When they don’t would seem to be the appropriate time. Perhaps I missed it, but other than an allusion in the OP I don’t see anything about them not working. Una and somebody else mentioned that such efforts failed in their employers’ cafeterias, but with respect I’m not sure those are reliable data points.
The problem with this ideology is you have to be ruthless enough to allow people to die. Yes, you do. The ‘everyone for themselves’ line of thought is necessarily survival of the fittest. If someone is too fat to work, yet you demand that they pay their own healthcare costs, they’re fucked. They’ve got nowhere to go.
At the macro level (as in, thinking about it from a society perspective, which you castigate liberals for doing) it’s not that bad an idea. The fittest survive, society becomes leaner and better. But in the short term, all the people who were able to survive primarily due to society helping them along will die. And as much as you and people who think like you strut around talking about the individual, most folk aren’t willing to let thousands of people across the US die like that.
So we have basic ground-level welfare systems that do the minimum to prevent people from dying. But they’re hatchet jobs that are expensive because, as I was bringing up in a previous thread, they’re temporary cures, not prevention.
If we accept that we as a society have an obligation not to let people just wither and die because they can’t work, then we should try to implement affordable public programs that keep people from getting to the emergency point. These means we look at why people are getting obese and see if there’s anything we can do at the macro level, like changing certain farm subsidies, increasing education, and, yes, implement universal healthcare.
Whinge all you like about not wanting to support others with your money, but the fact is it’s cheaper than what we have now and better for both employees and employers:
[ul]
[li]Easy access to preventative healthcare means a healthier workforce, which means less need for sick days and accommodations in the workplace. [/li][li]A federal insurance program using a larger risk pool, reduced overhead, and not working for profit means overall cheaper healthcare costs per person, which means fewer dollars spent in total, either via taxes or paychecks.[/li][li]Universal coverage means companies are no longer obligated to provide healthcare, which increases overhead and results in lost productivity due to the paperwork needed (not much, I know), although companies would still have the option to provide premium healthcare as a benefit.[/li][li]Universal coverage means employees aren’t as tied to their jobs, which helps them in that they can more freely move about and find the company that suits them best and don’t fight tooth and nail to stay in a miserable job just because of the healthcare benefits for their family. Stress hurts productivity too.[/li][/ul]
Of course, this is all predicated on the idea that we shouldn’t just let fellow Americans die of poverty and starvation. If you’re willing to allow that, then sure, fuck 'em all, fight against social programs, and keep that extra dollar or two in your paycheck that may or may not go to a charity that accomplishes an insignificant fraction of what the federal government is able to achieve.
Good question. You’d really have to dig deeply into the methodology of the studies and understand if all variables* have been controlled for. There is value in doing such studies across cultures, so I wouldn’t count the one done in Great Britain as telling us what will happen in Philadelphia. That’s an easy catch right there.
I don’t have the time or resources to scour the papers written on theses studies, if indeed any were actually published in peer review journals at all. But even with the little we know about this program, it appears to different enough from the others that it qualifies as “something new”. It’s a government/private sector partnership with some education aspects thrown in for good measure.
In the end, I’d leave it up to the social scientists involved to determine when the consensus answer has arisen. Maybe some sort of survey of what those folks think of the state of that knowledge is would be useful. But I suspect that information does not exist.
*And there are probably dozens of significant variables.
It’s also possible that encouraging change on this scale must be done on a national basis. I’m not sure that immunization campaigns and other major public health initiatives would have worked on a city-by-city basis.
Because they aren’t as smart as me?
Besides, I’m not convinced one way or the other about “failure”. For starters, the program is so small that statistical types of analysis are crippled from the git-go. Did anyone eat more healthily as a result of this program? Surely some did, simply because it was there. But how many, and what conclusions may we draw from that? No matter what conclusions we draw, they must be modest conclusions, because the scope of the enterprise doesn’t permit anything else. Unless, of course, one already knows all about such liberal nanny-state programs, and can readily see how this fits in with one’s pre-certainty.
Wouldn’t it be better to examine the thing in its place, to draw modest conclusions or perhaps just hints at a possible wider perspective? Did anyone eat better? What is different about the people who ate better than those who did not? Even if we cannot answer that question definitively, even a hint would be interesting, maybe point us in the right direction.
But something is very, very wrong. Our people are far more fat and sick that is appropriate for the wealthiest country in human history. And, yes, we need to know what, and yes, we need to do something about it. And if that requires a big hairy ass liberal nanny state solution, so be it.
Besides, has it occurred to you that if people had a more healthy diet, they might think more clearly and rush to support your conservative agenda?
Post 156.
Perhaps you missed it.
Either someone has stolen elucidator’s computer, with the browser set to automatically remember his user name and password…
…or elucidator CAN, in fact, write clear, declarative statements, logically connected to establish a proposition.
This is a very clear and supportable statement.
I don’t agree, at least not entirely, but that’s not because I didn’t understand it.
My question to Cogent Luci’ is: why aren’t the other studies relevant to show the basic idea is flawed?
My question to Rhetorical Flourish Luci’ is: where’d you go?
You want his relentlessly personal, Counselor? I’m your huckleberry.
I don’t see why this is cast as a liberal vs. conservative agrument but since it is, the conservatives lost this agrument a long time ago when they invented Star Wars. The cost of the OP’s program was a pimple on the ass of a pimple on the ass of Reagan’s beloved Star Wars defense system. At least the program in the OP has good intentions in mind, even if it turns out to be a failed experiment.
That was one of the arguments during those debates. If they regulate tobacco consumption they’ll regulate fatty foods. It didn’t start there and it’s not going to stop there.
I think one of the best known examples are seat belts and air bags. Seat belts were a small cost addition to cars and nobody objected to the mandate. Air bags were mandated because people weren’t using the seat belts. They are expensive and almost useless from a value added cost to the car. From a value-added perspective it would have saved more lives (IMO) to mandate anti-lock brakes.
The key word in all of this regardless of opinion or success rate is “mandate”. There is literally no limit to the mandates a government can impose on it’s citizens if they are allowed to do so. And while we have the option to reverse something by voting a new group of people into office it’s damn hard to reverse a law once it’s enacted.
Because those two positions are not mutually exclusive. Yes, the program is worth pursuing, and no, it doesn’t mean what you say it means about liberal thought.
This is categorically incorrect. Air bags are barely any safer than a steering wheel if you don’t wear a seatbelt.
Or “No, this program is not worth pursuing, and it still doesn’t support any sweeping conclusions about ‘liberal thought’, whatever the hell that is.”
Also works.
But “This program is crap, and is proof positive that liberals are poopy-heads!”? Not so much.
Moreover, many people were mad about the seat belt requirement.
A couple of points:
(1) The general idea of see-a-problem-and-try-to-solve-it-by-spending-tax-dollars is certainly more associated with the liberal side of things than the conservative side, but conservatives certainly do engage in it… abstinence-only-education and Star Wars are two examples that have been mentioned in this thread which utterly dwarf the healthy food issue, one dwarfing it in willful-ignorance-required-to-believe-it-might-possibly-work and one in dollars spent. Do liberals do this kind of thing more? Possibly. I’m honestly not sure. But there are also countless examples throughout US history in which programs of this general sort (ie, see a problem and spend money to address it) have been extraordinarily successful. Say… rural electrification? Campaigns to reduce smoking? Medicare?
(2) Bricker seems to be quite convinced that this idea is one that could basically be proven to be doomed to failure due to previous similar experiments and studies done on them. I can’t prima facie reject that idea, as he has provided some studies of clearly comparable situations which support his contention. But neither he nor (as far as I know) any of us are social scientists with the proper background and credentials to really even begin to analyze an issue as complex as this one. And there’s also a difference between an attitude of “hey, I’ve got this brilliant idea, let’s put fresh fruit in 7-11s, why, this is guaranteed to solve obesity, how could it possibly fail!! I’m a genius!” and an attitude of “well, obesity is a serious issue, so let’s take some money and attempt to solve it in a way that is similar to methods that we know have failed in the past, but tweaked by adding some private-public partnership and some education (or whatever) and see what happens… even if it fails we’ll at least have learned something about how to tackle this troubling issue”. Do I know that the people who designed this campaign had the second attitude rather than the first? I have no idea… but I don’t think Bricker does either.
(3) I think there’s an interesting analogy between general health care issues and general poverty issues. For both issues, the stereotypical liberal/conservative reactions are similar. Someone is sick… the liberal wants tax dollars to help them, the conservative does not. Someone is poor… the liberal wants tax dollars to help them, the conservative does not. In both cases I think conservatives want to view being either sick or poor as purely a result of poor choices the person took. If I’m richer than you, or healthier than you, it’s because I was harder working or more careful than you. And in such a world, the conservative mindset is much more appealing. Imagine a world in which the only health problem that humans ever experienced was lung cancer due to smoking (and this had been well known for generations). In that world, if you start smoking and I don’t, and you get lung cancer, and then you want me to help pay for your lung cancer treatments, well, I can see how even a liberal like myself might at least balk at the idea. Similarly, if we all started out precisely equal economically and the only reason people succeeded or failed was effort and talent, and I just worked harder than you and became richer, I might not want to give you money just to help you live a happier life. But that’s not at all how the real world works.
I’ve usually seen the “veil of ignorance” argument used concerning welfare and economic policy, but it applies to health care also. Suppose I told you that I somehow knew that your child was, at the age of 25, going to develop a serious medical condition of some sort… one that goes undetected for a few years, and then reaches a state where it can be treated by a very very expensive daily pill which must be taken for the rest of one’s life, in which case the patient leads a perfectly normal life, but if they can’t get the pill they die a horribly slow and painful death. Would you want that child to grow up in Australia/UK/Canada/most of the rest of the first world, or in the US?
What were the several failed programs prior to Star Wars – you know, the ones that should have provided the no-nonsense information that the program was doomed?
Here, you seem quite comfortable speculating that tweaking some variables might produce better use of produce (ha!) even while acknowledging that the bulk of the research so far is not encouraging.
So I assume that there were similar warning signs for Star Wars?
Yeah, there were such warning signs. Physics, math, stuff like that. The calculus of intercepting a bullet with a bullet would melt Stevey Hawking into a pool of goo. It couldn’t be done and it wasn’t.
Unless, of course, you have some astonishing new information?
No, no – I simply don’t recall.
Since we managed to intercept a few Scuds with Patriots, I am assuming that the prospect of intercepting a Soviet ICBM with a US anti-ICBM was at least notionally possible, but I am no physicist.
So are you telling me that the plan was mathematically impossible? If it was, I absolutely concede the point.
Er… was it?
And I was sure I watched Jessica Savitch blow up a satellite with a laser – for real, no special effects. But I was a young man then, and only barely paying attention. Did I misconstrue the importance of that?
So, I’m curious.
Obesity is a national epidemic and appears to be particularly problematic among the urba poor. It costs billions of dollars in health care, lost productivity, etc, etc… In other words, it’s a real problem. Here’s a city that’s running a relatively cheap * experiment * to see if they can make a difference.
According to Bricker, this liberal approach is doomed to failure. So, what’s the conservative approach? Do nothing? Preach abstinence from Snickers and Coca Cola? Deny healthcare to the obese and sick because it’s their own damn fault? (I’m not sure I want my government to have that attitude either.) C’mon, Bricker, it’s easy to fling those brickbats – lets hear your solution to the problem.
I made no such claim or implication:
SDI certainly dwarfs the Philadelphia Experiment (ha!) in terms of dollars spent. I think there are a huge number of perfectly reasonable reasons to criticize it on grounds of plausibility and so forth, but I was merely in this context using it as an example of a situation where conservatives saw a problem and decided to spend tax dollars to solve it.
If you could respond to the other parts of my post, I’d appreciate it.