If I lived in NYC and within a reasonable distance of those wonderful dollar slice places, ooh that would be dangerous for my waistline.
The corn on industry is a scary one. I wouldn’t be surprised if corn syrup is the tobacco of the next generation. They are a very successful lobby group and that’s partially why you still see Coca Cola sold in schools, even though it really shouldn’t be. The lobby group and of course the “I’m 'merican, I’ll be fat if I wanna be, f@&% yeah!” attitude.
Got it… I have thought of this too (without incorporating the debasing of said currency aspect) and tried to invest in vertical farming in NYC. I envisioned this grand building with a fish farm in the basement, a restaurant that served the organic food farmed in the building on the ground flow, and the remainder of floors as different farming products. Even without the transportation costs, the numbers never worked for me which leads me to believe the problem doesnt stem at the farm subsidies but at the material companies (MON). Instead of being a martyr i bought just bought MON stock…
Here’s the thing: good food is not expensive. It is certainly cheaper than soda. The issue is availability (bodegas don’t carry veggies in the hood), time contraints (working multiple jobs means you don’t have time to cook and need to eat “fast food”) and laziness (some people are just lazy, while some just have unfortunate circumstances).
Eating out healthy is easy to do too, but more expensive (the time-money trade off previously mentioned).
^That and…most people can’t cook.
THIS THIS THIS
Getting decent groceries is a hard work!
BW I don’t know where you get your food, but ‘good food’ is extremely expensive compared to lower quality pre-packaged alternatives and fast food. Milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables and protein prices are ridiculous compared to the amount of crap you can buy in the middle aisles of grocery store or at a fast food chain. The only exception is that water is relatively cheap if you live in an area with a good municipal supply.
yes it is more expensive to buy the same prepared meal vs cooking it yourself, but that is not the choice lower income people are making. they are maximizing the amount of food they can eat with a fixed budget, which is understandable when the alternative is to miss some meals in order to be able to afford fewer quality homecooked meals.
I like this tangent. TF, there are studies pointing both ways. The ones that say that unhealthy food is cheaper estimate that amount at about $1.50 per day. Here is a chart from a study (most recent) that healthy food may actually be cheaper than unhealthy food, largely because so much of what you pay for with soda and Lucky Charms is marketing.
I like this chart because it takes a comprehensive look. You get to look at the whole range of options from three lenses: price per 100 calories, price per grams and price per average serving size. Modeeration foods are in gray, and they are basically junk food like candy, chips and soda. They are cheap per 100 calories (no surprise, with all that trans fat and sugar) and expensive per serving size. So, by eating a preponderance of these foods, you get fat and waste money doing it. A good substitute if you are poor would be eating grains like pasta and rice and topping them with sauce and/or a moderate amount of veggies and protein, but get most of your calories from the grains.
If you are talking about a Paleo type of diet, then you are correct. That is more expensive, probably substantially so. But, that is not the only way to eat healthy, as the Italians and Japanese have shown.
That’s pretty wacky for a conspiracy theory. First, there are so many links in that causal chain that (farm subsidies) -> (government can continue to borrow, run deficits, and debase the currency) that the links are going to be washed out by the time you get to the end.
You would do better to run the chain this way:
government can continue to borrow, run deficits and debase the currency --> farm subsidies --> cheap corn and wheat --> corn and wheat go into just about every processed food --> cheap food that is really bad for you —> low food prices for the masses (except for food that is real and nutritious) --> low official inflation and a nation full of fatties
the low official inflation is not accurate (as a causal process) because 1) food and energy are taken out of official inflation, and 2) agriculture drives up energy prices, so low food prices generally come at the expense of high energy prices (though weather effects make this correlation noisy).
Finally, in your original linkage… how does a nation full of fatties lead to a government that can continue to borrow, run deficits and debase the currency?
Dang gubmint water subsidies… 
your average low income person can get by (i.e. not die of starvation) by living on these cheap calories. if this was not an alternative, then the hidden tax of inflation caused by currency debasement would be apparent and civil unrest would follow. the government band aid of farm subsidies has held off this realization, but it can’t go on forever. at some point it’ll be…ANARCHY! …btw i don’t necessarily think it’s a “conspiracy”, but as in pool, you don’t need to be a physicist to learn how to play.
That assumes that you only need to eat to live in a modern society. If currency debasement is caused by food subsidies, then presumably inflation attacks other points of living, like transport, and fuel and housing prices.
And if it doesn’t, then why is inflation bad again??
Presumably the problem of poor health is lost productivity due to morbidity and health expenses that could otherwise go into consumption that will support the economy and employment and growth. If we are paying doctors to keep us healthy, that means our time is not going into making iPads and infrastructure and whatnot.
In my view, the problem with a nation of fatties is not about secret inflation, it’s about lost productivity due to health effects and the funds required to treat them being deviated away from other productive activities.
currency debasement is MADE POSSIBLE (not caused), in part, by food subsidy because food prices are temporarily kept low…that is until the ponzi scheme runs its course. Ask a person whose wage has stayed the same for the last decade why inflation is bad. how many of those people do you think you can find out there? i’m guessing 1 or 2 at least.
Then again, morbid obesity decreases life expectancy by 8-10 years. So if we assume people retire at 65 and live until 85, does this mean having a morbidly obese nation could reduce the cost of retirement programs by up to 40%?
What is the true medical cost saving per lifetime on being healthy vs. being obese? It seems like if you live longer to die of cancer or some other disease, you might jsut spend the money on treatment that would have gone to treating obesity related diseases.
Then again, morbid obesity decreases life expectancy by 8-10 years. So if we assume people retire at 65 and live until 85, does this mean having a morbidly obese nation could reduce the cost of retirement programs by up to 40%?
What is the true medical cost saving per lifetime on being healthy vs. being obese? It seems like if you live longer to die of cancer or some other disease, you might jsut spend the money on treatment that would have gone to treating obesity related diseases.
I agree that inflation is bad, particularly with stagnant wages. But if your argument is that currency debasement (and accompanying inflation?) is made possible by all these subsidies, then the cost of living hasn’t really increased for those with stagnant wages, because there isn’t really inflation going on because all the necessary inputs to life are being subsidized. Or you can say that it’s only food that’s stayed cheap, but in that case the policy is not really effective - even now - at keep the masses insulated from inflation.
I don’t think this argument works, because - yes, it’s a ponzi scheme, but it unravels quickly. The reason for agricultural subsidies isn’t because the government wants to keep people calm while it debases the currency. The reason for agricultural subsidies is because the agricultural lobby has a stranglehold on congressional finance decisions.
so you agree it’s a ponzi scheme? Good we’re getting somewhere. now on to the “reason” for subsidies – again you don’t need to be a physicist to be a good pool player. politicians do the things they do because it works for them – they receive benefits (power and influence) in exchange for something that has limited immediate/apparent negative consequences. this usually takes the form of: “we can all sacrifice a little to help the little guy and then everyone will prosper”. so everything seems to work out ok and nobody worries, until it no longer works and everyone is fucked. right now they probably don’t know the long term consequences of what they’re doing. all they care about is that it works for them now.
I beg to differ. Soda IS good food. (Especially if it’s Coca-Cola out of the little 8-oz bottles.)
So are double cheeseburgers and strawberry cheesecake.
I’ve seen this argument made for smoking related illness too. I don’t buy it. Most folks don’t instantly die of being fat. Its years or even decades of high cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and disability from stroke before they finally kick it. Morbidity costs for fatness are massive. In a user-ish pay system, I say so what, let people be fat. In the Canadian system, for example, I think folks should pay a premium for making poor life choices that impact social costs. As a result, I like the idea of a junk food tax. It creates further economic disincentives for individuals to eat poorly and recovers some of their burden on society. I also wonder what the correlation between fat folks and smokers is. Anyway, our society needs to get away from this acceptance of fat people. It should be shamed like smoking now is. I get that some folks have high BMI due to muscle strength, but anyone that has traveled outside North America can easily see that the reason why Americans have high BMI in general is not due to hammering the iron. Canadians and Americans are mostly just fat.
Or better yet, just eliminate these subsidies…instead of coming up with some bizarre tax.