Quote: Original post by Zahlman
This requires:

(a) That you have enough education to understand that fast food is bad for you;
(b) that a proper grocery store opens up shop in your neighbourhood (and consider that businesses, being required to look out for their own bottom lines, will organize themselves in a way that exploits the poor whenever it is helpful to do so; see also (a)), or that there is decent access to public transit;
(c) for the case of food that requires actual cooking, that you can afford (to get yourself set up with) the appropriate appliances and maintenance (consider that a lot of these people are entirely homeless).

You're over-analyzing this. I can't imagine there are many people who don't see the connection between fast food and obesity. It's obvious and commonly known. Not everyone is well-educated about the specifics of nutrition (including me) but that's not necessary in order to eat reasonably well and stay in shape. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Pepsi is less healthy than water. Nor does it take a rocket scientist to read the nutritional information listed on every food product.

The points about grocery stores and lack of appliances are also questionable: grocery stores do exist in poor neighborhoods, although fast food restaurants and convenience stores are more common there, and I've never heard of apartments/homes without stoves and refrigerators.

This is all missing the larger point: regardless of whether some corner cases without appliances and without access to grocery stores exist, "low income" correlates with obesity and "low income" is a very broad categorization that includes more than just the dirt poor. These people most certainly have access to transportation, grocery stores, and have the time to prepare food.

Quote:
Of course, it's certainly a gross oversimplification to blame the GOP for all of this. But the question remains - what is the point of having a society at all, if not to provide a social safety net? And if we agree that having society is a good thing (how did we get where we are otherwise), then how can we support a political party that seems so opposed to the idea of maintaining that net?

Government is not society. The government is an organization that exists within society and whose purposes it is to ensure social order and stability, adjudicate disputes, and maintain a monopoly on violence. In other words, its primary purpose is to keep order within society.

You're arguing that society has become so dysfunctional that the government should step in and do something, but sadly, the government is composed of people, not super-rational and efficient robots or gods. Evidently, private individuals and organizations are not able to rectify the problems. Why not? Because they don't care. The government doesn't care either but feels obligated to do something to justify its existence and appease the people for a little while longer. So the bureaucrats make impassioned proclamations on television, pass some laws, and then proceed to put other people to work to do the bare minimum to fulfill their legal obligations.

Very well. Shouldn't social assistance come with hefty strings attached? So far, I'm not aware of any government that has successfully been able to micromanage people's lives. It seems like a lot of these solutions are attempts by sweep complex, systemic problems under the rug.

What is the government going to do here? Deliver healthy, ready-to-eat meals directly to fat people? Send them off to fat camps? Higher a bunch of incompetent do-gooder bureaucrats who couldn't cut it in the private sector to implement transportation initiatives and then remain on the public payroll indefinitely (all the while getting fatter themselves)?

Quote: I would agree that these things are incredibly important as well. I would also argue that government spending is certainly capable of doing *something*. You do have something like the Children's Aid Society in the US, right? And it isn't privatized?

What about a buddy system, whereby everyone over a certain income range (say, $50K/year) is partnered up with a poor person who earns less, and subsidizes part of their food expenses?

Quote: Original post by tstrimp

Quote: Original post by Zahlman
The working poor commonly work double shifts. You might do well to calculate how far minimum wage would get you in your city.

Prove it. The majority of working poor are high school and college students working part time while attending school.

And most are not obese!

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: Original post by LessBread
From that comment: "Now, you can't force a supermarket to open a store in the ghetto. But you can provide public transit that is at the same time cheap, clean, and fast. This will allow people to go where they need to to get healthy food."

I live in Seattle, we have excellent public transportation. The bus routes go through poor areas. In fact, there are very wealthy areas right next to extremely poor ones, so stores with healthy food are never far out of reach. There are still people who subsist on junk food. There are also a lot of poor, fat people with cars who prefer going to the Jack-in-the-Box drive-through which is more expensive than Trader Joe's. How do you account for that?

That's great. Meanwhile, you wrote: "...but this is shear lunacy. The GOP is responsible for the lack of healthy food stores in poor neighborhoods?" From the snippet I quoted, it's clear that the person who wrote that comment acknowledged up front that he wasn't holding the government, much less the GOP, responsible for the lack of supermarkets in the various ghettos of America. He was holding the government to account for a shortage of public transportation. Seattle may have excellent public transportation, but most cities in America do not. And many cities in America are looking at cutting back on what they have, even though ridership has increased substantially in recent months (Rider Paradox: Surge in Mass, Drop in Transit). "Their problem is that fare-box revenue accounts for only a fifth to a half of the operating revenue of most transit systems — and the sputtering economy has eroded the state and local tax collections that the systems depend on to keep running." (See also Why Transportation Matters) [On the subject of state finances: States' only option now is budget pain, 84% of cities in money trouble, Senator Ensign Thinks States Can Cut Back Without Cutting Anything Back]

As for explaining why poor people prefer fast food to Trader Joe's (if that's what you're asking), the most straight forward answer is that they are more familiar with fast food than they are with Trader Joe's. To quote from the comment again: "The food available in many inner cities does not usually involve a high number of grocery stores selling the kind of food that keeps you healthy. It's mostly convenience stores and mini-marts that sell sugary crap or over-salted junk, fast food restaurants and maybe a few bars where you can order greasy deep fried death on a plate for a few dollars." In simple terms, they eat in the places they know and shop in the stores they can walk to. Old habits die hard (Tax cuts for every need!!!). The stores they can walk to do not likely have fresh vegetables for sale. Those stores very likely sell cheap wine, but not the same quality of cheap wine sold at Traders Joe's.

At any rate, with the economy in free fall, public transportation is on track to become a primary concern of the former middle class (i.e. the new poor) as well as the old poor (Deflation: When low prices buy high anxiety). "Taken as a whole, prices in the U.S. economy increased last year, but only a tiny bit. Inflation registered only 0.1% in 2008, the smallest increase in prices since 1954. Consumer spending declined in December for a record sixth straight month and rose 3.6% for the year, its lowest annual gain since 1961. The economy lost 3.6 million jobs since the recession started in December 2007." The small increase in prices might sound good for consumers, but it also means falling wages as the human interest story portions of that article illustrate.

In my view, the weak spot of that comment is this remark: "Those who want to gut the stimulus package and turn it into tax cuts do so with a subconscious desire to commit genocide." I'm sympathetic with the general thrust of that complaint, but it's a huge jump to claim to know what the "subconscious desires" of the habitual "tax cuts for every need" crowd are, much less to declare the operational desire to be genocidal. It seems to me that crowd is more interesting in engaging in a partisan effort to derail President Obama's first 100 days in office. Their leaders have clearly stated they want him to fail. Are they fighting a class war as well? I think so, but I don't think that means that they want to wipe out every last poor person living in the ghettos of America.

Quote: Original post by trzy
Government is not society. The government is an organization that exists within society and whose purposes it is to ensure social order and stability, adjudicate disputes, and maintain a monopoly on violence. In other words, its primary purpose is to keep order within society.

"We the People, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity..."

That's a nice succinct expression of the purposes of government - perform, law, order, defense, welfare, liberty - for today and tomorrow.

Quote: Original post by trzy
Evidently, private individuals and organizations are not able to rectify the problems. Why not? Because they don't care.

Maybe they're making money off of those problems and they don't want to them to end...

Quote: Original post by trzy
What about a buddy system, whereby everyone over a certain income range (say, $50K/year) is partnered up with a poor person who earns less, and subsidizes part of their food expenses?

Serfdom! Indentured servitude! Work farms! Plantations!

The Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes (April 29, 2008)

"The report demonstrates that people who live near an abundance of fast-food restaurants and convenience stores compared to grocery stores and produce vendors, have a significantly higher prevalence of obesity and diabetes regardless of individual or community income."


Higher prices, wider waistlines (July 25, 2008)

"The link between poverty and obesity may be counterintuitive, but it is well documented. Hunger and obesity are not at opposite ends of the continuum from poverty to wealth; rather, they are opposite sides of the same coin of malnutrition. As food prices continue to inflate, so will waistlines. And increasing rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and a host of other chronic disease will likely follow."


Do the Poor Pay More for Food? An Analysis of Grocery Store Availability and Food Price Disparities (Minneapolis and St. Paul)

Neighborhood Characteristics & Location and Type of Food Stores (North Carolina)

Poor Neighborhoods Lack Access to Fresh Produce (Oakland)

It shouldn't take a road trip to shop (Dallas)

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Maybe they're making money off of those problems and they don't want to them to end...

Yeah, because so much more money can be made off the poor than the wealthy. In any system there is going to be some degree of exploitation and manipulation; a fundamentally more robust approach needs to be taken to deal with this, something more robust than playing legal whack-a-mole with every social problem that develops.

Quote:

Quote: Original post by trzy
What about a buddy system, whereby everyone over a certain income range (say, $50K/year) is partnered up with a poor person who earns less, and subsidizes part of their food expenses?

Serfdom! Indentured servitude! Work farms! Plantations!

There would be no preconditions on the people receiving the assistance, so it's not comparable to any of those things. They would send you a food bill, and you would write a check. For people with time and mobility issues, you could even do the shopping and some of the food preparation!

This is a vastly superior solution to hiring more low-IQ bureaucrats to deal with a complicated societal, economic, and organizational problem. :)

Quote: Original post by tstrimp

Quote: Original post by Zahlman
The working poor commonly work double shifts. You might do well to calculate how far minimum wage would get you in your city.

Prove it. The majority of working poor are high school and college students working part time while attending school.

Uh, you just challenged him to prove his statement and then you throw up the same type of statement in response?

Also, you did prove his point, IMO. Going to school (not taking into account actually studying and doing the homework) and having a job are double-shifts and you only get paid for one of them.

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
Uh, you just challenged him to prove his statement and then you throw up the same type of statement in response?

Not exactly the same kind of statement. There is information readily available to confirm my assertion. Can you claim the same of his?

Quote: Also, you did prove his point, IMO. Going to school (not taking into account actually studying and doing the homework) and having a job are double-shifts and you only get paid for one of them.

Part time jobs, and summer jobs while attending classes are hardly a double shift.

College Survey

Take a look at Table 2, Student Time Usage. The average college student spends 32 hours a week going to classes, studying and working combined. Not even close to what was implied, two full time jobs or approximately 80 hours per week. Even if you doubled the average amount of paid work they do according to the survey, they are at 40 hours per week, and still well under the poverty line.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Maybe they're making money off of those problems and they don't want to them to end...

Yeah, because so much more money can be made off the poor than the wealthy. In any system there is going to be some degree of exploitation and manipulation; a fundamentally more robust approach needs to be taken to deal with this, something more robust than playing legal whack-a-mole with every social problem that develops.

There's plenty of money to be made off the poor. If there wasn't, there wouldn't be fast food restaurants in ghettos. In America, systematic responses to exploitation and manipulation are often met with cries of "socialism" and the like. The whack-a-mole approach benefits powerful interests, many of whom prosper from the status quo and don't want to see it change.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote:

Quote: Original post by trzy
What about a buddy system, whereby everyone over a certain income range (say, $50K/year) is partnered up with a poor person who earns less, and subsidizes part of their food expenses?

Serfdom! Indentured servitude! Work farms! Plantations!

There would be no preconditions on the people receiving the assistance, so it's not comparable to any of those things. They would send you a food bill, and you would write a check. For people with time and mobility issues, you could even do the shopping and some of the food preparation!

This is a vastly superior solution to hiring more low-IQ bureaucrats to deal with a complicated societal, economic, and organizational problem. :)

Nevertheless, that notion smacks of paternalism. Today it's a buddy, tomorrow it's the lord of the manor. The bottom line here is that the problem isn't with the food stamp program, which works well. The problem is with transportation. And guess what? Our transportation systems need serious upgrades right now anyway.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
There's plenty of money to be made off the poor. If there wasn't, there wouldn't be fast food restaurants in ghettos. In America, systematic responses to exploitation and manipulation are often met with cries of "socialism" and the like. The whack-a-mole approach benefits powerful interests, many of whom prosper from the status quo and don't want to see it change.

The whack-a-mole approach is what you're advocating. Here you've identified a problem: a seemingly excessive amount of convenience stores and fast food restaurants (due to demand, not conspiracy) and a shrinking number of grocery stores. The problem? Social dysfunction. The symptoms? Lack of demand for food products that require preparation. Your solution? The equivalent of a school district busing.

Quote:
Nevertheless, that notion smacks of paternalism. Today it's a buddy, tomorrow it's the lord of the manor. The bottom line here is that the problem isn't with the food stamp program, which works well. The problem is with transportation. And guess what? Our transportation systems need serious upgrades right now anyway.

Slippery slope fallacy. Feudalism didn't develop from the system I proposed. And anyway, I was joking. People would violently oppose the buddy system because they'll be damned if they have to actually help someone else they don't know.

Transportation is arguably a problem but that's due to poor urban planning over decades. What sort of transportation is going to solve the obesity problem? More bus routes? High-speed rail links between ghettos and affluent neighborhoods? You're expecting me to buy the notion that if only people had transportation they'd go out of their way to shop at Trader Joe's? If there was a demand for fresh produce in ghettos, the grocery stores would respond by opening up stores.

I couldn't help but chuckle when I saw this in the Oakland article you posted:

Quote:
In this down-at-the-heels neighborhood of 28,000, located between downtown Oakland and San Francisco Bay, the only grocery store is Eugene International Gateway Foods.

Eugene's goods are so geared toward the Asian community it is easier to find lemon grass than artichoke or asparagus, according to Kenna Stormogipson, a 26-year-old West Oakland resident who teaches at Oakland Tech High.

West Oakland is a neighborhood ringed by three freeways. Its proximity to the Port of Oakland makes it one of the most polluted places in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Besides these drawbacks, the fact that there's not a single grocery store that offers fresh produce popular among the black and Latino residents makes West Oakland one of the least desirable places to live in the Bay Area.

"People have left West Oakland because they see it as an unhealthy place," Stormogipson asserted.

This is smacks of racism. Evidently, we are to believe that nobody wants to sell Latino and black food, only Asian food. It's probably those damned Koreans keeping the black man down again. The market responds to their demand but not the black or Hispanic man's demand.

I feel horrible for people like Robert Bell who go through huge pains to do the right thing despite their advanced age and poverty. I wish he had somewhere to shop in his own neighborhood. Better transportation would certainly help this guy, but how many other people would take advantage of it? Why doesn't Trader Joe's, Safeway, or Winco open up shop in West Oakland?