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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On June 20 2013 05:18 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I think some in this thread underestimate just how big the United States is, this nation wasn't built for walking but for automobiles nor was it built for public transportation.
this logistical isolation is what gives us so many more problems then the European states.
I blame the poor situation in the south to poor public planning. Minnesota is expertly planned from the start with first, second, and third tier suburbs to balance out the population and the space in between them.
Even the seas of corn and soybeans that make up much of the midwest is shockingly well planned and doted with small cities where people can plug their crops into the logistics of the nation and to interact in the market best.
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On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:30 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 02:20 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:02 ziggurat wrote:On June 18 2013 14:50 aksfjh wrote:On June 18 2013 14:23 Chocolate wrote: cable/internet + phone. Not necessary. Cable/Internet is a luxury and pay as you go cell phones are very cheap. renters insurance $10-20 per month furnishings bed+ mattress, a refrigerator, a chair, a table, a desk, and a couch doesn't cost much. I've never paid electric bills so I probably did overestimate them, but keep in mind that it is including heat. Food costs really don't need to be $5-8 per day, and I don't know why it matters if it's a full-time job since you can just bring food for lunch. Also, you can still have variety and healthy food for cheap. Bananas and apples are pretty cheap, and a lot of soup is cheap too. Milk+ oatmeal with a banana is a good breakfast, a good lunch could be a salad with some chicken and some cheap dressing, and for dinner you have lots of options with cheap food like beans, potatoes, bread, rice, corn, soups, noodles, chicken, etc. Multivitamins are like 200 for $10 at Walmart too. I also forgot health insurance, good catch. Still, there was leeway in the budget with over $200 per month unaccounted for, so if you really want to splurge on entertainment (I would do internet+ computer) you could still have money left over. You could also save if you wanted to, but personally if I were a non-university educated, HS degree holding person in the hypothetical situation I would be going to community college in preparation for a transfer to a 4-year university to get a STEM degree. That would take a lot of time and you might not have much time for entertainment. Indeed pay-as-you-go phones are cheap. Probably about ~$30 a month. The food situation comes from personal experience. Last summer I had a factory job working from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm every weekday. I would wake up at 6:45, get ready for work, get home around 5:00, shower/clean up until 5:30. Entertainment and dinner until ~9:00 pm, and then bed. That gives me 3.5 hours for relaxation and errands daily. Cooking a meal normally takes anywhere from 30-90 minutes, and prepping a meal that isn't leftovers for lunch takes another 10-15 minutes. If you're cooking, this reduces your free/errand/chore time down to 2-2.5 hours a day (on weekdays), which isn't much. Meanwhile, eating out shrinks that time requirement down to ~15 minutes, and eliminates the "next-day-lunch" prep altogether. Consuming the ~2200-2500 calories for an active job will cost you at least $6 a day if you eat fast food 2-3 times a week. This is where the disconnect on food comes in, as foods that look cheap (like fruit and vegetables) are actually really light on calories as well. Their cost/calorie ratio (which I know isn't the END ALL measurement, but can be a metric) isn't that great or different from a fast food meal. I currently budget myself to <$7 a day on average, and I have plenty of time to cook my own meals. Power for me in my current ~600 sq ft. efficiency is close to $95 a month, water and trash is about $25. I admittedly overpay for rent, but that's because I can afford to do so for now, but I do know of some really shady places you can get for ~$425-450, and any apartment I have found that includes water/gas/trash and/or electricity in the bill are not places you want to be even temporarily. Furniture and home cleaning supplies get expensive really, really fast and easily. It's not uncommon for me to spend $50 on 2 weeks of groceries, and another $50 on a month worth of home supplies. While living alone, I have also noticed a tendency for me to have some sort of unexpected expense of ~$200 a month relating to either car trouble, medical expenses, or replacing/fixing something broken at home. As I read this post I couldn't help thinking what a moving target "poverty" really is. But this is actually a pretty good picture of what is means to be "poor" in a rich country. "Poor" people have TVs, computers, cable, cell phones, cars, and many other things that truly poor people would consider to be absurd luxuries. "Poor" people in the US are often obese because they consume too many calories. Meanwhile, millions of truly poor people in the 3rd world subsist on less than a dollar a day. It's hard for me to feel sorry for a "poor" person because car insurance in North America is expensive. Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes. In many ways this is more due to education and demographics than living conditions. Poor people don't have to eat fast food at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population, and fast food in many ways isn't even that cheap. Poor people might also have higher chances of getting involved in gang activity, drug trafficking and use, alcoholism. I would say that poor people typically make poorer choices and/or are less intelligent (THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE SO DON'T YELL AT ME) than the rest of the population so poverty correlates with other results of bad choices. Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far.
1) It's incredibly exaggerated to say that "the poor can get pretty damn good care". That's absurd, as the incredible amount of medical debt in this country shows.
2) Sure, the poor have a "choice". But what significance does that choice have when they 1) don't have the money/opportunity to pursue other choices, and can only abstain from the bad choices, or 2) more importantly, aren't educated in making better choices?
Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that.
Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable)
Sorry to pick on you, but I fucking hate this attitude.
"Most poor people have cable/satellite TV, computers, iPhones, etc."
That is complete and utter B.S. Just because you have seen the cases that Fox News reports on where people spend their welfare money on stupid things doesn't mean that this is the experience for any significant portion of this country's poor. Furthermore, even if a noticeable amount of poor people DO have these things, you know how they get a lot of it? Theft. Crime is, by far, mostly prevalent in the poorer parts of any given society. This isn't just random coincidence. When you are poor, oppressed, and/or just don't have any other avenues, you turn to crime. Very few people choose crime "just because".
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On June 20 2013 05:17 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:35 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:On June 20 2013 04:32 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:30 Chocolate wrote:
[quote]
In many ways this is more due to education and demographics than living conditions. Poor people don't have to eat fast food at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population, and fast food in many ways isn't even that cheap. Poor people might also have higher chances of getting involved in gang activity, drug trafficking and use, alcoholism. I would say that poor people typically make poorer choices and/or are less intelligent (THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE SO DON'T YELL AT ME) than the rest of the population so poverty correlates with other results of bad choices. Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. I believe JonnyBNoHo's argument is that given market forces, a grocery store would likely be established nearby if there was a demand for it. These areas with no grocery store in a mile and where over 5% of people don't have a car to get to the store likely aren't very wealthy. A grocery store may very well see it as not being worth the risk of the store failing just to get a small amount of business from these poor individuals. But the fast food joint (particularly if it's a national chain) does see enough business to be worthwhile? That seems absurd, particularly with government subsidies for food. I guess you missed my previous post so I'll repost it: Well, first of all, if you don't have a car, transporting groceries is a huge problem. Especially enough groceries for an entire family. Second, a lot of poor people aren't unemployed, they're working multiple part time jobs and without a car that means their entire lives revolve around bus schedules and their kids. Finding time to actually cook is extremely difficult. And yes, cooking anything healthy takes a lot of time. Third, if you live in government subsidized housing with barebones utilities, what do you think the kitchen situation is like? I'm going to guess you'd have a hard time pulling off one of Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals. Fourth, crime does tend to be more prevalent in poorer neighborhoods. It's super freaking easy to steal from a grocery store. No one's stealing sleeves of taco shells from a Taco Bell. And grocery stores have to have a lot more cash on hand to fill all their registers. All these things mean that even if a grocery store did open up in a poor neighborhood it would likely go out of business very quickly.
Yes if you don't have a car things will be a pain, but going to McDonald's three times a day would be a pain too.
Cooking healthy can be pretty quick. Depends what you're cooking. A sandwich or a bowl of soup isn't hard to make and much healthier than fast food.
Taco Bells get robbed too you know. They aren't going after the tacos, they're going after the cash in the register.
I think you're misreading the economics here. A typical McDonald's requires ~$1M - $2M of investment. If there's enough business in the neighborhood to support one of those, you can, without a doubt, support a grocery store.
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On June 20 2013 05:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:17 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 05:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:35 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:On June 20 2013 04:32 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:
[quote]
Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. I believe JonnyBNoHo's argument is that given market forces, a grocery store would likely be established nearby if there was a demand for it. These areas with no grocery store in a mile and where over 5% of people don't have a car to get to the store likely aren't very wealthy. A grocery store may very well see it as not being worth the risk of the store failing just to get a small amount of business from these poor individuals. But the fast food joint (particularly if it's a national chain) does see enough business to be worthwhile? That seems absurd, particularly with government subsidies for food. I guess you missed my previous post so I'll repost it: Well, first of all, if you don't have a car, transporting groceries is a huge problem. Especially enough groceries for an entire family. Second, a lot of poor people aren't unemployed, they're working multiple part time jobs and without a car that means their entire lives revolve around bus schedules and their kids. Finding time to actually cook is extremely difficult. And yes, cooking anything healthy takes a lot of time. Third, if you live in government subsidized housing with barebones utilities, what do you think the kitchen situation is like? I'm going to guess you'd have a hard time pulling off one of Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals. Fourth, crime does tend to be more prevalent in poorer neighborhoods. It's super freaking easy to steal from a grocery store. No one's stealing sleeves of taco shells from a Taco Bell. And grocery stores have to have a lot more cash on hand to fill all their registers. All these things mean that even if a grocery store did open up in a poor neighborhood it would likely go out of business very quickly. Yes if you don't have a car things will be a pain, but going to McDonald's three times a day would be a pain too. Cooking healthy can be pretty quick. Depends what you're cooking. A sandwich or a bowl of soup isn't hard to make and much healthier than fast food. Taco Bells get robbed too you know. They aren't going after the tacos, they're going after the cash in the register. I think you're misreading the economics here. A typical McDonald's requires ~$1M - $2M of investment. If there's enough business in the neighborhood to support one of those, you can, without a doubt, support a grocery store.
A sandwich our soup is easy to make, but it also requires that you have the proper things to make it, put it all together, and, more importantly, one sandwich our soup is a snack. That's not enough food for a working individual. This is why this country's poor usually turn to cheaper, easier to make, and worse-for-you food when at the grocery store. It gives you more food for less money, regardless of its health value, and at the end of the day, as a poor individual, all you really care about is how full your stomach feels.
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On June 20 2013 04:49 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:30 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 02:20 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:02 ziggurat wrote:On June 18 2013 14:50 aksfjh wrote:
[quote]
Indeed pay-as-you-go phones are cheap. Probably about ~$30 a month. The food situation comes from personal experience. Last summer I had a factory job working from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm every weekday. I would wake up at 6:45, get ready for work, get home around 5:00, shower/clean up until 5:30. Entertainment and dinner until ~9:00 pm, and then bed. That gives me 3.5 hours for relaxation and errands daily. Cooking a meal normally takes anywhere from 30-90 minutes, and prepping a meal that isn't leftovers for lunch takes another 10-15 minutes. If you're cooking, this reduces your free/errand/chore time down to 2-2.5 hours a day (on weekdays), which isn't much. Meanwhile, eating out shrinks that time requirement down to ~15 minutes, and eliminates the "next-day-lunch" prep altogether. Consuming the ~2200-2500 calories for an active job will cost you at least $6 a day if you eat fast food 2-3 times a week. This is where the disconnect on food comes in, as foods that look cheap (like fruit and vegetables) are actually really light on calories as well. Their cost/calorie ratio (which I know isn't the END ALL measurement, but can be a metric) isn't that great or different from a fast food meal. I currently budget myself to <$7 a day on average, and I have plenty of time to cook my own meals.
Power for me in my current ~600 sq ft. efficiency is close to $95 a month, water and trash is about $25. I admittedly overpay for rent, but that's because I can afford to do so for now, but I do know of some really shady places you can get for ~$425-450, and any apartment I have found that includes water/gas/trash and/or electricity in the bill are not places you want to be even temporarily. Furniture and home cleaning supplies get expensive really, really fast and easily. It's not uncommon for me to spend $50 on 2 weeks of groceries, and another $50 on a month worth of home supplies. While living alone, I have also noticed a tendency for me to have some sort of unexpected expense of ~$200 a month relating to either car trouble, medical expenses, or replacing/fixing something broken at home. As I read this post I couldn't help thinking what a moving target "poverty" really is. But this is actually a pretty good picture of what is means to be "poor" in a rich country. "Poor" people have TVs, computers, cable, cell phones, cars, and many other things that truly poor people would consider to be absurd luxuries. "Poor" people in the US are often obese because they consume too many calories. Meanwhile, millions of truly poor people in the 3rd world subsist on less than a dollar a day. It's hard for me to feel sorry for a "poor" person because car insurance in North America is expensive. Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes. In many ways this is more due to education and demographics than living conditions. Poor people don't have to eat fast food at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population, and fast food in many ways isn't even that cheap. Poor people might also have higher chances of getting involved in gang activity, drug trafficking and use, alcoholism. I would say that poor people typically make poorer choices and/or are less intelligent (THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE SO DON'T YELL AT ME) than the rest of the population so poverty correlates with other results of bad choices. Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that. Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable)
First, I can't believe people stick "color tv" as some sort of luxury good poor people shouldn't have access to. I really think many of you literally think poor people should be working 100 hours a week, and when they aren't working, either cooking or studying to "get ahead." You treat leisure for somebody making less than $20k a year as some sort of sin, unless maybe it's sitting around a radio in a dark room.
I'll tell you right now, the taste of the food isn't as big of a deal. It's obviously a factor, but not the entire story. For an adult, fast food is a choice that is cheap, work-free, and convenient. You do nothing more than pay the cashier and you receive a meal that fixes your hunger. There's no worry about proportions, which are decided for you, nor can you accidentally ruin the meal. There's also the case for timing, since bringing a meal home at 8 or 9 at night means kids won't be up until 11 eating, instead of having to start dinner that late.
Poor people aren't choosing to eat fast food and be unhealthy because they like to engorge themselves more than the rest of us, but because it makes the most economic sense for now and the foreseeable future. Some of you dolts need to realize that these people aren't much different than us when it comes to aggregate desires and decisions. They are forced, in their situation, to make bad long-term decisions to get by in the short term. About the only choice they are given is to take a gamble and sacrifice what they can spare for a chance to move up 1 rung on the socioeconomic ladder in a lifetime, which doesn't look much different than the rung they are on.
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On June 20 2013 05:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:17 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 05:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:35 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:On June 20 2013 04:32 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:
[quote]
Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated.
Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. I believe JonnyBNoHo's argument is that given market forces, a grocery store would likely be established nearby if there was a demand for it. These areas with no grocery store in a mile and where over 5% of people don't have a car to get to the store likely aren't very wealthy. A grocery store may very well see it as not being worth the risk of the store failing just to get a small amount of business from these poor individuals. But the fast food joint (particularly if it's a national chain) does see enough business to be worthwhile? That seems absurd, particularly with government subsidies for food. I guess you missed my previous post so I'll repost it: Well, first of all, if you don't have a car, transporting groceries is a huge problem. Especially enough groceries for an entire family. Second, a lot of poor people aren't unemployed, they're working multiple part time jobs and without a car that means their entire lives revolve around bus schedules and their kids. Finding time to actually cook is extremely difficult. And yes, cooking anything healthy takes a lot of time. Third, if you live in government subsidized housing with barebones utilities, what do you think the kitchen situation is like? I'm going to guess you'd have a hard time pulling off one of Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals. Fourth, crime does tend to be more prevalent in poorer neighborhoods. It's super freaking easy to steal from a grocery store. No one's stealing sleeves of taco shells from a Taco Bell. And grocery stores have to have a lot more cash on hand to fill all their registers. All these things mean that even if a grocery store did open up in a poor neighborhood it would likely go out of business very quickly. Yes if you don't have a car things will be a pain, but going to McDonald's three times a day would be a pain too. Cooking healthy can be pretty quick. Depends what you're cooking. A sandwich or a bowl of soup isn't hard to make and much healthier than fast food. Taco Bells get robbed too you know. They aren't going after the tacos, they're going after the cash in the register. I think you're misreading the economics here. A typical McDonald's requires ~$1M - $2M of investment. If there's enough business in the neighborhood to support one of those, you can, without a doubt, support a grocery store. A sandwich our soup is easy to make, but it also requires that you have the proper things to make it, put it all together, and, more importantly, one sandwich our soup is a snack. That's not enough food for a working individual. This is why this country's poor usually turn to cheaper, easier to make, and worse-for-you food when at the grocery store. It gives you more food for less money, regardless of its health value, and at the end of the day, as a poor individual, all you really care about is how full your stomach feels.
Well there's zero issue of people not receiving enough calories. The issue is often the opposite - too much calories. So the argument that the healthier options I'm suggesting are "not enough food" is a bit absurd. Yes, you'll have to buy the ingredients (no harder than going to McDonald's) and put it together (pretty damn easy) but I fail to see how that is somehow an insurmountable challenge.
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On June 20 2013 05:41 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 04:49 Danglars wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:30 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 02:20 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:02 ziggurat wrote:
[quote]
As I read this post I couldn't help thinking what a moving target "poverty" really is. But this is actually a pretty good picture of what is means to be "poor" in a rich country. "Poor" people have TVs, computers, cable, cell phones, cars, and many other things that truly poor people would consider to be absurd luxuries. "Poor" people in the US are often obese because they consume too many calories.
Meanwhile, millions of truly poor people in the 3rd world subsist on less than a dollar a day. It's hard for me to feel sorry for a "poor" person because car insurance in North America is expensive. Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes. In many ways this is more due to education and demographics than living conditions. Poor people don't have to eat fast food at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population, and fast food in many ways isn't even that cheap. Poor people might also have higher chances of getting involved in gang activity, drug trafficking and use, alcoholism. I would say that poor people typically make poorer choices and/or are less intelligent (THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE SO DON'T YELL AT ME) than the rest of the population so poverty correlates with other results of bad choices. Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that. Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable) First, I can't believe people stick "color tv" as some sort of luxury good poor people shouldn't have access to. I really think many of you literally think poor people should be working 100 hours a week, and when they aren't working, either cooking or studying to "get ahead." You treat leisure for somebody making less than $20k a year as some sort of sin, unless maybe it's sitting around a radio in a dark room. I'll tell you right now, the taste of the food isn't as big of a deal. It's obviously a factor, but not the entire story. For an adult, fast food is a choice that is cheap, work-free, and convenient. You do nothing more than pay the cashier and you receive a meal that fixes your hunger. There's no worry about proportions, which are decided for you, nor can you accidentally ruin the meal. There's also the case for timing, since bringing a meal home at 8 or 9 at night means kids won't be up until 11 eating, instead of having to start dinner that late. Poor people aren't choosing to eat fast food and be unhealthy because they like to engorge themselves more than the rest of us, but because it makes the most economic sense for now and the foreseeable future. Some of you dolts need to realize that these people aren't much different than us when it comes to aggregate desires and decisions. They are forced, in their situation, to make bad long-term decisions to get by in the short term. About the only choice they are given is to take a gamble and sacrifice what they can spare for a chance to move up 1 rung on the socioeconomic ladder in a lifetime, which doesn't look much different than the rung they are on.
You lost me in the last paragraph. Are you saying their decisions are poor ones or good ones?
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On June 20 2013 05:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:17 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 05:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:35 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:On June 20 2013 04:32 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:
[quote]
Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. I believe JonnyBNoHo's argument is that given market forces, a grocery store would likely be established nearby if there was a demand for it. These areas with no grocery store in a mile and where over 5% of people don't have a car to get to the store likely aren't very wealthy. A grocery store may very well see it as not being worth the risk of the store failing just to get a small amount of business from these poor individuals. But the fast food joint (particularly if it's a national chain) does see enough business to be worthwhile? That seems absurd, particularly with government subsidies for food. I guess you missed my previous post so I'll repost it: Well, first of all, if you don't have a car, transporting groceries is a huge problem. Especially enough groceries for an entire family. Second, a lot of poor people aren't unemployed, they're working multiple part time jobs and without a car that means their entire lives revolve around bus schedules and their kids. Finding time to actually cook is extremely difficult. And yes, cooking anything healthy takes a lot of time. Third, if you live in government subsidized housing with barebones utilities, what do you think the kitchen situation is like? I'm going to guess you'd have a hard time pulling off one of Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals. Fourth, crime does tend to be more prevalent in poorer neighborhoods. It's super freaking easy to steal from a grocery store. No one's stealing sleeves of taco shells from a Taco Bell. And grocery stores have to have a lot more cash on hand to fill all their registers. All these things mean that even if a grocery store did open up in a poor neighborhood it would likely go out of business very quickly. Yes if you don't have a car things will be a pain, but going to McDonald's three times a day would be a pain too. Cooking healthy can be pretty quick. Depends what you're cooking. A sandwich or a bowl of soup isn't hard to make and much healthier than fast food. Taco Bells get robbed too you know. They aren't going after the tacos, they're going after the cash in the register. I think you're misreading the economics here. A typical McDonald's requires ~$1M - $2M of investment. If there's enough business in the neighborhood to support one of those, you can, without a doubt, support a grocery store.
They aren't going to McDonald's three times a day. They're probably going once a day and eating a massive meal because they don't have the time or it's not practical to make multiple trips. And even if they are going 3 times a day. Carrying 4 combo meals for you family is a hell of a lot easier than carrying groceries to feed a family of 4.
Sandwiches and soup? There's nothing inherently healthy about either of those things. And, in fact, if you're talking about canned soup, that shit is so loaded with sodium if you ate it every day your kidneys would shrivel. And really, you think a sandwich is a meal? (your statement does kinda irk me because it reeks of ignorance about diet and food while at the same time judging the poor for having bad diets)
And if Taco Bell's get robbed at the register then grocery stores are going to have the exact same problem in addition to shoplifting. Shop lifting was what I was talking about when I referred to crime.
And again, just because there's enough business to support a McDonald's doesn't mean there will be enough to support a grocery store. That's like saying because there's enough business to support a gas station there should be enough business to support an audi dealership. Poor people simply cannot shop at a grocery store for many reasons, those reasons don't exist for McDonald's. It's a lot more than "they just don't wanna go grocery shopping."
I do not understand why you're assuming that a trip to the grocery store is the same as a trip to McDonald's The grocery store takes more time, results in more cargo, and takes more money. AND you better have the storage for all this food in your apt...and hope that bugs/rats/mold doesn't get into it before you can eat it.
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On June 20 2013 02:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +Will Obamacare Hurt Jobs? It's Already Happening, Poll Finds
Small business owners' fear of the effect of the new health-care reform law on their bottom line is prompting many to hold off on hiring and even to shed jobs in some cases, a recent poll found.
"We were startled because we know that employers were concerned about the Affordable Care Act and the effects it would have on their business, but we didn't realize the extent they were concerned, or that the businesses were being proactive to make sure the effects of the ACA actually were minimized," said attorney Steven Friedman of Littler Mendelson. His firm, which specializes in employment law, commissioned the Gallup poll.
"If the small businesses' fears are reasonable, then it could mean that the small business sector grows slower than what economic conditions otherwise would indicate. And small businesses have been a growth engine in the economy," Friedman told CNBC.
Forty-one percent of the businesses surveyed have frozen hiring because of the health-care law known as Obamacare. And almost one-fifth—19 percent— answered "yes" when asked if they had "reduced the number of employees you have in your business as a specific result of the Affordable Care Act."
The poll was taken by 603 owners whose businesses have under $20 million in annual sales. ...
One group that favors Obamacare for small businesses said the findings reflect misconceptions about its true effects as well as the need for continued outreach by reform advocates to the small business community. LinkHopefully things pan out better than expected. There weren't a lot of job losses in MA from the healthcare reforms. Though the uninsured issue was smaller and the economy was stronger.
I'm still not convinced this is the case with business owners. I know a lot of them are upset with the legislation and have political leanings that will skew their reported answers. Most likely, there will be quite a few that will write off any recent lay-offs/firings/quitings on Obamacare. So far, private sector hiring hasn't diminished much in the past few months, and businesses haven't really accrued costs from the law yet. As with health care costs, we'll need to wait this one out a few years to really gauge the success/failure of the law.
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On June 20 2013 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:41 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 04:49 Danglars wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:30 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 02:20 Shiori wrote:
[quote]
Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes.
In many ways this is more due to education and demographics than living conditions. Poor people don't have to eat fast food at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population, and fast food in many ways isn't even that cheap. Poor people might also have higher chances of getting involved in gang activity, drug trafficking and use, alcoholism. I would say that poor people typically make poorer choices and/or are less intelligent (THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE SO DON'T YELL AT ME) than the rest of the population so poverty correlates with other results of bad choices. Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that. Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable) First, I can't believe people stick "color tv" as some sort of luxury good poor people shouldn't have access to. I really think many of you literally think poor people should be working 100 hours a week, and when they aren't working, either cooking or studying to "get ahead." You treat leisure for somebody making less than $20k a year as some sort of sin, unless maybe it's sitting around a radio in a dark room. I'll tell you right now, the taste of the food isn't as big of a deal. It's obviously a factor, but not the entire story. For an adult, fast food is a choice that is cheap, work-free, and convenient. You do nothing more than pay the cashier and you receive a meal that fixes your hunger. There's no worry about proportions, which are decided for you, nor can you accidentally ruin the meal. There's also the case for timing, since bringing a meal home at 8 or 9 at night means kids won't be up until 11 eating, instead of having to start dinner that late. Poor people aren't choosing to eat fast food and be unhealthy because they like to engorge themselves more than the rest of us, but because it makes the most economic sense for now and the foreseeable future. Some of you dolts need to realize that these people aren't much different than us when it comes to aggregate desires and decisions. They are forced, in their situation, to make bad long-term decisions to get by in the short term. About the only choice they are given is to take a gamble and sacrifice what they can spare for a chance to move up 1 rung on the socioeconomic ladder in a lifetime, which doesn't look much different than the rung they are on. You lost me in the last paragraph. Are you saying their decisions are poor ones or good ones?
He's saying that the choices available to the less fortunate are not the boon that many present them as.
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On June 20 2013 05:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 05:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:17 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 05:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:35 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:On June 20 2013 04:32 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:
[quote]
I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense.
Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. I believe JonnyBNoHo's argument is that given market forces, a grocery store would likely be established nearby if there was a demand for it. These areas with no grocery store in a mile and where over 5% of people don't have a car to get to the store likely aren't very wealthy. A grocery store may very well see it as not being worth the risk of the store failing just to get a small amount of business from these poor individuals. But the fast food joint (particularly if it's a national chain) does see enough business to be worthwhile? That seems absurd, particularly with government subsidies for food. I guess you missed my previous post so I'll repost it: Well, first of all, if you don't have a car, transporting groceries is a huge problem. Especially enough groceries for an entire family. Second, a lot of poor people aren't unemployed, they're working multiple part time jobs and without a car that means their entire lives revolve around bus schedules and their kids. Finding time to actually cook is extremely difficult. And yes, cooking anything healthy takes a lot of time. Third, if you live in government subsidized housing with barebones utilities, what do you think the kitchen situation is like? I'm going to guess you'd have a hard time pulling off one of Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals. Fourth, crime does tend to be more prevalent in poorer neighborhoods. It's super freaking easy to steal from a grocery store. No one's stealing sleeves of taco shells from a Taco Bell. And grocery stores have to have a lot more cash on hand to fill all their registers. All these things mean that even if a grocery store did open up in a poor neighborhood it would likely go out of business very quickly. Yes if you don't have a car things will be a pain, but going to McDonald's three times a day would be a pain too. Cooking healthy can be pretty quick. Depends what you're cooking. A sandwich or a bowl of soup isn't hard to make and much healthier than fast food. Taco Bells get robbed too you know. They aren't going after the tacos, they're going after the cash in the register. I think you're misreading the economics here. A typical McDonald's requires ~$1M - $2M of investment. If there's enough business in the neighborhood to support one of those, you can, without a doubt, support a grocery store. A sandwich our soup is easy to make, but it also requires that you have the proper things to make it, put it all together, and, more importantly, one sandwich our soup is a snack. That's not enough food for a working individual. This is why this country's poor usually turn to cheaper, easier to make, and worse-for-you food when at the grocery store. It gives you more food for less money, regardless of its health value, and at the end of the day, as a poor individual, all you really care about is how full your stomach feels. Well there's zero issue of people not receiving enough calories. The issue is often the opposite - too much calories. So the argument that the healthier options I'm suggesting are "not enough food" is a bit absurd. Yes, you'll have to buy the ingredients (no harder than going to McDonald's) and put it together (pretty damn easy) but I fail to see how that is somehow an insurmountable challenge.
Your skipping over one of the more important difference. Fast Food is cheaper then eating healthy is large(if not all) parts of the US. Poor people dont eat fast food because its awesome or whatever, they eat it because its cheaper and when your forced to squeeze every dollar thats all that counts.
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On June 20 2013 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:41 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 04:49 Danglars wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:30 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 02:20 Shiori wrote:
[quote]
Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes.
In many ways this is more due to education and demographics than living conditions. Poor people don't have to eat fast food at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population, and fast food in many ways isn't even that cheap. Poor people might also have higher chances of getting involved in gang activity, drug trafficking and use, alcoholism. I would say that poor people typically make poorer choices and/or are less intelligent (THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE SO DON'T YELL AT ME) than the rest of the population so poverty correlates with other results of bad choices. Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that. Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable) First, I can't believe people stick "color tv" as some sort of luxury good poor people shouldn't have access to. I really think many of you literally think poor people should be working 100 hours a week, and when they aren't working, either cooking or studying to "get ahead." You treat leisure for somebody making less than $20k a year as some sort of sin, unless maybe it's sitting around a radio in a dark room. I'll tell you right now, the taste of the food isn't as big of a deal. It's obviously a factor, but not the entire story. For an adult, fast food is a choice that is cheap, work-free, and convenient. You do nothing more than pay the cashier and you receive a meal that fixes your hunger. There's no worry about proportions, which are decided for you, nor can you accidentally ruin the meal. There's also the case for timing, since bringing a meal home at 8 or 9 at night means kids won't be up until 11 eating, instead of having to start dinner that late. Poor people aren't choosing to eat fast food and be unhealthy because they like to engorge themselves more than the rest of us, but because it makes the most economic sense for now and the foreseeable future. Some of you dolts need to realize that these people aren't much different than us when it comes to aggregate desires and decisions. They are forced, in their situation, to make bad long-term decisions to get by in the short term. About the only choice they are given is to take a gamble and sacrifice what they can spare for a chance to move up 1 rung on the socioeconomic ladder in a lifetime, which doesn't look much different than the rung they are on. You lost me in the last paragraph. Are you saying their decisions are poor ones or good ones?
They make poor choices naturally because of their situation, but if they sit down and draw the good choices to their natural conclusions, they see that their situation doesn't change much (nominally better, but not really better).
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On June 20 2013 05:50 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 05:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:17 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 05:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:35 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:On June 20 2013 04:32 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. I believe JonnyBNoHo's argument is that given market forces, a grocery store would likely be established nearby if there was a demand for it. These areas with no grocery store in a mile and where over 5% of people don't have a car to get to the store likely aren't very wealthy. A grocery store may very well see it as not being worth the risk of the store failing just to get a small amount of business from these poor individuals. But the fast food joint (particularly if it's a national chain) does see enough business to be worthwhile? That seems absurd, particularly with government subsidies for food. I guess you missed my previous post so I'll repost it: Well, first of all, if you don't have a car, transporting groceries is a huge problem. Especially enough groceries for an entire family. Second, a lot of poor people aren't unemployed, they're working multiple part time jobs and without a car that means their entire lives revolve around bus schedules and their kids. Finding time to actually cook is extremely difficult. And yes, cooking anything healthy takes a lot of time. Third, if you live in government subsidized housing with barebones utilities, what do you think the kitchen situation is like? I'm going to guess you'd have a hard time pulling off one of Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals. Fourth, crime does tend to be more prevalent in poorer neighborhoods. It's super freaking easy to steal from a grocery store. No one's stealing sleeves of taco shells from a Taco Bell. And grocery stores have to have a lot more cash on hand to fill all their registers. All these things mean that even if a grocery store did open up in a poor neighborhood it would likely go out of business very quickly. Yes if you don't have a car things will be a pain, but going to McDonald's three times a day would be a pain too. Cooking healthy can be pretty quick. Depends what you're cooking. A sandwich or a bowl of soup isn't hard to make and much healthier than fast food. Taco Bells get robbed too you know. They aren't going after the tacos, they're going after the cash in the register. I think you're misreading the economics here. A typical McDonald's requires ~$1M - $2M of investment. If there's enough business in the neighborhood to support one of those, you can, without a doubt, support a grocery store. A sandwich our soup is easy to make, but it also requires that you have the proper things to make it, put it all together, and, more importantly, one sandwich our soup is a snack. That's not enough food for a working individual. This is why this country's poor usually turn to cheaper, easier to make, and worse-for-you food when at the grocery store. It gives you more food for less money, regardless of its health value, and at the end of the day, as a poor individual, all you really care about is how full your stomach feels. Well there's zero issue of people not receiving enough calories. The issue is often the opposite - too much calories. So the argument that the healthier options I'm suggesting are "not enough food" is a bit absurd. Yes, you'll have to buy the ingredients (no harder than going to McDonald's) and put it together (pretty damn easy) but I fail to see how that is somehow an insurmountable challenge. Your skipping over one of the more important difference. Fast Food is cheaper then eating healthy is large(if not all) parts of the US. Poor people dont eat fast food because its awesome or whatever, they eat it because its cheaper and when your forced to squeeze every dollar thats all that counts.
Fast food isn't cheaper than the grocery store.
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On June 20 2013 02:30 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On June 19 2013 18:43 aksfjh wrote:On June 19 2013 10:55 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Finally some real debate, Space Policy; Republicans in Congress are pushing for major cuts across the federal budget, but so far, they’re not willing to sacrifice a plan to build a moon colony.
In fact, Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee are eyeing an even more ambitious goal: building a base on Mars, too.
Those calls will be part of new legislation to be released Wednesday reauthorizing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for two more years, and though the bill doesn’t use the term “moon base,” the goal is clear.
“The [NASA] Administrator shall establish a program to develop a sustained human presence on the Moon and the surface of Mars,” states a recent discussion draft obtained by POLITICO.
New language in the bill also says that while the NASA chief is authorized to develop international partnerships to establish a “sustained presence” on the two celestial bodies, “the absence of an international partner may not be justification for failure to pursue such program in a timely manner.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich famously said during last year’s presidential campaign that the U.S. would have a permanent base on the moon by the end of his second term, drawing mockery from Mitt Romney, who said he’d fire someone for proposing to spend billions on such a project.
But the new NASA authorization isn’t quite as ambitious as Gingrich’s plan. SourceMy position, I support this might as well as solving problems in Space spurs economic activity on Earth. Next thing we hear, NASA's budget will be cut by 20% and told to get a moonbase running by 2019. Republicans have always been pretty good at increasing NASA's budget. It went up a lot more under bush then it will ever under obama.
True, but these aren't the same Republicans. In the House, at least, a great number of them cheered the sequester's cut in military spending. Many government programs would probably celebrate just having a budget that kept up with inflation at this point.
On June 20 2013 05:53 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:50 Gorsameth wrote:On June 20 2013 05:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:35 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 05:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:17 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 05:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:35 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:On June 20 2013 04:32 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:
[quote]
"Collective personal preference."
When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available.
And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. I believe JonnyBNoHo's argument is that given market forces, a grocery store would likely be established nearby if there was a demand for it. These areas with no grocery store in a mile and where over 5% of people don't have a car to get to the store likely aren't very wealthy. A grocery store may very well see it as not being worth the risk of the store failing just to get a small amount of business from these poor individuals. But the fast food joint (particularly if it's a national chain) does see enough business to be worthwhile? That seems absurd, particularly with government subsidies for food. I guess you missed my previous post so I'll repost it: Well, first of all, if you don't have a car, transporting groceries is a huge problem. Especially enough groceries for an entire family. Second, a lot of poor people aren't unemployed, they're working multiple part time jobs and without a car that means their entire lives revolve around bus schedules and their kids. Finding time to actually cook is extremely difficult. And yes, cooking anything healthy takes a lot of time. Third, if you live in government subsidized housing with barebones utilities, what do you think the kitchen situation is like? I'm going to guess you'd have a hard time pulling off one of Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals. Fourth, crime does tend to be more prevalent in poorer neighborhoods. It's super freaking easy to steal from a grocery store. No one's stealing sleeves of taco shells from a Taco Bell. And grocery stores have to have a lot more cash on hand to fill all their registers. All these things mean that even if a grocery store did open up in a poor neighborhood it would likely go out of business very quickly. Yes if you don't have a car things will be a pain, but going to McDonald's three times a day would be a pain too. Cooking healthy can be pretty quick. Depends what you're cooking. A sandwich or a bowl of soup isn't hard to make and much healthier than fast food. Taco Bells get robbed too you know. They aren't going after the tacos, they're going after the cash in the register. I think you're misreading the economics here. A typical McDonald's requires ~$1M - $2M of investment. If there's enough business in the neighborhood to support one of those, you can, without a doubt, support a grocery store. A sandwich our soup is easy to make, but it also requires that you have the proper things to make it, put it all together, and, more importantly, one sandwich our soup is a snack. That's not enough food for a working individual. This is why this country's poor usually turn to cheaper, easier to make, and worse-for-you food when at the grocery store. It gives you more food for less money, regardless of its health value, and at the end of the day, as a poor individual, all you really care about is how full your stomach feels. Well there's zero issue of people not receiving enough calories. The issue is often the opposite - too much calories. So the argument that the healthier options I'm suggesting are "not enough food" is a bit absurd. Yes, you'll have to buy the ingredients (no harder than going to McDonald's) and put it together (pretty damn easy) but I fail to see how that is somehow an insurmountable challenge. Your skipping over one of the more important difference. Fast Food is cheaper then eating healthy is large(if not all) parts of the US. Poor people dont eat fast food because its awesome or whatever, they eat it because its cheaper and when your forced to squeeze every dollar thats all that counts. Fast food isn't cheaper than the grocery store.
Have to come to jonny's side on this one. While it's not a great deal cheaper, it is cheaper. The fast food healthy meals are obviously ridiculously expensive, but groceries will save you about 10-30% per calorie (and give more nutrients) compared to regular "greasy" fast food. The issue lies with the time it takes to prepare compared to the cost savings.
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On June 20 2013 05:51 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:41 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 04:49 Danglars wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 02:30 Chocolate wrote:
[quote]
In many ways this is more due to education and demographics than living conditions. Poor people don't have to eat fast food at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population, and fast food in many ways isn't even that cheap. Poor people might also have higher chances of getting involved in gang activity, drug trafficking and use, alcoholism. I would say that poor people typically make poorer choices and/or are less intelligent (THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE SO DON'T YELL AT ME) than the rest of the population so poverty correlates with other results of bad choices. Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that. Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable) First, I can't believe people stick "color tv" as some sort of luxury good poor people shouldn't have access to. I really think many of you literally think poor people should be working 100 hours a week, and when they aren't working, either cooking or studying to "get ahead." You treat leisure for somebody making less than $20k a year as some sort of sin, unless maybe it's sitting around a radio in a dark room. I'll tell you right now, the taste of the food isn't as big of a deal. It's obviously a factor, but not the entire story. For an adult, fast food is a choice that is cheap, work-free, and convenient. You do nothing more than pay the cashier and you receive a meal that fixes your hunger. There's no worry about proportions, which are decided for you, nor can you accidentally ruin the meal. There's also the case for timing, since bringing a meal home at 8 or 9 at night means kids won't be up until 11 eating, instead of having to start dinner that late. Poor people aren't choosing to eat fast food and be unhealthy because they like to engorge themselves more than the rest of us, but because it makes the most economic sense for now and the foreseeable future. Some of you dolts need to realize that these people aren't much different than us when it comes to aggregate desires and decisions. They are forced, in their situation, to make bad long-term decisions to get by in the short term. About the only choice they are given is to take a gamble and sacrifice what they can spare for a chance to move up 1 rung on the socioeconomic ladder in a lifetime, which doesn't look much different than the rung they are on. You lost me in the last paragraph. Are you saying their decisions are poor ones or good ones? They make poor choices naturally because of their situation, but if they sit down and draw the good choices to their natural conclusions, they see that their situation doesn't change much (nominally better, but not really better).
That ignores the economic history. Their situation exists because the communities decided to favor the unhealthy over the healthy.
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On June 20 2013 05:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:51 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:41 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 04:49 Danglars wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:On June 20 2013 03:12 Shiori wrote:
[quote]
Doesn't really matter what it's due to. Lack of education is pretty correlative with poverty for obvious reasons (i.e. education is fucking expensive and requires effort and parental input for optimal reward) whereas demographics are descriptions of existing situations rather than explanations. Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated. Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that. Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable) First, I can't believe people stick "color tv" as some sort of luxury good poor people shouldn't have access to. I really think many of you literally think poor people should be working 100 hours a week, and when they aren't working, either cooking or studying to "get ahead." You treat leisure for somebody making less than $20k a year as some sort of sin, unless maybe it's sitting around a radio in a dark room. I'll tell you right now, the taste of the food isn't as big of a deal. It's obviously a factor, but not the entire story. For an adult, fast food is a choice that is cheap, work-free, and convenient. You do nothing more than pay the cashier and you receive a meal that fixes your hunger. There's no worry about proportions, which are decided for you, nor can you accidentally ruin the meal. There's also the case for timing, since bringing a meal home at 8 or 9 at night means kids won't be up until 11 eating, instead of having to start dinner that late. Poor people aren't choosing to eat fast food and be unhealthy because they like to engorge themselves more than the rest of us, but because it makes the most economic sense for now and the foreseeable future. Some of you dolts need to realize that these people aren't much different than us when it comes to aggregate desires and decisions. They are forced, in their situation, to make bad long-term decisions to get by in the short term. About the only choice they are given is to take a gamble and sacrifice what they can spare for a chance to move up 1 rung on the socioeconomic ladder in a lifetime, which doesn't look much different than the rung they are on. You lost me in the last paragraph. Are you saying their decisions are poor ones or good ones? They make poor choices naturally because of their situation, but if they sit down and draw the good choices to their natural conclusions, they see that their situation doesn't change much (nominally better, but not really better). That ignores the economic history. Their situation exists because the communities decided to favor the unhealthy over the healthy.
Umm...and you're just completely rewriting economic history. Poor communities never decided to be unhealthy. They've always had to squeeze as many calories per dollar into their food as they can. As it became easier and easier to squeeze calories out of a dollar (i.e. fast food) yes they started eating too many calories BUT that doesn't change the fact that grocery stores aren't the answer. Time is still very valuable and groceries aren't practical. I'm not sure whether you're deliberately skipping my posts or just missing them but I list many reasons why grocery stores don't work other than the price tab.
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WASHINGTON — President Obama is preparing a major policy push on climate change, including, for the first time, limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants, as well as expanded renewable energy development on public lands and an accelerated effort on energy efficiency in buildings and equipment, senior officials said Wednesday.
Heather Zichal, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change, said the president would announce the new policy initiatives in the coming weeks. Another official said a presidential address outlining the new policy could come as early as next week.
“He is serious about making it a second-term priority,” Ms. Zichal said at a forum in Washington sponsored by the magazine The New Republic. “He knows this is a legacy issue.”
Ms. Zichal suggested in her remarks that a central part of the administration’s approach to dealing with climate change would be to use the authority given to the Environmental Protection Agency to address climate-altering pollutants from power plants under the Clean Air Act. She said that none of the initiatives being considered by the administration required legislative action or new financing from Congress, but any effort to clamp down on power plant emissions is likely to provoke intense opposition in Congress and litigation by industry. Such regulations would hurt states heavily dependent on cheap power produced from coal and would drive up electricity prices, at least in the short term.
In a speech in Berlin on Wednesday, Mr. Obama said that the United States and the world had a moral imperative to take “bold action” to slow the warming of the planet.
Source
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On June 20 2013 06:10 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:51 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:41 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 04:49 Danglars wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 04:14 Chocolate wrote:
[quote]
Well, I'm basically saying that it's still a choice to eat fast food, engage in gang violence, get some sort of addiction (at first obv). We can't say "poor people die too early" and act like they're in some horribly dangerous situation when in reality they have a choice not to do a lot of things that are unhealthy. You can be smart and be poor, but the poor will almost always be made up mostly of the dumbest of society (no marketable or specialized skills), who will of course also make dumb decisions. So I don't think we can say that poverty causes the problem that "Poor people in America die significantly earlier than people of higher classes" but more that it is correlated.
Obviously, poor people might not be able to afford the best medical care available but they can still get pretty darned good care. My mom works in a hospital and notes that medicaid money goes quite far. I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense. Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that. Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable) First, I can't believe people stick "color tv" as some sort of luxury good poor people shouldn't have access to. I really think many of you literally think poor people should be working 100 hours a week, and when they aren't working, either cooking or studying to "get ahead." You treat leisure for somebody making less than $20k a year as some sort of sin, unless maybe it's sitting around a radio in a dark room. I'll tell you right now, the taste of the food isn't as big of a deal. It's obviously a factor, but not the entire story. For an adult, fast food is a choice that is cheap, work-free, and convenient. You do nothing more than pay the cashier and you receive a meal that fixes your hunger. There's no worry about proportions, which are decided for you, nor can you accidentally ruin the meal. There's also the case for timing, since bringing a meal home at 8 or 9 at night means kids won't be up until 11 eating, instead of having to start dinner that late. Poor people aren't choosing to eat fast food and be unhealthy because they like to engorge themselves more than the rest of us, but because it makes the most economic sense for now and the foreseeable future. Some of you dolts need to realize that these people aren't much different than us when it comes to aggregate desires and decisions. They are forced, in their situation, to make bad long-term decisions to get by in the short term. About the only choice they are given is to take a gamble and sacrifice what they can spare for a chance to move up 1 rung on the socioeconomic ladder in a lifetime, which doesn't look much different than the rung they are on. You lost me in the last paragraph. Are you saying their decisions are poor ones or good ones? They make poor choices naturally because of their situation, but if they sit down and draw the good choices to their natural conclusions, they see that their situation doesn't change much (nominally better, but not really better). That ignores the economic history. Their situation exists because the communities decided to favor the unhealthy over the healthy. Umm...and you're just completely rewriting economic history. Poor communities never decided to be unhealthy. They've always had to squeeze as many calories per dollar into their food as they can. As it became easier and easier to squeeze calories out of a dollar (i.e. fast food) yes they started eating too many calories BUT that doesn't change the fact that grocery stores aren't the answer. Time is still very valuable and groceries aren't practical. I'm not sure whether you're deliberately skipping my posts or just missing them but I list many reasons why grocery stores don't work other than the price tab.
The obesity / unhealthy food issue is a recent thing. Every issue you listed existed prior to concerns over obesity. Walking to a grocery store was always a pain. Cooking food always took time. The introduction of fast food meant that people could make the bad choice to trade health and money for convenience. And they did so in droves.
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On June 20 2013 06:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 06:10 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 05:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:51 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:41 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 04:49 Danglars wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 04:18 Klondikebar wrote:
[quote]
I like how when people blame poor people for being poor they throw around the world choice like it's appropriate in any way other than the most technical sense.
Yeah, poor people "choose" to eat fast food but when you can't afford nicer food, there's no grocery store anywhere around your neighborhood, and you don't have time to cook anyway...wtf else are you gonna eat? Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that. Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable) First, I can't believe people stick "color tv" as some sort of luxury good poor people shouldn't have access to. I really think many of you literally think poor people should be working 100 hours a week, and when they aren't working, either cooking or studying to "get ahead." You treat leisure for somebody making less than $20k a year as some sort of sin, unless maybe it's sitting around a radio in a dark room. I'll tell you right now, the taste of the food isn't as big of a deal. It's obviously a factor, but not the entire story. For an adult, fast food is a choice that is cheap, work-free, and convenient. You do nothing more than pay the cashier and you receive a meal that fixes your hunger. There's no worry about proportions, which are decided for you, nor can you accidentally ruin the meal. There's also the case for timing, since bringing a meal home at 8 or 9 at night means kids won't be up until 11 eating, instead of having to start dinner that late. Poor people aren't choosing to eat fast food and be unhealthy because they like to engorge themselves more than the rest of us, but because it makes the most economic sense for now and the foreseeable future. Some of you dolts need to realize that these people aren't much different than us when it comes to aggregate desires and decisions. They are forced, in their situation, to make bad long-term decisions to get by in the short term. About the only choice they are given is to take a gamble and sacrifice what they can spare for a chance to move up 1 rung on the socioeconomic ladder in a lifetime, which doesn't look much different than the rung they are on. You lost me in the last paragraph. Are you saying their decisions are poor ones or good ones? They make poor choices naturally because of their situation, but if they sit down and draw the good choices to their natural conclusions, they see that their situation doesn't change much (nominally better, but not really better). That ignores the economic history. Their situation exists because the communities decided to favor the unhealthy over the healthy. Umm...and you're just completely rewriting economic history. Poor communities never decided to be unhealthy. They've always had to squeeze as many calories per dollar into their food as they can. As it became easier and easier to squeeze calories out of a dollar (i.e. fast food) yes they started eating too many calories BUT that doesn't change the fact that grocery stores aren't the answer. Time is still very valuable and groceries aren't practical. I'm not sure whether you're deliberately skipping my posts or just missing them but I list many reasons why grocery stores don't work other than the price tab. The obesity / unhealthy food issue is a recent thing. Every issue you listed existed prior to concerns over obesity. Walking to a grocery store was always a pain. Cooking food always took time. The introduction of fast food meant that people could make the bad choice to trade health and money for convenience. And they did so in droves.
Dude, when you're working two part time jobs to support a family and you don't have a car, "convenience" becomes a commodity you can't waste. At first I thought you were just a little bit uninformed and a little explanation would clear things up, but now you're just blatantly flaunting your naivety. Being upper middle class is super easy.
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On June 20 2013 06:36 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 06:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 06:10 Klondikebar wrote:On June 20 2013 05:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:51 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 05:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 20 2013 05:41 aksfjh wrote:On June 20 2013 04:49 Danglars wrote:On June 20 2013 04:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
Why would there be a fast food restaurant but no grocery store nearby other than the collective personal preferences of the neighborhood? "Collective personal preference." When it comes to something like food (a necessity), you take what you can get. The consumer doesn't strictly dictate what is available. And yes, even if there is a grocery store around, it is true that healthier foods tend to be noticeably more expensive than cheaper foods, which is a huge factor when talking about obesity rates among the poor. Going from calling food a necessity to talking about obesity rates is hinting at the economic reality. The rarity in America is the urgent need for food, the desire for food more often becomes counterproductive and dangerous when we're talking about the poor. Try telling an economist that there is an objective and quantifiable need for this or that. Armed with choice, they choose fatty fast foods at high enough rates to be a statistically significant part of the obese in America. This is a choice despite all the government's education pushes for healthy eating in many programs. We've seen more and more assistance be tilted to healthy foods, but the second you have a dollar and a choice, the healthy foods by and large are not the choice. May I suggest that if fatty foods from KFC, McDonalds, and others didn't taste so darn good, this would not be a problem? If those carrots and zucchini were akin to adding opium hash to a meal, you'd be seeing a lot more healthy poor walking around (Poor being a relative term in this sense, and not an absolute term, since your average poor person in America has 2 color TV's and satellite/cable) First, I can't believe people stick "color tv" as some sort of luxury good poor people shouldn't have access to. I really think many of you literally think poor people should be working 100 hours a week, and when they aren't working, either cooking or studying to "get ahead." You treat leisure for somebody making less than $20k a year as some sort of sin, unless maybe it's sitting around a radio in a dark room. I'll tell you right now, the taste of the food isn't as big of a deal. It's obviously a factor, but not the entire story. For an adult, fast food is a choice that is cheap, work-free, and convenient. You do nothing more than pay the cashier and you receive a meal that fixes your hunger. There's no worry about proportions, which are decided for you, nor can you accidentally ruin the meal. There's also the case for timing, since bringing a meal home at 8 or 9 at night means kids won't be up until 11 eating, instead of having to start dinner that late. Poor people aren't choosing to eat fast food and be unhealthy because they like to engorge themselves more than the rest of us, but because it makes the most economic sense for now and the foreseeable future. Some of you dolts need to realize that these people aren't much different than us when it comes to aggregate desires and decisions. They are forced, in their situation, to make bad long-term decisions to get by in the short term. About the only choice they are given is to take a gamble and sacrifice what they can spare for a chance to move up 1 rung on the socioeconomic ladder in a lifetime, which doesn't look much different than the rung they are on. You lost me in the last paragraph. Are you saying their decisions are poor ones or good ones? They make poor choices naturally because of their situation, but if they sit down and draw the good choices to their natural conclusions, they see that their situation doesn't change much (nominally better, but not really better). That ignores the economic history. Their situation exists because the communities decided to favor the unhealthy over the healthy. Umm...and you're just completely rewriting economic history. Poor communities never decided to be unhealthy. They've always had to squeeze as many calories per dollar into their food as they can. As it became easier and easier to squeeze calories out of a dollar (i.e. fast food) yes they started eating too many calories BUT that doesn't change the fact that grocery stores aren't the answer. Time is still very valuable and groceries aren't practical. I'm not sure whether you're deliberately skipping my posts or just missing them but I list many reasons why grocery stores don't work other than the price tab. The obesity / unhealthy food issue is a recent thing. Every issue you listed existed prior to concerns over obesity. Walking to a grocery store was always a pain. Cooking food always took time. The introduction of fast food meant that people could make the bad choice to trade health and money for convenience. And they did so in droves. Dude, when you're working two part time jobs to support a family and you don't have a car, "convenience" becomes a commodity you can't waste. At first I thought you were just a little bit uninformed and a little explanation would clear things up, but now you're just blatantly flaunting your naivety. Being upper middle class is super easy.
I understand that they value convenience. That doesn't make it a good decision.
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EPT
