Study reveals that most middle-class people have absolutely no idea what it's like to be really, honest-to-god poor.

This is not surprising. The article talks about how Kraft Dinner is a bad choice to give to food banks because poor people can't afford milk and butter. Also? It has NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE WHATSOEVER.

Most people don't seem to understand how expensive vegetables are. Honestly, guys, it costs a lot of money to eat healthily.

When I was broke, I used to buy Mr. Noodles by the case, because all you had to do was add water. You didn't need to have, you know, ingredients. Two packs of Mr. Noodles a day and the occasional can of something-or-other was my typical diet for a good few months - why I didn't die of scurvy is still up for debate.

Should we be OK with the fact that cheap food is also really bad for us? When are we going to accept that it costs a lot to nourish people, and that without being nourished we can't expect people to function properly? Yeesh.

This just gives me chills:

... Deregulation brought us miseries in finance, transport, energy and the climate. Free trade agreements dole out favors to big farmers and big pharma. The financial crisis finished off what was left of monetarism, the idea that the Fed should only worry about inflation. And everyone has given up on waiting for low taxes to unleash the creativity of the ultra rich.

Under Bush, oil and gas, drug companies and defense contractors, insurers and usurers control the government of the United States and it does what they want. This is the predator state. The wisdom of free markets? The President gave his own verdict in Houston the other day: "Wall Street got drunk." True enough, but where were the grownups when the party went wild? - James Galbraith

And in case anybody was going to ask me (I know you weren't, but I'll tell you anyway), I am of the strong opinion that Canada should boycott the Beijing Olympics. We should refuse to take part in this exercise in totalitarian maneuvering and vast suppression of human rights.

Obviously, I do not buy the IOC's claims that holding the Olympics in China will wrench the Chinese government into the 19th, 20th or 21st centuries. I do not buy their explanation that the games will bring much-needed economic stimulus, nor that the IOC will have some kind of bargaining power to assure an increase in human rights* in Beijing proper for the duration of the games (which will miraculously outlast the games themselves.) They obviously do not, to judge from the ongoing cencorship of the web, to take a recent example. The IOC seems to have forgotten that they now need China as much as China needs them - what are they going to do, cancel the games if China is naughty? Unlikely.

* For non-Chinese citizens, that is. Chinese citizens can go fly a kite. Or not, if they haven't received permission from the government to do so, of course.

This should become required reading before the City of Kingston renews your annual permit to hold opinions.

h/t Alan.

This is an interesting observation about the current corn-ethanol fad:

A student came in my office last week and asked: Aren't ethanol subsidies just implicit taxes on the poor? I thought about it for a minute, then said, "Yep."

It always comes down to that, doesn't it?