June 19, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
11:53
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| When people shop for food, they're incentivized by lower prices. | |
| Many people are very price sensitive when shopping. | |
| And that's why it's such an issue when the government subsidizes corn. | |
| Corn is subsidized to produce ethanol, but also other derivatives such as corn syrup. | |
| Corn is in so many foods that it has become a staple of the diet of Americans. | |
| A lot of it's genetically modified. | |
| Most of it is, in fact. | |
| And in its corn syrup form, it contributes to diabetes and obesity and even nutritional deficiencies because it's just, well, just empty calories without the micronutrients that the body needs. | |
| So with that in mind, you may wonder, why does the government subsidize corn? | |
| It causes the junk foods that are promoting diabetes and obesity and ultimately heart disease and cancer to be more affordable or less expensive, versus organic foods or whole foods that offer more nutrition. | |
| Now, those of you who are libertarians might say, well, the government shouldn't be in the business of subsidizing any food at all. | |
| And philosophically, I tend to agree with you on that. | |
| Why should the government vote? | |
| With your money for what kind of food you're supposed to be buying. | |
| It doesn't make any sense to pay farmers not to grow crops, which is what the government has done for a very long time, or even to pay farmers extra to grow crops, thus subsidizing their production costs. | |
| But if you're going to subsidize food, why not subsidize organic food? | |
| Why not subsidize healthy food or whole foods? | |
| And if you're going to subsidize people's purchases through food stamps, Then why not limit food stamps to foods that promote good health? | |
| I know there's a lot of topics here, so let me tackle them one at a time. | |
| The food stamp program called SNAP, it's a food assistance program. | |
| It's used by, well, under Obama, it hit, I think, 48 to 49 million Americans at that time. | |
| It has since reduced its scope. | |
| I think now it's right around 43 million Americans, but I'm not entirely sure that's the exact number. | |
| Anyway, it's probably in the low 40s. | |
| Did you know that people who are getting the SNAP assistance, they can go out and they can buy a soda. | |
| They can literally buy junk food snacks. | |
| They can buy foods that promote diabetes and obesity. | |
| And then under Obamacare, the idea was that the government was also going to pay for your health care costs. | |
| So wait a second. | |
| The government subsidizes foods that cause disease, and then the government also turns around and pays for the treatment for that disease? | |
| And of course when I say the government, I mean the taxpayers ultimately are paying for all that. | |
| That makes no sense. | |
| The Food Assistance Program is supposed to be a program to help people who are starving. | |
| But have you ever seen people who use food stamp cards? | |
| They don't look like they're starving. | |
| A lot of times they look obese. | |
| They're getting too many calories and not enough nutrition. | |
| They're certainly not starving. | |
| The SNAP program should be limited to ingredients like beans and rice, vegetables, fresh fruits, You know, onions, I mean, the produce section of the grocery store, for example, so that people can have health-enhancing foods. | |
| Now, so that's the SNAP program. | |
| That's the problem there. | |
| It subsidizes all the wrong things. | |
| It subsidizes the junk food and the crap food, the processed food that's promoting disease. | |
| Now let's get to the subsidies for farmers, as I mentioned earlier. | |
| Why isn't our government subsidizing organic agriculture instead of subsidizing chemical GMO corn agriculture? | |
| Again, the libertarians out there, maybe you are one, would say, well, the government shouldn't be subsidizing any agriculture, and I actually tend to agree with that. | |
| Why should the government pay for any food to be grown? | |
| It doesn't even make sense. | |
| But if you're going to do it, why not subsidize the healthful foods that reduce, effectively, long-term health care costs? | |
| That would mean subsidizing organic production to help make organics more affordable so that they can compete with non-organic produce so that consumers who are very price sensitive can walk into the grocery store and afford to buy organic produce which means they're not eating the pesticides, herbicides, and other toxic chemicals that promote disease. | |
| If you think about it, When the government actually subsidizes organic production, I mean, if they did, that would be an investment in the long-term health of the nation. | |
| It would reduce long-term healthcare costs, and it would add to the longevity of the citizens and even their productivity. | |
| Because pesticides, for example, cause Alzheimer's disease. | |
| It's scientifically proven. | |
| We know this. | |
| It's in the scientific literature. | |
| Thousands of studies talk about the devastating effects of pesticides and herbicides on human biology, and many of them link pesticide exposure to neurological damage or cognitive impairment, as it's called. | |
| So why is the government subsidizing foods that cause brain dysfunction and reduce longevity and reduce productivity and increase health care costs? | |
| See, that makes no sense. | |
| So I say there are really two ways to tackle this. | |
| I mean, number one, big government is too big. | |
| Government is involved in too many decisions in industry. | |
| The government shouldn't be telling farmers what to grow or what not to grow. | |
| The free market can take care of that. | |
| So that's the first answer here. | |
| But the second answer is, if the government's going to choose to subsidize something, for whatever reason, they should subsidize organic produce. | |
| Now then, there's another angle in all this, which is sort of the government intervention angle. | |
| And that angle says that you should tax all the junk foods and use that money to subsidize all the healthful foods. | |
| So, in other words, you would tax sodas. | |
| You would tax... | |
| And by the way, I'm not saying that I support this. | |
| I'm just describing it, okay? | |
| In this scenario, you would tax Doritos. | |
| You would tax Oreo cookies. | |
| You tax high-sugar, high-fat processed junk food, sodas, and all that. | |
| You use that money to subsidize organic foods, to make organics dirt cheap. | |
| Now, think about this. | |
| Let's do a little thought experiment here. | |
| What if you were able to make organics so inexpensive that people could shop for organic food and pay, let's say, one-tenth the price of what they're paying for non-organic food? | |
| Well, how many people across America would start eating organic? | |
| And the answer is almost everyone. | |
| Even poor people. | |
| Especially poor people. | |
| If organic were affordable, less expensive than conventional, let's say it's even just half the price, not to mention, you know, one-fourth or one-tenth. | |
| People would buy and eat that food like crazy. | |
| And they would get healthier. | |
| And national healthcare costs would plummet. | |
| And the drug companies would make less money. | |
| Because people wouldn't have all these diseases. | |
| Cancer rates would plummet. | |
| You see, that's good for America, but it's bad for the industries that profit from sickness and disease. | |
| It's bad for the pesticide industries especially, because they wouldn't be able to sell as many pesticides, because demand for pesticide-grown food would plummet. | |
| You see, I know I said a lot there, but I said all that to get to this point, which is that so many for-profit industries in America depend on the cycle of processed food, chemical exposure, And toxic or degenerative disease caused by those toxic foods. | |
| It is a business to feed people ingredients that causes disease and then for the drug companies to make money treating those diseases. | |
| This business all counts on the GDP. The more people get sick and the more people go to doctor's offices, take more drugs and have more surgeries, the GDP skyrockets. | |
| Oh my God, it looks like the economy is booming. | |
| But is it really? | |
| The junk food companies are selling more food. | |
| Is the economy really booming if people are dying of cancer and diabetes and spending more money on sickness and disease? | |
| Is that really gross domestic product? | |
| I mean, yeah, it's gross. | |
| Isn't it more like, though, gross domestic suffering? | |
| Gross disease suffering. | |
| Or maybe gross disease profits. | |
| GDP is really more gross disease profits, if you think about it. | |
| And that's not what we should base our economy on. | |
| So this whole cycle gets incestuous between food companies and the drug companies and the government. | |
| Subsidies are all wrong. | |
| Processed food pricing is all wrong. | |
| Organic is too expensive compared to what it should cost if we're going to incentivize healthy living. | |
| And, of course, healthcare costs are all wrong as well. | |
| Monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals, for example. | |
| But it all counts on the GDP. So the economy is booming the more everybody gets sick. | |
| And there's something truly sick about that from a national perspective. | |
| I've got a cartoon on this, by the way. | |
| It's at counterthink.com. | |
| You can see the cartoon. | |
| I think it's called The Economy is Booming, by the way. | |
| And it shows the chain of a local economy. | |
| A mayor is standing at a podium and saying, the economy is booming. | |
| And how's it booming? | |
| Well, behind him are all the businesses, the drug companies, the Junk food, fast food companies and the hospitals and the cemeteries and the pesticide companies are all making money while people are getting sick and dying. | |
| And the nation crumbles when its citizens can't protect their health and can't enjoy longevity and productivity. | |
| And that's what we're experiencing here in the United States. | |
| So if you want to have a country that has a long-term plan for economic prosperity and happiness, it has to be rooted in health. | |
| And health has to be rooted in food. | |
| Good food that's not exposed, doesn't expose you to toxic chemicals. | |
| Food that isn't saturated with pesticides and glyphosate and GMOs. | |
| The very foundation of a sustainable nation has to come from sustainable, healthy food. | |
| America is not ready for that yet. | |
| No nation in the world, in fact, has gone all organic or even prioritize organic. | |
| But if that were to happen, that nation would be the most prosperous, the most truly abundant, the healthiest, the happiest nation in the world. | |
| And I'm not sure this is ever going to happen in my lifetime, but if there were ever a nation that wanted to know how to do that, I'm the guy who can help you design that plan, show you how to incentivize the right things, And create long-term economic prosperity, food freedom, health freedom, happiness, cognitive abundance, performance, economic prosperity on top of health prosperity, all of that. | |
| It's within reach. | |
| You just have to make the right decisions at the top level of government about what to incentivize and what not to subsidize. | |
| Simple economics can change human behavior. | |
| That's what economics really is, the study of human behavior. | |
| If you apply the right economic principles, you can change the future of an entire nation. | |
| It's within our reach. | |
| I just don't know if any nation has the willingness to bankrupt the sick care industries so that the people can be set free to live lives of health and prosperity. | |
| My name is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger. | |
| You can hear more of my podcast at healthrangerreport.com or read my website, naturalnews.com. | |
| Thank you for listening. |
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