Wednesday, December 26, 2012

For those that fear "global warming" your biggest fears may be what is reflected back at you in the mirror

Gun-Control Today; Fat-Control Tomorrow?


Leaving the highly sensitive topic of "gun-control" aside for the time being, one can't help but wonder if it isn't time that the US government, seemingly hell-bent on regulating virtually everything in its quest to prove (to itself?) that America's population can no longer be trusted with making any responsible decisions on it own (and in the process becoming even bigger), shouldn't be more focused on "fat-control" instead. Why? Because while guns may or may not kill people, the bottom line is that of the 32K or so death attributed to firearms, roughly 20K, or two thirds were suicides, meaning firearm-based homicides were 11,015 in 2010. Putting this number in perspective, every year some 935,000 Americans suffer a heart attack, and 600,000 people die from some form heart disease: 1 in every 4 deaths. Net result to society: the cost of coronary heart disease borne by everyone is $108.9 billion each year. And of all proximal factors contributing to heart disease, obesity and overweight is the main one. But of course one can't make a media spectacle out of 600,000 hospital wards where people quietly pass away, in many cases due to a lifetime of ill decisions relating primarily to food consumption. In fact, some estimate that obesity now accounts for one fifth of the total US health-care bill (the part of the budget which no amount of tax increase can offset). Which is why if the topic of gun-control has managed to promptly tear the country into two (or three, or more), just wait until fat-control (far more than the recent tepid overtures into this field such as Bloomberg's NYC sugary soda ban) rears its ugly head and sends the already polarized (and weaponized) US society into a state of agitated hyperflux.


Some useful observations on this topic from The Economist:
IN 1937 George Orwell suggested that “changes of diet” might be more important than “changes of dynasty or even of religion”. Now he is being proved right in a way he might not have expected. Having spent millennia worrying about not having enough food, mankind’s main concern is now eating too much (see our special report on obesity).

The story of human health in the past few decades is a broadly encouraging one. Life expectancy has increased—globally, by 12 years for women and 11 years for men from 1970 to 2010. But greater longevity means that people spend more years chronically ill (see article). Obesity makes things worse by raising the risk of diabetes, heart disease, strokes and some cancers. In much of the world, being too fat is now the single largest driver of sickness.

In 2008 obesity rates were nearly double those of 1980. One in three adults was overweight, with a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or more (at least 77kg for a man 175cm tall); 12% were obese, with a BMI of at least 30. In America, ever the world leader, about two-thirds of adults were overweight in 2008. But Britain lumbered close behind, with six in ten too fat. The problem is not confined to rich countries. Thanks to economic growth, people around the world are eating more food. Workers burn fewer calories at their desks than in the fields. Even in China, one in four adults was too fat in 2008. In Brazil more than half were. Obesity rates in Mexico, Venezuela and South Africa matched those of America. The Pacific islands and Gulf states are home to some of the world’s fattest people.

For those (like this newspaper) who believe that the state should generally keep its nose out of people’s private affairs, obesity presents a quandary. “A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits,” Orwell pointed out; “an unemployed man doesn’t…You want to eat something a little bit tasty.” If people get great pleasure from eating more than is good for them, should they not be allowed to indulge themselves? After all, individuals bear the bulk of the costs of obesity, quite literally. They suffer at work, too: their wages are often lower and, in America, some employers also make fat workers pay more for health insurance.

Yet in most countries the state covers some or most of the costs of health care, so fat people raise costs for everyone. In America, for instance, a recent paper estimated that obesity was responsible for a fifth of the total health-care bill, of which nearly half is paid by the federal government. And there are broader social costs. The Pentagon says that obesity is shrinking its pool of soldiers. Obesity lowers labour productivity. And state intervention is justified where it saves people from great harm at little cost to themselves. Only zealots see seat-belt laws as an affront to personal liberty. Anti-smoking policies, controversial at first, are generally viewed as a success.
So which is it: state intervention? Or, as the Economist correctly asserts for once: individual liberties where people have no choice but to experience the consequences of one or more of their own wrong decisions? But what happens when the entire state is already broke from pre-funding generations of precisely these bad decisions, and there is nothing left in the state's piggy bank for those who wish to behave prudently and sensibly? The Economist has some further thoughts:
In the absence of a single big solution to obesity, the state must try many small measures. Governments, some of which already intervene a lot in the first few months of people’s lives, should ensure that parents are warned of the dangers of overfeeding their babies. Schools should serve nutritious lunches, teach children how to eat healthily and give them time to run around. Urban planners should make streets and pavements friendlier to cyclists and pedestrians. Taxing sugary fizzy drinks—which unlike fatty foods have no nutritional value—and limiting the size of the containers in which they can be sold may work. Philadelphia and New York, for example, have implemented a range of such policies, and have seen child-obesity rates dip ever so slightly.

There is a limit, however, to what the state can or should do. In the end, the responsibility and power to change lie primarily with individuals. Whether people go on eating till they pop, or whether they opt for the healthier, slimmer life, will have a bigger effect on the future of the species than most of the weighty decisions that governments make.
Just like in the sensitive issue of gun-control, there is no easy, or definitive answer when it comes to the world's most overweight nation. Perhaps, however, the best clue to what should happen comes from the WSJ's interview with the 107 year old Irving Khan, one of Wall Street's oldest investors and Ben Graham's research assistant, who made the following remark on unwholesome lifestyles: "Millions of people die every year of something they could cure themselves: lack of wisdom and lack of ability to control their impulses."
And that's really it. Sadly, the government, in its encroaching desire to become the world's nanny state par excellence, already believes it can offset everything else, including human stupidity and impulse control. That it can't will become very apparent in time, but only when everyone finally wakes up from the 150 year old dream that started with Bismarck's 'Welfare State' utopia, and sadly ends in bloodshed. With or without gun control.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-22/gun-control-today-fat-control-tomorrow

32 comments:

  1. WOW, ZH posts something relevant. Had you put this up prior to the 21st, I would have been convinced the last horseman had arrived!

    In serious TD, this IS a good article and the author put in some very salient facts I have been screaming about for quite awhile. He does, however, present the paradox we don't want to deal with that is crucial in this example. We want the freedom to do whatever the hell we want, eat whatever the hell we want and so on, but we don't want to pay the bill for it. The cost for our glutenous ways is enormous, not only in financial terms but in losses to families from those who die too early.

    I have complained endlessly that the costs of the gluttons are born by everyone, not just the individual. This author didn't even mention the cost of diabetes. in therein lies the paradox. We don't want a damn bit of restraint put on us by the government, but when the bill comes due, we bitch endlessly about how much it costs.

    As an honest question, does anyone here have a suggestion for how we can "fix" this? To me, a true free market solution would be just that, a solution that includes ending work sponsored insurance and that sends people off to try and find insurance at a reasonable cost when they are clinically obese and have multiple related conditions such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and so on. However, suggesting we do this is usually met with scorn. I'd really like to hear solutions

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    1. The amazing thing is with a 37% obesity rate and over 50% of the population over weight, people complain about the cost of healthcare in the US.

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    2. Let's see now, we have all these obese and fat people and yet life expectancy continues to rise.

      Hummmmm,,,,

      Two things are certain, either we will produce not enough food, and scarcity, in which prices will rise. Or we produce to much food and prices will remain cheap, most likely resulting in overeating.

      One things for sure, we will never completely balance our food production with our food requirements.

      Sooooo,,,,,

      What's yer poison?

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    3. Check with your actuary. For the past 5 years, life expectancy for white males has declined in the U.S.

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    4. "Let's see now, we have all these obese and fat people and yet life expectancy continues to rise. "

      As always William, you view life through a straw and a narrow one at that. Prior to all of our advances in medicine and array of endless, costly procedures, natural selection did the job of thinning the herd of the unhealthy. You mention how we have extended life expectancy of the obese as if this should someone end any discussion about how bad our healthcare system is. On the other hand, you completely skip and purposefully ignore the main point, which is that that obesity is costing us A LOT of money.

      Your second para also blissfully ignores what is important. what we have created an abundance of is cheap and very unhealthy food, and we have done so with enormous help from the tax payer to fund it. We eat shit. Plain and simple. From too much fat to that ungodly creation known as high fructose corn syrup. But, it's better to overconsume and let everyone absorb the cost then it is to design a health care system that punishes bad habits rather then rewards good ones.

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    5. The simple answer is to tax the crap that makes us sick and have that money allocated straight to funding healthcare.

      Easier said than done (with regards to the particulars), I know, but there's your starting point, Max.

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    6. Or plunky sic a few unions and the NLRB on the Twinkie bakers and drive them from the playing field along with their jobs.

      Get government out of my bad habits. My body was given by God, not the government.

      Pass the gruel.

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    7. Eh, ideological claptrap, DI. "Unions" ... sheesh.

      Max is right. You're paying for the fatties, I'm paying for the fatties, we're all paying for the fatties.

      Obesity and other health conditions caused by all forms of crap we consume places a HUGE monetary cost on our society in one form or the other.

      I see absolutely nothing wrong with a $1 per pack of smokes , or per bottle of liquor, or $.50 per cheesecake or soda going straight to funding healthcare.

      You can still consume it. It'll just cost you a little more now to do so, so you can pay for your future quadruple bypass or your insulin scrip.

      Sounds like a pretty good Free Market/Government hybrid solution to me ...

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    8. Get government out of my bad habits. My body was given by God, not the government.

      True but then we are left to take care of you when the systems begin to fail.

      The cost of healthcare has risen in direct proportion to our weight issues. Think healthcare is expensive now, get government involved and watch the cost sky rocket to new heights. Pretty interesting, in the 50's early 60's people had a heart attack stayed in the hospital for a week and went home and generally didn't make it long before the big one. The causes really were not addressed. Today we gave the same heart attack, stay for a day or two, a stent or bypass and were off to the races for another 5 or 10 years. It's all about the advancements that we are paying for.
      Now we are eating ourselves to death, is it a clinical or psychological issue?

      The government taxes bad habits all the time. Look at cigarette taxes, alcohol taxes now sun tanning taxes. Why not a junk food tax. If we want to over eat, be over weight, tax it. Maybe 5 dollars a pound over the the established norms. Index it for inflation and weight. The more you weigh, the more you pay. Deficit problem solved or healthcare costs solved.

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    9. LouMan you're not being fair to fatties or "big butted women."

      Most obese die younger, check the stats. Lot's of skinny people hang on into old age and cost us all a bundle.

      Get government out of the health care biz. It's gov that's causing the spiraling costs.

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    10. "Most obese die younger, check the stats. Lot's of skinny people hang on into old age and cost us all a bundle."

      And again, you miss the important point. Regardless of when they die, they suck up a lot of healthcare prior to their death. We can send a person back into the world with an ejection fraction of 20% and keep them going for quite some time on a buttload of medications. If their kidneys get scorched during their MI, we can put them on dialysis. Any idea what that costs a year William?

      Freedom Aint Free when the rest of us have to pay for the bad choices made by freedom loving idiots who don't a damn about anything but their happiness for the next five minutes.

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    11. Freedom Aint Free when the rest of us have to pay for the bad choices made by freedom loving idiots who don't a damn about anything but their happiness for the next five minutes.

      Maxie pad, if you're calling me a "freedom loving idiot" I plead guilty.

      1773-2009 Keep your dirty government loving hands off of my free choices. Don't f___in tread on me!

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    12. "1773-2009 Keep your dirty government loving hands off of my free choices. Don't f___in tread on me!"

      Aw, how quaint Charleston. Did you watch a repeat of planet of the apes recently? When people respect something, they take care of it and don't abuse it. Many many people in this country have chosen to live an abusive and confrontational life in the name of "Keeping people from treading on them". What I really think they enjoy, however, is being a douchebag and using their freedom to annoy everyone else and be as disruptive as possible in order to feed their egos. The smelly hippies of the 60's felt themselves principled as well, including the weathermen. That, William, is the future for the sector of ideology you come from. Tim McVeigh was just the first, there will be more as America tires of the intransigence and pushes tea party types further and further out of the picture.

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    13. William,
      You can be as fat as you want we just want to tax it like everything else to pay for more pork. We do not want to discriminate we want to tax fat butted men at the same rate.

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    14. 'tax it like everything else to pay for more pork.'

      Did you really intend to say that?

      Jean

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    15. Pretty appropriate or should we say they can bring home more bacon?

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    16. I recently had a discussion with a family member who went batshit ballistic on me for suggesting that overweight people should pay more for their health care. He has been more of a moderate type Republican, but he and my Mom have both gone into meltdown mode with the reelection of Obama. Anyway, when I suggested that people be charged more for being overweight, he launched a 5 minute tirade on me that was themed, "You can't do that! where does it stop!" Of course, he is about 20 lbs overweight, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it.

      I still maintain that we, as a nation, have become a petulant group of assholes who do not want to pay for what we consume and do not want to take an ounce of responsibility for much of anything. FREEDOM!.....GOTTA SAVE IT.......but don't ask anyone to give something up or demonstrate restraint because that ain't what you do when you love freedom!

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    17. Every wants more, no one wants to pay for it. Always go after the end result instead of the root cause.
      Go after doctors pay, hospitals compensation and test, instead of the person who is 50 lbs overweight needs 2 new knees and all the bells wand whistles that go along with it. Then bitch about how much it cost.

      With out the 50 lbs the knees would still be functioning fine.

      Need a heart bypass. Eat everything in sight and need a heart bypass. No regards for the over weight fat diet. Then bitch about how much insurance goes up.

      People are out to lunch, want it all and don't want to pay for it.

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    18. Well Lou, if you and I can agree on this, then perhaps there is some hope that Lawmakers will eventually start to come to the same conclusion and act accordingly.

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    19. Sorry Max,

      There will be little agreement in Washington as the people voting continue to elect the extremes instead of centrist politicians.

      Might be a bit pessimistic but I just don't see anything of value coming out of Washington until we begin electing people who represent all of their constituency.

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    20. An example:
      Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said Thursday that the nation appears to be running headlong into the looming fiscal crisis, as he launched into what is sure to be an aggressive round of finger-pointing on Capitol Hill.

      The majority leader, on the Senate floor, said "it looks like that's where we're headed" as he discussed the likelihood of missing the Dec. 31 deadline for averting $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts.

      In doing so, he put all the blame on House Speaker John Boehner, likening him to a dictator and claiming he was putting his speakership before the country.

      Harry absent from even talking to the House places blame well. I guess that's called a 2 prong attack, one side from harry, the other from Barack.

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    21. No, at the moment, agreement is not possible. We could trade stories like this all day. It is time for Reid to go, as well as McCain, Lindsey Graham, McConnell, Kerry, and Lieberman and several others. I think that what is going on right now is going to last the entirety of the rest of Obama's term. I don't like it, but I accept the reality that anger is the paradigm of America right now. Reid and Obama are the scapegoats of the right, the tea party and McConnell are the scapegoats of the left. And rightly so. Reid does control the senate and the tea party currently controls the house. Obama and Boehnor really control very little now. Obama isn't doing anything that any other POTUS hasn't done in an attempt to circumvent attempts to knee cap him. That's how Washington works these days.

      All I really hope for is that the voting public decides enough is enough and eventually demands a change, that or we start to see that bunch listed simply die off. If this state could put a moderate person on the ticket here, I would not vote for Reid, but my other choice was Sharon Angle. Nothing stays static forever, hopefully the next change is something real. Obama is a 1980's moderate Republican as was Clinton. Like Clinton, Obama WILL sign off on cutting safety net programs, he will sign off on screwing tomorrows seniors, and he will likely continue to cave on taxes. And we will be no better off for it. Regardless, he will do it anyway.

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    22. Under Obamacare you can be as fat assed as you please. Pre-existing conditions include everything, including Hillary style curvature.

      On the other hand Max would have those that had an extra Oreo line up for the long black tube.

      Death panels are in our near future.

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    23. Why should everyone pay for those that chose unhealthy life styles?

      Right after eating that Big Mac, people get the bill for their healthcare insurance and bitch about how much healthcare costs.

      See the correlation yet?

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    24. Everyone shouldn't pay louman, that's my basic point in everything that I post! If the government allows private insurance to handle health care and gets out of the dam way, then those fatties would be taken care of by private charity or not at all.

      It's government policy that emergency rooms must admit all comers. Before the government got their dam fingers into every f____in thing, when a fatty went for care he/she either paid, or faced the scorn of those who bailed his/her fat ass out.

      Now it is just passed along into a government slush fund for all of us to pay. Our of sight, out of f___in mind.

      Now we have laws against having a f____in soda.

      Now we have taxes up the f___in a__ for every f___in thing.

      Now we have centralized f___in socialism/communism.

      Enjoy your ride louman into the f___in long black tube.

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    25. "On the other hand Max would have those that had an extra Oreo line up for the long black tube."

      This is your typical response when you realize you've lost the crowd. Pull in something completely unrelated and blatantly false in order to end the discussion on a decisive note. I'm surprised you didn't call me Maxie Pad again, that's always so clever looking when you do.

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    26. OK I give up Maxie. Let's tax fatties. How much a pound do you propose? Let's tax cellulite like we tax every other f___in thing in this f___in communist country.

      What is your fee for a f___in pound of flesh?

      Add twinkies to the underground economy like we soon will do with guns.

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  3. As for gun control, Congressmen are warning that anyone advocation gun control will have to pry the lobbyists from their cold dead hands.

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  4. I'm convinced high fructose corn syrup is the main culprit - even worse than animal fat which is difficult for the body to absorb and mostly passes straight thru undigested.

    The use of HFCS has gone up something like 400% since 1970. I'm sure the correlation with the rise in obesity, though not the only cause, isn't coincidental.

    Just in the way we now process our foods has to have some adverse effects on our health. I was a kid in the 80s. Everyone had peanut-butter sandwiches, milk/dairy, wheat bread, etc. Now these things cause anaphylactic shock in many kids. Why the crazy spike in food allergies in the last 30 years?

    Do you think the spike in dietary disorders/food allergies have anything to do with the ubiquity of FrankenFoods (GMOs)? Has anyone done a long-term (10+ years) study?


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    1. Want something to really worry about? Google CRE super bug.

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  5. Let's get the government out of our daily lives. Making those responsible pay for their choices is fine by me as long as it is across the board.
    All promiscuous consequences should be the complete responsibility of that person. This would include ALL STDs and pregnancies. The average American should not have to pay for the lifestyle choices that pass along aids and other diseases nor should the average taxpayers be the payer of child-support via welfare.
    All addicts should be completely on their own and should NOT receive disability for being a burnout. Either they will clean up their act or starve.

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