Obesity And Sugar

[Joseph C.]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food-is-making-us-fat

Pretty sickening stuff. Pretty soon added sugar in foods will be forcibly clamped down it is just too addictive and too destructive and the cost to the health service is just staggering. I'd imagine the days of sugared water drinks are numbered too - diabetic poison.

 

[TylerDurden]

Weight loss groups back NYC's sugary drinks plan
Associated Press
Updated September 4, 2012, 8:44 a.m. ET

NEW YORK — The city's planned crackdown on super-sized sugary drinks got prominent backing Tuesday from Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and other diet companies, who added their influence to the campaign ahead of a vote next week.

The announcement — made at a press conference featuring Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a top Weight Watchers official — was the latest in a volley of statements of support for both advocates and critics of the plan, which calls for restaurants, movie theaters, sports arenas, food carts and delis to stop selling sodas and other sugary drinks in servings larger than 16 ounces.

Bloomberg and other proponents call it a sensible way to encourage people to cut calories. Opponents see it as government overreaching and question its effectiveness.

To the diet groups, it's a tool that fits with their approach to making healthy eating easier.

"Today, we live in a world where despite our best intentions, it's oftentimes very difficult on your own to make the healthy choice," said David Burwick, president of Weight Watchers North America. "We all need to take more personal responsibility for our own weight and eating habits, but it helps to remember what a healthy portion size is in a world where super-size portions have become the norm."

The proposal is set for a Sept. 13 vote at the city Board of Health, whose members are appointed by Bloomberg. If approved, it would take effect as early as March.

Bloomberg has been the leading advocate for the plan, which follows other efforts to spur New Yorkers to mind what they eat. During his 11-year tenure, the city has barred artificial trans fats from food served in restaurants and compelled chain restaurants to post calorie counts on menus.

Still, the city spends roughly $4 billion a year on weight-related health problems, the mayor says. He sees limiting the serving size of sugary drinks as a meaningful step — but not an inflexible order — to keep people from downing calories they might not even think about.

"Nobody is restricting the amount of sodas you can buy or the amount of sodas you can drink," he said, noting that people would be free to purchase multiple 16-ounce cups or bottles if they liked. "It is simply using portion control to point out to you ... how many calories you are consuming."

Along with Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, the creator of the South Beach Diet, the founder of The Best Life and other diet experts expressed their support. City Hall also has released a roster of kudos from people including physicians, elected officials, chef Jamie Oliver and filmmaker Spike Lee.

Critics, too, are counting their ranks.

An opposition group called New Yorkers for Beverage Choices said it has the backing of more than 2,000 businesses and 201,000 people. A New York Times poll last month showed that six in 10 New Yorkers opposed the plan.

Opponents say the city is overstepping its authority and infringing on personal freedom. And they call the diet companies' stance inconsistent with their own emphasis on letting people make food choices, rather than absolute limits.

"Restrictions and bans will do nothing to address the very complex issue of obesity," New Yorkers for Beverage Choices said in a statement Tuesday. "New Yorkers are smart enough to make their own decisions."

Some City Council members support the proposal; others have criticized it. Regardless, it isn't scheduled to come before them for a vote.

The rule wouldn't apply to lower-calorie drinks, such as water or diet soda, nor to alcoholic beverages or drinks that are more than half milk or 70 percent juice.

 

[dnmun]

and they now have shown that even moderate amounts of sugar elevations in the diet causes the brain to shrink. positive feedback? more sugar, less self control?

 

[salty9]

We have at least fifty million years of evolution teaching us that sugar and the ability to store this sugar as fat for use in times of famine is good for us. We also have a food industry determined to include high fructose corn syrup in every possible food and drink. Avoiding anything with this syrup is a good start to sensible nutrition. We have to read the labels because they don't care about our health.

 

[Joseph C.]

Weight loss groups back NYC's sugary drinks plan
Associated Press
Updated September 4, 2012, 8:44 a.m. ET

NEW YORK — The city's planned crackdown on super-sized sugary drinks got prominent backing Tuesday from Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and other diet companies, who added their influence to the campaign ahead of a vote next week.

The announcement — made at a press conference featuring Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a top Weight Watchers official — was the latest in a volley of statements of support for both advocates and critics of the plan, which calls for restaurants, movie theaters, sports arenas, food carts and delis to stop selling sodas and other sugary drinks in servings larger than 16 ounces.

Yes Peretti mentioned that in the article. He also mentioned that the is a body of growing evidence that suggests that the food industry have been foisting sugar upon us and that a landslide of lawsuits is going to occur. It will be same as the cigarette industry.

That nonsense of people being able to choose for themselves is laughable. If that were the case we wouldn't have this problem in the first place. The amount of overweight/obese/morbidly obese and cetacean-like people I see on the streets seem to be increasing with each passing year. Out of the four members of the family I am the only way that has a healthy amount of body fat.

One thing is for sure the food industry is very powerful and won't go down without a serious fight.

The comments on the tobacco industry were also very interesting. They simply have moved on to the Asian market and don't care any more about the new restrictions in the West. That's another industry that costs billions to the health service per annum.

 

[neptronix]

That nonsense of people being able to choose for themselves is laughable. If that were the case we wouldn't have this problem in the first place. The amount of overweight/obese/morbidly obese and cetacean-like people I see on the streets seem to be increasing with each passing year. Out of the four members of the family I am the only way that has a healthy amount of body fat.

Sigh, i know we have a problem but i can't say that i like this attitude where people are FOR government telling you what you can and cannot do. I would point the finger at the government for subsidizing corn, before telling them that they have a solution for this problem! Why is high fructose corn syrup so cheap and commonplace?

http://grist.org/article/food-2010-09-21-op-ed-corn-subsidies-make-unhealthy-food-choices/

Maybe the solution could be to stop making sugar so cheap? if it were to dramatically increase in price, do you think it'd be in everything, or that we may cut back? people will eat crap food because it's cheap, after all..

 

[Joseph C.]

Sigh, i know we have a problem but i can't say that i like this attitude where people are FOR government telling you what you can and cannot do. I would point the finger at the government for subsidizing corn, before telling them that they have a solution for this problem! Why is high fructose corn syrup so cheap and commonplace?

http://grist.org/article/food-2010-09-21-op-ed-corn-subsidies-make-unhealthy-food-choices/

Maybe the solution could be to stop making sugar so cheap? if it were to dramatically increase in price, do you think it'd be in everything, or that we may cut back? people will eat crap food because it's cheap, after all..

First of all, you make an invalid assumption that I am referring to the United States, I'm not. I'm first of all referring to my own country and then European countries - but it applies to all first-world nations.


EU Sugar Composition
I can't speak on American sugar production because I don't know enough information. Fructose-glucose (high fructose corn syrup) production is regulated in the E.U. so that it makes up only less than two per cent of the total sugar production (1.6 per cent). Therefore, corn syrup in Europe is only a small part of the sugar problem.

EU Sugar Subsidies - Consumer versus Producer
Your picture of the EU sugar subsidies is erroneous (what you quoted applies to the EU not the U.S.). Yes, producers are been heavily subsidised. There are powerful interest groups that control sugar subsidies in the EU and benefit from maintaining the status quo. This is to protect the domestic market from cheaper foreign markets.

Nonetheless, all of this is irrelevant. This is only for producers not consumers which is what you are talking about. The E.U. consumer pays prices that are currently twice as high as the world sugar levels. The consumer is not being subsidised - arguably they are being ripped off. They are the ones paying for the producer subsidies.

Yet, despite these artificially high prices obesity has been raising steadily. People eat sugar because it is addictive - they know it is bad for them (although they may underestimate just how bad).

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Overweight_and_obesity_-_BMI_statistics

While your points may appear to have merit they are not applicable to the EU in the first instance - we control fructose-glucose heavily and it makes up a very small minority of sugar production.

Most importantly, your solution to the problem empirically does not work. It is all well and good suggesting that we don't need government regulation and the world of classical liberialism is still relevant but these are fallacies. We tried that in the 20th century and it does not work for a variety of reasons.

Now, you may argue that if someone wants to prematurely kill themselves that is their choice. This appears on the surface to be fair enough, but it is costing the public money, vast quantities of money, and it is breaking the healthcare system along with the other two problems alcohol and cigarettes. Classical liberalism is dead and has been for a couple of centuries. It's time we stopped living in the past.

In the case of sugar we know specifically why it doesn't work. It is highly addictive and it is so ubiquitous that it is very difficult to avoid. Once you are introduced to it you gradually need more and more of it and as you age you become fatter and fatter. Of course they are normal, healthy-sized people but they seem to be getting fewer and fewer in number.

It's such an insidious problem as well as you don't notice it. Everyone else around is getting fatter so there is no easy frame of reference and how many people regularly weigh themselves? Those that are normal then look odd in comparison and they are thought of as being malnourished. Even the clothing makes spotting it difficult as what was a 'medium' is now labelled 'small' and so on. I suppose eventually you become so fat that it becomes impossible to not notice it but by then...

 

[TylerDurden]

For us Yanks, the label "Classical Liberalism" has been replaced mostly by "Libertarianism"...

"Classical liberalism is a political ideology, a branch of liberalism which advocates individual liberties and limited government under the rule of law and stresses economic freedom.

Classical liberalism developed in the 19th century in Europe and the United States. Although classical liberalism built on ideas that had already developed by the end of the 18th century, it advocated a specific kind of society, government and public policy as a response to the Industrial Revolution and urbanization. Notable individuals whose ideas have contributed to classical liberalism include John Locke, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo. It drew on the economics of Adam Smith and on a belief in natural law, utilitarianism, and progress.

There was a revival of interest in classical liberalism in the 20th century led by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Some call the modern development of classical liberalism "neo-classical liberalism," which argued for government to be as small as possible in order to allow the exercise of individual freedom, while some refer to all liberalism before the 20th century as classical liberalism.

The term classical liberalism was applied in retrospect to distinguish earlier 19th-century liberalism from the newer social liberalism.

Libertarianism has been used in modern times as a substitute for the phrase "neo-classical liberalism", leading to some confusion. The identification of libertarianism with neo-classical liberalism primarily occurs in the United States, where some conservatives and right-libertarians use the term classical liberalism to describe their belief in the primacy of economic freedom and minimal government."

 

[salty9]

Interesting thread but I would hazard a guess that most cyclists on the Sphere could metabolize HFCS or even crude oil without gaining weight.

 

[Joseph C.]

Interesting thread but I would hazard a guess that most cyclists on the Sphere could metabolize HFCS or even crude oil without gaining weight.

That's a good point. If you look at individuals you will always find exceptions.

Take a bicycle-orientated culture such as that in The Netherlands - you would expect that in a country where up to 70 per cent of the population use a bike to varying degrees there would be a decline in obesity.

In one 2002 study, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12187399, obesity rose by 3.6 per cent in a 21-year period from 1976 to 1997 in men. Between 1993 and 1997 obesity levels in males was raising at a rate of half a per cent every year. It was something similar for women.

On the whole, exercise is not the answer either.

 

[MattyCiii]

They say the way to manage weight is "diet and exercise". In my limited, unscientific study (of my own body) I'd say that it's 75% diet and 25% exercise. Exercise is very important, but you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet.

 

[Philistine]

Classical liberalism is dead and has been for a couple of centuries. It's time we stopped living in the past.

Spot on. Communism was a roaring success. Aren't those North Koreans laughing at all those dumb capitalists. The reason that the standard of living in China has been massively increasing has been because of the total ban on enterprise and freedoms, and the massive increase in the centralised nature of its economy.

If you ever have a problem, solve it with a law. Laws are always good. I hate freedom. I love having some pack of moralist axe-wounds telling me how to live my life. It's awesome.

Control economies and nanny states are the best places to live, and they foster innovation and human potential. The state of public finances (outside of Australia, which itself is starting to wane, even with all the shit in the ground) is in tip top shape, and public debt is nice and tidy. I agree, I predict the future will be big taxing welfare states. What with the massively aging population that will be unable to offer even half the current public services, programs and interventions, and the pending fiscal cliffs in the US and the awesome state of the Euro - that fantastic object worked well didn't it?

I love it when people get all righteous about "the failure of capitalism" just because Alan Greenspan and a pack of deluded nutbags failed to understand that cheap money and credit will always end in busts, because people think they will never die, and should be rich and looked after without ever having to do anything.

It would be like watching a single cell organism evolve into a group of people living in a village, and then one night they get a bit drunk chuck away all their money on the horses, and then some numnuts declares that "evolution has failed!".

It's like those insufferable indulgently smelly hairy cocksuckers with soul patches and dreadlocks, who came from families with 50 times more money than you, and who you had to sit through Uni philosophy tutorials with whilst they threw around words like "paradigm", and "postmodernism", and "deconstruct" and "let's unpack that idea", and then they go on about Walden, and the noble savage and how we should all go back to living in the dirt and using sharp rocks to cut up the animals that we kill with stones, and how "modern man has lost his way", and how the indigenous "peoples" know best, and are so much inhererently wiser than us, and how technology is "bad" and I would just scream at those wankers "One word for you buddy.... DENTISTRY!"...

 

[Miles]

and I would just scream at those wankers "One word for you buddy.... DENTISTRY!"...

 

[Spacey]

Do you know how hard it is in the UK to go to a normal supermarket and fill your trolley with healthy non sugar laced food?

I tried it for 2 months when we had a bit more money kicking about. It's nearly impossible, everything and I mean just about everything has sugar as either the second, third or fourth ingredient. Since cutting down hugely on sugar I can now taste it in everything! The other half did a 'normal' shop this week and I just can't eat it. Sugar cereal for kids...shame on the parents that buy their kids this crap.

Sugar in bread, EVERYTHING! Ever wonder why home cooked stuff goes off so quick but the supermarket stuff has a half life of a week lol......it's all the shit in the food. Fed up with it.

But if you are not very well off and have a family I can see how it is just so hard to eat healthily. UK is worse than US now I think. On my trip across the US last year I genuinly felt that the food quality was far superior to UK food. And I'm British.

 

[amberwolf]

I think that if people can't be bothered to read the ingredients and learn what htey are eating, and what it might do to them, they may well deserve the results. The information is generally easy to read and easy to find, and also easy to get details about using the web (or even LIBRARY BOOKS if anyone knows what those are anymore).

I dont' find it hard at all to avoid sugar-laced foods, because those are generally all processed foods, and more expensive than getting the raw ingredients to make your own, which is fresher, tastes better, and is probably healthier. But it does take more time to do, and lots of people cant' spare the time away from their TVs and game consoles for that.


I don't think government has any right or reason to step in and limit portion sizes. If we let them make them smaller now, what's to stop them from forcing places to sell them LARGER next time they pass a law, forcing us to then pay more in order to even get any at all? Or some other unforeseen consequence of this precedent.


For myself, if I happen on some very rare occasion to be able to eat out at a fast food place, I may wish to choose the largest size soda so that I can take more with me for my journey home, for those places with free refills. Since they only allow you to take with you what will fit in the cup you bought, I would want the largest one I could get. Then that can last me thru the rest of the day as I sip it on my ride around town or working with friends, or whatever. I can only afford to do it once every few months normally anyway, unless I manage to get the right coupons to essentially net me a near-free meal (happens sometimes), or friends take me out somewhere, so it isn't likely to hurt me much to splurge and actually have a soda now and then.


As others have pointed out, government subsidies making these "addictive sweets" cheap in the first place is a closer-to-the-root-of-the-problem place to start fixing things. Not legislating sizes of drinks.

 

[neptronix]

Spot on. Communism was a roaring success. Aren't those North Koreans laughing at all those dumb capitalists. The reason that the standard of living in China has been massively increasing has been because of the total ban on enterprise and freedoms, and the massive increase in the centralised nature of its economy.

:lol: :lol: :lol: thank you

Classic liberalism is alive and well.. it has always been a minority ideal though. It was only in the spotlight more recently when Reagan paid some lip service to it in the 80's as we watched socialism and communism CRASH AND BURN from afar. At that moment, we were collectively proud of our accomplishments as a mostly economically free society.. capitalism won.
But Reagan screwed the pooch midway his first term, and really screwed it into the last. He did the opposite of what was intended.

Whenever i talk to someone who wants Reagan's fiscal policies back, i tell them this:
So, you want to decrease taxes for a few year, cut the size of government a little, then explode taxes far beyond what your predecessor did in the white house, double the deficit, and grow the size of govt to the point where the next REPUBLICAN has to hike taxes up the second he takes office?

In my eyes, capitalism still wins - but not for us in the present conditions. Corporate influence and control are at an all time high. Congress appears to be a revolving door of private-public interests. Even Obama himself hired some of who the left wing would consider enemies, to be advisers, such as Monsanto's lawyer, Michael Taylor, to be the FDA Czar - who has proceeded to use that power to bust organic farmers!

What we have is an infestation of cronyism. We do not have a separation of business and state, and that is a huge problem. Capitalism and the idea of a free market cannot function under those circumstances. I'll tell you - i don't like how we run our economy either.

The libertarians have it right - social freedom is just as important as economic freedom. You can't have social freedom unless you separate the church and the state though.... and you definitely cannot have economic freedom without separation of business and state.

We're 16 trillion USD in debt right now, and the governments with the biggest spending and most meager income have been hit the hardest.

You guys are in some serious debt up to your eyeballs.

http://www.financedublin.com/debtclock.php

And look who's doing good right now - Hong Kong, the state that took the idea of a free market more seriously than even the USA ever has..

http://www.kpmg.com/cn/en/IssuesAnd...cuments/Hong-Kong-budget-summary-201202-2.pdf

Despite the adverse effects of the financial tsunami in 2008, the Hong Kong economy started to
improve in the second quarter of 2009 and then embarked on a full-fledged recovery in 2010. In
the first quarter of 2011, the year-on-year Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth was as high as
7.6 percent. However, as the global economic environment deteriorated rapidly, Hong Kong’s
GDP growth slowed down. As a whole, GDP only grew by 5 percent in real terms in 2011,
which is at the lower range of the forecast made by the Financial Secretary in August 2011.

By 31 March 2012, fiscal
reserves are expected to be HKD 662.1 billion. For 2012-13, the Government forecasts a small
Budget deficit of HKD 3.4 billion and fiscal reserves of HKD 658.7 billion by March 2013.

Maybe a classic liberal way of running an economy is unpopular, but the numbers seem to prove themselves.
So chew on that for a bit.

Well there is my giant political rant for the day..

Sorry though, i was referring to the USA's subsidy of sugar.. isn't the original topic about the USA?

Anyhow it seems like New York City is becoming a real police and nanny state. I guess history repeats itself! I'll have two 16 oz drinks please, thank you..

 

[Joseph C.]

Spot on. Communism was a roaring success. Aren't those North Koreans laughing at all those dumb capitalists. The reason that the standard of living in China has been massively increasing has been because of the total ban on enterprise and freedoms, and the massive increase in the centralised nature of its economy.

What are you talking about? What has communism got to do with anything? Nothing worse than a strawman argument.

The rest is just a rant not backed up by any facts.

 

[Spacey]

UK is only stalling what will happen us as it did in Ireland purely and simply because now that Ireland is in the EU it can not print (Quantative Easing lol....errr...Printing) its own money unlike the UK that is printing more money to hold off debts.

It's the only thing stopping us from falling into the shit right now...thing is...if we just let pure capitalism play out i.e let the crap companies go to the wall and new ones learn from their mistakes start then this mess might all be sorted by now...but no...we want to keep printing money to pay off our ever increasing compounded interest upon interest loans we owe.

We suck.

 

[Joseph C.]

Yes, Neptronix Ireland is screwed for the foreseeable future.

Ridiculous tax cuts during the boom times, a huge property bubble (when the financial regulator went AWOL), crap governance (people who pointed out the flaws were told to commit suicide), no regulation of the insurance industry allowing corruption and fraud (the public is now saddled with the private debt of the largest insurance company in the country) and the biggest crippler of all (massive banking debt - see point above about financial regulator).

I see Spacey has covered the point about how Ireland is screwed by the Euro currency. If you can't devalue your currency or print money - the exact same thing - then you can only wait for growth. When you are cutting everything in sight - that's not going to happen.

All of that leads to huge strain on public sector finances. Unlike a business, demand never goes down for the public sector. You need education, you need healthcare and you need police it doesn't matter if you are in a boom or a recession. I'm not for one-second saying that there isn't huge waste in the public sector in Ireland, there is.

I think you misinterpret what I think is good. I am not advocating communism and I am certainly not anti-capitalist. Capitalism is the best economic system we have. What I don't like is unbridled capitalism with no regulation.

You cite Hong Kong and call it a classical liberal region. It is not. It is socially liberal. It has public healthcare, public education, minimum wage etc.
It is also helped by the fact that it is so close to China as it is China. Not every region has access to a huge insatiable country to export services to.

I'd love it if we could sort the problems created by sugar through simple consumer choice. As I have said previously having expensive sugar in the EU isn't working. I can't see it why it would work in the U.S.

I used to maintain that if a person was fat it was their choice but the sheer scale of the problem and the worsening trends suggest that the situation is just too great and I have changed my mind. As I said previously, if it wasn't costing a fortune I wouldn't care - fire medication into them. But it is costing us ever increasing unsustainable amounts.

 

[TylerDurden]

"Can Policies Reduce Obesity Rates?

Weight status—underweight, healthy weight, overweight, or obese—is, for most people, an outcome of personal choices: what and how much to eat and whether and how much to exercise. Changes in habits are possible—recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that former smokers now outnumber smokers. Furthermore, habits would not have to change drastically to lead to reclassifying the weight status of most Americans. The American Dietetic Association says that each additional 3,500 calories a person consumes results in an additional pound of body weight. That implies that a person who gave up 100 calories (equivalent to a piece of toast) each day for a year would end up approximately 10 pounds lighter at year’s end.

The list of policies that could potentially help Americans turn the corner on obesity and overweight is as long as the list of factors that influence an individual’s diet and lifestyle choices. The list of unintended consequences stemming from obesity policy is probably longer. Even the most apparently straightforward policy proposal can have surprising effects: mandatory nutrition information at fast food restaurants could lead to reformulations or price promotions that do not necessarily contribute to healthier diets; taxes on snack foods could lead some consumers to substitute equally unhealthy foods for the taxed food; and restrictions on food advertising could ultimately lead to lower prices for food subject to the restrictions. Food policy overflows with unintended consequences. The trick is making sure they do not overwhelm the intended ones."

Full article: Obesity Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences

 

[Philistine]

Joseph I think Neptronix was referring to the fact that Hong Kong has both a personal and company tax rate of something like 15% or 16% or something like that.

To memory (and I could be wrong on this, this is all of my head) I don't even think they have a broad based consumption tax (and if they do, it is nothing like the VAT or the Aussie GST). If you want to argue that Hong Kong, is not an example of Classical Liberalism. Maybe I don't understand what you are talking about?

And please don't come carping about lowering your tax rate to crazy levels. Worked pretty sweet for you immoral bastards when your country whored itself out as a corporate tax haven.

I appreciate TylerDurden's translation of your term for the rest of us (because I thought Classical Liberalism was to be sat, say, as a counter to social democracy?) Am I way off understanding what you are talking about? Because if you are going to tell me that Hong Kong is a "Social Democracy", then I deeply confused about what language you speak in.

I don't want to get offensive on this, because I really do feel sorry for the Irish. They somehow managed to triple distil the bullshit of property speculation and free money, and then (and this bit was unecessary) let the whole country get anally raped, on the back end of the subcrime bust. If you had a government at that time who weren't lobotomised traitors to your own country with at least one ball its bag, you might not have managed to somehow screw things up more than those dumb fisherman in Iceland.

Sorry, I said I wasn't going to get offensive. But what the hell do you mean by "classical liberalism" anyway? Who died running that model? I don't even know what you are talking about now.....

 

[Joseph C.]

To memory (and I could be wrong on this, this is all of my head) I don't even think they have a broad based consumption tax (and if they do, it is nothing like the VAT or the Aussie GST). If you want to argue that Hong Kong, is not an example of Classical Liberalism. Maybe I don't understand what you are talking about?

And please don't come carping about lowering your tax rate to crazy levels. Worked pretty sweet for you immoral bastards when your country whored itself out as a corporate tax haven.

I appreciate TylerDurden's translation of your term for the rest of us (because I thought Classical Liberalism was to be sat, say, as a counter to social democracy?) Am I way off understanding what you are talking about? Because if you are going to tell me that Hong Kong is a "Social Democracy", then I deeply confused about what language you speak in.

I don't want to get offensive on this, because I really do feel sorry for the Irish. They somehow managed to triple distil the bullshit of property speculation and free money, and then (and this bit was unecessary) let the whole country get anally raped, on the back end of the subcrime bust. If you had a government at that time who weren't lobotomised traitors to your own country with at least one ball its bag, you might not have managed to somehow screw things up more than those dumb fisherman in Iceland.

Sorry, I said I wasn't going to get offensive. But what the hell do you mean by "classical liberalism" anyway? Who died running that model? I don't even know what you are talking about now.....

You are right I should have been clearer.

When I refer to classical liberalism I am referring to its present usage, not its history. It is also sometimes called neo-liberalism. In its purest form it means deregulated capitalism, no social welfare, no public education, no public pensions, no health care, no minimum wage and no regulation. It is the free market thinking of Adam Smith - the 'invisible hand' that notion with the belief that the free market can regulate itself. In short, it is the philosophy espoused by the Chicago School Of Economics without the cushion of negative income tax.

Hong Kong is a social liberal region as it has public education, public healthcare and a minimum wage.

The form of political rule doesn't matter for either classical liberalism or social liberalism. The country could be a democracy, communist or fascist and they could still implement whichever one they choose.

Ireland has a very low corporate tax rate of 12.5 per cent. Nonetheless, it does not have low personal tax rates and it has other ways of making up the shortfall through indirect taxation - something I believe that Hong Kong does too. The corporate tax rate had very little (or nothing) to do with our problems. The Irish multi-national model doesn't look to make that much tax from footloose companies. It seeks to get its return from the employees of these companies, from the necessary construction of infrastructure, from the maintenance of said infrastructure and from the knock-on effects to the local economies.

It is a popular notion for classical liberals to put forward that 'big businesses' are corrupt and this is the sole problem of unbridled, deregulated, open market capitalism. But it ignores the obvious - every business has the potential to be corrupt irrespective of size and because of this certain sectors need to be regulated.

The sub-prime crisis in the US would not have occurred if there was proper financial regulation, the same with Ireland. The banking crisis would not have occurred if there was proper financial regulation. To suggest otherwise (and this is certainly not directed at you Philistine) is a denial of reality.

There are crucial sectors that just can not do without heavy regulation. I have mentioned the two above but food, insurance and medication are others.

 

[Philistine]

Hong Kong is a social liberal region as it has public education, public healthcare and a minimum wage.

 

[neptronix]

When i'm referring to Hong Kong as being an implementation of the free market idea, i am talking about their economy first and foremost. Their government basically has a hands off policy; they took laissez-faire capitalism literally and it worked for them. People moved from various parts of Asia to live on a damn rock..! it took China an extremely long time to catch on to the idea that capitalism is a better idea.

Yeah, they do have some social welfare programs now, and even a minimum wage as of late, but they are still the most freest market of them all.

Ah! we don't have any proof that the free market *can't* regulate itself, because we tried to have a free market and government just couldn't seem to keep their hands out of it. That's what the godfather of Chicago economics, Milton Friedman, was yammering on about his entire life.

Sub prime crisis in the USA? sure, we didn't have the best financial regulation, but you missed a part - the community reinvestment act. This is a piece of regulation that forced banks to loan to people who did not otherwise qualify for loan - often poor minorities. Eventually the banks invented the idea of the subprime mortgage. The credit default swap made those subprime mortgages profitable, because they would almost always fail as loans.

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We had warning signs of this bubble building since the Bush years, but to go against the community reinvestment act, which generally benefits racial minorities, would have been considered racist or 'anti civil liberties'. To regulate against the banks would have not been popular either because the financial sector was the only really "productive" one in the late 2000's. The banks on the other hand knew that they'd get bailed out, so they din't have much incentive to stop... nobody wanted to take responsibility!

I would say that the regulations caused the problem in the first place! and the idea that government should fix everything backfires all too often. Hands off, i say! separate business and state!

As for the obesity debate, nobody has a good answer. 16 oz drink limits are yet another ineffective idea from NYC.

 

[Spacey]

This will always happen with a Fiat money system.