Originally Posted by lurkette

Incidentally, (threadjack coming up here) I don't hear anybody bitching about the government interfering in personal consumption behavior by subsidizing the hell out of agriculture and oil so we can have cheap oranges in December and gas that costs less than milk so we can drive huge cars instead of funding public transportation. If you don't object to government action that affects one set of behaviors (public transportation issues), why do you object to it when it affects another set (public health)?

Originally Posted by flstf

Do you really want polititians to attempt to determine what is healthy or not and tax what they consider unhealthy behavior?

Originally Posted by funkeodor

And since so many boomers are overweight from living a lifestyle in which they believed "If what I'm doing only hurts me and no one else then what does it matter!" The economy will be strained by many over weight people in the coming few years. If someone wants to be 5'5'' and 600 pounds and believe that it is their business and and doesn't affect anyone else is first of all completely self centered and two, lacks any thought of foresight. Since gargantuan (you know, I've always liked that word, gargantuan, but it's so rare that I get a chance to use it) people are more likely to get clogged arteries and have several heart attacks. Before so many medical breakthroughs these people generally died at much younger ages for their own stupidity. However in more recent years these people of numerous rolls of fat have become a burden to society due to the fact that often enough the people that are fat are mid to low income people who can not afford health care and the society pays their costs. With the number of people retiring and more and more people depending on social security and medicare since they were far to dimwitted and once again, lacked foresight, to plan their own retirement they let society take the burden for them. This makes the gov't tax people more since there are more people collecting 'benefits' and less people working. Which brings up the real question that I wonder. Since the dollar is relatively weak right now, and taxing people more and more takes the money out of people's hands and more often than not is squandered away which means the gov't needs more money. Ultimately this money is put back into the hands of the enormous fatsos that are the problem to begin with. In turn this seems likely to be a situation in which inflation could become out of hand and (while in turn erasing the national defecit), could create another 'great depression' in which once again we're all in poverty! The best option I see is the elimination of fat people all across this country. every should have to take a BMI test and if they have more than 30% fat, shoot em. Or, better yet, have them fight national games to the death! They could reenact older battles. We could have our president, or perhaps we could call all of our presidents in the future the High Caesar (or High C for short)(He would also have to be a porn star and would always shout "OH YEAH! DRINK SOME OF HIGH C!"), then they decide if they live or not with the traditional thumbs up (good) or thumbs down (die fatso!). The tv ratings would be huge across the world. The people in the middle east would be happy for seeing americans die, and in doing so they would stop their wars since we would be fighting it for them! with this they would watch the battles and be enthralled with the ads in which would support the U.S. economy. The EU would be happy again because they could once again sell their manufactured goods at a lower price than the americans and wouldn't have to compete directly with us. Kim Jong Il would also be happy to see americans die and thus stand down in the nuclear arms race since his destruction of americans is already being replicated. This would put us on a far better track to get our economy on track. Screw going to mars, instead, lets stop the future great depression from happening and instead just concentrate on killing all the fat people. The world would obviously be a better place for it! I once heard that the best way to end a piece is with a quote because it shows humility and that others may know more than yourself. So as the great and wise Homer Simpson, "Oh come on Marge, the only reason we don't move out of this dunghill is because of my court ordered ankle bracelet"