I read the same EXACT arguments being made by the same people for the same reasons in the 18th century as we see now. And accountability of government and business for embedding the addictive products in the first place conveniently forgotten.

The battle of the economic, utilitarian and the moral, and what to do about the products and their effects still going on!

"Unlike the impact on specific industries – with increased demand for some sectors being offset by lower demand for others – the health benefits of less smoking, drinking and obesity are unambiguously good for the economy. Being sick means that people are less likely to be in work, more likely to have days off if they do have a job, and more likely to have impaired job performance when they make it in. There are more pressing moral reasons to save people’s lives, but deaths from these behavioural causes also represent a loss of working-age people from the labour market.

"...The upshot, then, is that we should not give too much weight to the economic arguments around public health policies. We should pay little heed to incumbent industries that tend to over-emphasise their value and neglect the harm that they do. By contrast, while measures to reduce sickness can increase labour supply and productivity, the gains are more in the “every little helps” category than the basis for a full economic strategy.