Here’s a letter that I just sent to the CBS Radio Network:
On your 9am (EDT) national
news broadcast today you reported (1) that, across the U.S., families
now face more difficulty feeding "hungry mouths," and (2) that, because
of today’s financial worries, many ordinary Americans "are overeating."
Are you not struck by this inconsistency?
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
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Playing devil's advocate a bit, why is this inconsistent? The two groups could be mutually exclusive.
My neighbor on the left who just lost his job might have 5 kids, while my neighbor on the right is a childless executive. If my neighbor on the right overeats because he's worried, that doesn't change the fact that my jobless neighbor on the left is going to struggle to feed his kids now.
True, they could indeed be mutually exclusive.
But the media tends to make generalized statements like these, without any explicit mention of mutual exclusivity and entirely devoid of proper evidence (quite often even unethical manipulation of data) as a way to appeal to emotion.
Bryan Caplan is correct. Most people really do have stupid, bone-headed biases.
A proper way to determine if some people are eating less while others are eating more (not subjective terms like overeating) would be to do statistical work, adjusting for other factors like changes in exercise, by using the Mifflin-St. Jeor formula, which has been shown to be the most accurate indication of a person's basal metabolic rate.
Either way, I don't trust anything the meatheads in the media say.
Wellll….. ummmmmmmmmm….. see…..
…..a lot of fat people are having trouble feeding there “hungry mouths”?
I worked in the public schools of South Dallas and never once encountered any child who appeared to be malnourished.
The overnourished were everywhere.
Again, I'd call it journalistic malpractice, but…
Maybe older people (like me) overeat as we sweat the loss of retirement we expected, while younger people go hungry as we pressure our statesmen to pressure the younger people to cough up the rents.
Obesity, in economic terms, is defined as a surplus of calories going to waist.
Business loan bailout
Clearly, it's all about mortgages for trailer trash.
The two comments may refer to different population segments in the US.
The decrease of income for poorer people will make them cut their food expenses and having "difficulty feeding hungry mouths".
Meanwhile, rich americans are losing more money in absolute terms but still have enough savings to live and buy food. The stress they feel because of their loss of status and wealth make them eat more.
Scott,
You could be right, but it is likely to be just the opposite of what you described in your example. Poorer sections of our society have higher incidence of obesity. So you need to invert your example. Your neighbor on the left ( one with 5 kids ) might be the one overeating, where as the neighbor on your right (executive) might be malnourished.
Suppose I were homeless and made around $40 per week collecting recyclables, how would I budget my money? $10 would go to the local YMCA so I could take a shower once a week; hygiene is important. $10 would go towards beer; I'm a bit of a wino, you know. The final $20 would go for two meal at the local Sizzler steakhouse, where they have an all-you-can-eat salad bar. So you see, I am forced to alternate between binging and fasting due to my economic circumstances. Surely as an economist, you are familiar with the depths people sunk to, to get something to eat, during the last GR8 Depression. Perhaps this 2nd GR8 depression will be a little better. They didn't recycle bottles back then, nor did they have a CRV, did they? We've come a long way, baby!
Trumpit,
I feel your pain. I tried a similar strategy to lose weight. It worked.
Why have you reduced yourself to picking cans? Did you just get released from prison?
I can't believe in our obese nation that anyone is hungry in a real sense. Moving on to more pressing problems like the $50 trillion hydrogen bomb about to vaporize the American economy…
We won't have any Gr8 Depression, not the unemployment anyway. I'm more concerned that we'll starve investment, particularly R&D, and that we'll impose even more confiscatory rents on my children, not to mention me, as we enact the illusion that all of our "life savings" (explicitly the target of the bailout) purchased real productive means rather than confiscatory rents.
And as we do it, we'll discuss anything else. Most of us here agree that Social Security is a rent, but we won't acknowledge that our "private investments" were rent-seeking, even while the Fed and the Treasury exchange them for entitlements to tax revenue in plain view.
The payroll tax surplus peaked this year, and the silence is deafening.
Trumpit,
When you become homeless, move to NYC. There the government really takes care of the homeless. It spends $1 Billion annually on the homeless. I can't find the stats, but last I checked that was around $250K per homeless person. With all that government spending, I'm sure that my local wino lives like a king! He must. The government is the only entity which can really care for the indigent and I'm certain that nobody spends the Billion clams New Yorkers fork over more efficiently than the NYC government.
In the late 70's and economist whose name escapes me made a pitch backed-up with the facts to show that if federal spending were held to a constant number for any three-year period of our history to then the budget would be balanced at the end of the three years and the deficit would then become a lesser and lesser factor. I have not looked in the last ten years but I'll bet we are still pretty close to being able to do that very same thing.
Please tell me that I'm not the only who caught Rudy's brilliant pun. That was beautiful man.
Please tell me that I'm not the only who caught Rudy's brilliant pun. That was beautiful man.
Whoops. Sorry about the double post.
The payroll tax surplus peaked this year, and the silence is deafening.
Maybe because they'll shoot anyone who breathes a word of it.
Let the printing presses roll.
I had heard, at one time, I've never checked the figures, but San Fran is up there for handing benefits out to homeless too.
For a non-homeless, non-welfare recipient to spend $250K in NYC, they would first have to make almost $500K because taxes are almost 50% (state + local + federal).
I moved to a neighbouring state. Apparently only the homeless can afford to live in NYC. Apparently San Fran too.
NYC may be spending a billion per year on the homeless but I'd bet you one homeless person's $250K that 95% of that money goes to administration costs. The homeless barely benefit from these programs. However, I'll bet that same $250k there are no homeless or hungry bureaucrats.
Unfortunately, cheap food makes you fat.
I used to think, we live in such a great country, where even the poor people are fat!
Later I realized that if you are poor you can only afford to eat food that is fattening.
(I here refer to high glycemic foods. Not high-fat foods. The lipid hypothesis is bs.)