In today’s NY Times, Mark Bittman debunks the myth that poor people are getting fat because junk food is cheaper. It isn’t. People just don’t want to be bothered cooking, and more affordable junk food makes that possible – at the expense of people’s health. This is, I believe, just one example of people doing what is easy rather than what is best. The easy life, intensively marketed, is killing us.
You see the same trend in transportation. Riding a bike to work three or four times a week nine miles each way, which many people could do but few actually do, I find that my legs actually get tired sometimes. Before I started doing so, I never got enough exercise to become physically tired, unlike just about every human in history before the 20th Century. Despite the occasional discomfort, however, I am undoubtedly far healthier and able to keep my weight steady.
The human body has the ability to acclimate to heat or cold, but those who are running the AC all summer long and keeping the heat high in winter lose that ability. They end up little more comfortable than before, at great expense. Eventually, people spend little time outside. At one time it was a point of pride in this country to be tough enough to be out there in the elements. Now, it seems, people would rather ride in a climate controlled SUV from one indoor garage to the next.
If you are ever up late at night, you’ll see that network TV is full of ads marketing Medicare-funded powered scooter chairs to seniors, seniors who in past years would have struggled to walk with a cane or walker. Aches and pains come with aging, but my grandparents knew to fight them as long as possible to remain as healthy and active as long as possible. Today, seniors are encouraged to surrender as soon as possible. I can’t help but think this will accelerate their decline.
And, of course, people have been encouraged to get what they want today the easy way by going into debt, rather than taking the harder road of deferring gratification and saving for things. In part because marketers realize that if they don’t spend on impulse, people will realize they don’t really need all the crap anyway. The result has been a decline in our financial health.
In finance, in fact, fraud and the transfer of wealth through power has been a far easier route to wealth and profits than actually performing due diligence on every loan and investment for a modest fee, and earning a good living actually allocating capital intelligently. The jobs of all the people who used to check up on things were eliminated, leaving more room for higher pay at the top.
Politicians have been promising easy street too. Early retirement for unionized public employees, so they’ll have one year living while doing nothing for anyone for each year they are expected to work. Tax cuts. More spending. It’s been completely bi-partisan, with Republicans and Democrats appealing to the laziness of different people in different ways. Now that the city, state and federal governments are bankrupt, they’ll be delivering the reverse for years, and no one will be popular with an electorate conditioned to demand something for nothing or else be robbed by those actually getting it.
One wonders if the eventual goal of our society is to allow all or most of its members to spend a lifetime in bed, hooked up to a sugar water IV, watching infomercials on TV or playing videogames. Perhaps the fact that we can’t afford it, because the Chinese won’t lend us quite that much, isn’t a bad thing.