BusinessWeek

As people in the developing world stop dying of diseases of the poor, such as diarrhea, influenza, malaria, and measles, they have started dying of diseases of the rich instead. Obesity is climbing the rankings as a killer, but it has some way to catch up to global public-health enemy No. 1: tobacco. The only consumer product that kills if used as directed is a leading risk factor for every major noncommunicable disease: cancer, diabetes, respiratory illnesses, and cardiovascular conditions. And while smoking has declined in the U.S. and Europe, it’s on the rise in the developing world.

As European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso arrived at the Los Cabos meeting of the G-20 last week, he made one thing clear: “We’re not coming here to receive lessons … in terms of how to handle the economy.” That’s because “the European Union has a model that we may be very proud of.” After all, Barroso noted, the crisis in the euro system all started because of “unorthodox practices” in the U.S. financial sector.

As the Great Recession rumbles on, hitting the old, very rich countries of Europe and North America far harder than the new, somewhat rich economies of Asia and Latin America, the traditional order of global financial governance is looking increasingly frayed. At the Group of 20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, on June 18-19, world leaders are expected to issue bold statements about their commitment to reshaping institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to reflect shifts in the economic balance of power.

Leaders of the world’s largest economies are off for a G-20 get-together June 18 in Los Cabos, Mexico. No doubt, their closing communiqué will declare that the governance of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank should “more adequately reflect changing economic weights in the world economy in order to increase their legitimacy and effectiveness.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in the headlines last week for his proposal to ban soft drink servings over 16 ounces. It’s the latest front of his war against obesity, which kills 5,000 residents in the city each year. (The mayor is the founder of Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg Businessweek.)

The U.S. is a heavyweight champion in fat. It has the most obese population of any industrialized nation. About two-thirds of all adults in the country are overweight and one-third are fully obese, according to the World Health Organization.

It’s a question richer people have about their poorer neighbors: Why are they poor? Is it circumstances, or is it some kind of moral or intellectual failing? Is it that they never had a chance to cross from the wrong side to the right side of the tracks, or that they never had the motivation to cross? The subject colors thinking about international development as well. Is poverty in Africa and Asia the result of something about individual Kenyans or Pakistanis, or is it instead something about Kenya or Pakistan? Is it about the people, or the place?

It’s a cliché that the Pacific Ocean is displacing the Atlantic, that China will replace America at the top of the world’s hierarchy of power, and the East will surpass the West. The cliché is also wrong. The multipolar world we are entering will have no single winner, and the three-pillared West of the European Union, North America, and Latin America remains a triangular zone of peace and foundation of global stability.

As the presidential campaign kicks off, both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are looking for popular ways to reduce a still-ballooning deficit. However sensible, proposing deep cuts in Medicare or defense spending has little political appeal. Raising the income tax rate—at least on anyone earning less than a million a year—appears equally unpalatable. There is, however, at least one revenue-generating tool that’s simple, fair, and very efficient, at least in theory: a tax on happiness.

“We need a plan that puts the deficit on a downward path,” said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director with the CRFB. “This needs to be the No. 1 issue in the presidential campaign, and the No. 1 issue that Americans are thinking about, at least domestically,” said Goldwein, a registered independent who worked on the nonpartisan staff of the budget supercommittee created as part of the debt-ceiling extension signed in August by Obama.

The massacre of 16 Afghan civilians by a lone U.S. service member last weekend has intensified debate as to whether the U.S. should speed the end of the war in Afghanistan. According to the New York Times, the Obama administration is considering whether to announce a redeployment of 20,000 troops by the middle of 2013, on top of the 22,000 scheduled to leave by this September. (There are 90,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan.) The Times reports that Vice President Joe Biden has voiced support for a faster pullout. And he’s got company.