Pay people to eat broccoli? Well, no, let's just tax Doritos

Because taxing everything that moves is SUCH a better way to change behavior than any other way. And, really, YOU PEOPLE need to change your eating habits. Michelle says so. Plus did you see there's even a TV show about changing your eating habits? The government says we need to! Cuz we'll be on government health care soon anyway!

To create successful incentives, says Yale behavioral economist Dean Karlan, a policy needs to specifically target the people whose behavior its trying to change. "So in the case of broccoli you'd want to find out who's not eating broccoli and then pay them to eat it," he says. You don't want to necessarily make broccoli cheaper for those who are already buying plenty of it, you want to target those who don't buy enough fruits or vegetables. It could be very tricky to structure such an incentive.