Fat Tuesday!

Back when our ancestors were hunting and gathering, men did not have to worry about their women asking them the now cliched joke, "do I look fat in this?"  And men then could easily see their own penises because they did not have over-sized waists that blocked everything down.

Now, we don't have to worry about hunting and gathering.  We worry about fat though. A lot.  Abundance has become a problem.  A huge problem.  Even in the continent that has long been a poster-child for poverty and starvation!

In Africa, the world’s poorest continent, malnutrition is stubbornly widespread and millions of people are desperately hungry, with famine conditions looming in some war-torn countries.
But in many places, growing economies have led to growing waistlines. Obesity rates in sub-Saharan Africa are shooting up faster than in just about anywhere else in the world, causing a public health crisis that is catching Africa, and the world, by surprise.

Obesity is a not merely a public health issue, it now comes across as a pandemic!

The causes are the same:

Many Africans are eating more junk food, much of it imported. They are also getting much less exercise, as millions of people abandon a more active farming life to crowd into cities, where they tend to be more sedentary. More affordable cars and a wave of motorbike imports also mean that fewer Africans walk to work.

The older I get, the more I am pissed off that a whole bunch of smart and talented people spend their lives creating problems for humans.  "Food scientists" create newer and unhealthy junk foods. MBAs devise devilish marketing strategies to trap especially the young and the poor. And more.  Can't these talented devils use their brain power do something meaningful for humans, instead of being the glorified drug-dealers in lab coats and suits that they are, all in the name of "making money"?

Chile, which was ruined by the Chicago Boys who advised the strongman Pinochet, is on a hyperdrive against obesity:

They killed Tony the Tiger. They did away with Cheetos’ Chester Cheetah. They banned Kinder Surprise, the chocolate eggs with a hidden toy.
The Chilean government, facing skyrocketing rates of obesity, is waging war on unhealthy foods with a phalanx of marketing restrictions, mandatory packaging redesigns and labeling rules aimed at transforming the eating habits of 18 million people.
Nutrition experts say the measures are the world’s most ambitious attempt to remake a country’s food culture, and could be a model for how to turn the tide on a global obesity epidemic that researchers say contributes to four million premature deaths a year.

The modern (junk) food industry goes after kids with all kinds of marketing gimmicks.  They are powerful child abusers, against whom most parents are simply powerless.  I agree with the Chilean politician, Guido Girardi, who "publicly assailed big food companies as “21st century pedophiles.”  Pedophiles in suits!

Abdicate now: The world is flabbergasted!

I have had a few chocolate bars sitting on the dining table for a couple of weeks now.  In the freezer is a container that I am yet to open.  In the kitchen shelf is an unopened packet of potato chips.

Yet, yesterday afternoon, when I felt like snacking, I picked up a banana from the fruit basket!

For years, I have been suggesting to students that the challenge in these modern times is to stay away from inexpensive calories.  As animals, we want to spend the least amount of work in order to obtain the calories that we need.  As economic agents, we want to spend as little as possible for the calories that we need.  In this world of food abundance, it is, therefore, easy to get into our systems a whole lot of calories at very low prices.  And that is where the problem begins.

Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight. At the same time, scientists say, the growing availability of high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods is generating a new type of malnutrition, one in which a growing number of people are both overweight and undernourished.
“The prevailing story is that this is the best of all possible worlds — cheap food, widely available. If you don’t think about it too hard, it makes sense,” said Anthony Winson, who studies the political economics of nutrition at the University of Guelph in Ontario. A closer look, however, reveals a much different story, he said. “To put it in stark terms: The diet is killing us.”

We can blame the manipulative practices of the food industry for all we want, and they deserve to be blamed.  But, at some point, we need to look at our fat selves in the mirror and realize that we have met the enemy.

Brazil, which we associate with the fantastic beaches and skimpily attired shapely women, is no exception to this diet crisis:

The rising obesity rates are largely associated with improved economics, as families with increasing incomes embrace the convenience, status and flavors offered by packaged foods.
Busy parents ply their toddlers with instant noodles and frozen chicken nuggets, meals that are often accompanied by soda. Rice, beans, salad and grilled meats — building blocks of the traditional Brazilian diet — are falling by the wayside, studies have found.
Compounding the problem is the rampant street violence that keeps young children cooped up indoors.

All these are modern day problems that the hunter-gatherers did not have to worry about.  As I have noted before, these are all the results of a historic turn of events about 12,000 years ago: Settled agriculture.

For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"

From this perspective, “Civilization” was not good for our health.

Archaeologists have proved this. If we examine two female skeletal remains from, say, 8,000 years ago, one from within a “grain” civilization and the other from mobile foraging and hunting peoples outside that civilization, the difference is clear. The bones and teeth of “civilized” woman are far more likely to have left a signature of malnutrition and iron-deficiency anemia while the bones of those outside these centers (the “barbarians!”) rarely bear such signs. What’s more, the barbarians are taller, less likely to be stunted. The difference is most striking among women due to the loss of blood during menses combined with a diet often lacking in the protein that would replace the red blood cells quickly.

We invented chocolate and ice cream, and that is our go-to-food for our kids because we parents work an insane number of hours.  Who is the smarter one: The Bushmen or us? ;)

ps: The title is from neologisms via The Washington Post:

Abdicate: To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach
Flabbergasted: Appalled at how much weight you have gained

What have the corporations ever done for us?

I am absolutely pro-labor union.  Yep.

I thought I should make that very clear to my rabid right-wing debaters, if they have not figured it out already ;)

At this point, you perhaps are thinking that this is a set up for something else.  Yep.

I am pro union, if the labor belongs to a category that truly can be screwed over by the short-term profit seeking greedy firms and bosses.  If, for instance, Walmart employees want to organize, I am all for it.  If Foxconn workers wants to join hands in solidarity, I say "go for it."  

But, any public sector employees forming a union, well, that's a different story.  I don't care if the employees are police officers or sanitation workers or university faculty.  The logic is this: Who is "the man" that the union wants to stick it to?  "The man" being considered the oppressor is the taxpayer.  Not some greedy capitalist.  So, the union wants to stick it to the taxpayer?

Of course, the public sector union's leaders will argue that they are really after the greedy capitalist who wants to hoard it all.

Consider this: Here in the dark blue state of Oregon, the public sector unions, "led by teachers," are enthusiastically pushing a ballot measure:

If approved by the voters here in November, Measure 97 would create the biggest tide of new tax revenue in any state in the nation this year as a percentage of the budget, economists said — and one of the biggest anywhere in recent history. Oregon’s general fund would grow by almost a third, or about $3 billion a year, through a 2.5 percent tax on corporate gross receipts.

How would that money be raised?

If the ballot measure passes, not every company will be affected. Out-of-state corporations and those with $25 million or more in revenue would pay the new tax. Smaller businesses would not. That disparity has cut like a knife through the business community.

If only it were that simple to make corporations pay taxes.  I wonder if the unions have heard of gazillion-dollar earning tax lawyers and accountants, like the ones Apple has on its side to keep the taxes far, far away.  The public sector unions create and live in their own alternate universe!

The editorial chief at the newspaper from the state's capital had some awesome lines:

What gets me is proponents’ assumption that corporations simply will accept lower profits in order to pay the tax. At the Salem City Club recently, one advocate went as far as saying companies would transfer their revenue from other states to pay their Oregon taxes.
That’s not the way corporations work, especially ones that are publicly traded on the stock market.

Meanwhile, the state's Legislative Revenue Office ran the numbers because, well, they have to.  It is their job.  What did they find?  Much to the displeasure of the Measure's backers, the office concluded that it would harm the state's economy:

among other effects, Measure 97 would slow private sector job growth and boost the average per-person tax bill by $600 via price increases, with the burden falling mostly on low- and middle-income Oregonians.

Really?  I was going to bet that businesses love paying taxes and will never pass the costs down to consumers.  Oh, how could I have been that stupid! I need to sign up with the comrades the first thing tomorrow ;)

Toilet Paper and Pee, aka, the TPP

Sometimes--ok, more often than not--I wonder why I think I am qualified to write about whatever it is that I write about.  Egomania? Egotism?

But then I tell myself that I write about very, very, very few topics at all.  I have never, for instance, blogged about art history, or Mendelssohn, or rocketry.  I know enough to know that I don't know a damn thing about most things.  I stick to what I know and what I can understand at least a little bit.  What a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of knowledge this is--so tiny it would not even blip in the knowledge screen.

Klout even tells me what its algorithms think about my expertise!

Well, enough about you; let's talk about me! ;)

Back when NAFTA was being debated, I remember being conflicted about it.  There are very few things in life that I am certain about, and two decades ago I was a cautious and doubtful supporter of the trade deal.  But then I am almost always suspicious of anything the suits put forward!

Now, it is the TPP, which doesn't have a neat aural effect as NAFTA.  TPP doesn't easily roll off the tongue.  When I read or hear TPP, my mind thinks about TP and pee.  Maybe it is my problem.  Well, enough about you; let's talk about me! ;)

Anyway, about the TPP, John Cassidy at the New Yorker, writes:

Many moderate Democratic senators have been put off by the secrecy surrounding the putative agreement, which has been in negotiations since 2010 and whose provisional text is classified

My suspicious mind is always inclined to worry about any agreement or bill when the material is classified.  What are they trying to hide from you and me?  How much of a secret is the text?

When Senator Barbara Boxer went to inspect it in a secure room at the Capitol, a guard told her she couldn’t take notes.

Pause for a moment and think about it.  TPP is not any national security document from which we can find out how much the government has been spying on you and me.  It is a freaking trade deal. What are they trying to hide from you and me?

A number of legal experts, however, including Yale’s Judith Resnik and Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, have raised similar concerns to the ones Warren expressed, warning that the T.P.P. could allow corporations and investors to challenge the laws and policies of member countries, including the United States, outside the scope of their existing legal system. In a recent letter to congressional leaders, the experts referred to a known provision of the T.P.P., which would see disputes resolved not by the courts but by a new conflict-resolution panel, the prospective makeup of which is far from clear. This panel “risks undermining democratic norms because laws and regulations enacted by democratically elected officials are put at risk in a process insulated from democratic input,” they warned.

But then an idiot like me wants an example of these concerns.  Which is what Joseph Stiglitz does in his commentary:

The real intent of these provisions is to impede health, environmental, safety, and, yes, even financial regulations meant to protect America’s own economy and citizens. Companies can sue governments for full compensation for any reduction in their future expected profits resulting from regulatory changes.
This is not just a theoretical possibility. Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia for requiring warning labels on cigarettes. Admittedly, both countries went a little further than the US, mandating the inclusion of graphic images showing the consequences of cigarette smoking.
The labeling is working. It is discouraging smoking. So now Philip Morris is demanding to be compensated for lost profits.

Pause for a moment and think about it.  We know really well that cigarettes are not dietary supplements and that they kill.  So, we have laws restricting it even while allowing the sale to be legal.  The manufacturer then turns around and sues for the compensation that it "loses"?  This surely merits a WTF!

Stiglitz writes:

The proceedings are so expensive that Uruguay has had to turn to Michael Bloomberg and other wealthy Americans committed to health to defend itself against Philip Morris. And, though corporations can bring suit, others cannot. If there is a violation of other commitments – on labor and environmental standards, for example – citizens, unions, and civil-society groups have no recourse.
If there ever was a one-sided dispute-resolution mechanism that violates basic principles, this is it. That is why I joined leading US legal experts, including from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley, in writing a letter to President Barack Obama explaining how damaging to our system of justice these agreements are.

This egomaniac has nothing else to say, other than quoting Elizabeth Warren and Rose DeLauro:

Congress should refuse to vote for any expedited procedures to approve the TPP before the trade agreement is made public. And Congress certainly shouldn’t vote for expedited procedures to enact trade deals that don’t yet even exist.

Source

Corporations are people, my friend!

Way, way, back, when I was in graduate school, I made a wonderful mistake of reading something by Ralph Nader, and even listening to him.  One of his favorites, which continues to dog me enough to even blog about it, questioned the idea of corporations as people.

Much later, another progressive, Robert Reich, articulated it well:

I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.

For all I know, Riech's thinking was influenced by Shakespeare, whose Shylock exclaims in The Merchant of Venice:

If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh?
if you poison us, do we not die?

We people bleed, laugh, die, but corporations do not.  We people have emotions. We are tied to geography.  We identify with cultures, via the languages we speak, the foods we eat, the music we like, the sports we follow, the places we call home, and the countries that we fondly cherish as our lands.  We are people who need people.

A corporation is anything but all those.  It is an imaginary concept to which we have ascribed human qualities.  A corporation does not have any family, no friends, and no cultural identity.

Thus, a "corporation" can be here one day and vanish the next day.   This imaginary entity can easily be packed up and sent across, whereas we real people are, for the most part tied down by geography.  And now, we are increasingly held hostage by the threat of these artificial people moving to a different geography--another state or another country--if we do not give them what they demand, which is typically a regime of low taxes and regulations.  These imaginary people called corporations behave like kidnappers demanding ransom.

You can, therefore, see why I am not pleased with this leader in the Economist:

Economic refugees have traditionally lined up to get into America. Lately, they have been lining up to leave. In the past few months, half a dozen biggish companies have announced plans to merge with foreign partners and in the process move their corporate homes abroad. The motive is simple: corporate taxes are lower in Ireland, Britain and, for that matter, almost everywhere else than they are in America.
In Washington, DC, policymakers have reacted with indignation. Jack Lew, the treasury secretary, has questioned the companies’ patriotism and called on Congress to outlaw such transactions. His fellow Democrats are eager to oblige, and some Republicans are willing to listen.
The proposals are misguided. Tightening the rules on corporate “inversions”, as these moves are called, does nothing to deal with the reason why so many firms want to leave: America has the rich world’s most dysfunctional corporate-tax system.

The piece begins with "economic refugees," by which you picture in your mind images of real people who move because conditions are horrible in their homelands and they are looking for something better.

Source

The magazine even provides the readers with an image of the artificial people with a "human face" so that you may then equate those emotional images with the imaginary people called corporations who are tied down by a ball and chain and want to flee from tyranny.  What bullshit!

The problem has been exacerbated by countries that have bought into this idea that by slashing taxation rates they can then attract the imaginary people and real money to their respective geographies:

Twenty years ago inversions were rare. But as other countries chopped their rates and America’s stayed the same, the incentive to flee grew.

The inversions--the movement of the imaginary paper people--were rare back then is an important fact.

Mr Obama insists that corporate-tax reform must also raise more money to spend on things like public infrastructure, which the Republicans oppose

I suppose only we real humans who bleed, laugh, and die use public infrastructure and, therefore, the imaginary people do not need to be taxed at all!

I second the notion that "I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one."

Will pay gazillions for linsanity. But, not a dime for CEOs?

I have ranted blogged many times about the ridiculousness in the supersized payouts for athletes, actors, singers and other entertainers (like here).  And pointed out the irony in the ardent supporters of these gazillionaires being vehement critics of corporations and their CEOs.  But, who cares for what Sriram says, right?

But, what about when the eminently qualified Ken Rogoff makes that same point?  Will you listen to him then?  If so, here is what he writes:

What amazes me is the public’s blasé acceptance of the salaries of sports stars, compared to its low regard for superstars in business and finance. Half of all NBA players’ annual salaries exceed $2 million, more than five times the threshold for the top 1% of household incomes in the United States. Because long-time superstars like Kobe Bryant earn upwards of $25 million a year, the average annual NBA salary is more than $5 million. Indeed, Lin’s salary, at $800,000, is the NBA’s “minimum wage” for a second-season player. Presumably, Lin will soon be earning much more, and fans will applaud.

Yet many of these same fans would almost surely argue that CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, whose median compensation is around $10 million, are ridiculously overpaid. 

The US values entertainment way too much for its own good.  But, hey, that is the story within academia too--football and basketball rule, while the liberal arts get flushed down the dirtiest toilet :(

Oh well ...

99 Percent: The evil corporations be damned!

Worth a gazillion words :)

Yes, Solidarity!     hahaha

And from the world of science comes this grumble from the dark matter:

Occupy Wall Street explained ... in a venn diagram

Pretty good, right?  Kudos to the person who created this.

BTW, if you like Venn Diagrams, then here and here are two posts from the past

Corporations serve us, or do we serve corporations?

Many years ago, while still a high school kid reading every potboiler novel around, I read The "R" Document, by Irwing Wallace.  (I confess that as a teenager, whose biology was rapidly changing, I was way more fascinated by his "The Seven Minutes"!)

The novel, which my cousin from the big city of Madras had loaned me, was set in an America of chaos and violence, and a near breakdown of law and order.  The answer to this was going to be a constitutional amendment that would suspend the first ten amendments to the Constitution--the Bill of Rights.  And, of course, there is a much deeper conspiracy driving all these, and one of the conspirators is an all powerful multinational corporation, "Supranat Co." (at least, this is how much I recall from memory, which is fading by the day!)

Fast forward a few years, and I was among the audience at USC to listen to Ralph Nader who was critiquing the powerful rights that the government and the Supreme Court had awarded to corporations.  Nader was worried that scheming corporations will subvert civics and the Constitution.

Over the years, I have had my own love-hate relationship with mega corporations.  The one thing I know for sure that I hate is their ability to participate in elections.  If democracy is for, of, and by the people, only humans can participate in governance.  Yet, time and again, the Court re-affirms corporations as individuals, which is one hell of a screw-up.  Now, after reading this interview with Joseph Stiglitz, who is no dunce, I am really, really concerned:

"Corporations are a legal entity," Stiglitz explained. "We create them. And when we create them we create all kinds of rules. They can go bankrupt. And that means they owe more money and they get away scot-free. They can create an environmental disaster, and then go bankrupt and again go away scot-free. So, as legal entities we have the right to make the rules that govern them."

"As individuals we have certain basic rights," Stiglitz continued. "We aren't created by the law. We exist by nature. But corporations are man-made. They are supposed to serve our interest, our society's interests. And we are creating them with powers that are not serving our society's interests."

More on the Supreme Court decision on free speech ...

Supreme Court Allows Corporations To Run For Political Office
WASHINGTON—In a landmark decision that overturned decades of legal precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday to remove all restrictions that had previously barred corporations from holding public office. "This is an unfair, ill-advised, and tragic mistake," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said before boarding a flight to Arizona in response to primary poll numbers that show him trailing the Phoenix-based company PetSmart by a double-digit margin. "Despite the deep discounts and exciting promotions that they may be able to offer, these huge, soulless entities are not capable of truly serving the American people's—or their pet's—needs." Corporate attack ads have already begun to hit the airwaves in New York, where a new Pepsi commercial set to a catchy modern remix of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" blasts incumbent governor David Paterson as "unrefreshing" and urges New Yorkers to "taste the choice of a new generation this Nov. 2."

Source
ahem, it is a satire :)

How important are corporate income taxes?

Warning: this chart from the Economist might get your blood pressure way up :-)

Only death is certain: not taxes for corporations!

I wonder what Obama and McCain will have to say about this GAO report that most corporations do not pay income taxes. I suppose taxes are only for the working stiffs :-(

From CQ Politics: Most corporations, including the vast majority of foreign companies doing business in the United States, pay no income taxes, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday.
During the eight-year period covered by the report, 72 percent of foreign-owned corporations went at least one year without owing taxes, and the same was true for 55 percent of domestic corporations.
Small companies were much more likely to pay no taxes than larger companies. Still, more than 3,500 large domestic corporations — with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts — did not pay taxes in 2005. ...
... The country’s 35 percent top rate on corporate income is among the highest in the industrialized world