Bringing up 'fat people' and obesity to counter any movement towards public health.

To avoid this being labelled a callout thread, I will specify that this is attacking an idea, not a certain individual who keeps using the idea.

The idea is exacerbated due to Covid targetting the obese harsher in its symptoms and lethality, similar to the elderly and those with lung and heart conditions (actually heart conditions and obesity are closely linked but can be independent).

In Japan, South Korea and many 'western' social democracies today, you will notice something extremely shocking when you compare it with the general people's body proportions in a nation like the US or the upper class in less developed nations; there are becoming less 'fat' people amongst the wealthy in these nations.

Why is that? It is perhaps, if extremely cynical, to do with campaigns and policies of 'taxing sugar' etc that certain governments carried out over recent years to help (according to skeptics who propose this idea) to reduce costs on the socialised or partially-socialised healthcare. If that's true, why don't proponents of this idea support the US doing that then?

As in, why don't proponents of the idea that obese people would drain the economy too much if healthcare were socialised, instead support information programs and policies on fast food (the same meal name in Europe is around only 60% as unhealthy as the same meal in the US, I am not exaggerating, this is due to strict EU policy regarding 'how unhealthy a single meal can be' in Europe which is a law that simply doesn't even exist in US), Japan and South Korea also healthier but that is more cultural (if it was purely oily and greasy fast food there, they'd not visit it much as they have much healthier 'fast food' outlets, focused on strips of meat and/or fish with decent amount of vegetables and only easy-to-digest starch formats like rice, etc). 

If you would observe what a culture can do if it begins to positively (not negatively or abusively) pressure the obese to make healthier life decisions, as one whole society (rather than individuals teasing and having spite for one another) you would see a much more exponential transition towards a healthier populace. You can call it Orwellian, even I was not a fan of the sugar tax (I love sugary treats now and again and am a slim guy myself) but ultimately it's about the 'greater good'.

If more people end up less draining on society and happier+healthier, these policies can be optimal for the society. It's all based around that metric. Stop screaming 'freedom' and then going 'oh no not everyone uses their freedom so wisely'. You don't matter enough on your own for your 'good life decisions' to outweigh the bad ones others can/will make without guidelines and restrictions. You're not the only citizen of your nation.

You do realize that the United States is 50 countries under one Constitution. It is up to each state to do what it's going to do for its citizenry the federal government is not supposed to dictate anything outside of jurisdiction to the states. They were supposed to hand her international borders, international roads and policies regarding Federal properties within the states. This idea that the United States should work under one thing like Sweden or France makes no sense we have 50 Swedens and 50 Frances and populations don't necessarily want to do those things. Hawaiians don't even want mainlanders going to their state let alone have them governing policy for them.

The answer is that we already tax sugar more than any other country in the world.  Reagan's 1981 Farm Bill set very low quotas and very high tariffs on foreign sugar cane and sugar beet production.  Mexico would happily produce all the sugar the US could ever want for far less than we pay today but we tax most Mexican sugar at rates calculated to make sure domestic sugar is always cheaper for domestic buyers, which results in Americans paying more for sugar per lb. than any other country in the world.  This keeps domestic sugar production alive and still quite profitable since the cost gets absorbed by the addictive popularity of sugary drinks and candies. Reagan also set max limits for domestic production.  To keep the price of sugar very high, the government buys and converts overproduction into ethanol (which is slightly cleaner but not way cleaner than gasoline as fuel).  So, yeah, we don't call it a tax but Reagan taxed sugar at the highest rates in the world while condemning such taxes generally and most Americans failed to notice the hypocrisy. 

There are many countries that consume way more sugar than Americans and yet enjoy lower obesity rates- Israel, Brazil, Cuba, Russia, Australia.

I do think that American taxpayers could save a lot of money in healthcare by implementing free athletics and exercise programs as well as free annual checkups for all Americans. 

I don't think most Americans will ever be persuaded by any "stop screaming freedom" argument.

Amusing really.

Take online gambling laws, for instance, do you know which modern non-Sharia highly developed nation has the harshest laws regarding it? You got it. In 2 states it's actually purely illegal as in you can get arrested. The others except 3 have it passively outlawed, meaning it's taken on a case-by-case basis and you have to pay compensation to the government depending on evaded tax and how much you're involved with the host of the online service.

Take the way corporate tax is the most brutal one in the US and the fact that taxation on things works by you going and getting taxed for it, yourself, as opposed to it being taken out of the original source of income or payment output towards you... What is that mechanism of taxation other than an opportunity for the crafty with crude accountants and lawyers to evade it while the rest have to pay more as a result (to meet the quota every year,  you have multi-millionaires not paying their 'progressive tax' much at all while the rest pay openly and honestly far more whereas in other developed nations the progression of taxation up the wealth ladder actually is enforced much better, with the only loophole being offshore accounts). Interestingly, this difference even applies to Switzerland because the locals there are treated harsher with inspection laws on their bank accounts than foreigners they have two organisations that dedicate to monitoring banking and exposing tax evasion, it's just an issue of enforcement and high privacy provisions making getting warrants much more difficult than most nations, especially for foreign investors).

The citizens of the US are also not even more free in what they can say and do, not by much at all. If you would observe what actually happens in the US in terms of how you get alienated if you said the wrong thing to the wrong person and how rapidly word can spread in a nation that is so heavily based around social media; I don't know how to prove it but I can tell you that things like 'omg this instagram thing, this tiktok thing' etc are much more heavily observed and communicated faster in the US subcultures than in other developed nations, where it's primarily only teens and young adults who care much about it and even then they tend to just communicate to the people they know IRL.

The 'freedom' in the US is not really better in practise and 'cancel culture' is (as I just said) much more brutal there because, for instance, a restrictive law that many social democracies provides makes it difficult to keep a cancel culture thing regarding an individual going because getting defamatory things removed from search engine results presenting to the local nation is nearly impossible within the US but within the EU, Canada, Australia, South Korea etc it's far more viable due to laws regarding that.

Brutal "freedom" for all, means all can oppress all freely. This will never be understood by the US because the constitution directly opposes that fact (not opinion) there. It will require the culture to admit its wrongfulness and flawed thesis before it can progress in that regard but it seems to be starting to realise it, especially the left-wing within it.

The United States is home to 13% of the world’s fat population, the largest percentage of any other country in the world, according a new study published in the Lancet. In fact, around 30% is now overweight or obese.  Researchers found more than 2 billion people worldwide are heavy. The U.S. leads the pack, while China and India combined for 15% of the world’s overweight population, according to the report. And the concern isn’t just the percentage of the world that has crossed over into obesity, but the Associated Press reports that no country has been able to reverse the trend in the last decades.

I think you are off-point generally and specifically.

You argued some countries with lower obesity rates tax sugar so the US should follow suit and tax sugar.  I argued that the US already pays the highest sugar tax in the world, although that tax is hidden in an artificially high price.  None of your response addresses your thesis or my anti-thesis.

You argued that Americans should stop screaming freedom and submit to optimizing guidelines and restrictions.  I argued that Americans are never persuaded by that approach.  Look at Reagan- his farm bill added massive guidelines and restrictions and taxes to the US economy without registering a peep of backlash from the Right because he complained bitterly and often about government guidelines and restrictions and taxes.  He said one thing and did another and Americans found that persuasive.  If Reagan has argued that Americans stop screaming about freedom and just submit to new guidelines and restrictions and taxes because they are sensible and efficient, few to none of Americans would have been persuaded and the sensible and efficient measures would never have been implemented.

You countered that Americans are less free than they think they are, which is entirely non-sequitur to the argument that Americans are not persuaded by arguments against freedom.  Americans are also less well educated than they think they are but that's irrelevant to the point that you can't persuade Americans by calling them stupid.

No, Congress is mandated to legislate on matters covering only seventeen specific subjects [Article I, section 8]. Everything else is supposed to delegated to States. But, of course, Congress is greedy and will legislate on just about anything but their 17 powers of legislation. Not included in the 17: education, childcare, healthcare, food and diet, private ownership of weapons, state elections, insurance [see healthcare], intra-state commerce, etc. 

And Congress is supposed to investigate only matters affecting specific proposed legislation, but they are not a carte blanche DOJ.

I argued a lot more than that.

It's about an attitude and culture. The US would sooner celebrate the freedom to make poor dietary choices as its overeaters die prematurely or suffer than push for social programs and taxation to create pressure to both fast food chains and consumers to make healthier decisions. There are chemicals in a mcdonald's meal/drink in the US that are literally illegal to be in food in the EU.

That is a total lie. The entire EU, Australia+NZ, Canada, Japan and South Korea have directly pushed towards healthier lifestyles in recent years.

The Japanese (excluding sumo wrestlers) have always been relatively slim though, the reason isn't exactly known it may even be partly genetic as opposed to their dietary choices.

Human social and physiological evolution in progress RM.

Over all life expectancy is still far better than it was 200 years ago, even if one is a fat lazy bastard.

Death relative to life choices should be regarded as a reasonable expectation.