What Do You Think of Mayor Bloomberg?
I haven't paid much attention to the job that New York's mayor has been doing--I've been distracted by other things. But it has just come to my attention that he is seeking to to extend the ban on smoking in New York City restaurants with more than 35 seats to include all bars and restaurants in New York City. I couldn't be more pleased. Many will argue that this will be unnecessarily bad for business, but I don't think that's valid:
"All of the evidence suggests that in California, where they did this, that actually the patronage of restaurants and bars - the amount of money spent in them - goes up, not down," [Bloomberg] said.
I'm still not sure about him in many respects, but I'm comfortable that he knows what's best for businesses.
People will also argue that smokers have the freedom to smoke. I'm all for that, as long as it doesn't affect anyone else. But second-hand smoke aside, it's hard to imagine how a significant segement of our population getting sick and dying won't affect anyone else.
The most quantifiable effect on others is increased insurance costs. Although insurance companies should be able to ensure that smokers pay the actuarially determined cost of their behavior, in practice, that doesn't work. HBO and I buy the health insurance for me and my wife as part of a pool that includes other HBO employees and their families, many of whom smoke. We do not pay less because neither my wife nor I smokes, so we bear a portion of the costs incurred as a result of other HBO employees and/or their family members choosing to smoke. So my health insurance costs and HBO's benefits expense is higher because other people smoke.
That is just one example of the ways in which the rest of us subsidize smokers' freedom, and I can't see any good reason for it to continue, even though the normally faultless Onion seems to disagree.
8:14:15 AM 
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