Jake,
I think you missed my point entirely.
I never said the government should dictate food choices. I said eating healthy is expensive and eating processed food-crap is cheap. A lot of families eat poorly not because they want to, but because it's cheaper to do so. I advocate making healthy food cheaper, not forcing people to eat that healthy food. There is a HUGE difference. Here's the reality: Health care costs are spiraling out of control and at some point we're going to have to change our mindset to be proactive instead of reactive. Modern medicine whips out the Rx pad as a solution to all ailments with nary a thought of how the patient actually ended up there.
>>Individual illness affects all Americans because when people without health insurance make bad consumption choices and end up in the hospital (heart attack, diabetes, etc.), they get free healthcare. Those costs are passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher health insurance rates.
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>Sounds like there's a simple way to restore individual liberty and lower costs, eh? ;)
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>>I damn sure don't want the government regulating what I can and can't consume,
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>are you certain?
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>>but at the same time those people who make poor choices and raise children with those poor choices end up costing the rest of us even more money.
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>Seems like you DO want the government regulating what you can and can't consume
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>>I don't believe in regulation
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>are you certain?
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>>but I do believe in the power of policy to leverage individual choices.
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>Seems like you DO believe in regulation. Specifically, regulation to limit people from doing things YOU disappprove of, like unhealthy eating. When that same attitude is applied accross all the opinions of the citizenry, eventually every single choice is regulated.
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>Update : This is from 60 Minutes Sunday night.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B56Gpf1f5_A&feature=player_embedded>
>Here's my favorite (~6:30) :
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...That's when a government commission mandated that we lower fat consumption to try and reduce heart disease.
>Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So with the best of intentions, they say, "Time to reduce fat in the American diet?"
>Dr. Robert Lustig: Exactly. And we did. And guess what? Heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and death are skyrocketing.
>Dr. Lustig believes that's primarily because we replaced a lot of that fat with added sugars.
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>Attempting to control behavior therough regulation completely backfired in the 70s. Time to double down on the failure. I can't wait to see what they replace sugar with, I bet it tastes awesome. ;)
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>>Here's the reality: eating healthy in American is way more expensive than eating nutrition-void processed food. Why don't we take those effing big oil tax breaks and those corn subsidies and subsidize healthy foods to make them cheaper than the processed shit that makes up most of american's diets? If healthy food is cheaper, then budget-strapped families can make the economically smart choice, the byproduct of which just happens to be a healthier diet.
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>In message #1540049 you demonstrate how tax policy affects decisions. If you tax something more, prices rise, which leads to less demand. Let's apply the same idea to your response above, if you remove "big oil" tax breaks, fuel prices rise. Since every single "healthy" food requires fuel to produce, transport and store, you'll be raising prices on all the "healthy" food.
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>FWIW: Agriculture subsidies serve to keep prices up not down. ;)
Brandon Harker
Sebae Data Solutions
