myelo: I think educating kids about health, including diet and exercise, is just as important as reading, spelling, and math. And "educating kids about health" withing the government-run system would be just as ineffective as in "reading, spelling, and math". I do not dispute here that the goal (of drastically changing american culture) may be good. I only claim that creating a government program for it will be a complete waste.
What if 25% of kids graduating from the public school system were illiterate? Over 25% of kids graduating from the public school system
are illiterate! They may be able to read a printed paragraph aloud but that is not literacy if the school graduate reading
comprehension is at the 4-th grade level.
Would you say they're just stupid, it's their fault-- what's the problem? Yes, major part of the problem is that some are plain stupid though no fault can be assigned, unless you blame Creator or principles of genetics or the fact that our technology and customs stopped natural selection from weeding out the bad genes and habits.
In a mobile society like american one, smart capable individuals move out and congregate in different neighbourhoods and socialise in different circles, which leads dumb people breeding mostly with dumb people and not having smart people living next to them to set a lifestyle example.
As for "what's the problem...", I do not deny that the "problem" exists. As do many others. For example, gravity is a major problem - if only we could cut Earth surface gravity in half, we would drastically reduce fuel consumption, airplane range, heart failures, low water pressure in the faucets and women's breasts would be much perkier.
But since there is no solution to this problem, what's the point of speculating about it or throwing tax money at it?
Or, if they don't have insurance they get medical care anyway, increasing taxes for medicaid and increasing medical costs... So you've discovered the philosophical concept of "moral hazard" - socially reducing porential penalties for risky behavior leeds to increase in that kind of behavior! Forgive loans and people will take more unreasonably risky loans, subcidise treatment of consequences of obesity, and people will be more obese, guarantee pensions and people will save less. Congratulations!
At least that problem - unlike gravity, dumb genes or bad culture - is legislatively created in the recent past. So we could remove it if we wanted to.
-dead-: Ahem the point of the article is that it is the general public who are "lazy americans" (as you put it). Good point!
Or maybe Wlfgng was not clear. He was talking specifically about people who were paying taxes. Since way over 50% of US taxes if paid by way below half of the population, calling that minority "general population" was not correct on his part.
If I may offer a different wording - "We - general taxpayers, numerical minority of the population - should not be paying for what basically amounts to "lazy americans".
miko
