steveinbsas said:
If what you say is true, perhaps walmart (in the USA) should be forced to provide FULL healthcare for all of it's employees and pay them all full time wages.
Then they would have to raise thier prices. AS A RESLUT, THE CUSTOMERS OF WALMART (WHO VASTLY OUTNUMBER THE EMPLOYES) WOULD BE THE ONES WHO REALLY SUFFER.
Last I heard no one in the US was ever forced to take a job at walmart.
That's what I always find humorous, people who curse Walmart for coming in and doing business better than others and driving inefficient businesses out of business, and supposedly ripping off their employees at will. As if Walmart are slave drivers who force people to work for them, and have driven all the small shops in the country out of business with their business model.
Still waiting, BTW, for Walmart to start raising their prices and take advantage of the "monopoly" that they built by selling at prices that were "unsustainable"...
It's called competition.
If they are not providing a good enough employment environment, for the level of employee they are seeking, they would not be able to employ people without making them slaves.
I also doubt that the relatively few (per area) of businesses that Walmart put out of business with their prices employed, together, more people than a single Walmart store employs, nor bring as much business to distributors of varying sorts. Certainly, their prices couldn't compete with Walmart.
But damn them for being so successful and bringing good products at cheap prices to the consumer!
Hell, maybe we should still be paying people to make buggy whips. Damn those auto manufacturers who drove the buggy-whip making people out of business! Of course, I guess one possible unintended consequence of continuing to employ people making something like buggy whips - think of how many people may have become interested in S&M with so many buggy whips just sitting there unused...
As far as the fat of Americans - I can say this. Steve had it right about gluttony in a previous statement. All people are pretty much the same everywhere in certain basic themes. Give them enough food to eat, at a cheap price, and the temptation is there to eat poorly. It becomes a matter of self control in front of relative riches. So we should control what's available to people so they don't get fat and bother other people with their obesity? Try to blame their gluttony on high health care prices (what a joke)?
I've been to McDs here enough to know that there are a LARGE PORTION of people here who eat at McDonalds. Maybe not as often as people in the States, because it sure as hell isn't as cheap as it is there in straight terms, and in terms of purchasing power to the local Argentine it's even worse. However, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon at McDs here - most all of the employees who work there carry about the same amount of weight most do who work in McDs in the States.
So people who come from the States and snub their nose at the obesity there and live here on their expat incomes, and manage to control their weight, aren't living the same thing anyway - they already control themselves. Those who come here and live on local wages don't have much of a choice - if they've come from a rich country.
I've seen many people come from Paraguay thin as a rail because they haven't had good nutrition or quantity of food where they came from, who quite rapidly balloon up to be obese when here. One of the biggest reasons is because they continue to eat the same kind of food they did back in Paraguay (LOTS of carbohydrates and starches), just in bigger quantity because for them the local wages (even as low as they are) allow them to buy more food here than they could at home.
Hell, it's actually somewhat a sign of respect in Paraguay to be fat. It means you're successful and can afford to eat well. Even a bigger sign than dressing well and being skinny. Unless you're a foreigner, and then being a foreigner is enough to garner respect even if you're an idiot.
I've seen plenty of terribly obese people here as well. Mostly older people but certainly enough younger people too. My wife and I just got back from the movies in Recoleta and I was blown away by a lady who raised herself out of the seat in front of us. I'm not sure how she got herself in, in the first place, but it couldn't have been easy and I know it wasn't comfortable.
And as GS_Dirtboy says - watching someone whip out a breast that is as pendulous with fat as it is with mother's milk is not a pretty sight. Unfortunately, one brother-in-law's wife, with their recent baby, one of those who came skinny from Paraguay and now is quite large - she feeds her baby on visits in our apartment too often...
Of course, at least when I was in the States living last, it was becoming quite common to feed the baby in public as well. But that's not something people talk about as they do with obesity. Personally, I am not repulsed by this, but feel uncomfortable as our society there has tried to shove Puritanism so far up our ##### that even something as natural as breast feeding feels uncomfortable. I would try to have a conversation with a woman breast feeding and stare at her face without moving my eyes for fear someone would jump up and shout PERVERT! if my eyes came anywhere near her mammary glands...
What I find really interesting about people is that they are never happy with the way other people dress. When I was young, everyone dressed to the nines, or at least what we would consider such now. I remember wanting some simple t-shirts to wear around the house, but my mother always bought me collared shirts and corduroy pants (even shorts)! Hell, my wife saw a picture of me when I was 5 and she started laughing - I looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy. After she stopped laughing so hard, she told me how cute I looked dressed like that - and managed to say it with a straight face.
Later, we were supposed to let people live the way they wanted to and it gets us people going to Walmart in t-shirts and other comfortable clothes and we tell them they should feel shame when they do so.
Meanwhile, here, everyone dresses to the nines to walk around the corner to the kiosko, no matter how much or little money they have - seems a bit superficial to me.
Hell, I walk down the street in nice Adidas sweat pants and a sweater and I feel as though I'm on display, like those walking around in Walmart in the States.
So of course Argentinos are going to dress up to go to Walmart - that's the culture here. Look good, no matter who you really are inside. In the meantime, too many people in the States dress as is comfortable to them, which sometimes shows too much of how they are on the inside. Heh.
