Huge deficits and waist lines. Fat Poor Americans: The Ignorant Choice.

I am tired, so this is a little ranty...

Here we go.

With all the talk about the American Deficit focusing on buzz words and favorite whine topics and blame tossing. I would like to make a couple suggestions and burst a couple of myths.

Firstly: The deficit is not due to health care costs. Healthcare costs are but a symptom of another problem. But to discuss how the insurance billing works there are two key items to understand.

Years ago there were two laws passed regarding insurance:
1: A doctor or healthcare provider cannot charge an insurance carrier more than a patient.
2: An insurance company can decide fair costs on what is billed.

The result is basically-this: A doctor must charge $1,000 for a procedure to make 100 dollars off of it. Depending on what is done and the materials used an insurance company can decide that they will only pay 20% of what is billed. This means a doctor must charge much higher than wanted in order to make ends meet. They cannot charge a patient less which is what it is that leads to 10,000 dollar one hour visits to the Emergency Room. Net result is an industry that has spiraled costs out of control to guarantee it's own profit margins.

However, the debate on the deficit and costs go like this:

Republicans / Conservatives really enjoy using the deficit as a call to battle. That combined with hot button moral issues constantly drive terrified voters to office. They will never truly even attempt to alter such issues because it is their security for voters-it keeps them in power.

Democrats do tend to raise taxes. This is to pay for spending. Republicans like to increase spending, and cut any civil benefits to pay for it. In essence to halt public benefits to pay for pork barrel projects.

The basic premise of Pork Barrel spending is actually beneficial. It shifts money into areas that need help-it puts people to work in regions thus kicking the local economy in a very good way. There are certain types of this pork barrel philosophy that are destructive.

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War: War is the ultimate pork barrel project. Especially when many politicians have direct connection to companies which maintain defense contracts. War causes billions of tax payer dollars to shift through all the defense contractors swiss accounts all tax free because many have off shore addresses or a home office in Dubai. To maintain war you must maintain a cause. In recent years it is a generated threat in the form of Terrorism. As the impact fades and people withdraw support – here comes the terror alerts.

This is a conspiracy for profit. Many claim NWO but at it's simplest. It is about profit and Congressmen/Senators having guaranteed fluff jobs for millions a year after office. The war on terror is nothing more than people dieing so others can make money. Whether 9/11 was an insider attack or terrorist is irrelevant to the now.

Now it is all about money. All about keeping money flowing into certain bank accounts.

The next Pork Barrel type we are looking at is a subsidy.

Subsidies are more sinister in many ways because nobody really thinks about them. A subsidy is welfare for using or not using products. This means if you want a paycheck: just open a business for product X.

Of the agricultural subsidies the most evil is Corn.

In the United States Corn is a massive money maker in everything. The Taxpayer pays the farmer for corn-and corn products-even if that corn is not used due to these subsidies. This has caused a wave of ethanol production because even if the product did not get adopted-they would make a measurable profit due to the Corn Subsidies.

This subsidy has a direct threat to all living in the U.S. and abroad from High Fructose Corn Syrup-recent renamed “Corn Sugar” due to the reputation it was getting. Any corn products are applicable to the subsidy.

That is right. The reason HFCS is in EVERYTHING from soda's to bread and everything in between is for the reason it is subsidized. As an example of this: The Twinkie. Twinkies make a profit for Hostess even if it does not sell because it was made from products 100% subsidized.

Agricultural Subsidy-Corn


Essentially the U.S. Taxpayers are being charged to put high fructose corn syrup in everything, we are paying taxes to give our kids obesity and diabetes. We are paying taxes for our kids who are not obese to kill people in other countries. All because of farmer welfare.

Write your senators and congressmen. In this time of dire economics when China could wind up dictating American fiscal policy we need to tighten our belts in more ways than one. Write them and demand Corn subsidies be halted immediately.

This will save us billions a year from the subsidies. BUT, it will also save billions if not trillions down the road as the average health increases nation wide. This is win win for the people. All it means is the obscenely wealthy will get a fraction less money going forward.

The deficit has nothing to do with NPR or Art grants.. Has nothing to do with Food Stamps or even illegal aliens. Those areas are chump change to the billions every year going to mega companies in the form of subsidy welfare.

The Corporate beast is eating the fat taxpayers wallets first.
Stop railing on civil benefit programs and go after the real culprits already.

reply to post by lordtyp0


Explanation: S&F!

Bumped for Justice!

Personal Discosure: Can I please get that with an upsized diet soda as part of mine (order).[= die t sod aspartemine]

OL sips on slurpy!,... whilst waiting.

I have to watch how many threads I'm consuming... this thread all most had too many grams of the corn syrup crap!

P.S.

Ugh, Aspartame is pretty bad too.
Plain old sugar is bad enough but far far better for you than HFCS and aspartame. Sweeteners that were originally used as degreasers are horrific.

So you're arguing that the reason poor people in america are fatter than rich people is because the food they eat is subsidized? And the food that's subsidized is unhealthy?

You don't think the fact that they're poor doesn't cause them to indulge?

reply to post by jonnywhite

So you're arguing that the reason poor people in america are fatter than rich people is because the food they eat is subsidized? And the food that's subsidized is unhealthy?

You don't think the fact that they're poor doesn't cause them to indulge?

No.. I think it was clear... I was saying that subsidies should be halted to assist with both the deficit and the obesity epidemic.

This is correct, things like Oil Subsidies, companies that post record profits year after year after year even in a recession get free money from our government.

Why should OUR tax money go to a for profit company? Why should our tax money pay companies that post massive profits?

Corn is one of these subsidies that boggles my mind why we are paying for it not to be grown. Of course does anyone know of a private farm anymore? Or are they all giant farming conglomerates?

Excellent topic Lord.

To me this seems a case of government intervention affecting the health of average citizens.

For example: Pretend that the government of WA steps in and decides to offer subsidy for grape growers who produce Chardonnay. They may offer a subsidy of 50% based off the last three years harvest, and hope that by limiting the supply, they can drive up prices in the short term. Those growers that accept it, will destroy their crops in order to qualify for "free money" and are not helping their local economy. Suddenly, you have lost possibly 20 - 30 jobs. Some of which will go onto govt assistance just to get by.

The problem I have with any form of Govt. subsidy is that it only rewards the primary producers, and not the workers who otherwise would be caring, harvesting and transporting these crops. This does not help the local economy, and in the end does not help the national economy. There are a lot of people involved in any stage of production, and any subsidy negates a chance of gaining an honest wage. No money for the supervisors, the workers, the truck drivers, the harvester drivers, the admin, the sales people. By accepting a subsidy, you are denying those people the right to work.

This subject actually gets me quite angry, as I have seen the first hand effects of such schemes. Not only does it limit production, but also allows for disease, aridness and pestilence to creep thru the land. An untended land is ripe for outbreaks of disease, that can easily spread to other propertys, it also attracts pests, and the dust stirred up from the lack of a regular watering schedule can easily carry soil-based fungus and other nastys into neighboring farms/properties.

It also encourages a laziness on the part of growers. Depending on a Govt. subsidy to NOT produce crops is akin to being on the dole. You have the land. Work it and make an honest buck, rather then depending on tax-payers to provide for you.

Any economy depends on the flow of money from a producer to a worker. It's that simple. By cutting off an opportunity for that to happen, you are effectively shutting down a local economy in favor of a short term buck. And as a tax payer, it makes me disappointed to see my wages (which are created from me working the land) going to other producers who are only thinking of the short term effects.

In short: Providing any form of assistance to NOT produce what you grow is just insane. It not only shuts down the local economy, but allows an opportunity for heavily modified chemicals to be introduced to supplement the lack of naturally occurring foodstuffs. It makes me angry. And I'm a type of farmer.

Cheers
Shane

p.s - I'm going to get back to this topic this weekend. I don't think my post actually covered many points.

reply to post by shamus78


Awesome point, I noticed I didn't explain that part: The Corn growers get kick backs to now put the corn direct into the food market so they convert it to ethanol and or HFCS (or sell to companies that do) getting the subsidy. Those companies then actually get a perk to use corn products.

I was meaning to expand on that with the Twinkie-every step in the twinkie brings profit whether they sell it or not.

Youre wrong and stupid. Just jokin

Seriously though.. I cant see anything in your post that I can disagree with and learned a few things! I cant add to the excellent post, but I do have a question since you seem very learned on the subject : if we are to attck the problem at its source.. who is exactly the source and how would one make change? Depending on your answer.. I have something to throw into the discussion

reply to post by Advantage


The source... That is a fairly wide issue.
These sorts of things usually start with a cause that is important to be there. In this case I bet it was to help farmers who were failing all through the corn basket states. Then mega corporations such as Monsanto started buying all the seed rights and farms even going so far as to throw GM corn seed into fields so as to do surprised intellectual property inspections-and sue the farmer out of business.

From there so many companies now use the subsidies that I am certain it would be a massive bloody fight in congress to remove said perk.

Corn products are in everything it seems. They even use the cellulose in some papers and to make some "Green phones". It's live stock feed (which causes milks and cheeses of cattle fed to be less nutritious: Cows normally eat grass-this is because the cow gets its nutrition from bacteria in the stomach, the grass they eat is for said bacteria. Corn doesn't quite to the job. You can tell butter that was from a cow fed on grass vs. corn from it's color. Nutritious butter is yellowish in color. Corn butter is white-this is presuming there are no colors added )....

Really this subsidy affects pretty much every market in the United States and would impact everything from shipping freight to Ethanol to sweeteners etc..

But it is something we need to have happen. It is a tremendous burden financially given so many states give massive tax credits to companies to setup shop there in locations as well as the health issues..

1: Companies are paid to use corn in products. From per liter to per gram direct profit-it is an incentive for a company to replace natural ingredients with what is basically a toxin in the levels we consume.

2: Farmers are paid to not release corn as food so as to keep food costs up. Right now we are seeing riots all over the world because food costs are rising for them. This means this subsidy negatively impacts people directly as it inflates costs to eat, but only to buy the ingredients because restaurant suppliers and manufacturers are getting PAID to include crap so it is far cheaper now to buy food pre made with this toxin than to buy the raw ingredients and mill your own bread.

3: Companies are paid to use corn products AND states give huge tax credits to setup shop resulting in companies getting taxed well below levels a middle class person gets taxed in percentage values. This means middle class families are getting fed toxins while being forced to pay inflated costs for the toxins while being given no alternative choices because it is very hard to find products that do not contain HFCS AND said companies are causing deficits on a state level due to lost proceeds. Causing massive health costs from state run help programs due to issues like diabetes and obesity in said states.

Ultimately.. This is a downward spiral. People cant afford non HFCS garbage food-IF they can find sources of food that do not have it to begin with (I challenge people to walk down a grocery aisle and look at ingredients on random items-example: That 100% Natural Juice? Yeah, HFCS is classified as a "Natural Ingrediant".). States and fed are paying companies to poison people to maximize profits...and it goes on and on and on.

On a related note. Oil and Gas companies get 73 billion in tax breaks tax dollar provided profits. Looks like of that 16 billion is for Ethanol from Corn so in that case-they double dip.
I am trying to find how much Monsanto rakes alone on tax dollars.


Where is the tea party out rage on this?

Another point to comment on is: If you are for subsidies in any industry you are anti-free market.
But I suppose that is also something casually ignored as inconvenient?

Originally posted by lordtyp0
Essentially the U.S. Taxpayers are being charged to put high fructose corn syrup in everything, we are paying taxes to give our kids obesity and diabetes. We are paying taxes for our kids who are not obese to kill people in other countries. All because of farmer welfare.

This is all I have a problem with really.

The obesity of our children is because of bad diet and bad parenting. And the whole "paying taxes for our kids who are not obese to kill people in other countries" statement I just find offensive. For your information I used to weigh 280 pounds because my parents did not control my eating habits. Everything else they were strict on. But now I'm 5'10" 200 pounds of solid muscle. Why? Not because of tax payers money to send me to some foreign land to kill people but because I had the motivation and will to drop the weight. Obesity is all a matter of will power. Or maybe I'm just different.

I find it a little annoying that you have to spend much more money to buy food that has less chemicals and preservatives in it. Lets face it poor people are going to buy the cheap food with all the chemicals in it because you can buy more of it. Part of the problem is also that people simply don't care where their food comes from, they just have it ingrained in them that the FDA would never allow a bad product on the market. We are staying with my wife's grandmother and she gets annoyed at me and my wife because we read the label to see what chemicals are in the food we eat.