Seminar Time - And the tendency of intervention

As I take the introductory course of Public Policy here at University of Glasgow, I also attend the weekly 1-hour long tutorials in the course. To be fair, put aside all the obvious objections I have towards this subject, its lecturers and the ways in which  it is taught, the Tutor of my neat seminar group is great. She openly displays her opinions and always let us discuss freely our own ones. Shame time is such a scarce resource.

Naturally, as most of the group consists of sociologists or students of other social sciencie, the tendency is very much towards an intervetionist "The State Will Fix Everything" kind of idea. And, yet as natural, whatever comment I make disrups the status quo of allowable opinion, at times producing a war in that little room of ours.

Todays subject; Health Inequality. Appearantly, the percieved and measures "Inequalities" in health related areas in Glasgow are particularly interesting to sociologists due to the fact that they are heavily correlated to geography within the city. It even has given name to the international phenomenon of WHO.

Our tutor gave us the task of suggesting Policies to Solve this Problem (a future post will be dedicated to explain why it isn't even a problem to begin with). What types of policies did my wonderful group come up with?

1) Regulations
2) Tax on unhealthy food
3) redistribution of income

It's gotta be a good life these keen supporters of public policy have. The answer to EVERY question is STATE INTERVENTION or STATE REGULATION. It's a bit like listening to Keynesian Economists, their magic trick being INCREASED SPENDING.

It's a funny world we live in.

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Oh, btw!

During this mornings lecture (Time of first Thatcher critique: 22 minutes) we were fed the faulty socialists' concepts of transforming correlations to causality; Health in Glasgow, we were told, are appearantly determined by 1) Race, 2) Gender, 3) Social Class 4) Geography and OF COURSE the almighty Income (and Income inequality). Funny that, I had the impression determinism was long ago considered a bit out of fashion, if you'd like. That individuals make choices, preferes DIFFERENT THINGS was of course readily discarded as some black magic Mumbo Jumbo. Funny.