America's emerging "fat war" threatens to pit a shrinking
population of trim Americans against an expanding population of
heavy Americans in raging policy debates over "fat taxes" and "fat
bans." These "fat policies" would be designed to constrain what
people eat and drink - and theoretically crimp the growth in
Americans' waistlines and in the country's healthcare costs.
Richard McKenzie's "HEAVY The Surprising Reasons America Is the
Land of the Free-And the Home of the Fat"offers new insight into
the economic causes and consequences of America's dramatic weight
gain over the past half century. It also uncovers the follies of
seeking to remedy the country's weight problems with government
intrusions into people's excess eating, arguing that controlling
people's eating habits is fundamentally different from controlling
people's smoking habits.
McKenzie controversially links America's weight gain to a
variety of causes: the growth in world trade freedom, the downfall
of communism, the spread of free-market economics, the rise of
women's liberation, the long-term fall in real minimum wage, and
the rise of competitive markets on a global scale.
In no small way - no, in a very BIG way - America is the "home
of the fat" "because "it has been for so long the "land of the
free." Americans' economic, if not political, freedoms, however,
will come under siege as well-meaning groups of "anti-fat warriors"
seek to impose their dietary, health, and healthcare values on
everyone else.
"HEAVY " details the unheralded consequences of the country's
weight gain, which include greater fuel consumption and emissions
of greenhouse gases, reduced fuel efficiency of cars and planes,
growth in health insurance costs and fewer insured Americans,
reductions in the wages of heavy people, and required
reinforcementof rescue equipment and hospital operating tables.
McKenzie advocates a strong free-market solution to how
America's weight problems should and should not be solved. For
Americans to retain their cherished economic freedoms of choice,
heavy people must be held fully responsible for their
weight-related costs and not be allowed to shift blame for their
weight to their genes or environment. Allowing heavy Americans to
shift responsibility for their weight gain can only exacerbate the
country's weight problems."
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