Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced an idea to limit soda sizes to 16 ounces. The limit is only for sugary drinks that have over 25 calories per 8 ounces. Diet sodas and water would likely exempted. However, the city of Cambridge thinks this is an equally delightful idea, would likely include ALL drinks, all the name of "the war on obesity."
But myopic rules like these don't work. They're designed to be stifling and show the laziness of governments not to do their research on health, to knee-jerk their way into control of the populace who consumes these drinks. This is why rules like this get ridiculed; no law is worse than when proposed by someone who doesn't like what others do (and is tyring to get money from the government to fund such cockeyed schemes) and try to control others.
Furthermore, by disguising these stiff laws as "it's for your own good," they hide the real motivation behind them, which is "we don't like what you're doing, regardless of it being harmless, and we'll prevent you from doing it any way we can." Types of laws like this usually devolve into resentment, confusion, and then revolt and black markets. See the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s for an example of that success story.
A better idea would be to suggest that occasionally, a 20 ounce drink with as much sugar as your pancreas can handle is fine, so long as you balance it out during the day. That's better than being laughed at as a crank and a control freak.
Showing posts with label nanny statism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nanny statism. Show all posts
6/20/2012
6/07/2012
'Elf and Safety? Stuff and nonsense!
"Health and safety" is a completely rational reason for shutting something down that is obviously dangerous. For example, if you have a bunch of donuts on the shelf and one of them has been tested for salmonella, you get rid of the remaining donuts as a precaution. It's a waste to get rid of the donuts, but there's that rare chance that salmonella-contaminated donut in your hand might contaminate others.
Abuse of "health and safety" as an excuse to exert power and be an obnoxious killjoy is rampant in Britain. The list of what constitutes banning things in the name of health and safety is pretty darn stupid, at least to this Yank. Unless you're putting rocks in hanging baskets, using an ironing board to try out your new chainsaw by cutting vegetables with it, it's just plain grating for town councils to wag their bony bureaucratic fingers at others.
It's also narcissism gone amok: if the town's image is so sullied by people doing ordinary things such as flying kites, tying up bicycles, pouring tea, and having bake sales, while sweeping drug use, larceny, burglaries and assault under the rug, the town's priorities require a massive reworking and shakeup, including the public sacking of the people responsible for using "health and safety" as an excuse to spoil other people's livelihoods.
Abuse of "health and safety" as an excuse to exert power and be an obnoxious killjoy is rampant in Britain. The list of what constitutes banning things in the name of health and safety is pretty darn stupid, at least to this Yank. Unless you're putting rocks in hanging baskets, using an ironing board to try out your new chainsaw by cutting vegetables with it, it's just plain grating for town councils to wag their bony bureaucratic fingers at others.
It's also narcissism gone amok: if the town's image is so sullied by people doing ordinary things such as flying kites, tying up bicycles, pouring tea, and having bake sales, while sweeping drug use, larceny, burglaries and assault under the rug, the town's priorities require a massive reworking and shakeup, including the public sacking of the people responsible for using "health and safety" as an excuse to spoil other people's livelihoods.
2/21/2010
Phasing in sounds like a good idea...
Hub Blog posts an article regarding an easier way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
The idea is to add a carbon tax of $300 a ton, or about $2.60 per gallon of gasoline.
I like it, but not for reasons of the psuedo-religion of environmentalism.
No - slapping a high premium on oil and gasoline would certainly discourage the excessive speculation going on in Wall Street. Put a $2.60 tax on a gallon of gasoline, and you will find a LOT of investors who should have no business in Wall Street leaving the energy futures market quicker than you can say "perp walk" and "margin call."
The reason? People who find themselves grumbling of paying $5 a gallon for gas will reduce demand even further. The demand on crude oil has been quite low since the stock market crash of 2009, even though we pay an average of $2.60 in Massachusetts. People like cheap gas (I do, even though I don't drive) but when gas is sky-high, people reduce a lot of their car driving. When gas went from $4.11 a gallon in June 2008 to $1.59 in December 2008, certainly it put money back in their pockets.
The reason why gasoline prices are high now is because Wall Street thinks that once the economy improves, people will return to their bad old driving habits and hence increase demand, and hence line their portfolios with monster profits. A $2.60 per gallon tax will not only cool off demand, it will all but freeze it. The crude oil traders in the NYMEX pits would drive the wholesale price to under a dollar because no one wants to drive when gas is over $5 a gallon. The floor, then, for a gallon of gas would be around $3.25-$3.50.
The other benefit will be that hostile foreign countries who feel the US will always be dependent on them for cheap oil won't be so accomodating when they go into their little diatribes against America. The Great Satan/imperialists/warmongers would finally tell these countries that, yeah, your imports are nice, but we've got cars that are more fuel efficient anyway. So, take your tankers back from whence they came and your fevered conspiracy theories and mumbo-jumbo too.
A better way to implement this gas tax would be to add this tax in 2011 at the end of every quarter. Adding 65 cents a quarter to the price of gasoline is less painful and won't cause as much panic as doing it all at once. Or, increasing the tax 10 cents every other week would cause far less panic as long as the public is notified beforehand.
The only problem I would forsee is a few activists screaming (as they're wont to do) "This tax is regressive towards the poor." Really? Everyone who drives will pay this tax, but in return for this high tax, innovation would explode exponentially - cars with better fuel mileage, substantial improvements to public transportation, and other developments. For example, Bermuda has a minimum gas price of $2.00 per liter - or $7.56 per gallon - yet their cars are much smaller and fuel efficient. So a 20 liter tank of gas that has a fuel efficiency of 5L/100km gives a Bermudian a 400km range - and the island itself is only 52 square kilometers. Conversely, Bermudians use scooters and public transportation to get around the islands. The same would happen if the US implements a this tax and the 30 gallon tanks of gas giving only 15 miles per gallon shrink to 10 gallon tanks giving 45 miles to the gallon. Same distance, but better fuel efficiency.
And I do like the aspect that control freaks who use the environment as an excuse to implement wild schemes like this will not like this kind of tax either because with it, they can't impose their ideals on us. Environmentalism, along with socialism and communism, is a false religion to begin with - they are religions worshipped by the elite who missed the memo that the United States isn't ruled by a monarchy or a dictator with military fatigues and bushy facial hair. If you want to worship trees and plants and pray that one day, animals can hold a reasonable conversation with you, go right ahead - but trying to control behavior because your morality must be followed without question harbors resentment and revolt. Americans don't like to be ruled.
Finally, if the benefits of this high tax outweigh the skepticism, indeed it will be a small cost to pay. The true scientific proof for global warming has not been established yet, and may take many years to establish, but if we can stave off at least the bad parts, it will be a boon for many people, not a curse.
The idea is to add a carbon tax of $300 a ton, or about $2.60 per gallon of gasoline.
I like it, but not for reasons of the psuedo-religion of environmentalism.
No - slapping a high premium on oil and gasoline would certainly discourage the excessive speculation going on in Wall Street. Put a $2.60 tax on a gallon of gasoline, and you will find a LOT of investors who should have no business in Wall Street leaving the energy futures market quicker than you can say "perp walk" and "margin call."
The reason? People who find themselves grumbling of paying $5 a gallon for gas will reduce demand even further. The demand on crude oil has been quite low since the stock market crash of 2009, even though we pay an average of $2.60 in Massachusetts. People like cheap gas (I do, even though I don't drive) but when gas is sky-high, people reduce a lot of their car driving. When gas went from $4.11 a gallon in June 2008 to $1.59 in December 2008, certainly it put money back in their pockets.
The reason why gasoline prices are high now is because Wall Street thinks that once the economy improves, people will return to their bad old driving habits and hence increase demand, and hence line their portfolios with monster profits. A $2.60 per gallon tax will not only cool off demand, it will all but freeze it. The crude oil traders in the NYMEX pits would drive the wholesale price to under a dollar because no one wants to drive when gas is over $5 a gallon. The floor, then, for a gallon of gas would be around $3.25-$3.50.
The other benefit will be that hostile foreign countries who feel the US will always be dependent on them for cheap oil won't be so accomodating when they go into their little diatribes against America. The Great Satan/imperialists/warmongers would finally tell these countries that, yeah, your imports are nice, but we've got cars that are more fuel efficient anyway. So, take your tankers back from whence they came and your fevered conspiracy theories and mumbo-jumbo too.
A better way to implement this gas tax would be to add this tax in 2011 at the end of every quarter. Adding 65 cents a quarter to the price of gasoline is less painful and won't cause as much panic as doing it all at once. Or, increasing the tax 10 cents every other week would cause far less panic as long as the public is notified beforehand.
The only problem I would forsee is a few activists screaming (as they're wont to do) "This tax is regressive towards the poor." Really? Everyone who drives will pay this tax, but in return for this high tax, innovation would explode exponentially - cars with better fuel mileage, substantial improvements to public transportation, and other developments. For example, Bermuda has a minimum gas price of $2.00 per liter - or $7.56 per gallon - yet their cars are much smaller and fuel efficient. So a 20 liter tank of gas that has a fuel efficiency of 5L/100km gives a Bermudian a 400km range - and the island itself is only 52 square kilometers. Conversely, Bermudians use scooters and public transportation to get around the islands. The same would happen if the US implements a this tax and the 30 gallon tanks of gas giving only 15 miles per gallon shrink to 10 gallon tanks giving 45 miles to the gallon. Same distance, but better fuel efficiency.
And I do like the aspect that control freaks who use the environment as an excuse to implement wild schemes like this will not like this kind of tax either because with it, they can't impose their ideals on us. Environmentalism, along with socialism and communism, is a false religion to begin with - they are religions worshipped by the elite who missed the memo that the United States isn't ruled by a monarchy or a dictator with military fatigues and bushy facial hair. If you want to worship trees and plants and pray that one day, animals can hold a reasonable conversation with you, go right ahead - but trying to control behavior because your morality must be followed without question harbors resentment and revolt. Americans don't like to be ruled.
Finally, if the benefits of this high tax outweigh the skepticism, indeed it will be a small cost to pay. The true scientific proof for global warming has not been established yet, and may take many years to establish, but if we can stave off at least the bad parts, it will be a boon for many people, not a curse.
4/13/2009
Why snack taxes don't work, Exhibit #2,384
Going into the L'il Peach (now Tedeschi's) to buy a newspaper for the train/bus rides into Watertown, I literally have to go around groups of kids waiting to go into the Rogers. If I'm lucky, I'm able to purchase my paper (and a lottery ticket or two) before they can slam all of their sugar-laden junk onto the counter.
Here is my bit of friendly advice to Ray Considine, who is the head of the Medical Foundation in Boston. A lot of those kids come to Hyde Park from other parts of the city - mainly the inner city, like Roxbury and Dorchester. Their families likely cannot afford organic/vegan/super healthy things to begin with, so the kids don't get a healthy, nourishing breakfast. So they either (a) wait until they get into school, where the breakfast they serve is so bad even the rats refuse to eat it, or (b) they purchase quick cheap energy, like L'il Hugs, Doritos, and Little Debbies. Not many of them would be patient enough to buy a banana or buy a little cup of Milk and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Unless you want a full-bore black market on junk food - to which many kids will gladly profit from and mark up the price to willing demand - forget the snack tax. It's a tax that will not fund health programs or anything remotely resembling health. (Notice I'm using the word "health" and not the diaphanously ambiguous and Orwellian "wellness.") They will be boomerang taxes, going from the poor to the government to fill their rainy day fund.
"But it will only add up to pennies!" you proclaim.
Horse hockey. For every dollar these kids spend, it's 5 pennies to the state. Five percent sales tax. Add that to a $1.50 bottle of soda, plus a five cent deposit, and it's a sneaky/stealth/backdoor 8% sales tax. A kid with two bottles of soda at $1.50 each, plus two hostess at a dollar, and a bag of Doritos at $0.75, is looking at a 7% tax. (The good thing is that they're not buying cigarettes at a national/state take of 50-60%, which I learned isn't going anywhere near smoking prevention programs, but to...wait for it...the rainy day fund.)
What are the efforts to control our smoking and eating habits anyway? I call these efforts health eugenics - the efforts of a government to conform the citizens into a perfect, docile, asexual, compliant group of Stepford people. Utopia ain't here and never will be. Trying to manipulate life and people for the promotion of utopia has violent, even deadly, results.
Here is my bit of friendly advice to Ray Considine, who is the head of the Medical Foundation in Boston. A lot of those kids come to Hyde Park from other parts of the city - mainly the inner city, like Roxbury and Dorchester. Their families likely cannot afford organic/vegan/super healthy things to begin with, so the kids don't get a healthy, nourishing breakfast. So they either (a) wait until they get into school, where the breakfast they serve is so bad even the rats refuse to eat it, or (b) they purchase quick cheap energy, like L'il Hugs, Doritos, and Little Debbies. Not many of them would be patient enough to buy a banana or buy a little cup of Milk and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Unless you want a full-bore black market on junk food - to which many kids will gladly profit from and mark up the price to willing demand - forget the snack tax. It's a tax that will not fund health programs or anything remotely resembling health. (Notice I'm using the word "health" and not the diaphanously ambiguous and Orwellian "wellness.") They will be boomerang taxes, going from the poor to the government to fill their rainy day fund.
"But it will only add up to pennies!" you proclaim.
Horse hockey. For every dollar these kids spend, it's 5 pennies to the state. Five percent sales tax. Add that to a $1.50 bottle of soda, plus a five cent deposit, and it's a sneaky/stealth/backdoor 8% sales tax. A kid with two bottles of soda at $1.50 each, plus two hostess at a dollar, and a bag of Doritos at $0.75, is looking at a 7% tax. (The good thing is that they're not buying cigarettes at a national/state take of 50-60%, which I learned isn't going anywhere near smoking prevention programs, but to...wait for it...the rainy day fund.)
What are the efforts to control our smoking and eating habits anyway? I call these efforts health eugenics - the efforts of a government to conform the citizens into a perfect, docile, asexual, compliant group of Stepford people. Utopia ain't here and never will be. Trying to manipulate life and people for the promotion of utopia has violent, even deadly, results.
3/27/2009
Grandma got run over by the DOR
I don't condone smoking, but I just noticed that cancer sticks, over the past decade or so, have more than doubled in price. You could get a generic brand of smokes for $2, and a name brand for $3. Today, a generic pack costs $5.50 and a name brand pack is $7.50. This is due to our $2.51 state tobacco tax and the new $1 or so tax to fund children's health care. Cross the border into New Hampshire, and the prices are slightly less.
One industrious lady went the route of getting generic cigarettes from an Native American Smoke shop. One carton of their brand goes for the rock-bottom price of $14.89 - which comes out to 79 cents a pack. Pretty good deal, right? And the Native Americans, since they operate from a sovereign nation (aka the reservation), don't charge taxes on what they sell. You can get name brand cigarettes for $35 a carton - a huge savings over Massachusetts' $150 per carton.
But the Native Americans, making sure they keep kosher with the states, report whoever buys their cigarettes to the tax rolls of each state. As a result of buying 5 cartons of Seneca unfiltered cigarettes, this woman now must pay an additional $91.58 to the state. And, she's refusing to pay, even if they levy penalties and interest.
Let's calculate what's going on here. $14.89 times five cartons is $74.45. In order to tack on $91.58 to her bill, the tax on each additional carton must be $18.316, making her actual purchase (in the eyes of the Commonwealth) $166.03 - or $33.21 a carton. Why would the state chase this woman over cheap generic cigarettes at $33.21 a carton when there are bigger fish to fry - the people who fork over $150 for name brand cigarettes? Maybe it's because the Native Americans have a much better handle on freedoms and what it means, versus the health neurotics who can't seem to keep their germophobic mitts out of other people's business - and if they had a chance, not only would they not hand over names, they'd tell the states what rabbit hole to go down to?
When cigarettes and tobacco are banned from the state, I can tell exactly who's going to need the bigger nicotine patch - the Mass DOR, as billions of tax dollars generated from cigarette and tobacco sales fund everything the desire, and you bet they'll have a jones worse than a heroin withdrawal once that tax money goes away.
One industrious lady went the route of getting generic cigarettes from an Native American Smoke shop. One carton of their brand goes for the rock-bottom price of $14.89 - which comes out to 79 cents a pack. Pretty good deal, right? And the Native Americans, since they operate from a sovereign nation (aka the reservation), don't charge taxes on what they sell. You can get name brand cigarettes for $35 a carton - a huge savings over Massachusetts' $150 per carton.
But the Native Americans, making sure they keep kosher with the states, report whoever buys their cigarettes to the tax rolls of each state. As a result of buying 5 cartons of Seneca unfiltered cigarettes, this woman now must pay an additional $91.58 to the state. And, she's refusing to pay, even if they levy penalties and interest.
Let's calculate what's going on here. $14.89 times five cartons is $74.45. In order to tack on $91.58 to her bill, the tax on each additional carton must be $18.316, making her actual purchase (in the eyes of the Commonwealth) $166.03 - or $33.21 a carton. Why would the state chase this woman over cheap generic cigarettes at $33.21 a carton when there are bigger fish to fry - the people who fork over $150 for name brand cigarettes? Maybe it's because the Native Americans have a much better handle on freedoms and what it means, versus the health neurotics who can't seem to keep their germophobic mitts out of other people's business - and if they had a chance, not only would they not hand over names, they'd tell the states what rabbit hole to go down to?
When cigarettes and tobacco are banned from the state, I can tell exactly who's going to need the bigger nicotine patch - the Mass DOR, as billions of tax dollars generated from cigarette and tobacco sales fund everything the desire, and you bet they'll have a jones worse than a heroin withdrawal once that tax money goes away.
1/08/2009
I'll take the calorie counts, easy on the nanny statism, please
I know I'm fat. Not pleasingly plump, not extra padding, just plain, ugly, disgusting fat. The battle of the bulge has been going on for nigh on eighteen years, ever since I left working at a shoe store and found myself at a love affair with a computer and sedentary living. My doctor and I still can't understand why my blood sugar and cholesterol are so outstanding, but the dirty zone is the old gullet. Once in awhile, I hear hushed English voices trying to determine if I'm the second pregnant man in the world (or the first authentic pregnant man), but rest assured, you will all be the first to know if that gut was either a ectotopic newborn or just my huge stomach. I'm definitely not proud of it.
However, parents have been sort of looking the other way. They're too busy holding two jobs, watching their 401(k) dwindle to nothing, and basically surviving on the smell of an oily rag. A trip to McDonalds is Tavern on the Green, so why not fill their cherubs with stuff that will keep them happy while they try to beat the debt collector?
The things I've noticed in my gustational journeys are many. The more I think about it, though, I eat because (a) I'm hungry, (b) I'm bored, (c) things ain't going well in Cleary Squared land, (d) it's there.
What I've noticed in my eating habits is as follows.
- A few months ago, I went to Cambridgeside to grab some dinner. (I've been learning to eat at 5:00 because if I eat later, I wake up in the middle of the night sweating, leaching off that meatloaf or cheeseburger pie.) Taco Bell is one of the best places to get Mexican food, even though Qdoba and Chipotle make theirs much fresher. I couldn't get near the place, or even the register. Couldn't have been the 79, 89 or 99 cent taco/burrito specials, couldn't it? Cheap food = popular food, and no wonder - BK's value meals were clocking in at $7 minimum! And places like Sakkio (great chicken teriyaki) were also busy as beavers as they had $4.99 chicken teryiaki with maki rolls! The other specialty shops, however, were bare. The Indian shop hardly had a person there, as well as the Thai place and the mini-bistrots.
I think what bothers the health scolds is that when people don't have a lot of money, they're going to see what they can get for as little as possible - both monetarily and nutritionally. They can't swing over to Souper Salad or visit the local vegetarian place and hope that $5 will fill their tummies, when a single bowl of mugilltawany soup is $4.99 before taxes. If these health scolds want to introduce healthier foods to the public, bring down the exorbitant prices of healthy foods! Is it too much to say, "to hell with the bottom line and profits...let's make healthy food cheap!" This includes all of the trendy food items like organics and fair trade items - which are marked up considerably over plain Jane foods. I don't care if my blue corn chips came from an labor faction in Ecuador - all I want is affordable (and delicious!) food.
- I don't like Weight Watchers. Period. Most of the leaders are very nice, and have lost anywhere between 60 and 100 pounds. Weigh-ins I liked, because it was in front of the nice leader instead of my doctor, who keeps on (sarcastically) suggesting stomach surgery. The points system is pretty neat and scientific. The culture of meetings every single second, however, are the deal breaker. Weight Watchers is food's version of AA-I'm overweight, not injecting myself with 98% pure heroin and selling my kids to feed my habit. If my weakness is food, wouldn't a more rounded program of (a) one-on-one with a qualified nutritionist, (b) one-on-one with a qualified trainer, and (c) one-on-one with a qualified psychologist to dig deep down and figure out why I'm gaining all this weight? Forget all the fad crap, like Hydroxywhizbang and Dr. Lala's Cabbage and Lemongrass 30-day fast. I'd like to lose the weight and keep my sanity, thanks.
- Health eugenics - raising a more perfect human race through nutrition - is a dangerous thing. Self-righteousness is even more so, as the assumption that Your Way should be Everyone's Way is not merely arrogant, it's dead wrong. For every vegan (militant, obnoxious, or just a fussy pain in the ass) who throws a fit every time someone dares to bring in a hamburger, there is a long-time practicing vegetarian who can whip up a 100% vegetarian meal that looks like the real meat-laden McCoy and no one ever suspects a thing, and will not be bothered in the least if you drink skim milk in their presence. The way to introduce healthy eating and avoiding obesity is not to jam it down people's throats - although that hasn't stopped politicians from hiking cigarette taxes through the wazoo while redistributing that money through everything else but health. Sure, I don't mind calorie counts on the menus, and I hardly notice the missing trans fats. (It's a nice test in math to see if you can make a filling meal for under 500 calories.) When the busybodies (pardon me, the "concerned") delve into the holy nonsense of taxing sodas and pulling out vending machines because Heaven forfend there's a molecule of trans fat in it, that's when people get turned off into getting healthy, and do their best to sneak around it. Hey, prohibition really worked for Al Capone, didn't it?
The only person, believe it or not, who gets the health thing right is Richard Simmons. Kids are so overprotected and hovered over these days is that they don't get to run around and get the pent-up energy out of their systems - yet when these same kids get fat, the administrators and teachers panic and overcompensate. The best solution for this is bringing back physical education, something I give huge support to (even though back at Latin Academy, we had a huge floor that passed for "gym".) You get kids who get exercise and maintain a healthy life, and teachers get more attentive kids. Not a bad deal.
However, parents have been sort of looking the other way. They're too busy holding two jobs, watching their 401(k) dwindle to nothing, and basically surviving on the smell of an oily rag. A trip to McDonalds is Tavern on the Green, so why not fill their cherubs with stuff that will keep them happy while they try to beat the debt collector?
The things I've noticed in my gustational journeys are many. The more I think about it, though, I eat because (a) I'm hungry, (b) I'm bored, (c) things ain't going well in Cleary Squared land, (d) it's there.
What I've noticed in my eating habits is as follows.
- A few months ago, I went to Cambridgeside to grab some dinner. (I've been learning to eat at 5:00 because if I eat later, I wake up in the middle of the night sweating, leaching off that meatloaf or cheeseburger pie.) Taco Bell is one of the best places to get Mexican food, even though Qdoba and Chipotle make theirs much fresher. I couldn't get near the place, or even the register. Couldn't have been the 79, 89 or 99 cent taco/burrito specials, couldn't it? Cheap food = popular food, and no wonder - BK's value meals were clocking in at $7 minimum! And places like Sakkio (great chicken teriyaki) were also busy as beavers as they had $4.99 chicken teryiaki with maki rolls! The other specialty shops, however, were bare. The Indian shop hardly had a person there, as well as the Thai place and the mini-bistrots.
I think what bothers the health scolds is that when people don't have a lot of money, they're going to see what they can get for as little as possible - both monetarily and nutritionally. They can't swing over to Souper Salad or visit the local vegetarian place and hope that $5 will fill their tummies, when a single bowl of mugilltawany soup is $4.99 before taxes. If these health scolds want to introduce healthier foods to the public, bring down the exorbitant prices of healthy foods! Is it too much to say, "to hell with the bottom line and profits...let's make healthy food cheap!" This includes all of the trendy food items like organics and fair trade items - which are marked up considerably over plain Jane foods. I don't care if my blue corn chips came from an labor faction in Ecuador - all I want is affordable (and delicious!) food.
- I don't like Weight Watchers. Period. Most of the leaders are very nice, and have lost anywhere between 60 and 100 pounds. Weigh-ins I liked, because it was in front of the nice leader instead of my doctor, who keeps on (sarcastically) suggesting stomach surgery. The points system is pretty neat and scientific. The culture of meetings every single second, however, are the deal breaker. Weight Watchers is food's version of AA-I'm overweight, not injecting myself with 98% pure heroin and selling my kids to feed my habit. If my weakness is food, wouldn't a more rounded program of (a) one-on-one with a qualified nutritionist, (b) one-on-one with a qualified trainer, and (c) one-on-one with a qualified psychologist to dig deep down and figure out why I'm gaining all this weight? Forget all the fad crap, like Hydroxywhizbang and Dr. Lala's Cabbage and Lemongrass 30-day fast. I'd like to lose the weight and keep my sanity, thanks.
- Health eugenics - raising a more perfect human race through nutrition - is a dangerous thing. Self-righteousness is even more so, as the assumption that Your Way should be Everyone's Way is not merely arrogant, it's dead wrong. For every vegan (militant, obnoxious, or just a fussy pain in the ass) who throws a fit every time someone dares to bring in a hamburger, there is a long-time practicing vegetarian who can whip up a 100% vegetarian meal that looks like the real meat-laden McCoy and no one ever suspects a thing, and will not be bothered in the least if you drink skim milk in their presence. The way to introduce healthy eating and avoiding obesity is not to jam it down people's throats - although that hasn't stopped politicians from hiking cigarette taxes through the wazoo while redistributing that money through everything else but health. Sure, I don't mind calorie counts on the menus, and I hardly notice the missing trans fats. (It's a nice test in math to see if you can make a filling meal for under 500 calories.) When the busybodies (pardon me, the "concerned") delve into the holy nonsense of taxing sodas and pulling out vending machines because Heaven forfend there's a molecule of trans fat in it, that's when people get turned off into getting healthy, and do their best to sneak around it. Hey, prohibition really worked for Al Capone, didn't it?
The only person, believe it or not, who gets the health thing right is Richard Simmons. Kids are so overprotected and hovered over these days is that they don't get to run around and get the pent-up energy out of their systems - yet when these same kids get fat, the administrators and teachers panic and overcompensate. The best solution for this is bringing back physical education, something I give huge support to (even though back at Latin Academy, we had a huge floor that passed for "gym".) You get kids who get exercise and maintain a healthy life, and teachers get more attentive kids. Not a bad deal.
6/05/2007
I ain't payin' $5 tax on a keg of Natty Light!
If our legislators weren't so addicted to spending money, our taxes would be a heck of a lot lower.
Vice (or sin) taxes are super-popular, as it's easier to inveigle the control freak nature of some of these pols. Take away the vice, and you take away the easy, interest-free and hassle money to be spent on more noble things, like naming a park after your girlfriend or researching the mating habits of albino squirrels.
We are non-smokers, and we think the habit of smoking is disgusting and dangerous. We will not chase you down with a high-powered fan if we catch you with a cigarette/cigar/pipe, however, as we love and adore freedom and respect personal choice. If the Commonwealth of Massachusetts banned cigarette smoking and cigarette sales, they'd lose $1.50 per pack in tax alone (which comes to $30 per carton - for a $48 carton that comes to a tax rate of 62.5%!). Whether there would be a black market for smokers, or better yet, a gigantic boom for stores in other states with minimal to low taxes (New Hampshire), is uncertain. When Massachusetts loses hundreds of millions of dollars in cigarette taxes because they thought it wise to ban it, everyone loses. Prohibition didn't work because a nice new black market took its place, and crime syndicates loved the idea of cornering the market in illicit hooch.
The 5% booze tax proposal will do nothing to control drinking, i.e. overconsumption of alcohol. The idea of using the money for substance abuse is well and good, but doing it through the focus of a vice tax smacks of the same Carrie Nation prudishness that did very little than give rise to speakeasies and Al Capone. Better yet, why not have some of these politicians, who get paid in the low six figure range, or about ten times poverty level, voluntarily withhold a healthy part of their paychecks for this plan? Nope...they're elected officials, and the little people must pay.
Vice (or sin) taxes are super-popular, as it's easier to inveigle the control freak nature of some of these pols. Take away the vice, and you take away the easy, interest-free and hassle money to be spent on more noble things, like naming a park after your girlfriend or researching the mating habits of albino squirrels.
We are non-smokers, and we think the habit of smoking is disgusting and dangerous. We will not chase you down with a high-powered fan if we catch you with a cigarette/cigar/pipe, however, as we love and adore freedom and respect personal choice. If the Commonwealth of Massachusetts banned cigarette smoking and cigarette sales, they'd lose $1.50 per pack in tax alone (which comes to $30 per carton - for a $48 carton that comes to a tax rate of 62.5%!). Whether there would be a black market for smokers, or better yet, a gigantic boom for stores in other states with minimal to low taxes (New Hampshire), is uncertain. When Massachusetts loses hundreds of millions of dollars in cigarette taxes because they thought it wise to ban it, everyone loses. Prohibition didn't work because a nice new black market took its place, and crime syndicates loved the idea of cornering the market in illicit hooch.
The 5% booze tax proposal will do nothing to control drinking, i.e. overconsumption of alcohol. The idea of using the money for substance abuse is well and good, but doing it through the focus of a vice tax smacks of the same Carrie Nation prudishness that did very little than give rise to speakeasies and Al Capone. Better yet, why not have some of these politicians, who get paid in the low six figure range, or about ten times poverty level, voluntarily withhold a healthy part of their paychecks for this plan? Nope...they're elected officials, and the little people must pay.
5/21/2007
"[O]rganic" is really just code for "awesome marketing idea."
When you buy organic foodstuffs, what are you really paying for?
- The notion that the item does not contain unhealthy additives, is raised in a favorable environment that doesn't use harmful chemicals, employs persons that are paid a fair and decent wage and are not exploited by their employers, and is processed in such a manner that it is fresh from the moment the item is selected from a careful worker, right to the point of consumption?
- The notion that only the elite (i.e. yuppies) can pay an extra 25-50% premium on things that the lower and middle classes couldn't even understand; i.e. what minimum wage slave would ever step foot into an health food cooperative, blow a quarter of their paycheck on bananas they'll let rot and throw out, and then turn around and blow the other parts of their paycheck on McDonalds, Walmart, and the cell phone they have glued to their ear?
- The notion that no one understands "organic" food except really finicky eaters, militant vegans, and yuppies, and the rest of us are happy with the non-organic stuff anyway because it's cheaper.
- The notion that the item does not contain unhealthy additives, is raised in a favorable environment that doesn't use harmful chemicals, employs persons that are paid a fair and decent wage and are not exploited by their employers, and is processed in such a manner that it is fresh from the moment the item is selected from a careful worker, right to the point of consumption?
- The notion that only the elite (i.e. yuppies) can pay an extra 25-50% premium on things that the lower and middle classes couldn't even understand; i.e. what minimum wage slave would ever step foot into an health food cooperative, blow a quarter of their paycheck on bananas they'll let rot and throw out, and then turn around and blow the other parts of their paycheck on McDonalds, Walmart, and the cell phone they have glued to their ear?
- The notion that no one understands "organic" food except really finicky eaters, militant vegans, and yuppies, and the rest of us are happy with the non-organic stuff anyway because it's cheaper.
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