6 ms·

Fat tax, just like Japan. You want to be a fat ass, and drain resources, then you pay for it. Just like car insurance. You want to drive dangerous sports cars,

Fat tax, just like Japan. You want to be a fat ass, and drain resources, then you pay for it. Just like car insurance. You want to drive dangerous sports cars, then you pay a higher price to cover liability.

frankc 9y ago
Well, I don't think that is going to "solve" the underlying problem. It might help the government pay for things, but it's not going to solve the obesity epidemic. There are already huge intrinsic and extrinsic negative impacts to your life if you are obese. One more negative impact is not likely to suddenly make you thin. What we need to do is figure out why people are getting fatter despite how much they don't want to be fat.
- NikolaeVarius 9y ago
  Sedentary lifestyle, cheap food (and not just junk food, calories in general are insanely cheap), eating too much of said cheap food.
  - frankc 9y ago
    Those are hypothetical causes but they don't actually line up with all the observations. For instances, poor people are fatter than rich people. Shouldn't rich people be fatter since they 1) don't have to work as much manual labor 2) have more access to food. You can try complicate the explanations to account for this but the fact is that it shows that the 'obvious' reasons most people surmise are not so clear cut and need to be tested like any hypothesis. It's a hard problem to test and there are several other competing hypothesis. The best I can say for my own beliefs is that we need to have more studies that need to be done before I'm convinced of any of them.
    - linkregister 9y ago
      I suspect there is no one-size-fits-all solution for obesity: some people experienced sustained weight loss only after undertaking a vegetarian diet, some only by a ketogenic diet, some only by getting into sustained exercise, and some only by a laproscopic band. For some people, obesity isn't even associated with poor health.
    - antisthenes 9y ago
      What? It makes perfect sense. I explain this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14353914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14353914 It's cheaper to not exercise.
      - overcast 9y ago
        Sorry, but exercise doesn't require a gym membership, that's just nonsense. Look at the guys in prison. Go run around your block, do pushups, and pull-ups in your house. I've never spent a dime in a gym, and I exercise five days a week. Also exercise is not for weight loss, it's for exercise.
    - overcast 9y ago
      There have been poor people throughout the history of time, why is it that obesity rates have been going up? Shouldn't they stay the same, or decrease, as more people move away from the have not, to the have something? Spent a month in India, tons of poor people, very few fat ones. The majority of overweight people were the affluent, that just didn't care, because they were well fed, and had essentially slaves working for them to do all of the hard physical work.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    I'm not sure this sort of calculus is helpful: Eat less and exercise more, duh! Also works for saving: earn more and spend less, duh! Making friends: be nice more and mean less, duh! Stress: sleep and relax more and worry less, duh! Marriage: communicate and date more and fight less, duh! Fat people want to be thinner. There are plenty of negative incentives to being fat. There's something subtler and more complex going on here.
  - VLM 9y ago
    Hyper levels of advertising with the primary messages being lack of self discipline is the definition of having fun, and sensible time preference judgment, or application of any judgment at all, is for boring low social status people because cool people live for this instant only and never judge anything ever. Not too surprising that being immune or actively avoiding that toxic culture, results in both wealth and fitness. Advertising Kills.
- overcast 9y ago
  You're right, having them pay more, isn't going to make them thin. People are going to do what they want regardless, just like smokers. People will smoke, while they are hooked up to oxygen keeping them alive. However, the cost of that shouldn't be redirected to people who have made an effort to live healthy their entire lives.
samirillian 9y ago
Cold blooded! I don't know if it's more or less efficacious/probable than dinging the corporations, but it certainly seems less moral.
positr0n 9y ago
The problem with that logic is that people with unhealthy behavior actually cost the system less. It's way cheaper to be relatively sickly for a few decades then die of lung cancer or heart disease at 50 than be relatively healthy and die of cancer or alzheimer's at 90. Not saying something like that might not be a good idea from a public health perspective. I'm not educated enough on those issues to have an opinion.
- antisthenes 9y ago
  > I'm not educated enough on those issues to have an opinion. Yet here you are, posting things like this: > The problem with that logic is that people with unhealthy behavior actually cost the system less. Without any data.
  - positr0n 9y ago
    > Yet here you are, posting things like this I posted what I am educated about, and did not post an opinion about what I am not educated about. > Without any data. Apologies. I posted a nytimes story that links to a study in another comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14353347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14353347
- legulere 9y ago
  I have seen studies go in both ways, depending on which costs they include or not
- overcast 9y ago
  Cancer, and Alzheimer's are generally not preventable. Being fat is. If you want to compare fat people dying of heart disease, and smokers dying of emphysema, fine. But don't compare an avoidable problem, with an unavoidable one.
  - positr0n 9y ago
    Why not? We're talking about average lifetime medical costs, so who cares if one is preventable and one isn't? From a public health perspective yes that absolutely matters, but all I'm saying is this narrow claim: You will not save money on medical costs if you get your population to act healthier and they die of unpreventable diseases instead of preventable ones.
logfromblammo 9y ago
If you want to be fat, please raise your hand. Those who think being fat is fun or desirable, hands up. Nobody? Really? What you're proposing is to pile additional hardship on people who are likely already unhappy with their current situation, and may also feel powerless to fix that part of their lives. On its face, your proposal lacks both compassion and efficacy. It's also horribly authoritarian, and would likely discourage people from seeking preventative health care, just because the nurses weigh you at your office visit. Think about the potential unintended consequences before firing off a glib, "fix it with market incentives" proposal, paired with reasoning by [car] analogy.

frankc 9y ago

Well, I don't think that is going to "solve" the underlying problem. It might help the government pay for things, but it's not going to solve the obesity epidemic. There are already huge intrinsic and extrinsic negative impacts to your life if you are obese. One more negative impact is not likely to suddenly make you thin. What we need to do is figure out why people are getting fatter despite how much they don't want to be fat.

NikolaeVarius 9y ago
Sedentary lifestyle, cheap food (and not just junk food, calories in general are insanely cheap), eating too much of said cheap food.
- frankc 9y ago
  Those are hypothetical causes but they don't actually line up with all the observations. For instances, poor people are fatter than rich people. Shouldn't rich people be fatter since they 1) don't have to work as much manual labor 2) have more access to food. You can try complicate the explanations to account for this but the fact is that it shows that the 'obvious' reasons most people surmise are not so clear cut and need to be tested like any hypothesis. It's a hard problem to test and there are several other competing hypothesis. The best I can say for my own beliefs is that we need to have more studies that need to be done before I'm convinced of any of them.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    I suspect there is no one-size-fits-all solution for obesity: some people experienced sustained weight loss only after undertaking a vegetarian diet, some only by a ketogenic diet, some only by getting into sustained exercise, and some only by a laproscopic band. For some people, obesity isn't even associated with poor health.
  - antisthenes 9y ago
    What? It makes perfect sense. I explain this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14353914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14353914 It's cheaper to not exercise.
    - overcast 9y ago
      Sorry, but exercise doesn't require a gym membership, that's just nonsense. Look at the guys in prison. Go run around your block, do pushups, and pull-ups in your house. I've never spent a dime in a gym, and I exercise five days a week. Also exercise is not for weight loss, it's for exercise.
  - overcast 9y ago
    There have been poor people throughout the history of time, why is it that obesity rates have been going up? Shouldn't they stay the same, or decrease, as more people move away from the have not, to the have something? Spent a month in India, tons of poor people, very few fat ones. The majority of overweight people were the affluent, that just didn't care, because they were well fed, and had essentially slaves working for them to do all of the hard physical work.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I'm not sure this sort of calculus is helpful: Eat less and exercise more, duh! Also works for saving: earn more and spend less, duh! Making friends: be nice more and mean less, duh! Stress: sleep and relax more and worry less, duh! Marriage: communicate and date more and fight less, duh! Fat people want to be thinner. There are plenty of negative incentives to being fat. There's something subtler and more complex going on here.
- VLM 9y ago
  Hyper levels of advertising with the primary messages being lack of self discipline is the definition of having fun, and sensible time preference judgment, or application of any judgment at all, is for boring low social status people because cool people live for this instant only and never judge anything ever. Not too surprising that being immune or actively avoiding that toxic culture, results in both wealth and fitness. Advertising Kills.
overcast 9y ago
You're right, having them pay more, isn't going to make them thin. People are going to do what they want regardless, just like smokers. People will smoke, while they are hooked up to oxygen keeping them alive. However, the cost of that shouldn't be redirected to people who have made an effort to live healthy their entire lives.

samirillian 9y ago

Cold blooded! I don't know if it's more or less efficacious/probable than dinging the corporations, but it certainly seems less moral.

positr0n 9y ago

The problem with that logic is that people with unhealthy behavior actually cost the system less. It's way cheaper to be relatively sickly for a few decades then die of lung cancer or heart disease at 50 than be relatively healthy and die of cancer or alzheimer's at 90. Not saying something like that might not be a good idea from a public health perspective. I'm not educated enough on those issues to have an opinion.

antisthenes 9y ago
> I'm not educated enough on those issues to have an opinion. Yet here you are, posting things like this: > The problem with that logic is that people with unhealthy behavior actually cost the system less. Without any data.
- positr0n 9y ago
  > Yet here you are, posting things like this I posted what I am educated about, and did not post an opinion about what I am not educated about. > Without any data. Apologies. I posted a nytimes story that links to a study in another comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14353347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14353347
legulere 9y ago
I have seen studies go in both ways, depending on which costs they include or not
overcast 9y ago
Cancer, and Alzheimer's are generally not preventable. Being fat is. If you want to compare fat people dying of heart disease, and smokers dying of emphysema, fine. But don't compare an avoidable problem, with an unavoidable one.
- positr0n 9y ago
  Why not? We're talking about average lifetime medical costs, so who cares if one is preventable and one isn't? From a public health perspective yes that absolutely matters, but all I'm saying is this narrow claim: You will not save money on medical costs if you get your population to act healthier and they die of unpreventable diseases instead of preventable ones.

logfromblammo 9y ago

If you want to be fat, please raise your hand. Those who think being fat is fun or desirable, hands up. Nobody? Really? What you're proposing is to pile additional hardship on people who are likely already unhappy with their current situation, and may also feel powerless to fix that part of their lives. On its face, your proposal lacks both compassion and efficacy. It's also horribly authoritarian, and would likely discourage people from seeking preventative health care, just because the nurses weigh you at your office visit. Think about the potential unintended consequences before firing off a glib, "fix it with market incentives" proposal, paired with reasoning by [car] analogy.