Rats, can’t open the links. would have loved to see the end of the story.
The problem in te US -and the countries copying the system- is that the layout is isolating, unfriendly, unhealthy. Now that you mention well off people having problems, a classmate -US citizen- who has several degrees and plenty of experience under his belt had to give up on a dream job simply because he could not find an affordable apartment within a reasonable several hours commute range of his workplace. That sucks.
Yup, America designed all their cities on the assumption that everyone would drive everywhere, and then a load of third-world countries copied them, because, like, if you have cars, development follows, right? 
This guy has a 21-mile commute because city planners decided that was perfectly normal.
I think the only thing that prevents America slipping into third-world status itself is the Protestant work-ethic and a good education system. These two things are spread across a large enough section of society that it keeps the whole thing more-or-less functioning.
The second link doesn’t work so the punchline is missing, but why do people think a car will solve this man’s problems? Yes, in the short term, it will get him to work in a reasonable time, but it’s just another money-sink: half his paycheck will disappear down the car’s gullet instead of his own. It’s no different from owning a horse, which needed food and care. I hope he has the sense to save what money he can, then take that car and GTFO of Detroit - or at least his local area - and go somewhere a 56-year-old has a better chance of getting a job. In the long term, perhaps cities like that will simply fall to pieces and people will design proper ones to replace them.
Problem is: where is he going to find a job? who is going to hire him? Doe she have enough funds to settle elsewhere? He certainly has no retirement fund, no health benefits aside from basic stuff he gets if he works and hence, no work, no coverage.
It is scary to live like that. No wonder food has no way to push up its way up in the priority list.
search this headline to open the article
‘A new home, a different life for walking man’
He’s had a lot of help from good people.
Worryingly his diet could kill him before his old neighbors get to him! It’s hard to change habits overnight and he’s probably just eating and drinking what everybody else eats around him. He’s also lonely as he has had to break ties with his old community and move to a better areas. But overall he’s in a good place for retirement in the future…if he can get the diet sorted out soon. It’s ironic that the exercise was probably keeping him relatively healthy before.
As an aside, his rent then and now is almost the same as what I pay for a 3bd apartment in Taipei (capital city) with first rate and cheap MRT system within 6 minutes walk. I also can secure my car in the car park for a small fee and I only pay a few hundred USD per year for insurance. I have fresh food available in markets within a short walking distance. Things are just easier here, although admittedly his paltry wage of 1,700 usd/mth (in America) is actually higher than average in Taiwan. In Taiwan he would most likely earn up to 1,000 usd/mth at most for a semi skilled shift job in a provincial city. The big difference is in health care and transportation options and the fact you are not going to be shot or mugged on your way home.
[quote=“Icon”]Problem is: where is he going to find a job? who is going to hire him? Doe she have enough funds to settle elsewhere? He certainly has no retirement fund, no health benefits aside from basic stuff he gets if he works and hence, no work, no coverage.
It is scary to live like that. No wonder food has no way to push up its way up in the priority list.[/quote]
Sure it is. Being a 56-year-old unskilled worker in the US must be f’ing scary. In many ways, the place really is third-world: an older person in his position is probably not much worse off in, say, Vietnam. But I strongly believe that where most poor people screw up is by being compliant: keeping their head down and their nose to the grindstone in the hope that, somehow, it’ll all just work out, and the rich people will be nice to them, or at least not kill them. It’s been like this for all of human history, and it’s not a whole lot different in the US today.
I was reading some article about guns the other day (I was responding to a poster in a gun-control thread). It was written by some ex-military guy and he was offering advice about dealing with threats to your life - home invasions, kidnapping and suchlike. His point was this: if someone is threatening you with a gun and attempting to force you to submit to some bodily insult - being tied up, say - on the pretence that ‘everything will be fine’, you can be damn sure that everything will not be fine. Things can only get much, much worse. Therefore, the most logical option is to simply run far and fast, or do whatever you have to to resist, because the chances are you’ll be shot regardless (statistically, about 33%, apparently). In other words, you’re already fucked, so at least take your chances with what little luck you still have.
“Society” in most countries is a lot like a holdup. For the poor person, it’s not going to all work out fine, because the rules were written to make sure it doesn’t. A 56-year-old unskilled labourer (I’m just assuming he’s unskilled) who just hopes that he’ll have a job tomorrow, even if it’s 21 miles away, is already fucked. The story has a miserable ending whatever he does. His best bet is to take the advantages he has today - a job and a car - and make it less miserable. For example, he could tell his company he wants to train up. He’s a committed worker and if they have any sense, they’ll give him the day-release he needs. The worst that can happen is that they’ll say no. He may be able to sell a car-share to work to another employee. Maybe he can still downsize in some way. He could get married (although it sounds like he doesn’t have time for a social life). Two people can’t live as cheaply as one, but they can live as cheaply as one-and-a-half. If you can save money, you can buy land, which IMO is the most valuable thing anyone can have. You can either cultivate it and live on it directly, or you can rent it to others. 10ha of land in Ohio or Indiana costs less than $50,000. Living like that isn’t an idyllic retirement, but it’s better than being dead in a ditch.
The more important point is: don’t dig yourself into a hole you can’t get out of. WTF was he thinking? He’s had 40 years to make a life for himself. It’s a lot easier to prevent a crisis than to extract yourself from one.
Read the follow-up article by searching the headline in Google above Finley, he got a free car and at least 350k USD donated to him. Just as importantly he has people looking out for him. But Yep, if we are talking about joe soap 56 yr old unskilled worker on pay check to pay check…they are generally fucked, one mishap away from complete destitution.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Well, most people in the ol country live like that but have family ties -people who support them, no matter what, family is family- and free medical services -bad quality I admit, and probably will die before seeing a doctor but at least will die in a hospital bed- that assure he won’t be so… isolated. It is juts that that existence is not a life. Or at least I do not see how it can be a fulfilled life.
Going back to diets and evolution, take it from someone’s gut that’s only been sick twice in Taiwan and is fully able to have street food in India:
How Modern Life Depletes Our Gut Microbes
[quote]As cultures around the world become more “Western,” they lose bacteria species in their guts, Dominguez-Bello says. At the same time, they start having higher incidences of chronic illnesses connected to the immune system, such as allergies, Crohn’s disease, autoimmune disorders and multiple sclerosis.
“So the big question is: Are these two facts related?” Dominguez-Bello asks. “It’s not clear if more diversity in the microbiome is healthier. But maybe we have lost species with important functions.”
…
“Clean drinking water is one of the most important achievements of Western culture,” Walter says. “It prevents the spread of infections, but it also prevents the easy exchange of our microbiomes.”
At the end of the day, though, less diversity in our guts may be a small price to pay for overall good health, Walter says.
“We don’t want to romanticize life in Papua New Guinea,” he says. “They may have much lower incidences of allergies and autoimmune diseases. But they are actually less healthy than people in Western societies. Their life expectancy is lower, and their infant mortality rate is high because of infections and parasites.”
[/quote]
Interesting position about how what we eat influences our health. What I like is that attitude of “we do not know everything already, we have more to explore, discover and understand”.
It’s due to oil powers lobbying hard. Chomsky has a long exposition about it. It’s completely by design.
China then did the same thing, people like cars and women like guys who have cars. So it’s a bit more complicated than one conspiracy theory.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Actually China’s boom in car ownership was very much government policy. People may like cars but government always sets the conditions for whether they are widely available.
And also how to subsidize this lifestyle. If car owners suddenly had to pay to leave their multi-tonne personal property on public space, they may have incentives to select other options. As it stands, they are among the most heavily subsidized tax payers around.
Guy
I have to agree. People like cars because they’re told to, and private cars were very much a part of Chinese gov’t policy (although they soon realised the flaws in taking that position, such as a fractious public demanding big roads).
Car manufacturers, of course, make the most of the power that they are given. That’s just human nature.
Come on guys, there’s a reason top gear is so
Popular and it ain’t all Jeremy
Clarkson. Of course governments influence the ease and usefulness or not of owning a car. For instance since I moved to Taipei I barely use a car, as it has little utility and I have little need for it here, due to massive investment in public transport. I still see lots of people driving cars though, and I bet a lot don’t need to drive either.
My point about China was that it’s seems as a marker
Of success and wealth, and therefore one of the things potential brides and their families ask for prior to marriage. That is very powerful.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Come on guys, there’s a reason top gear is so
Popular and it ain’t all Jeremy Clarkson.[/quote]
I think you’re right too. Personally I view cars as a synthetic virus (or since they’re macroscopic, a parasite). They have a lot of disturbing similarities, and it’s not like such things haven’t been created before. Car infection is like a reverse STD: the disease comes first, and sex is the outcome.
However, I believe governments could (in theory at least) apply all the usual methods of disease control:
The only thing I wouldn’t recommend is applying antibiotics (destroying existing cars). The disease is self-limiting because the virus cannot reproduce itself. Use the cars for their entertainment value in special parks, the way you can do similar things with old military vehicles if you know where to look.
You still have the issue of transport, but that’s nothing to do with cars. Cars are not transport. They are - as you correctly said - just things to help you get laid. Actual transport is so laughably easy with modern technology that it’s only the car industry (and prizewinning gov’t incompetence) that prevent it happening.
Obviously, all the above control measures are only possible in places that aren’t overrun with cars. The rest of us are in the same situation as HIV-decimated Botswana.
I have to agree. People like cars because they’re told to, and private cars were very much a part of Chinese gov’t policy (although they soon realised the flaws in taking that position, such as a fractious public demanding big roads).
Car manufacturers, of course, make the most of the power that they are given. That’s just human nature.[/quote]
In the ol country, a car is a status symbol. I am better than the rest because I can afford a third or fourth hand discarded Detroit reject made in Korea but sold as US car -which I really can’t afford, but are paying a loan for triple its local market value, actually several times what it was sold for originally in the States… Please note we have no streets to speak of, no markers, no street signs nor street lights, but our ministers were all trained in the US and apply US solutions -like increasing the speed limits- to reduce accidents and mortality in our “streets”. All the while taxing bikes to oblivion. Oh, and they frown on motorcycle use because it is the vehicle of choice for murderers, usually cartel related but also for hire at reasonable prices -hence, laws banning two people to ride in a motorcycle…
Do you understand why every time I come back to Taiwan I do the papal salute?
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Come on guys, there’s a reason top gear is so
Popular and it ain’t all Jeremy
Clarkson. Of course governments influence the ease and usefulness or not of owning a car. For instance since I moved to Taipei I barely use a car, as it has little utility and I have little need for it here, due to massive investment in public transport. I still see lots of people driving cars though, and I bet a lot don’t need to drive either.
My point about China was that it’s seems as a marker
Of success and wealth, and therefore one of the things potential brides and their families ask for prior to marriage. That is very powerful.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk[/quote]
I don’t think we are in disagreement. The popularity of cars as a signifier of status is separate from government policy. China wanted to build a world class world dominating car industry. Which they have. Since 2008 they’ve been the largest in the world.
Stimulating local sales was part of the strategy. As was vastly expanding the paved road network to allow weekend travel to the countryside.
I totally agreed with you. we need more exercise then eat less.
This is the science.
I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it:
Five things you might be surprised affect weight - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43822604