Comments on: enough! and then, somewhat more than enough

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:11:38 +0000

I think that’s a bit paranoid, rxc. If you follow Pollan’s work it’s quite clear that his concerns are centered around public health, environmental sustainability and the minimization of suffering by animals. Asserting that he’s after wealth transfer for its own sake is ludicrous.

By: rxc

rxc — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:15:32 +0000

Whant Mr. Pollan wants is some sort of way to raise the price of cheap food (not food that he approves of) that is not a tax. Then, when the poor people can’t afford it, he will want a tax on people with “too much money” to transfer their money to the poor to enable them to afford the food. He can’t ask for a real tax on cheap food because that would sound terrible, but if he can figure out a way to increase the cost of cheap food and transfer wealth, then he gets the results he wants.

By: Isabel

Isabel — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:34:26 +0000

THANK YOU. This drove me insane in the NYTimes article, especially with his non sequitorial juxtaposition of it to the rise in health care spending (because an aging Baby Boomer population going on Medicare wouldn’t have anything to do with that. nor would people living longer in general. nor would the discovery of expensive treatments for formerly untreated diseases. nor would shifts in how we spend the rest of the national budget. we could go on but I don’t have all day). Not to mention that it seems the statistic is an average of percentages of household income, and the super-rich have gotten ever richer (not that I know this for a fact, because it’s not like Pollan ever tells us where exactly his statistics come from). Grr. Okay. I could keep poking holes in this, but basically, I agree with you that it’s dishonest, and it pisses me off, and I’m glad to hear someone else saying so.