Thursday, March 5, 2015

OBESITY. GLUTTONY, SLOTH AND OBAMACARE AND THE TRUE FIX THAT WOULD END THE BURDEN OF OBESITY

So today, Bloomberg editors published yet another article on fat Americans. What caught my eye is the chart near the story's top.



A bit ago, in a talk with a friend, I said to her that during my youthful days, maybe one of every 10 would have been considered fat for the times. The chart confirms seems to confirm my recollection.

You see it was closer to 15%, so 15 out of 100 rather than 10 out of 100 as I recall, but that is because I didn't live in the Midwest or the South. Thus, I didn't see the extra five fat ones.

As you can see from the chart, fatness has skyrocketed exponentially since the 1980s though it looks as if it is levelling off. My guess is that all those who want to be fat are fat and beyond that percentage people likely die from fat illnesses before that growth line can continue.

The Bloomberg story links all kinds of reverberation from having this many Americans obese including an estimate of as many as one billion gallons of gasoline burned along with associated pollution generated because of the obese.

Some would like to excuse anyone of his or her character flaws and errors. They would like to blame hormone imbalances, though they ignore overeating as a cause of those imbalances; or they would like ot blame sugar addiction, as if sugar is alive and forced anyone to consume it.

Obesity arises from gluttony and sloth. To believe in any other causality is to deny reality. In short, those who become obese fail to earn their calories. Their food intake far exceeds their energy needs.

Back on September 3rd, 2012, the New Scientist reported that a large body of evidence supports the belief that Alzheimer's is primarily a metabolic disease with some scientists calling it Type 3 diabetes.

In America, no one talks about how the chronically overweight and the obese effectively free ride on everyone, getting full on medical bailouts with Medicare and sometimes sooner with Medicaid. Because no one talks about this, no one talks about how the chronically overweight and obese should pay substantially higher medical bills insurance premiums including those deducted through FICA for Medicaid and Medicare.

Since Chief Robe Roberts wrongly blessed Obamacare,  everyone must buy medical bills paying insurance, politically called health care because Congress pays the medical bills. Health care is Washington, D.C. political-speak for Medicaid and Medicare. That is why you hear pols say "the cost of health care."

The way Obama and his cronies see it, the fit and the healthy should subsidize the unfit and the sickly. They have it all wrong.

There should be at least two pools of the insured. The fit and the unfit. In short, those who are unfit ought to pay substantial premiums as it is inevitable, nearly so, that the chronically overweight and the obese shall need substantive medical care for a good part of their lives. There is no reason why the fit ought to carry the heavy weight of the chronically overweight as well as the obese.

The pool of the unfit ought to pay for unfit others. The pool of the fit ought to pay for the fit others.

Twice a year, at the expense of the insured rather than the insurer, anyone could get test for height, weight, heart rate and blood pressure. Depending upon how far from fitness anyone is ought to govern what shall be that one's premium rate.

Actuarial scientists can figure out all of this and project their true costs and thus what their realistic premiums ought to be. As it is now, though, the chronically overweight and obese are freeloading at the all-you-can-eat buffet of life at the expense of the fit.

Obama is Americans' foremost preacher about people paying their fair shares. One would think Obama would call for the willingly slothful and gluttonous to pay their fair shares, shares that are calculable by actuarial science.

As long as Americans demand that welfare medicine exist, future Medicaid and Medicare recipients should pay substantially higher taxes for those programs based on their lack of fitness. The onus ought to get placed on those who voluntarily turn themselves into fatties through their own depraved gluttony and sloth.

Yet, many weak-minded foolish ones clamor for sin taxes on bad foods as the means by which to stop the Battle of the Bulge. However, why should responsible Americans who can eat sugar, processed meats and the like in moderation pay the price too?

The right answer of course, is to end all welfare medicine (Medicaid, Medicare). Involuntary association is violence expressed. And all violence is immoral. Forcing some to hand over their earnings, calling such stealing income taxes so others can live depraved lives, effectively getting a bailout for their behavior, is immoral.

For that is all welfare medicine is, a bailout for each recipient. Many Americans never exercise and thus never achieve max heart rate; or they smoke, drink alcohol excessively, overeat, eat a diet mostly of petro-chemical laden factory foods, or eat mostly junk carbs. After years of abuse, they sign up for their welfare medicine, provided free-to-them and paid for through immoral forceful taking with the sugary sweet name income taxes.

Here is how it ought to work. Those who want to live longer can decide to do so and thus eat right, exercise, buy medical bills paying insurance (wrongly called health insurance as a rhetorical means of deception) as a risk hedge against their unknown future. Those who don't want to live longer can get as fat as they want and die younger without the means to sustain themselves physically or financially.

Among the real world, legislator meddlers insist on forcing adults with threats of violence (fines, imprisonment), claiming that they're saving those adults from themselves while they justify robbing others to pay themselves for their rheotrical Utopian crusades.

Weight gain comes from excess calories. No other causality exists. This is inescapable biological physics.

It's time to do some food mathematics.

one pound = 3500 calories ( 0.45 kg = 3500 calories; 0.07 stones = 3500 calories)

If someone eats a mere extra 50 calories a day over their daily caloric needs, within 70 days, that one shall gain one pound. What amounts to an extra 50 calories?

• 4 ounces of Coca Cola (4.28 oz; 118.3 ml)
• one-third of one ounce of a Nestle Butterfinger Bar (0.38 oz; 10.9 g)
• one-third of one ounce of a Kit Kat bar (0.34 oz; 9.65 g)

In one year, that one would gain a bit more than five pounds ( 5.2 lbs; 2.36 kgs; 0.37 stones). In five years, that one would gain a whopping 26 pounds (11.8 kg; 1.86 stones) and in ten years, the gain comes to lardy 52 pounds (23.6 kg; 3.71 stones).

If you are unsure about how your weight measures up, check out this easy to use calculation:

Maximum Weight Limit (MWL) - Screening for Obesity-Over weight by George Fernandez

It's my hope for all who need to do so, to awaken to their personal errors, to feel sorrow and then to turn, working to effect their own salvation. Until all do, nothing shall change.

Here is how I recall what Americans looked like during my youth, especially American women.

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Monday, June 9, 2014

ALMOST 17 MILLION AMERICANS STILL NOT WORKING FOR A LIVING!

Many Americans wish they could bitch about dead end jobs they don't have right now.

So today, I read in Forbes yet another egg head economist, Bill Conerly, raving about how "total employment ... now exceeds the pre-recession level."

By "pre-recession" I assume the guy means before the Banking Crisis of 2008 or at True Peak GDP, which came at the end of Q4 2007.


Let's have a look at reality instead of Conerly's Ph.D.-in-economics fantasy.




Employment incidence of workers to working age population shows that Americans have fallen back to 1987 Reagan era employment levels.

Mind you, Employment Incidence accounts for approximately 80%  of the workers who contribute to GDP. Employment incidence reveals the ratio of jobs added or lost to total population growth of all who can work legally from an age standpoint. 

Employment incidence has fallen an eye-popping -6.1% since Peak True GDP, hit in Q4 2007. The annualized decline from the peak has run at slightly -1% a year ( -0.95%). 

From when Nixon slammed shut the gold window in August 1971, peak employment incidence hit at the end of November 1999, during the end of the Clinton Good Times. Since hitting the peak, employment incidence has fallen a jaw-dropping -10.8%, falling at a rate a bit more than three-forth's of  -1% a year (-0.79%).

If we were to assume that as many Americans who were working at the peak of the Clinton Good Times would like to work today, then there are almost 17 million Americans who want to work but who are out of work right now! There are two full New York Cities worth of American workers sitting idle! 

Here is how our projected unemployed Americans who would like to work compare to the top 15 cities of the USA by head count. 





Eleven Philadelphias sit idle every day! So too, twenty San Francicsos idle every day!

17 million Americans kicking about wanting to work is one-fifth of all Germans, one-quarter of all Brits, one-third of all Koreans, almost half of all Canadians, not quite three-fourths of all Australians and all Dutchmen. That's right, 17 million willing to work Americans constitute the entire population of the Netherlands!

With fewer workers and True Wages falling, is it any wonder that True GDP has fallen a walloping -42.8%,  falling at an annual rate of -8.9%!  



Relative to a growing population, is it any wonder why ever fewer Americans are buying cars

To read this chart, the lows are the better numbers. The Drive ratios compare how many Americans there are for each new car and light truck sold.



Should it surprise you that entrepreneurs running firms like Uber seek to capitalize on ever poorer Americans by creating the renting economy rather than the owning one?

So who can you thank for wrecking the economy? You can thank successive U.S. Congresses during the Bush-Obama Bad Times for crossing the Rubicon pushing True Debt to True GDP to 100% to fund unneeded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can thank Alan Greenspan and his successor Ben Bernanke for inflation of the biggest credit bubble in mankind's history.  


Note: The data excludes proprietors, private household employees, unpaid volunteers, farm employees, and the unincorporated self-employed. 


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