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You need to learn about micro-nutrients. Cheap food is generally empty calories, that won't make you feel full, so you eat more. Where healthy food, especially meat costs more in comparison to say boxed stovetop Mac&Cheese
I may have missed it but has the role HFCS in modern foods been talked about at all?
My wife arrived in the US at age 22 with $50 in her pocket and an overnight bag of clothes as part of a 1-year cultural exchange program. (She stayed after we married - almost 20 years now.) By the time she was 30, she was making six figures. So much for your claim of a lack of economic mobility.
Why are people risking their lives to come *to* the US? How many are risking their lives to get out? Why do foreigners seem to see all the opportunity here while natives cry about being victims and demand to be cared for at the expense of others? If it's so terrible here, why aren't they fleeing to one of the European Socialist countries?
And what entitles them to an ever-growing part of what I earn?
You need to learn about micro-nutrients. Cheap food is generally empty calories, that won't make you feel full, so you eat more. Where healthy food, especially meat costs more in comparison to say boxed stovetop Mac&Cheese
Actually, you can blame the modern obesity epidemic on the government policy to cut fats and replace them with carbohydrates (sugars, HFC, etc).
Ketogenic diets (high fat, moderate protein, low carb) result in weight loss.
As to the claim that such diets are unhealthy, one must consider that American Indians thrived on pemmican (80-82% fat) for thousands of years. Ditto, for the Inuit people near the Arctic circle.
You need to learn about micro-nutrients. Cheap food is generally empty calories, that won't make you feel full, so you eat more. Where healthy food, especially meat costs more in comparison to say boxed stovetop Mac&Cheese
You need to learn you're wrong. And DEAD wrong when it comes to the MORBIDLY obese poor.
These stats tell us a LOT about the health damage caused by Food Stamps:
Income-eligible children on Food Stamps: 24% obese
Income-eligible children NOT on Food Stamps: 20% obese
Non-poor children who of course don't even qualify for Food Stamps: 13% obese
Income-eligible adults on Food Stamps: 44% obese
Income-eligible adults NOT on Food Stamps: 33% obese
Non-poor adults who of course don't even qualify for Food Stamps: 32% obese
See the difference? The income-eligible adults and children who DON'T get Food Stamps have a LOWER obesity rate than those on Food Stamps.
Eliminate Food Stamps and Free School Breakfast and Lunch programs for low-income kids. They're having the deleterious effect of contributing to exceptionally high rates of adult and childhood obesity among the poor. Keep WIC, but add more restrictions on what can be purchased with WIC benefits.
I watched a new documentary on fentanyl use and how it is ravaging Vancouver in Canada.
...
The problem in this area was not improving. It was getting worse and one EMT expressed concern that they could not go on "like this." I was getting angry watching. The free narcan, the free care, the "Welfare Wednesdays." IMO it seems to be a very flawed system. I just can't support it, personally. What a waste of funds and taxpayer money when most of these people don't learn and won't get help.
Why are we as a society so adverse to the idea of realizing there *are* defective human beings (as described above) and that allowing them to fail and self-destruct is okay? Instead, we keep 'saving" them, facilitate their behavior, fund their breeding and continued parasite activities, and enable all that is wrong with them.
Let nature take it's course. I could sleep well knowing their failure is not my failure.
Why are we as a society so adverse to the idea of realizing there *are* defective human beings (as described above) and that allowing them to fail and self-destruct is okay? Instead, we keep 'saving" them, facilitate their behavior, fund their breeding and continued parasite activities, and enable all that is wrong with them.
Good question. It's also true that many of our country's worst public school systems are the most highly funded. Washington, DC and Camden, NJ, for example. Utter failures, but we just keep dumping ever more $$$$$ into them.
Yes, her room and board was part of the program. And she was making $128 a week during that year. Yet, she saw the limitless opportunity here, even for someone for whom English was a second language and struggling with the cultural differences. Native born Americans have neither of those problems.
After we married and were waiting on her paperwork to process, I suggested she attend classes at the local community college rather that sit home being bored. She took a few IT courses and was hooked. I spent evenings teaching her about databases (she was taking a class on Access). Once her greencard was in good order, she found a job doing simple database work. She looked for further opportunities and eventually hooked up with a company with educational benefits, earning a Masters' in Software Engineering by working during the day and going to school at night. (She had the equivalent of a B.A. in Linguistics from her home country (in the former Soviet Union), planning to be a teacher there.) The point is that she looked for opportunity and worked to make it pay off rather than looking for someone else to care for her. We expect no more of others than we are willing to do ourselves.
I'd be more supportive of increasing social programs, but it seems like most people in the "middle class" don't even benefit from them because they "make too much". For example, the new free college in New York is only for students from parents with a combined income of 100-125k, which is a pretty low threshold for a northern state where the cost of living is more expensive. The system is set up so that poor income families can have tons of children because they will get financial support from the government, and the wealthiest families are all set. As someone who will be part of the lingering middle class in a few years when I'm done with my training, I don't even know if I'll be able to afford even just one kid. I won't get financial help, and after all the necessary expenses are paid for, there isn't much left over.
Wish I could rep you a thousand times. This was the problem with the ACA--"affordable?" For who? Not the middle class. We make too much money to benefit from many of these programs and yet our tax dollars take a greater portion of our income to finance them.
The difference between the US and many of these European nations has been the strength & size of our middle class and sadly I see that slipping away. I'm first generation American on one side and second generation on the other--my family came here for a better life & I fear next generations will not be as prosperous as the ones before them.
Wish I could rep you a thousand times. This was the problem with the ACA--"affordable?" For who? Not the middle class. We make too much money to benefit from many of these programs and yet our tax dollars take a greater portion of our income to finance them.
The difference between the US and many of these European nations has been the strength & size of our middle class and sadly I see that slipping away. I'm first generation American on one side and second generation on the other--my family came here for a better life & I fear next generations will not be as prosperous as the ones before them.
Education plays a role in the decline, as well, and the news is NOT good:
Quote:
"This exam [OECD's PIAAC], given in 23 countries, assessed the thinking abilities and workplace skills of adults. It focused on literacy, math and technological problem-solving. The goal was to figure out how prepared people are to work in a complex, modern society. And U.S. millennials performed horribly...
But surely America’s brightest were on top?
Nope.
U.S. millennials with master’s degrees and doctorates did better than their peers in only three countries, Ireland, Poland and Spain...The ETS study noted that a decade ago the skill level of American adults was judged mediocre. “Now it is below even that.” So Millennials are falling even further behind.
Top-scoring US millennials – the 90th percentile on the PIAAC test – were at the bottom internationally, ranking higher only than their peers in Spain. The bottom scorers (10th percentile) also lagged behind their peers."
A large portion of Americans seem to be against social programs even though it may be for the common good. When there is talk of the (on average) much better social programs in many European countries the general response is "well, they have to spend more on taxes". To which I ask.....so? If it meant far better health care, far better maternity leave, etc. isn't that worth it? Do not the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one?
Why would I pay more taxes for health care if I can finance it by myself?
From what you wrote, I guess the population that need this "social programs" (that most of the people against) is the poor.
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