>>>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.
>>
>>Sounds like there's a simple way to restore individual liberty and lower costs, eh? ;)
>>
>>>I damn sure don't want the government regulating what I can and can't consume,
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>>are you certain?
>>
>>>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?
>>
>>>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.
>>
>>Update : This is from 60 Minutes Sunday night.
>>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B56Gpf1f5_A&feature=player_embedded>>
>>Here's my favorite (~6:30) :
>>
>>
...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.
>>
>>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. ;)
>>
>>>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.
>>
>>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.
>
>Fuel prices rise anyway. Here, as of tomorrow, fuel at the pump will have risen a tad under 8 cents since last Thursday. That makes no sense at all looking at the normal economic factors that are supposed to have a bearing on oil prices. last week when the price went up 3.5 cents ovrnight, even the usual analyst/apologists on the radio were saying out loud that it was nothing less than a rip off, and in those words.
>
>>
>>FWIW: Agriculture subsidies serve to keep prices up not down. ;)
You don't trust the oil companies? I am shocked, shocked.
What puzzles me is that some people are blaming gas prices on President Obama and expecting him to do something about it. The power of the American presidency is greatly overrated. There is not much he can do about oil prices other than somehow end the turmoil in the Middle East.
