Joanna blames her car for her extra pounds ...so get a bike.
Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes:
"You don't have people living on the streets, picking food out of traschcans? We sure do. Malnutrition of various kinds is much more widespread."
Well, it does happen, but it is pretty exceptional. The homeless are most likely to be in that invidious position, since welfare benefits - no doubt very mean ones - are available to people with an address.
Recent research on rough sleepers in London argues that most people stuck in such a position are likely to be mentally ill, mostly schizophrenics, who find it difficult to keep an address (Big Issue editor, John Bird said the same thing to me a few years ago).
"Health indicators for the American poor rival Third World levels, and bad food is part of the problem."
Are you sure? What proportion of the population are you classing as 'poor', or 'rivalling Third World levels' (and which Third World). I know these rhetorical arguments are made from time to time, but the US that I have visited is the best-fed country in the world - apart maybe from Sweden.
Doug
"depression does have social causes - the alienation and powerlessness that comes with working crappy jobs for $5.15/hr, or, further up the social scale, the alienation and stress that come with social isolation and overwork. Since we're all supposed to be happy, we don't like to talk about it. So some of us self-medicate with potato chips."
Does depression have social causes? I find the slippage between psychological (i.e. individual) and social diagnoses lets some terrible howlers in. No doubt the two are inter-related, but causally linked?
I tend to agree that alienation and powerlessness are likely to provoke unhappiness, but I am not sure that socialism will abolish unhappiness. I can imagine filling the psychological void with fish and chips for some time to come.
But, hey, its better than starving.
-- James Heartfield
http://www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/james1.htm