In any case, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find places to sled in Monroe County anymore. This is rather startling since the county is brimming with terrific public parks and its geology is perfect for the kinds of sledding that folks love to do. Almost every country park here has wide and vast slopes that just scream out for kids to spend entire days there sledding and tubing and messing around.

Until now of course. We were hiking at Mendon last week, and at Ellison park a few weeks ago and also walking around some of the local high schools that also have great sledding hills on them, and posted on hills in every location for all to see is, “Warning: Absolutely No Sledding is Permitted Here.” And the notice is from Monroe County Parks. I don’t have pictures but I’ll take my camera the next time I go out there and post the images for your enjoyment.

That’s simply incredible, it really is. Of all of the things Monroe County is spending its time on, telling us not to sled on spectacularly great hills is, needless to say, totally absurd. It’s at this point that I’d normally launch into a tirade on the ridiculous nanny-state paternalists all around us and perhaps bring up points like this. Not today. Today, I want to go on a tirade on you. That’s right. You. Not the government.

You are the reason for this suckage. Now, I imagine I can find a way to tie this all into government somehow, but that is not the point. Why are you the reason for this suckage? Because too many people can’t handle individual responsibility. Too many people cannot handle their own freedom. And you suck because of that.

Here we are, after two feet of fresh snow has blanketed the pastoral landscape of western, NY. Snow boots on, hats and gloves on snug, a clean hill of pure joy laid out before us for hundreds of yards in all directions, sled underfoot – and the Monroe County sheriff comes by to relocate us. And it’s all because you suck. I am sure someone in the past few years bumped their head while sledding. I am sure that some people crashed into one another while sledding at some point in the past few years. After all, on the best snow days dozens and dozens of families get the same excited feeling we do and head for the same hills. Indeed, part of the ritual of sledding that is important is learning how to respect the actions of others – not wallowing on the ground at the bottom, dragging your sled up along the side of the path, not aiming for people with your sled, and having a good laugh when you wipe out. And I am sure someone had the brilliant idea of suing the county or suing another sledder for some accident that may have occurred in the past.

So Monroe County (in my charitable interpretation) is not necessarily telling me what’s good for me, and telling me that I cannot make decisions about risk, thrill and safety for myself and my children – what they are telling me is that few of my neighbors are capable of making those decisions without imposing massive costs on the county and indeed me. This is perhaps a liability issue.

And you know what? That sucks. If I were running Monroe County, I could see why I too might want to make the same rules (they do allow sledding now only in a few designated areas), but where is real leadership when we need it? Where are citizens of influence and policymakers leading the charge to remind people that individual responsibility is important, is to be cherished, and is a valued part of living in a decent society? Where are the policymakers to put an end to the litigousness that perhaps has led to this outcome? Why can’t Monroe County make it clear (pass a law?) that “buyer beware” when people are out on a sledding hill on public property? Are people really too stupid to handle that?

So sure, we have this asinine park paternalism to deal with, but I offer up the very likely possibility that the park planners are not the asinine ones – we all are, and that sucks. And it sucks living among folks who are like that.

OK, rant over, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I call it the 6-6-6 plan — an across-the-board 6 percent national sales tax (on top of any existing state and local sales taxes) in effect from 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 6 a.m. on Black Friday.

This plan would leave both stores and consumers free to decide for themselves whether middle-of-the-night shopping is worth it. Even if some retailers decided to stick with the early openings and even if some shoppers showed up, the country would reap a significant benefit. As every mature adult realizes, we have to tax something, and the revenue from my 6-6-6 plan would make it possible to reduce taxes on other activities that are actually useful. Best of all, it would encourage Americans to spend Thanksgiving night where they really want to — in bed.

Longtime readers will know that Professor Frank is probably the only economics professor I have ever had that has left a real mark on me, but that doesn’t mean he gets a free pass. Other writers have already much discussed the irony above that a “tax increases choice” … what I’d like to point out simply is that in much of Frank’s writings (such as this one) a major concern is that lots of spending by the rich is wasteful and that very steep consumption taxes would improve welfare since those taxes could be funneled toward the non-rich. Now of course think hard about who the typical Black Friday shopper is? Is it Daddy Warbucks in his bunny slippers just hoping to get that one extra great deal on a new toaster? So now Professor Frank finds himself in the position of wanting steep consumption taxes on the rich (we’ve written lots on this in the past) and wants to tell the non-rich exactly how and when to shop. And of course this is all done in the name of … liberty.

Let’s suppose we are willing to accept this newest of Professor Frank’s proposals. Do we think that there will be no incentive to create a substitute for Black Friday? Would Professor Frank want to ban all efforts to price discriminate in favor of this class of consumers? So much more to say … but I want to spend some time checking out what deals there might be in store for me on Cyber Monday. Would the dear professor like to see that activity taxed too? I’ll be buying lots of books tomorrow, in case anyone is wondering.

UPDATE: I should be clear. I know what Professor Frank would say in response. In the article he says that taxes have to come from somewhere, so they might as well come from Black Friday sort of things. And I am sure he is able to articulate something like this – I truly would be better off if the entire internet were banned on Saturdays. On the tax point – I am sure Professor Frank is a mature adult – sort of like he claims only some opponents of this idea are — and will recognize that we rarely get rid of bad taxes in favor of better ones – we just pile on the bad ones on top of one another. Maybe if the world were populated with more “mature adults” then we’d need neither the 6-6-6 plan nor need to replace bad taxes with good ones. What was that we hear about reality?

UPDATE #2: By the way, don’t some bars stay open every night until 4am … in an arms racy sort of way?

We want our balls back!

Our kids schoolyard has neither swings nor see-saws. My response? I pile up leaves real high and let me kids launch off of the roof of my car into the piles. What will they do next, ban leaf piles?

Here is the last episode in the series. (HT to a loyal reader MH).

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

I am sure I am just cherry picking again. Sadly, I’ve got enough to make a lifetime’s worth of pies and jams. Keep this in mind as the wizards in DC and our capitols continue their assault on salt, trans-fats, chips, aluminum bats, and even our garbage. But this, of course, is an incendiary caricature.

The other night, our family of four had a dinner of braised pork chops (maple glazed, but for health reasons you can simply roast them plain or in a little non-fat vegetable broth), mashed white sweet potatoes and pan-seared brussel sprouts. This is “fancy” as far as my cooking abilities go, and I can never get it quite right. But as my memory serves me, here is what I spent at Wegmans (which is more expensive than many local groceries and certainly more expensive than if you had to go to the local Walmart):

• One package of bone-in pork chops, about $4.79 per pound – for a total of about $5.50
• 28 brussels sprouts, freshly placed in the shelf as I was picking them out , about $3.29 per pound – for a total of $4.00 (that’s more than I spent, but I want to be conservative)
• 4 white sweet potatoes, about $1.19 per pound (I cannot find the web link for them, but they were the same price in the bin next to these yams) – for a total of $3.00

I’d note before continuing that this meal left us with enough pork and mashed sweet potatoes to feed one or two people for another evening, let’s completely ignore those costs. Putting these together, you can see that the major ingredients for our dinner cost $12.50. And that was more food than our family of four can eat in one sitting (one of our kids does not each much, another eats like an adult most of the time). Now, we made the sweet potatoes with a bit more butter, apple cider and cinnamon and cream than you might want to if you made them really healthy – like baking them, and we also used some good olive oil, parmesan cheese and pine nuts on the brussels sprouts, but they are easy to cook tastily and healthily with a slight coat of olive oil in the pan or even a little vegetable stock, salt and pepper (a little) and steam them for 10 minutes or so. We drink water with our dinner, but let’s assume that we all drank a half-gallon of freshly squeeze apple cider (pick your own healthy drink if you wish). That cider costs about $3.00 per half gallon, which gets us up to $15.50. Suppose we brought whole grain bread, the good kind, fresh from Wegmans’ bakery? A really fancy loaf is $4.00. That gets us to $19.50.

If you wish, you can try to price out the small amounts of salt, pepper, olive oil, cheese, maple syrup, stock, butter, and a few other ingredients that made their way into our food. But we used something like $2.00 of this stuff in total. To cook healthier versions of our meal you can do without most of this. So this gets us to $21.50.

TWENTY-ONE FIFTY. I mean, this was a pretty “fancy” dinner for us, and we shopped at the hoity-toitiest store in all of Rochester to do it. In other words, we fed our family of four, with whole grain bread and apple cider to book, for less than $5.50 per person. And remember, we had that as leftovers two nights later (along with half of another cheaper meal). Now, you might say that it took time to cook this. We spent money on electricity for our stoves. We had to invest in cookware and utensils. We can go that route if you want, but you’ll bored with the next blog post I put up as a rejoinder.

What does it cost to get 4 extra value meals from McDonalds? A quarter-pounder with cheese meal will run you over $6.00. And you still have to get into your car to go get it. So to feed a family of four the unhealthy, calorie dense food at McDonalds in many regards costs more than the healthy and somewhat luxuriant meal we prepared from Wegmans.

Now, when you have a few minutes, ask yourself a different question. If your sole goal was to feed yourself very healthy foods and to do so on a shoestring, what would it cost to feed a family of four (btw, it would be cheaper to feed larger families, of which the poor themselves have at greater incidence than the non-poor).

PS: I can predict two responses to this. First is that the poor don’t have the time to cook, or aren’t as knowledgeable about these issues as the non poor. To which I say tut!

• Check out the results of this great paper by my former colleague Mark Aguiar. The poor enjoy far more leisure than the non-poor.
• What does this say about our public education system? After all, 90% of students go to government schools, the job of which it is to educate people about really important stuff, and we cannot even get this part right?

Second, I am sure someone will talk about how poor neighborhoods do not have groceries which sell healthy foods – so called healthy food “deserts.” Remind me of this argument the next time some inner city decides it does not want to have a Walmart open within its borders. And I happened to grow up in one of those places. And even the smallest little corner groceries had a reasonable array of fruits, vegetables and healthy meats, in addition to the usual bad stuff. Finally, suppose the claim is true – isn’t that one of the understood costs of living in certain areas. As an illustration, would it be viewed as catastrophically bad if all the folks living in the North Woods of Michigan don’t have easy access to fresh veggies every day?