This paragraph is key:
Communities with large immigrant populations -- Southern California, for example -- fared considerably better than average despite relatively high poverty rates.
So this is clearly a real decline, rather than a confusion between average and total well-being.
I wish they had a map of the actual life expectancies by region, instead of just what kind of increases and decreases have occured.
Another article on the same study (which doesn't actually add much information).
"What we're finding is that two places separated by five or 10 miles can vary in obesity and diabetes by sixfold," [Adam Drewnowski] said. . . . "It's not the health-care system that's having the biggest impact on health -- it's the community," [David] Fleming said.
I wish they had a map of the actual life expectancies by region, instead of just what kind of increases and decreases have occured.
This looks like it has that, but it isn't loading for me right now.
Now it's working, it was just my security settings. The map is pretty cool, here's an example of the data that pops up when you select a county:
KNOX, NEBRASKA
Year 1987
Male LE 72.9
Years behind (male) 6
White male LE 72.9
Black male LE N/A
Countries above (male) Australia,Macao Special Administrative Region of China,Netherlands,Norway,Spain
Countries below (male) Channel Islands,Costa Rica,Cuba,Italy,Malta
What horrible news. Jesus Christ does the cheap food industry in this country have a lot of blood on it's hands. Though it would be interesting to know how much of the decline stems from a demographic bump in smoking rates.
It's not that the US is no longer a first world country -- apparently, we've been feeding and/or providing cigarettes to poor people in this demographic cohort that makes them more likely to die than their equivalent-income or poorer cohorts of ten years ago.
Jesus Christ does the cheap food industry in this country have a lot of blood on it's hands.
A lawyer to the core. I'm guessing this has something to do with it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110614/bs_yblog_thelookout/workers-share-of-national-income-plummets-to-record-low
Let them eat veal!
3:Well, I mentioned, but I haven't been able to find, the article about the astonishing concentration of subcultures. Maybe all the Coke-drinking Jumbo Jack-eating Batchelorette-watching people are moving into the same neighborhood, making Democratic counties look better than they should. Remember we had a housing boom, and I suspect a lot of people moved 5-10 miles in the last decade or two.
The maps still weird me out. Southern Oklahoma, but not Northern, with a very sharp break at the Texas border? What this about, Texas's vastly superior healthcare system and attention to healthy lifestyles?
What is that red spot in Illinois, Champaign-Urbana? Waco-Austin ain't looking so good, and there is a death gap between Dallas and Fort Worth, but we already knew that. Remind me not to move to West Arizona or SW Nevada. Deathtraps.
6: Did the cheap food industry target those particular areas?
The research article is in an open access journal.
This is indeed horrible.
But I don't think "no longer a first-world nation" is the right way to frame the problem. Do you care, really, about the stratification of nations into three "worlds", and do you really have strong feelings about where the US should belong? (Don't you want India and Brazil to prosper too? ;-))
I'd rather see rhetoric along the lines of "We're rich, and getting richer on average, and we could be improving our lives overall. Instead, we're making them worse."
(reminder to self to use bogus URL)
One thing to note about the maps. It looks like they default to 1987 data. You can hit "play" at the bottom to watch a time sequence, or use the scroll bar to select a more recent date.
7: Fast-food is the opiate of the underemployed.
I'm serious. On my third month of Atkins, and having broken it a few times, I view carbs as a deadly poison, addictive and ecstasy inducing. Most of the world is stumbling around in a drug-induced haze, a sugar high.
Alcohol is a terrible carb, of course.
Not that I have any moral room to talk, living on factory farm meat.
The trend seems to have started with the heavy smoking 1950s generation.
13: The "We're no longer a first world nation" rhetoric is about a thousand times better than your alternative.
According to the research summary "Methods to address health risks are likely to narrow the disparities seen in life expectancy. The researchers note that if the leading four risk factors were addressed (smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood glucose, and adiposity) life expectancy in 2005 would increase by 4.9 years for males and 4.1 years for females. Because risk factor exposures vary by county, and state-level analysis shows that risk factor exposures are higher in places with higher mortality rates, addressing these risk factors would tend to narrow county-level life expectancy disparities."
Three of the leading four risk factors are directly tied to diet.
Remind me not to move to West Arizona or SW Nevada. Deathtraps.
You'll be fine you old whitey.
http://www.epa.gov/region9/air/maps/nv_tribe.html
http://www.epa.gov/region09/air/maps/az_tribe.html
Sorry, hit "post" too soon. There's nothing in the notion of "First World" that excludes countries becoming "First World". People use "First World" as a synonym for "developed", and "Third World" as synonym for "not developed", and have completely forgotten what the Second World was supposed to be.
The Second World was the communist bloc.
The Fourth World is a record by John Hassell.
17:Yes and...
We are talking about people probably mostly in their 50s-70s. (Someone dying at 55 brings the LE rate down)
And yes one generation grew up in MadMan America of chain smoking and agribusiness and completion of interstate system and fastfood metastasis.
But they also reached a certain age (30s-40s?) in the 80s, when relative middleclass incomes and security started declining and never stopped declining, and stress levels climbed through the roof.
19:I consider bad diet and lack of exercise a symptom, not a primary cause. Wealth helps, but I bet because it gives more time, options, and different peer pressure.
This is the type of thing I file under "The US is no longer a first world nation."
It's no longer an egalitarian nation. But that just means we're a few years ahead of the curve of other first world nations.
Did the map linked in 4 remind anyone else of ?
The orange spot in SW SD is also tribal lands.
I would be wary of concluding too much from this sort of article without a discussion of the sources of error. For example how many of the trends mentioned are statistically significant?
The Second World was the communist bloc.
As a descriptor for a developed economy gradually eating itself, I think "Second World" fits us just fine.
1: As the article notes, immigrants are usually healthier than comparable groups on age and income. That doesn't show it isn't a real decline. The fact that the gap with the rest of the world is widening shows it is a real problem.
I'm with Halford: it seems pretty clearly to be diet- and exercise-related.
My doctor told me I had to eat less shit to bring my cholesterol down. And I can't even smoke to take off the edge of hunger.
Just this week he said it. Maybe he wants to do even more to close the gap with women.
25: It's no longer an egalitarian nation
You should check out American Pictures some time -- even at the height of the post-war middle-class apotheosis, we were a long way from egalitarian.
The thing that is interesting to me about playing the time-lapse sequence of those life expectancy maps is how, in the North and West, there seems to be a gradual spreading out of longer life expectancy from some urban centers, while in the South, things kind of muddle along, not really changing all that much, or in a very discernible pattern. It's often very obvious, when I'm talking to friends and family in other parts of the country, just how fortunate we are in the Twin Cities to have not only a huge teaching hospital, and many sub-campuses of the same, but also our close proximity to the Mayo Clinic and our two Level 1 trauma centers. The medical care I've heard about some people -- middle-class people, with decent health insurance plans -- receiving in other parts of the country is frankly criminal in its ineptitude.
On the other hand, in many other parts of the country you can't die from waiting for the bus in February.
1. Fallout from hardcore smoking post-war.
2. Diet and exercise:
2a. Culturally affiliated: predominantly white cultures rely on high carb and fat diets, few fruits and vegetables. Hispanic cultures do not, necessarily.
2b. Income related: black communities suffer from a food desert in urban environments, and are driven to fast food.
3. Healthcare poverty, or desert.
Just trying to fix ideas, so far. All items can be refined.
35: On the other hand, around here you don't usually die from waiting for the bus in August.
This decline has to do with women's smoking habits in the 1950's. I am on a low carb diet, but there really isn't any proof that being obese reduces life expectancy.
That's plausible, but is not what the authors of the study seem to think. Nor does it explain the countywide disparities.
Also, while I'm not at all well versed in the literature (and despite my diet have no very strong view on the medical effects of obesity) but is it really true that obesity and related diet problems (high blood glucose levels, high blood pressure) doesn't reduce life expectancy? There seems to be a lot of literature stating that it does, including literature relied upon by the study's author. I know Paul Campos doesn't think so, but that guy seems to me like a bullshit artist.
As I pointed out on another recent thread, a BMI of less than 18 or more than 28 is correlated with a significant increase in lifetime mortality. Since "obese" is normally defined as BMI>30, there is definitely a correlation between obesity and life expectancy.
A BMI between 30 and 35 reduces median survival by 2-4 years.
36,40: It's not that a good diet isn't important, just that it's expensive. FOOD: cheap, tasty, healthy: choose two.
Notice the extremely good correlation between the map labeled "Obesity" here and the life expectancy map.
Wait a minute. A more accurate headline would be "life expectancy increases In all 50 states," or at worst, "96% of American women live in counties with rising life expectancy."
As far as i can tell, the counties in red pn the map have no significant population centers, not even in the reddest states. The nine named counties with the largest declines have total population around 150,000, implying that all 737 counties may have about 12 million people, or 4% of the population.
The map also states the counties with the highest expectancy Increases. Three of these counties, all showing increases of over 5 years, are new York, king, and queens counties in new York, with a population over 6 million.
Not evidence of becoming a third world nation. Mostly just evidence that looking at county data for the united states is highly misleading.
28: You can get what looks to be the research article the press reports are working off of in the link in 12. Skimming, they appear to have used 90% confidence intervals. The stats nerds can argue about the value of that.
It's misleading if you take it to be a statement about the US population writ large. It's not misleading if you take it to be a statement about intra-US regional disparities.
Of course, such regional disparities have persisted according to any number of metrics for quite some time -- we could look at groundwater contamination in the south, say. Or at education level, or political affiliation, or degree of religiosity.
This strays from the topic at hand, but man, the south always stands out.
The article does say that much of the US has been falling behind an international baseline. But on the aggregate, the US plus those countries are still seeing increases.
Listening for the first time to Patty Waters singing "Black is the Color if My True Love's Hair" I am reminded of those days when poor white Appalachians, poor urban blacks, and urban intellectuals were hoping to form an alliance against the Southern power structures.
The urban intellectuals kicked the poor whites off the bus because they complicated the simple narrative and forced class into the discourse and now look who is dying.
The article does say that much of the US has been falling behind an international baseline
I'm not sure how much that says. The article specifically compares the US to Great Britain, Canada, and Japan in terms of regional disparities. The first and last are much smaller than the US, and Canada has a much smaller population.
One of the more distinctive things about the US as a so-called developed first world nation is its size and population: we've allowed over the last several generations for quite a bit of internal migration. There are significant geographical differences across the country (in terms of aridity, natural resources, rich farmlands, port or river availability and so on). People have eventually begun to aggregate in some areas rather than others, and the result is an increasingly noticeable regional disparity. No?
You'd need to compare the US to, I don't know, the EU as a whole, in order to get a fair comparator, but I'm not sure that would work either.
Figure 2 on page 17 of this pdf shows a graph of BMI versus mortality risk for smokers, ex-smokers and never smokers:
http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/pop/boardman/articles/2004_Krueger_et_al_ROA.pdf
I don't see a risk due to obesity. If you are a smoker it is better to be obese. If you are a never smoker, the graph is flat beyond about a BMI of about 24. If you are an ex smoker, the minimum risk is in the range 26-34 or so. In all cases, it is better to have a BMI of 37 than a BMI below 22 or so.
54: You cite a paper that has only people aged 60 and over. Obviously, the vast majority of people make it to 60 regardless of weight, but anybody who dies before then really brings down the average by quite a bit. Saying obesity doesn't matter if you've made it to 60 already is very different from saying obesity doesn't matter.
Also, the study in 54 controls for SES. If you are a relatively educated, wealthy American, you can avoid many of the problems of obesity. That is very true, but again very different obesity not being a risk factor.
"This decline has to do with women's smoking habits in the 1950's. I am on a low carb diet, but there really isn't any proof that being obese reduces life expectancy."
it mostly reduces quality of life. expensive medicine is pretty good at keeping you alive.
and i loathe paul campos.
Culturally affiliated: predominantly white cultures rely on high carb and fat diets, few fruits and vegetables. Hispanic cultures do not, necessarily.
The Hispanic culture around here does not seem to eat a ton of fruits and vegetables. By that I mean 1) Tex-mex restaurants don't really serve fruit or vegetables, and 2) the actual Hispanic population is quite poor around here, and thus face the same fresh produce vs. fast food trade-offs that poor people everywhere have.
This seems like something the authors of the study would obviously try to control for, but is "life expectancy in county X" defined in such a way that you're not just seeing a sorting--ie, "healthy/active people get the fuck out of depressing, no-future counties; sick/beaten-down-by-the-world people stay put and die"--effect? Which is a bit like what Parsi's saying in 53, but I'm talking about a continuous process.
I know it's a free journal so I could try to skim the study, but I'm not gonna.
61.1: Right. But I haven't looked at the actual study either. If all you're trying to measure is any change in regional longevity over time, not internal migration patterns, you wouldn't necessarily try to 'control' for internal migration.
30: I'm not sure how that's a response to what I said.
I was thinking of migration as the primary candidate for a confounding factor. This argument is more usually made when talking about income; poor immigrants can become richer, and not make anyone else poorer, but still make the average person in the destination country poorer. Because of this, when you talk about income inequality over time you have to think about the impact of the addition or subtraction of persons. I don't actually know if this turns out to be important for recent US income inequality.
In the case of health, immigration can't explain away the average decline, so a decline in average health has to represent someone's health actually getting worse. Though as 61 points out, intra-country migration could affect local aggregate LE too.
re: 53
The UK has massive regional disparities, and while it's still a smaller country than the US, at well over 60 million people it's not exactly Denmark. Life expectancy in the UK varies massively between, for example, bits of Glasgow [worse than most 3rd world countries for men] to bits of London [excellent life expectancy].
The key factor here isn't that life expectancy varies, or can be bad for poor people with bad diets and high rates of smoking. It's that it's _declining_ in some places.
In terms of searching for explanations, I'd guess increasing wealth inequality, i.e. gswift's point in comment 8, is as good a candidate as any.
On my third month of Atkins, and having broken it a few times, I view carbs as a deadly poison, addictive and ecstasy inducing. Most of the world is stumbling around in a drug-induced haze, a sugar high.
Bob, how often is it true that being the one in an altered state of consciousness means you're the sane one? Think about it. Also, you forgot the rainwater and grain alcohol.
I remember Dsquared saying that secret intelligence should be considered a drug - it alters your perception of reality in ways that are incommensurate with those around you who haven't taken it - and usually you shouldn't take decisions on drugs.
Also, having just got back from visiting an obese relative in the ICU, Paul Campos can piss off. Yes, I *know* you'll have a high BMI if you're muscular...this is not an argument for obesity.
Campos is an academic lawyer. If I wanted to listen to an introductory lecture on the law of landlord and tenant, I wouldn't go to a public health specialist. Mutatis mutandis, I don't listen to Campos either.
It's also true that people who are obese but who also do lots of exercise, don't drink to excess and don't smoke don't tend to have a lot of the poor health-outcomes that are associated with obesity. But, lets face it, that generally isn't a description of the lifestyle of most obese people.
The urban intellectuals kicked the poor whites off the bus because they complicated the simple narrative
Oh god Bob, are you developing Very Real Concerns?
The mentality of someone who can simultaneously be posting on unfogged, following the Atkins diet, discussing independent Japanese cinema and believing themselves to be a tribune of the marginalised white working class is quite beyond me.
I don't know if 71 follows. I might personally be doing a white-collar job, and gradually assimilating to the world of SWPL, but I have family members who remain in the same working-class jobs they've always had, who've never been to university [or even had high school education beyond 15], but who, nonetheless are really well read, and just as likely to have informed opinions on independent foreign cinema as any cliched Guardian reader.
63; It does matter a bit for income inequality, but health is often different. Immigrants are usually healthy and can sometimes raise the average health of an area.
||
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/foo-fighters-2011?page=1
Not quite up with the Iggy Pop one of years past, but still, pretty good.
>
71:I have to demur just a little with the description "independent" since I do watch a lot of old movies, especially from Shochiku Studios; since I feel the word can be a little misleading, maybe implying "avant garde" or "transgressive" or "confrontational";since the studios did, I think, grant their production teams slightly more or different kinds of artistic freedom than the American studios (nudity was not uncommon in Japanese movies as early as the late 50s); and since the production teams (writers and directors etc) seem more willing to work at the edges of consensus (feminism, but not direct criticisms of power structures The Bad Sleep Well is unusual) yet also seemed more skilled at using metaphor and allegory to challenge consensus. Jidaigeki (historical films, usually Edo or Meiji) was, and still is, simply a form to be used, much like American Westerns. Is High Noon about McCarthyism?
I am not sure how current reasonably commercial films, like Miike or Kitano are financed. And even some art-house movies are produced for initial television viewing, financed through consortiums, quite often with French assistance. Satoshi Kon's Paranoia Agent anime series, which is arguably more violent and strange than HBO would greenlight, was produced for Japanese satellite tv.
for Miike's 13 Assassins. But I don't know what such a credit really involves.
71:But of course, that the mentality of a working-class (psuedo?) intellectual is "quite beyond" you is part of my complaint and description of the problem(s).
74 is pretty funny.
Atkins is beyond my comprehension. I'd rather go vegetarian than Atkins, but I'd rather go Atkins than vegan.
I tried Atkins. I did sort of lose weight. However, I'm sure that was because I wasn't bloody eating rather than because of any magic-ketosis-rays. I'm a happy meat eater, but veg is nice, ffs.
This is the stupidest announcement that the US government has ever made.
||
Richard Seymour on Greece, which we all need to watch closely.
I think my Sorel-influenced "Burn shit down and take their stuff" is essential, because the window in which kleptocratic republics can be displaced by socialists yet not overwhelmed by full-on fascists or authoritarians is very short, and possibly unrepeatable. The people always need to go too far when they are moving.
It is apparently too late for Wisconsin and America.
|>
I know a guy who gained weight by going vegetarian. He blamed peanut butter sandwiches but I think it was probably beer.
...in which kleptocratic republics can be displaced by socialists
Greece is run by socialists. Or Socialists.
Is Atkins no carbs at all (i.e., no vegetables)?
84: You only get the leafy veggies, at least at the start.
My suspicion is that pretty much any diet that involves ditching a whole category of food is going to work, because you won't eat enough of the others to make up for it. You could have an "only eat foods that start with a vowel diet" and you'd probably lose weight.
19:I consider bad diet and lack of exercise a symptom, not a primary cause. Wealth helps, but I bet because it gives more time, options, and different peer pressure.
Amen.
A University of Pennsylvania study in which callers posed as mothers seeking pediatric specialty care found that two-thirds of publicly insured children were refused a doctor's appointment, compared with only 11 percent of privately insured children.
[...]The new study involved methods traditionally used to expose discrimination in housing and labor markets. Posing as mothers and using standardized scripts, graduate students called pediatric specialty clinics for appointments, saying they had referrals from primary-care doctors or emergency rooms. A month later, the same graduate students called the same clinics with the same requests. The only difference was the insurance status - private vs. Medicaid or CHIP. (The state even created fake Medicaid-CHIP identification numbers for the pretend members.)
Read the whole thing.
I see that the induction phase of the Atkins diet can last for as little as two weeks. I think I could handle that except that it doesn't allow potatoes for a very long time.
you won't eat enough of the others to make up for it
Isn't this sort of the point, though? That maybe you didn't need that category of food anyway? I've done the South Beach diet before (= ditching fruits and grains for the first two weeks), and it is shockingly effective* while definitely not leaving you hungry.
*Even when I've done a modified version, allowing myself alcohol.
Atkins himself actually stressed greens and vegetables heavily (during induction the total amount is rather restricted). The followers often stress double hamburgers without the bun.
re: 86
Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaking of diets, I went through a phase earlier this year of obsessively recording my calorie intake to work out why I wasn't losing weight. Despite eating less than I should be expending from basal metabolic rate alone, I lost basically nowt.
Atkins is excellent -- startling even -- the very first time, for the first few weeks, then really not terribly good for you. (South Beach is better for glycaemic index type stuff.) Bob's actually right (!) about the way you start to feel a bit repulsed even by the idea of carbs when you've been off them for a while.
91: Gary Taubes (the 'sugar is poison' guy) writes a lot about the calories in, calories out fallacy, and I find it pretty convincing.
89: Isn't this sort of the point, though?
Yes. I did Atkins rather seriously about 6 or 7 years ago and called it the "no guilt" diet (during a series of calm "discussions" with my wife about what crap I was putting in my mouth). I found it to be a very interesting physical and metal experience and I lost 35 pounds over several months. It pushed me to as different of a place physically as 10,000 yards a day of hard swimming did years before (neither were entirely for the good, however). The weight loss did not stick despite it triggering several permanent changes in my diet.
So basically longer tierce in 92. I can recommend it for the "experience" itself, or if you absolutely must fit into your wedding suit/dress in the next 3 months, but it is probably not going to change your long-term health for the better.
90:Not so much, although lettuce (celery, cukes) is probably half my consumption by weight, simply because I like it. Atkins is about making fats your primary energy source, and greens will never provide that kind of energy. They are mostly for fiber, roughage, nutrients (taking a magnesium supp), and variety. I should be adding broccoli and cauliflower by now, but I don't care.
I'm pretty easy, in that I can get into boring habits and just not care about variety. My moral qualms are lessened a little in that eggs, fish, and cheddar are probably 2/3 of my protein sources. 6 oz of salmon + 2 eggs. 8 oz of gr chuck + 2 eggs. 1 pork cutlet + 2 eggs. 3 eggs with a strip of bacon. (and all with half a plate of lettuce with Caesar) Night after night after night.
And I eat because I should. I'm never hungry, but that might be idiosyncratic.
2 strawberries and 2 oz cheddar at bedtime.
Disagree about long term health, but that's an unsettled argument.
As I said, it (Atkins) didn't work for me. Misery all the time. Hated it.
South Beach or the other general 'avoid sugary stuff and heavily processed carbs' diets were perfectly pleasant to be on, though. Still haven't solved the mystery of why not losing weight on calorie intake lower than BMR, though.*
* presumably because my BMR is really low, but still ...
Atkins is about making fats your primary energy source
I thought the idea was to replace carbs with protein, not fat.
97: Sometimes people who simply can't imagine deliberately eating a high-fat diet call Atkins high-protein instead. But a high protein diet can wreck your health fairly quickly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation
True, but Atkins doesn't have to be ridiculous high fat. I see Atkins sets a minimum of 100g of fat a day during induction. That isn't that much higher than the 65g of fat you'd get if you ate what the government says you should eat. Playing around with various nutrition calculators, I probably come close to that 100g at least once a week.
(I realize that most people on Atkins probably get more than the minimum.)
98: Yes, sometimes had symptoms that approached that--especially the headaches (usually in the middle of the night). Other times it was a hoot and I was cruising. Good energy for low-level physical tasks, however noticeable degradation in quick burst activities such as racquetball (countered in part after a few weeks by the benefits of weight loss).
90.2 -> 95.1
Actually, 100g is clearly a great deal higher than 65g. Still, it isn't completely absurb by U.S. standards.
87: I did read it. I was happy to see that, despite Penn doing the study, Illinois is the subject of it. Then I felt bad for not caring about Illinois.
re: 93
Yeah, I think that's true. Or at least it fits with my anecdotal experience. The problem is there's so much cranky/extreme literature out there, and faddism.
I am reminded of those days when poor white Appalachians, poor urban blacks, and urban intellectuals were hoping to form an alliance against the Southern power structures.
The urban intellectuals kicked the poor whites off the bus...and now look who is dying.
Um, poor urban blacks? Poor whites (whether or not they live in Appalachia) do badly on a number of health indicators, but in general blacks do worse than whites of similar socioeconomic status.
104.2 should be italicized, of course.
104: Bob didn't leave reality, reality left bob.
104.3:Check the link in the original post closely. It is not differentiated finely enough to suit, but LE is increasing for black males and especially black females. The trend is clear.
And that was the useful narrative, that the problem of poverty is a problem of racism. This kinda lets upper-middle class liberals off the hook, so they can keep their lifestyles, create useful enemies, and not feel guilty.
107: I think you might want to read the article closely yourself. Life expectancy is indeed increasing among blacks, but it's also increasing among whites. Life expectancy among blacks is increasing at a faster rate than among whites, but that just means the gap between the two groups is narrowing--whites still have higher life expectancy.
Poverty and racism each have independent harmful effects on health, and I don't think anyone who's well-versed in population health issues would deny that.
83:Greece is run by socialists. Or Socialists.
I have been thinking on this for a while, including on the dogwalk.
Perhaps socialism needs to be re-examined in OECD countries when 60%+ of the economy is in FIRE, medicine, and media/entertainment/services. What does socialism mean when the means of production are IP, 401ks, CDOs, and insurance/pension funds? I also wondered if the "means of production" in modern medicine are the patients and payment mechanisms, rather than doctors, hospitals etc.
Marx distinguishes between labour and "labour-power", I think that means that it is future production that can be leveraged into capital. And today's late-capitalism is all about income streams. Anyway, I need to read and think.
Here's Michael Hudson on Greece and finance capitalism. He's been active again lately.
Democratic action historically has been needed to enforce debt collection.The problem facing bankers was how to make loans permanent national obligations. Solving this problem gave an advantage to parliamentary democracies. It was a major factor enabling the Low Countries to win their independence from Habsburg Spain in the 16th century. The Dutch Republic committed the entire nation to pay its public debts, binding the people themselves, through their elected representatives who earmarked taxes to their creditors. Bankers saw parliamentary democracy as a precondition for making sound loans to governments. This security for bankers could be achieved only from electorates having at least a nominal voice in government. And raising war loans was a key element in military rivalry in an epoch when the maxim for survival was "Money is the sinews of war."
Liberalism is for banking and war.
NYT:How Many Calories Will One Dollar Buy
To look at it another way, you would have to spend about $5 to buy 2,000 calories at McDonald's, $19 to buy 2,000 calories worth of canned tuna and $60 to buy 2,000 calories worth of lettuce.
The answer is not to make "bad food" more expensive, as in ending corn subsidies or meat factories, which will just starve the poor (since they won't be getting better wages), but to make "good food" cheaper.
110: Or alternately, make bad food more expensive and give poor people more money.
"Campos is an academic lawyer. If I wanted to listen to an introductory lecture on the law of landlord and tenant, I wouldn't go to a public health specialist. Mutatis mutandis, I don't listen to Campos either."
I am a shitty lawyer, and i would recommend going to me for health advice.
"My suspicion is that pretty much any diet that involves ditching a whole category of food is going to work, because you won't eat enough of the others to make up for it. You could have an "only eat foods that start with a vowel diet" and you'd probably lose weight."
Yes. My personal diet is 'eat only very healthy and ecologically friendly foods that tasty extremely good' which makes it hard to eat much of anything without having some time and thought.
"19:I consider bad diet and lack of exercise a symptom, not a primary cause. Wealth helps, but I bet because it gives more time, options, and different peer pressure. "
poor health negatively, both causal of and caused by obesity, negatively affects ability to get rich. i'd say that is important too.
i would consider carb and fat (including fat type) macro substitution mostly unimportant, though for those who are overweight and heading toward obesity higher fat, and more unsaturated fat, are probably slightly preferable.
"The answer is not to make "bad food" more expensive, as in ending corn subsidies or meat factories, which will just starve the poor (since they won't be getting better wages), but to make "good food" cheaper."
probably not. obesity isn't limited to the poor, and americans spend very little on food. i'd prefer a per calorie tax. and burning down all the food factories and chain restaurants.