Ezra Klein

I don't think you should be able to advertise junk food at all to children.

I think it should be illegal to have Paw Patrol on kids' cereals.

I think this whole thing where we allow endless advertising children is completely insane and it makes every parent's life in the grocery store a nightmare, myself included.

And for the society at large, I think the problem is people want things that aren't good for them.

But people don't want you to do enough.

The people who vote.

Like this happened in New York.

Bloomberg wanted to tax sodas.

They almost ran them out of town on a rail.

I think you would need a level of paternalism for that.

I guess what I would say about it is that there is not a single jurisdiction in this entire country where the politics of that have worked.

We cannot point at one thing, one place, one state, one city where we've been able to do that much.

If it were there to do, I would be the first one to say we should do it.

But I don't think it's there to do.

Like the public health community, we tried to get people to take vaccines in the aftermath or the math during a deadly pandemic.

And it led to the largest public health backlash in my lifetime.

Such that RFK Jr.

is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

People's sensitivity to paternalism is very, very, very high.

It's a very potent political force.