When it comes to reforming health care in the United States, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says the "best solution" is for Americans to eat better and change their lifestyle.
This dude is literally just a huckster telling people that they'll live longer if the shop at his store. Just dressed up in modern self-help guru language. Absolutely zero credentials other than "I do the big money".
The fact that someone thought that asking the CEO of Whole Foods about healthcare would provide any kind of meaningful insight is just the most pathetic, simpering, neoliberal hero-worship bullshit that says more about them than it does about John Mackey.
I was ready to excoriate CNBC for even interviewing this guy, but then it turned out to be those absolute piss drinkers at Freakanomics Radio. I cannot describe how much contempt I have for those court jesters.
I fucking despise those shitheads. Had a 'friend' who was really into them talk to me about one episode where they examined this mentorship program where successful students were paired with kids from rundown inner city areas. Apparently these kids from inner city areas did worse than their peers. The takeaway apprently being don't bother with these programs and not that a radically different set of skills is needed to survive these childhoods because conditions are so appallingly bad. He seemed genuinely shocked when I suggested that. Seems like just an awful pit of the worst lib takes.
I used to listen to them a lot, but even before I self-identified as a socialist I could tell that something wasn't kosher about how they did their stories. They always took these really narrow looks at problems and used that limited amount of information to draw out these conclusions that were always just obviously incorrect if you took other factors into account.
The story that I remember is exactly like yours; they were wondering if just giving people money would actually improve their lives (as opposed to other more complicated methods of assistance), so they looked at some experiment that had been done in the 1800's and came to the conclusion that since 19th century farmers couldn't effectively make use of a direct cash stimulus it wouldn't work today, ignoring the fact that we live in an entirely different economy, society, and even geography. I remember listening that and just thinking to myself, "what the fuck are these guys talking about?"
There are a shitton of studies that show unconditional cash transfers work as well or better than conditional programs. Giving people money is good. It gets them to invest in businesses, education, etc.
This dude is literally just a huckster telling people that they'll live longer if the shop at his store. Just dressed up in modern self-help guru language. Absolutely zero credentials other than "I do the big money".
The fact that someone thought that asking the CEO of Whole Foods about healthcare would provide any kind of meaningful insight is just the most pathetic, simpering, neoliberal hero-worship bullshit that says more about them than it does about John Mackey.
I was ready to excoriate CNBC for even interviewing this guy, but then it turned out to be those absolute piss drinkers at Freakanomics Radio. I cannot describe how much contempt I have for those court jesters.
I fucking despise those shitheads. Had a 'friend' who was really into them talk to me about one episode where they examined this mentorship program where successful students were paired with kids from rundown inner city areas. Apparently these kids from inner city areas did worse than their peers. The takeaway apprently being don't bother with these programs and not that a radically different set of skills is needed to survive these childhoods because conditions are so appallingly bad. He seemed genuinely shocked when I suggested that. Seems like just an awful pit of the worst lib takes.
I used to listen to them a lot, but even before I self-identified as a socialist I could tell that something wasn't kosher about how they did their stories. They always took these really narrow looks at problems and used that limited amount of information to draw out these conclusions that were always just obviously incorrect if you took other factors into account.
The story that I remember is exactly like yours; they were wondering if just giving people money would actually improve their lives (as opposed to other more complicated methods of assistance), so they looked at some experiment that had been done in the 1800's and came to the conclusion that since 19th century farmers couldn't effectively make use of a direct cash stimulus it wouldn't work today, ignoring the fact that we live in an entirely different economy, society, and even geography. I remember listening that and just thinking to myself, "what the fuck are these guys talking about?"
There are a shitton of studies that show unconditional cash transfers work as well or better than conditional programs. Giving people money is good. It gets them to invest in businesses, education, etc.