I’m going to assume you aren’t serious.
Yes. Unless you also made this observation when the program was proposed, before the popularity was known, your advice is pretty worthless. I wish I had bought Apple stock when it was $50 a share. Hindsight is 20/20.
Big problem right there, isn’t it? There is no “economics”, there is conservative economics, and liberal economics.
For instance, you have the celebrated Koch Brothers offering to fund a chair in Economics at Florida State University, so long as they could pick a reliable academic to reflect and promote their views.
There is no conservative physics. No conservative biology, unless you count Creationism as biology, which I don’t.
Pick any liberal position on money, wages, etc. and you will find rock-solid academic economists who can prove that it makes perfect sense, based on irrefutable economic facts. And rock-solid academics that will prove it is total nonsense, based on the same irrefutable economic facts.
I’m a mathtard, soon as you wade into the swamp of statistical modeling, my eyes glaze over and I lapse into meditation. I like what Paul Krugman says, it is usually pitched down to my level, and makes sense. But then other equally acclaimed economists will say its all bullshit, based on universally accepted economic “facts”.
Or Keynesianism? Is that “accepted” economic orthodoxy, or no? Should I be surprised that an academic economist who’s checks are written by the Koch Brothers is skeptical? Is there even any such thing as “accepted economic orthodoxy”?
If someone cites an academic economics paper on “Cash for Clunkers”, or school lunches, or bloody well anything, have they proven anything at all?
That assumes that there is an actual signal cleverly hidden in all that noise.
Kinda hard, what with all that flowery rhetoric.
I’m as serious as you were when you made the claim.
I did, although not here – although other posters did make the point here before the extension act was passed, IIRC – mtgman to name one name that sticks out.
I was not really aware of the program’s details until it got underway, so I had no meaningful opportunity to criticize it up front.
But certainly I, and others, made this point before the $2 billion reauthorization bill for the program was passed. That would have been a fine time to lower the price, yes?
In the future, take the time to actually read what has been posted, or, at least, dial down the personal attacks if you have not.
[ /Moderating ]
For $5 you can buy 24 ounces of 80% lean ground beef (the equivalent of 6 quarter pounders worth of meat). 24 ounces of 80% lean has 1848 calories. It is cheaper by far to get the food at the market.
It’s a trip to see people actually supportive of government micromanaging our choices on what to eat and drink.
Things certainly have changed in the last few years.
Relative to the OP, here’s a quick read on food stamps and the government’s inability to quantify who is buying what, and their refusal to share where goods are purchased. (Some of it’s classified as trade secrets?)
Here is the problem that I have with your argument. You say that this grocery stocking plan has cost over a million dollars and of course that is an awful lot of money. If we did that in every corner of every big city it would cost 2 or 3 billion dollars, an outrageous sum. But when we get people talking about things like this which are arguably good and bad irrespective of the cost involved we end up making judgments about the merit of the people suggesting the program and completely take our eye off of the other balls that we should be paying more attention. Homophobia, abortion, equitable taxation, oligarchy, the Koch brothers, a Supreme Court that has ruled in favor of the U.S.Chamber of Commerce at every opportunity, Citizen’s United, the complete capitulation of every member of the Republican party to Limbaugh and his ilk. Please name one elected Republican in the national spotlight who has something good to say about President Obama.
http://www.republicansforobama.org/firstterm
Of course expecting much vocal support this close to the election is a little much, especially when the nominee is from the left wing of the Republican party. When it comes to foreign policy, a lot of Republicans must be wondering if they actually lost. I have a hard time figuring out what President McCain would have done differently on foreign policy. It might as well been called Bush’s third term on foreign policy. Obama didn’t even replace the Secretary of Defense.
My hat is off to you, but I was trying to find someone who has to worry about re-election.
Bricker, what’s the conservative plan to fight obesity among the poor?
If it’s to declare the problem unsolvable, or worse to declare that it doesn’t need a solution because it’s “their own fault anyway”, then I guess that explains why I’m a liberal.
For what it’s worth, I agree that just making healthy food more available probably won’t be effective, at least not in the short term and without other complementary efforts to encourage healthy eating. People who’ve been eating unhealthy food for years aren’t likely to suddenly reverse old habits. But even if this idea won’t work, at least liberals recognize the need to do something.
I do also think that the root cause of why the poor eat a less healthy diet is that healthy food is less available or more expensive. But it’s been less available and more expensive for many years, so you also have to contend with the fact that they’ve been eating this way their whole life, and their parents probably ate this way, and so forth. Just because that’s the root cause doesn’t mean that eliminating that cause eliminates all those other factors that have accumulated to reinforce this behavior. But we shouldn’t just write it off as “They’re choosing not to be healthy.”
You’ll notice I don’t use the phrase “It’s societies fault”, which I think is an inaccurate conservative caricature of liberal thinking. I do think it’s not “poor people’s fault” that they’re eating an unhealthy diet, but ultimately a consequence of their poverty. But I don’t want to help them because we (society) did this too them and ought to feel guilty. I want to help them because helping people who are less fortunate is the right thing to do.
I think conservatives also generally claim to believe that helping the less fortunate is the right thing to do (at least those conservatives who wouldn’t rather blame the poor for being poor). But they have this idea that the government shouldn’t get involved with this. Which would be great if everybody was doing their part to help the poor on their own, but that’s not actually happening. It would also be great if everybody would contribute their fair share to keep the local police and fire departments running, but they don’t, so it’s a good thing we have taxes to collect money to pay for those things. As a liberal, I don’t see why helping the poor should be any different.
My plan is to wear a button on my lapel that says, “Lose weight: eat fresh fruits and vegetables!” It probably won’t work, but at least I’ll be doing something.
I guess that plan makes me a liberal?
I’m not saying “Doing something that won’t work is better than doing nothing.” I’m saying “Wanting to do something is better than not wanting to do anything.” This particular proposal I agree is flawed, and the right response to that would be to try to come up with better ideas. The wrong response is to throw up our hands and say we shouldn’t try to help those who are less fortunate than ourselves. Unfortunately that seems to be the standard conservative response.
To put it another way, I’d say liberals have good goals (e.g., help the poor), and a mix of good and bad proposals to achieve those aims. (You do admit that some social programs are effective at helping the poor, don’t you?)
Meanwhile, conservatives don’t even seem to care about helping the poor, or consider it hopeless.
If it were actually the case that liberal proposals to help the poor never work you’d have a stronger case that we’re better off not trying and saving our money. But that’s not the case. If this were a debate on whether this particular proposal will work, I’d be mostly on your side, but you’re a far cry from making the case that on the whole the liberal approach (“let’s try to help the poor”) is inferior to the conservative approach (“the poor can go fuck themselves”).
I’m an liberal leaning independent, I’ve lived in poor neighborhoods without good access to fresh groceries, and I think the idea sucks as well.
But both sides have ideas that suck. And both sides have ideas that work out pretty well. (I was on the “Republican” side of the Stillwater Bridge debate - we’ve needed that bridge for 40 years - damn the pretty view from the river - and the pollution from the cars sitting in a traffic jam in a valley everyday cannot be good for the environment either - even though I had to be on the same side of an issue as Michelle Bachman). The smoking ban in public places has made my life a lot better, and was a lefty push. Which is why I’ll always say I’m an independent - I want to evaluate IDEAS and CANDIDATES as individual units - not as a party line.
I think this is a good point. The anti-smoking efforts of the last 40 years, from increased taxes, warnings on packages, public smoking restrictions, anti-smoking PSA’s and a general push to make smoking a socially disapproved habit has been very successful in reducing smoking and its negative health effects. Every time the government took one of these steps, opponents decried it as more pointless nanny state interference, but over time, the result has been a reduction in smoking.
I see green grocer liberalism the same way; lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, lots of predictions that it hasn’t worked yet, so it will never work. But these are short term views, and social change takes place over the long term. Whether it is health care, social freedom, the environment or any one of a hundred other important issues, conservatives seem to be only concerned with the short term, what has it done for us lately. We on the left know that the inexorable arc of history is toward more progressive social action, which is why we will keep the pressure on.
A wise man once observed, “He is smart; we are right. Sooner or later, he is ours.”