Study shows that lowering minimum-wage could end world hunger

A recent scientific study has honed in on the problem of obesity in America and in a mindboggling show of scientific and social expertise has determined that low income is the culprit. The argument begins with the supposition that poorer people generally have less access to fresh, healthy food options which can contribute to poorer health. Now I agree that this is generally true, although it’s important to differentiate between rural and urban poor communities (as rural populations are more likely to grow their own fresh fruits and vegetables, whereas inner-city communities are more likely to get their only semi-fresh, hormone-enhanced greens at the 99 Cent Store – us city folk always get the short end of the deal). Nor do I rule out the possibility that lower-income populations are more likely to be obese. What I have trouble believing is that the lack of healthy food options, as brought on by an inadequate income is responsible for the obesity problem. It’s very convenient, don’t you think, that our country’s obesity issues have been found to not, in fact, be an effect of eating too much crap and having too little exercise, but rather the fault of...big surprise...the rich people. It’s only part of America’s growing awakening; in the past several months, we have apparently come to realize that, indeed, all of our problems have been brought on by the wealthy.

What I love best about the study is its solution to the problem: raising minimum-wage. There are so many problems with this conclusion and the way it is drawn that it must be some kind of fallacy, if only I could ever remember the list. To begin with, the study found “that minimum-wage employees are more likely to be obese than those who earn higher wages, adding to growing evidence that being poor is a risk factor for unhealthy weight.” “Being poor is a risk factor for unhealthy weight,” is a rather obvious statement, except that it seems to me that having no money would more frequently lead to unhealthy weight in the negative, rather than the positive (if you will) direction. Furthermore, anyone who has worked in retail in any kind of shopping center can tell you that a thirty minute lunch at a place like that doesn’t leave you much opportunity for eating anything other than greasy fast food, unless you are of the enigmatic and dying race of people who somehow have the time and energy to take a sack lunch to work every day. As such, I would be inclined to believe that it is the greasy fast food, and not the minimum-wage that packs on the pounds.

According to the study, raising minimum wage “could increase purchasing power enough to expand access to healthier lifestyle choices.” The rhetorician in me notes the use of “could” instead of “will,” as in “the sky could fall tomorrow, but will it?” I wonder what the likelihood is that raising minimum wage will actually make people living in poor communities rich enough to travel farther away to get healthier food. To begin with, if all the places that currently pay minimum wage had to pay their employees more, they would also have to raise the cost of whatever it is they are selling. Since a lot of jobs that involve getting different kinds of food to different populations require large volumes of minimum-wage employees, the cost of food would necessarily go up. Is it beneficial to a person to raise both their income and the things they purchase simultaneously? Of course, the alternative is to raise minimum-wage and put a cap on the cost of food. We all know that businesses are evil anyway. This would cause most grocery stores to go out of business, making unhealthy food for minimum-wage employees more difficult to obtain. Obesity problem solved! Except for the small fact that it would also make healthy food for minimum-wage employees more difficult to obtain. With the obesity issue in low-income populations solved, perhaps nobody would notice the correlation between minimum-wage incomes and starvation?

Besides this, the only way I can figure to calculate how much raising minimum-wage could directly expand access to healthier lifestyle choices is to:

1. Calculate how much it would cost for the average minimum-wage employee to travel to buy healthy food.
2. Calculate how much it would cost this same person to actually purchase the healthy food.
3. Add 1 and 2.
4. Calculate how much it already costs the average minimum-wage employee to travel to buy healthy food.
5. Calculate how much it already costs this same person to actually purchase unhealthy food.
6. Add 3 and 4.
7. Subtract the answer to 5 from the answer from 3.
8. Determine how much more each minimum-wage employee would need to be paid per hour to equal the answer in number 7.

As a side note, if the answer to number 8 requires that minimum-wage be raised from $7.75 to $20.75, should we consider any of the problems that might arise from a $13 raise in minimum-wage?

As a preface to what I am about to say next, I would like to mention that ever since my AP Statistics class in high school, which I thoroughly enjoyed (and no, I’m not being sarcastic), I have frequently argued that the greatest thing about statistics is that it means absolutely nothing. If the world were a vacuum, perhaps a perfect statistical study could be achieved. Since it is not, statistics is entirely bogus. It is my opinion that you could conduct the same exact statistical study and very convincingly and successfully draw two opposite and true conclusions from it. The secret of statistics is not that it can give you insight into a particular topic, it is that you can use it as fake proof that your own personal insight on a topic is true. This particular study had a sample size of a mere 6,312 people who were supposed to be a representation of the approximately 300 million people who actually live in the United States. But that’s not the best part. The best part is that 85% of those 6,312 people were men and 90% were Caucasian. So basically what the study can say with honesty is that out of a population of mostly white, mostly men (which does not exist in America), of the ones who were heads of households, those ones who were making minimum wage were mostly fatter than the ones who were making anything other than minimum wage. And what the study is arguing is that poorness leads to fatness. Mild disconnect? Maybe it’s just me.

In support of the argument that poorness leads to fatness, the study states that, “People living in the southern United States – where state minimum-wage levels are among the lowest – were more likely to be obese than people in other regions.” But I wonder, could this have anything to do with fried chicken? Baking chicken should cost about the same as, or less than, and use fewer resources than breading and frying it and yet somehow the poor minimum-wage earners in the southern states are growing obese off of it. Can we honestly blame minimum wage for this? What I’m saying in a mildly offensive and unpolitically correct way is that the study seems to completely leave out the effects of a person’s culture on what he eats. Canned corn, for example, should be reasonably available even in low-income areas where fresh vegetables are not available. Although canned corn is not as nutritious as fresh corn, it is significantly more nutritious, and probably cheaper, than, say, Taco Bell. Could convenience factor into bad eating habits? Could taste? Could education?

In keeping with the kind of thinking behind this study, I have come to the conclusion that if raising minimum wage would directly improve obesity levels in America, then lowering minimum wage would actually allow the starving populations in America to gain weight. The implications could even be global. Who would have thought that the solution to world hunger was as simple as lowering income levels? Now Americans are faced with a very difficult decision: should we raise minimum wage and save the obese people, or should we lower it and save the starving ones?

-R.E.A.

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?"

I saw lupines growing wild for the first time in my life last month, something to check off my List of Things to Do Before I Go. It may seem like a small thing to make a big deal out of, but ever since I read Granny’s Miss Rumphius and then found out that Lupines are California natives, I have dreamed of seeing them growing wild. Poppies of various types we have in abundance and they are one of my favorite flowers of all time. But an unfarmed field strewn with wild poppies and lupines both...I suspect you aren’t quite a real Californian until you’ve seen one. I spotted my first glimpse of purple in the Grapevine and something in my soul basked golden. Every Spring since time immemorial, the Grapevine has wakened to the golds and oranges and amethysts of the poppies and lupines tucked away between meadow grasses and mountain rocks, heedless of me. But this year, I was there to see it.

We had a beautiful time in the Central Valley: roaming around the City of Trees (which is not as lovely as, say, the countryside just south of it, but which is nevertheless quite charming as far as cities are concerned); coming around to the surreality (not a word according to the red squigglies on my computer – squigglies, according to the red squigglies, also not a word) of Jason going to med school there, and all that that implies; spending time with beloved friends who also happen to be good people; and jogging along the Stanislaus River (whose name alone can make you forget the my-legs-are-about-to-fall-off, I’ll-never-breath-again, why-can’t-I-just-be-fat feeling of what they tell me is the “best” kind of jog.)

There is a smell that comes up over a river in the gloaming with all the lush shrubbery growing by its banks breathing softly and the animals of the day settling into their nests before the animals of the night begin their stirrings, and a million insects, individual in their own rights, of the thousand billions of their kind. There is a smell that comes up over a river who has seen a season of good rain and decades of unchanging changingness. This is not unique to one river in particular. I think it is kindred of all rivers, though to a practiced nose the scent is subtly different, like nectarines from peaches. If I had to guess, the Stanislaus River smells slightly of almond blossoms, but I cannot speak with the certainty of a native of its banks. And doubtless much like the ocean, its smell alters with the ground against which it washes and the breeze that wafts above it, and the trees – or rocks – that grow along it and turn to mulch – or sand – over the course of many tomorrows.

There is something about a narrow green footbridge across a river that makes the person jogging across it feel important somehow, in the best kind of secret and humble importance, as though the river wants you there above its banks, and as though all the storms and quakes and ferocious winds of its history have deemed it all right that you be there simply by not bringing it down before you got there. Like the bend in some random road that brings you up on a field of wildflowers. They weren’t put there for you, certainly, but somehow you’ve been granted the privilege to partake.

There is a place called Alpine, Wyoming that boasts the only stop sign within forty miles. I think to myself that I should be very happy living somewhere just outside of Alpine, Wyoming, somewhere where the stop sign is not too much of an inconvenience, a place that will be sufficiently overlooked when people travel to observe the Alpine landmark, somewhere only secretly, humbly important by Alpine association. Should I ever move there, you will find me sitting somewhere on a narrow footbridge, surrounded by native flowers, feeling important in my obscurity. Don’t feel badly for me; I have been 23 years searching for important obscurity. I suspect it will be a good deal longer until I find it, but I know it can be done. Cowboys have done it, and some sailors, and perhaps those questionable people you see backpacking along the side of the road sometimes, with an old happy dog following along on a string. When I doubt it, I simply contemplate all the out-of-the-way footbridges I have never seen, all the silvery creeks, all the wild lupines, all the lone, rocky outcroppings upon which I have never perched. I think of sitting on a quiet hill in Buchanan, Virginia surrounded by Black-Eyed Susans and cows and blue country sky. Important obscurity. It exists. You just have to find it.

-R.E.A.