One of the (many) reasons that central planning fails is because of the difficulty of forecasting the countless consequences of some event, innovation, or other development, even one so small as that much quoted flap of the butterfly’s wing.
And so, via the Wall Street Journal, here’s one example, admittedly more predictable than most.
America’s apparel companies are fighting increasing returns. The problem is the soaring use of weight-loss drugs. . . . Shoppers are increasingly buying multiple versions of the same garment, and then sending back those that don’t fit. They are also sizing down through exchanges, returning larger sizes in favor of smaller ones. The share of apparel exchanges where shoppers sized down has risen in each of the past three full calendar years, hitting a high of 14.6% in 2025, according to a review of 38 retailers by Narvar, which manages returns for retailers. . . .
As the medications become more accessible through price cuts and the introduction of a pill version, retailers are taking a harder line to keep returns in check.
This is another reminder that GLP-1s and other recent drug developments should be good news for the U.S.’s ability to manage its Medicare bill and, more generally, its ability to work its way through the challenging fiscal consequences of the population’s changing age structure.
In the end, something will get us all, but the more that the gap between HALE (“healthy life expectancy”) and “full” life expectancy can be narrowed the better, for reasons that obviously extend far beyond the economic.
One of those somethings is dementia. There have been hopes that GLP-1s could be a treatment for Alzheimer’s. It now seems more likely that their effect is preventative rather than braking or restorative. On a brighter note, however, it appears that the incidence of Alzheimer’s may be falling. There has been (and there will continue to be) an increasing number of cases. But that is an absolute number, reflecting the aging of the population.
But, as the authors of a report published last year explained:
Age-specific dementia prevalence rates declined by about two-thirds in the U.S. during 1984–2024. The declines were unexpected and mostly ignored; they occurred at a relative rate of 2.5–3.0% per year over 40 years across three large nationally representative surveys designed to estimate such declines—with no slowdown at the end of the 40-year period.
The reported decline is, sadly, not universal. The authors record “stable or even increasing prevalence rates such as in Japan or in African Americans in the U.S.,” but the broad pattern of decline can be seen in Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France:
One U.S. study of 3,010 participants found that dementia incidence rates declined across successive birth cohorts, finishing 77% lower for cohorts born 1932–1941 compared to those born 1902–1911.
Seventy-seven percent!