OK, the statistics don't lie. Indeed, they are consistent with everyday observation. Essentially, in wealthy western societies (and some others too) poorer people, starting in childhood, tend to be fatter than their richer peers. Hardly news. But the conclusion reached here, that poverty CAUSES obesity and the solution is to eliminate poverty, is simply preposterous. The good folk who earn their living by researching such matters need to look more deeply into the third class of factors that could provide the causal linkage between being poorer than others and eating too much. Of course they won't. The political incorrectness of such a probe would have them sacked before they opened their Excel spreadsheets.

Junk food is cheap. Very cheap. I've heard it claimed that a healthy diet is more expensive than a rubbish diet but I don't know if that's true: vegetables are also very cheap. I think the best thing to do is put up the taxes on junk so that it becomes unaffordable to those on low incomes and they are forced to live on a diet of mostly vegetables which is what nutritionists generally recommend.

Exactly!

And given we fight this war successfully, actually, improve everyone's circumstances and myriad wealth creation opportunities!

And we can achieve most of this without ever ratcheting up pay scales. But rather, effectively ending the no win never ending price wage spiral!

First to go must be the do bugger all, profit demanding middleman.

And none more urgent than those who represent officialdom/entirely unnecessary red-tape!

Simply eliminating the middleman and replacing that with a direct producer to consumer model, would in the first instance, literally halve the cost of living and or, doing business!

And considerable savings/time and money can be made/saved, simply by removing entirely counterproductive and nonessential state governments!

The second element is more than halving energy costs; and very doable if rolled out as publicly provided not for profit models; albeit, as small competing for customer share models, rather than self defeating monopolies.

And if government monopolies are bad, private ones are ten times worse!

The third piece of this puzzle needs to be a return to affordable housing and given a supply and demand construct, err of the side of supply!

And we have two tax laws, negative gearing and capital gains; that could be finally and effectively harnessed to do just that; and explained more fully in another post!

Other than that, we need massive tax reform to massively simplify and even more massively lower it; and doable, if we can finally oblige everyone doing business here, to finally pay a fair share/the same as everyone else!

Meaning many of the currently passed on costs can be eliminated and consequent prices lowered!

I have no objection whatsoever to the industrious earning a decent quid, just those who expect others to do all of it for them; or just price gouge; and just because they can or are allowed or actively encouraged to do so!?

We need a New Deal that reestablishes the idea of a fair go and a fair days pay for a fair days pay!

After all, wages are just 16% averaged of the cost of doing business!
Rhrosty.

Wages around 16% of the bottom line, tax 30%?

If you could lower either one but not both by around 40%, which would have the greatest impact on the bottom line? Well?

Wages averaging 16%, energy bill around 32% of total costs?

If you could halve the cost of one or the other, which would you chose as having the largest impact on the bottom line/transport/water? Well?

Yet we have this myopic focus on wages and as they're reduced in real terms, so also is the wealth creating discretionary spend!

Some folks just need to lift their heads out of the warm and comfortable if eternally dark places some of them have oh so clearly placed them!
Rhrosty.

I just did my week's shopping, and I was struck how cheap vegetables were, considering you can spin them out quite a bit: you can knock up a decent meal, with silver beet (cheap and good quality at the moment), a bit of lettuce, tomato and zucchini, and a couple of sausages, or a bit of steak, or a couple of chicken legs, all for well under $ 5.

I notice that bloke on 'Struggle Street', with $ 39 to blow from selling scrap metal, blew the lot on a meal for himself and his mate and a few chocolate bars. They could have fed the whole family for $39. Then the dipstick son pinches something from his dad and they have to go off in their cars, looking for him.

Yeah, it's a struggle getting of the couch from watching daytime Tv, and having to physically manhandle all that gut.

Tough. Hard lives. Struggle.

A bit like Bangla Desh ? I don't think so.

Jeez, in my day .......

Yes, I agree we should have much higher taxes on junk food from fast food outlets and high calorie foods sold in supermarkets. Obesity is a health epidemic.

We can't be seen to just pick on the smokers and over-eaters though, when alcohol consumption causes at least as much health problems as the other two.
We need much higher taxes on alcohol and cigarettes too.

High or higher taxes on junk food will not solve the problem of obesity. It will only penalise the poor for their choices.

Some folk choose to eat junk rather than healthy foods even if the latter is cheaper. Maybe this is a function of their education, or lack thereof. Or maybe it is habit forming.

If one holds that many junk food eaters are irrational then taxing their meals will not modify their eating habits. By virtue of their irrationality they will not be swayed by taxes.

Instead what may happen is that they will spend less on their health and even less on their children.

Rather that penalise folk for poor choices I suggest reward them (through subsidies) for making good choices.

Hi Jonathan,

Are you suggesting that 'good foods' should be subsidised heavily and 'crap foods' should be taxed more heavily ?

i.e., make healthy foods cheaper, and crap foods dearer ?

Sound good to me. Just leave cask wine alone.

Joe

This article is complete and utter BS.

The author of this article is of the opinion that since low economic status and obesity is linked, then "solving" poverty will "solve" obesity.

There is a direct correlation between low intelligence and obesity. Dumb people eat trashy food and do not look after their health. Dumb people smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol to excess, and take illegal drugs. Dumb people rob banks and steal cars and get caught and go to jail. Dumb people live on welfare forever because they are too dumb to get a job and too dumb to keep one when they get one.

Dumb people live in dumb communities where they beat their wives and screw their kids. Their kids are dumb because they are born that way. They do not want to go to school and they make their schools into war zones when they are forced to go. Our Socialist teachers do not support NAPLAN testing because such universal testing will clearly display that races are not equal.

There is also a direct correlation between certain ethnicities and crime, obesity, substance abuse, and welfare. Our socialist teachers refuse to support NAPLAN testing because such testing will glaringly display that ethnicity and low educational attainment is also linked.

But hey, let's pretend that the truth does not exist and that everybody is equal. And when reality does not conform to ideology we will just keep chucking ever more taxpayer money trying to get equal outcomes between smart people and dumb people. And when that fails, just keep chucking more money at the problem. And when that fails.....

There is a whole social worker industry out there totally dependent on "solving" the problem of "inequality" and there is a whole political apparatus that is dependent upon increasing the number of dumb people to be supported by smart people. The problem is that dumb people keep breeding a lot faster than smart people, or they are being imported into smart societies in such numbers that sooner of later, prosperous societies that will not discriminate will eventually become poor dumb societies.

//If one holds that many junk food eaters are irrational then taxing their meals will not modify their eating habits. By virtue of their irrationality they will not be swayed by taxes.//

I would argue strongly that smokers are good deal less rational than people who are overly fond of pie-and-chips. But despite their irrationality, we know that increasing taxes on cigarettes lead to a decrease their consumption.

https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0146.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/

http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/13-5-impact-of-price-increases-on-tobacco-consumpt

Excessive drinking is also irrational. Once again, we know that increasing taxes will reduce alcohol consumption despite the irrationality of drinkers.

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/10report/chap06a.pdf

http://www.bu.edu/today/2015/higher-alcohol-taxes-lead-to-less-binge-drinking/

http://www.cancer.org.au/content/pdf/ACDPA/110930-Final-ACDPA-PS-Alcohol-Taxation-position-paper.pdf

What makes you think increasing taxes on junk food won't reduce its consumption as well, in spite of the irrationality of people who like it?

I would like to eat eye fillet and lamb backstrap more often then I do but I haven't got the income and have to make do with cheaper cuts of meat. If you make, say, chicken nuggets (highly processed, extremely low in nutritional value) prohibitively expensive then poor people will have to make do with something more affordable like fresh chicken (an excellent source of lean protein, and at around $10/kg for thigh fillets an absolute steal).

//Rather that penalise folk for poor choices I suggest reward them (through subsidies) for making good choices.//

Oh good. Just throw some money at the problem, that'll fix it. If the Government wants to make my weekly shopping bill lower then I can't complain too much. I might be able to afford eye fillet more often. I'm just not sure that helping Toni afford eye fillet more often by reducing his fruit & veg expenditure is the best use of public health expenditure.

Eye Fillet ?! God, we used to dream of eye fillet. Sometimes the butcher used to let us look at it through the shop window. We had to make do with out-of-date sausage mince.

What rubbish LEGO!

Obesity is a scourge across the board in our society.
Just look at all our overweight rich business people in both the public and private sectors (eg Gina Rhinehart). There are overweight people in all professions.
They didn't get where they are without some intelligence.

I find the 'dumbest' people in our society are those idiots who feel the need to constantly put others down for their life choices in order to feel big about themselves.

//We had to make do with out-of-date sausage mince.//

Out of date sausage mince? We used to dream of out-of-date sausage mince. We used to have go down the local dog track and hope we could chase down the mechanical rabbit.

Mechanical rabbit ?! Christ, we used to dream of mechanical rabbit. Or dog, for that matter. Sometimes a trainer would put a dog down and give us the off-cuts. But only after we got into the rabbit-harness for a few rounds of the track.

But try telling that to a young person, they just won't believe you.