I knew there was something nasty about raisins.
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I knew there was something nasty about raisins.
I thought they were dried up gonads from all those child sex changes taking place in California?
I don't know if I'd go as far as the headline suggests, but good points.
I tried kale, ick. But again, who cares if people suffer because of your collective vision? It's for the cause man!Quote:
The greatest food in human history
In terms of cost-per-calorie, no locavore, organic veggie can compete with the McDouble
By KYLE SMITH
What is “the cheapest, most nutritious and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history” Hint: It has 390 calories. It contains 23g, or half a daily serving, of protein, plus 7% of daily fiber, 20% of daily calcium and so on.
Also, you can get it in 14,000 locations in the US and it usually costs $1. Presenting one of the unsung wonders of modern life, the McDonald’s McDouble cheeseburger.
The argument above was made by a commenter on the Freakonomics blog run by economics writer Stephen Dubner and professor Steven Leavitt, who co-wrote the million-selling books on the hidden side of everything.
Dubner mischievously built an episode of his highly amusing weekly podcast around the debate. Many huffy back-to-the-earth types wrote in to suggest the alternative meal of boiled lentils. Great idea. Now go open a restaurant called McBoiled Lentils and see how many customers line up.
But we all know fast food makes us fat, right? Not necessarily. People who eat out tend to eat less at home that day in partial compensation; the net gain, according to a 2008 study out of Berkeley and Northwestern, is only about 24 calories a day.
The outraged replies to the notion of McDouble supremacy — if it’s not the cheapest, most nutritious and most bountiful food in human history, it has to be pretty close — comes from the usual coalition of class snobs, locavore foodies and militant anti-corporate types. I say usual because these people are forever proclaiming their support for the poor and for higher minimum wages that would supposedly benefit McDonald’s workers. But they’re completely heartless when it comes to the other side of the equation: cost.
Driving up McDonald’s wage costs would drive up the price of burgers for millions of poor people. “So what?” say activists. Maybe that’ll drive people to farmers markets.
For the average poor person, it isn’t a great option to take a trip to the farmers market to puzzle over esoteric lefty-foodie codes. (Is sustainable better than organic? What if I have to choose between fair trade and cruelty-free?) Produce may seem cheap to environmentally aware blond moms who spend $300 on their highlights every month, but if your object is to fill your belly, it is hugely expensive per calorie.
Junk food costs as little as $1.76 per 1,000 calories, whereas fresh veggies and the like cost more than 10 times as much, found a 2007 University of Washington survey for the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. A 2,000-calorie day of meals would, if you stuck strictly to the good-for-you stuff, cost $36.32, said the study’s lead author, Adam Drewnowski.
“Not only are the empty calories cheaper,” he reported, “but the healthy foods are becoming more and more expensive. Vegetables and fruits are rapidly becoming luxury goods.” Where else but McDonald’s can poor people obtain so many calories per dollar?
And as for organic — the Abercrombie and Fitch jeans of food — if you have to check the price, you can’t afford it. (Not that it has any health benefits, as last year’s huge Stanford meta-study showed.)
Moreover, produce takes more time to prepare and spoils quickly, two more factors that effectively drive up the cost. Any time you’re spending peeling vegetables is time you aren’t spending on the job.
Activists will go anywhere to wave the banner of caring and plant their flagpole of social justice right in the foot of the working class.
Forcing New Yorkers to pay unnecessary high prices, they’ve managed to keep Walmart out of the five boroughs of New York City. The City Council of Washington, DC, recently passed a bill, designed specifically to punish only Walmart, which would mandate a super-minimum wage to benefit a small number of employees while effectively placing a surtax on every Walmart shopper. (Walmart responded by saying it was canceling plans for three stores. The bill may yet be vetoed by Mayor Vincent Gray.)
Fuel prices, like food prices, disproportionately hit the poor, so do-gooders do everything they can to raise energy costs by blocking new fuel sources like the Keystone XL pipelines and fracking. And they are always up for higher gasoline taxes and regulating coal-burning energy plants to death.
If the macrobiotic Marxists had their way, of course, there’d be no McDonald’s, Walmart or Exxon, because they have visions of an ideal world in which everybody bikes to work with a handwoven backpack from Etsy that contains a lunch grown in the neighborhood collective.
That’s not going to work for the average person, but who cares if they go hungry because they can’t afford a burger anymore? Let them eat kale!
Speech now I know they drank the koodaid and even if they didn't that diet will kill you
His connection of selective dots is interesting, but highly suspect.
Are you seeing dots, maybe you drank the koolaid
OK, so exactly how are poor folk supposed to shop at Whole Foods? Food stamps only go so far when buying organic arugula.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
P.S. Plus they don't have them in your most poor neighborhoods.
Progressive elites pay lip service to the needs of the poor and create programs for them that don't work and expect the middle class to foot the bill.
In a tight job market with low wages, and higher prices, and service industry jobs more important after manufacturing higher wage work became increasingly unavailable, then logic indicates higher wages in the lower wage income classes, to better circulate the currency. It's a lack of circulation that has stymied economic growth in a consumer driven economy.
Even supply siders are recognizing that not enough is trickling down to expand growth.
Unless the private sector recognizes the need for expanded growth there will be no middle class.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
Oh they do.. as soon as the gvt gets out of the way you'll see plenty of economic growth
I'm pretty sure I have the next response from Tal memorized...Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
There is nothing stopping the private sector from seeking growth and expansion. They have been doing great through a faltering global economy. Corporate profits are off the charts. If the government is in the way then they sure ain't stopping anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
Or slowing down anything either.
Um.. yes the government is holding them back...
Its called Obamacare...
In other words under Obamanomics the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, exactly what you whine about daily. It's not that complicated Tal, if you keep growing government, expanding regulations and mandates and protecting your favorites it's the big, rich and powerful you scorn that benefit while the little guy gets choked out.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
Corporations are figuring out how to profit from it, just give 'em another year. Leveraging investments is what they do.
It's been 6 years of Obamanomics and thus far the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Right?Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
Corporations do what they want no matter what the government does. Always has. Corporate profits have gone up for 30 years, wages have not.Quote:
Originally Posted by speechlesstx
Profits-
CHARTS: Corporate Profits Have Skyrocketed Over Last Three Years | ThinkProgress
Wages-
http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm
Study: CEO Pay Increased 127 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Over Last 30 Years | ThinkProgress
Expand your data to 30 years and get a bigger picture of the wage trends.Quote:
Originally Posted by speechlesstx
Dude, nice try at dodging the fact that under Obamanomics the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Even more ironic than that is that you guys honestly believe more regulations, mandates and an ever expanding government is going to alter that balance.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
Why do you dodge the fact that wages have been stagnant for 30 years? Why is this just about the black guy and NOT about the white guys before him?Quote:
Originally Posted by speechlesstx
Doesn't matter even though that's racist, but nonetheless, corporation have done well but have not trickled a damn thing for 30 years.
Smoothy - that doesn't even make sense. LOL!
Who's wages? Not my wages. Not anyone's wages I know.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
Welfare cheacks aren't wages paid for breeding and occupying space.
Instead of the "poor" blaming business owners for 'keepin them down" why don't they get off their butts and start their own businesses...
Or is it they are simply too dumb and lack any marketible skills to be able to do something of value to another human?
Well you run in the circles that 99% of us will never see, and we already know what a snob you are. Lovable, but a pure non empathetic snob nonetheless. Stuck up to put it simply.
I've got no empathy for the lazy... if they want something better... they need to work for it and earn it. If they are waiting for it to be handed to them... they have a really long wait.
Sorry.. I got were I have with a lot of hard work... and not one bit of help most of the whiners have available to them.
I grew up poor... and my parents had made great strides to rise over the real poverty they grew up in...
I'm no BIll Gates and never will be... but I'm comfortable middle class in the somewhat well off county I live in.
I have empathy for people born with Downs Syndrom and ceribal palsy... they aren't responsible for their condition... and nothing they can do will change it.
Working poor people who get up and go to work everyday are not part of those lazy people are they? And how much has your wages gone up and why? Promotions, COLA? Public, private or government sector?
Damn Tal, how in the hell did you manage to turn this into a racial thing? Oh I get it, when I said "poor" that was a dog whistle right? So repeating one of the most popular liberal memes of all time it becomes racist? Man, you guys have some awfully confusing (and extremely fluid) rules, liberalism is like Calvinball.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
FYI, you cannot use the disparity between CEO pay and the average worker and or minimum wage rates to prove wages have been "stagnant" for thirty years. Wages don't remain stagnant for most people, they move on, get a better job. I worked for minimum wage once, in 1976. At sixteen and still in high school the boss wasn't going to start me at managerial rates. You cannot pay someone your magical "living wage" to start their career dropping fries in a basket and dunking them in oil or the "value menu" would start at $9.95.
You need to get a clue (or just stop spreading the myth), the vast majority of workers don't go to work at McDonald's for minimum wage and stay at that rate for the rest of their life.
Are they too lazy to find a better job... or just itoo stupid to be able to get one that's better and higher paying?Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
Your value as an employee is based on your skill and value you have to the employer.
If you can be replaced by a trained monkey... or someone off the street within hours... then you don't have much value.
My first job out of college only paid $16k a year... I had maxed out on student loans that were 8.5% interest (yes Federally guaranteed ones)... I managed to live on that and pay off my debts (took 10 years to pay off that student loan)... and I moved on to better and better jobs all the while increasing my skill set with each job. And with it my pay and value to the next employer.
Maybe neither lazy, or stupid. Just stuck. As you said, it took you years of hard work to show progress. Me too. Seems like every time I wanted a dollar more I had to take a test to qualify. That's a lot of sitting at a desk juggling homework and the need to eat, and feed a family. Wasn't easy, or cheap.
We have lost millions of those types of jobs now though, and service and retail work aren't exactly a road map to success for the average guy. Better than nothing, but wholly inadequate in today's world. School?? I am all for it, but those costs have gone up higher than the ability to pay for it. I've watched younger people work their butts off for a chance at hope and dreams of better.
But a tight job market in a transitional period from major manufacturing, to the service industry is one helluva national adjustment.
Its always easier and less stressful to stay in the job you have.. the one you know... than to look for and find something a little better. However unless you expand your knowledge base... odds of advancement will be limited.
And yes.. that is why many of these people never go beyond what they do.
It's their job to seek out opportunities... not some "Rich" person to do it for them.
Their future really is in their own hands... the key is how hard are they willing to work towards it.
No its never easy... you get what you put into it.
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