Tobacco laws are already in place (I do believe?) , but not alcohol laws lol. (This is my personal observations based on tv watching =) )
How do you decide what foods are “too fatty”? Red meat is bad for you after all. For that matter, by your logic should marijuana and other drugs be made legal but not marketed? (Actually I’m still confused why smoking is legal but marijuana and what not aren’t. Legacy I guess?”

What about tv? I think I love hulu’s commercial; they acknowledge that excessive tv will turn your brain to mush and advertise accordingly.

Finally, who decides the line?

I would allow most of these things. I would not allow marketing of most of them. Tobacco causes cancer, why would you allow commercials directed to youth as portraying smoking as a cool thing to do when the results can be so cruel.

Where do you draw the line? Smoking is harmful. So is alcohol. Twinkies are gross. Guns can be harmful. TV is bad for time management. Paper kills trees =(. Cars crash. Etc. etc…

My wasting lots of time on internet is prolly harmful to me… oh no’S~~~

Actually I feel stronger about the matter. Businesses should be prohibited from selling products or services that are unhealthy or harmful. They do not need so much freedom to cause harm. This is not giving too much power to the state it’s removing some from the corporations who can generate profits ruthlessly.

Permitting dishonest promotions, false labeling, small print, hidden charges, bully marketing, gouging, marketing unhealthy foods, targeting kids and such are all bad. The consumer is not the enemy! I suppose many people making money in this environment might like the freedom little regulation allows.

And regulations after the fact are a bit late.

“It would be nice if all businesses were prohibited from the excessive marketing of products or services that are unhealthy or harmful. Less persuasion would result in less problems.”
Do you really want to give this much power to the government? Do you want to live in a nanny state? What if their view of what is harmful to you is different from yours? Besides, everything can be harmful. If you buy an expensive trip that you cannot afford, buying this trip is harmful to you too.

Why do Americans have this “victim” mentality? It was not me who overspent, it was these bad bad banks who made me… Have you not learned the difference between credit and spending money? As humans we have free will. We should be able to exercise it. Nobody forced you or anybody else to even get a credit card. Nor has anybody forced you to use credit to buy something you cannot afford. How about some personal responsibility?

I use American Express Blue cash, and I’ve never paid a penny more than the amount of my purchases. My mother used Bank of America and she’s never paid interest either. We know how to count so we’d have known if they charged us any more than the sum of purchases. American Express has a page about grace periods. Here is the explanation from American Express: http://home3.americanexpress.com/corp/consumerinfo/grace.asp

There are too many companies putting too much effort into marketing credit. The credit rates charged are excessively high at a time when investment interest returns are historically low. There could be the argument that their costs are too high but that’s because they market them too heavily and there are too many defaults. So many of these defaults are by people who could not wisely afford the purchases but were persuaded to do so on credit.

I’ve always gotten notifications from my CC when things were changing, rates, limit, etc. And if a CC company was pure evil, vote with your dollar and let them become unprofitable. If you don’t, well then … who’s fault is that?

More annoying to me is focus and obsessing over credit scores. I think that is actually something the govt needs to do; make it non-profit.

Pretty interesting. Doubt any of that will affect me =)