GOOD BODIES, LARD ASSES, LONG LIVES AND CITY LIVING
Miami Beach:
Miami Beach doesn’t look much like the rest of the country. For starters, Miami Beach is a real city in which people walk to go shopping or to work. Another reason is that in Miami Beach the inhabitants are mostly in good shape.
The good-body demographic groups in Miami are: a.) professional models, both female and male, both straight and gay; and b.) hangers-on, who are there because they are attracted by group “a” and need good bodies of their own for credibility with their marks.
A pit bull and his dog
Peculiar to Miami Beach is an extremely large population of Italians: upper-middle-class, young and stylish Italians from Northern Italy, some immigrants and some pro tem entrepreneurs—not the descendants of poor Sicilians we are used to thinking of as Italians in such cities as Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco. These Italians are in Miami Beach because of demographic groups “a” and “b” and because they like the stylishness and urbanity of Miami Beach; it is a real city and it reminds them of home. (It reminds me of Italy). One of these expatriate Italian fashion-mongers was famously murdered by his lover.
Italians have set the style for South Beach. This is why you will see so many Miami Beach residents of both sexes wearing black. Those in colorful t-shirts and cut-off jeans are tourists; you can also recognize them from their flab.
Tourists:
This man didn’t want his picture taken. Maybe that isn’t his wife.
In San Francisco, I believe that the biggest impetus for the goodbody culture comes from gays. The topography definitely plays a part; it makes inadvertent exercisers of all San Franciscans; aerobics without the boredom.
That this all translates into better health is beyond dispute; numerous studies reveal enhanced life expectancies for such places as San Francisco and (of course, if you think about it!) New York, where people walk. This has become an argument for New Urbanism.
For a little anecdotal evidence, here is a photo taken at Boston’s Quincy Market, an in-town suburban shopping mall to which suburbanites flock, especially on weekends. Here they are on Easter weekend:
Can you find a single person over ten years old who is not overweight?
* * *
LARD ASSES AND LONG LIFE
In the United States we are not only lard asses, but we pay for it with our lives.
The CIA lists 225 countries and almost-countries on its website, and gives you the statistical skinny on them all. The CIA will give you the facts by country or ranked in tables by category.
Here is the CIA’s table of top 48 countries ranked by life expectancy, out of 225. The United States is number 48. This means there are 47 countries in which the average person lives longer than in the United States, including Macau, Japan, Australia, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Italy, France, Spain, Israel, Greece, Germany, New Zealand, Britain, Bermuda, Cyprus and Jordan (Jordan!!)—and even including our own territories of Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico.
The table shows that the average Andorran lives 6.4 years longer than the average American.
While life expectancy is increasing in almost all countries, including the U.S., we drop further down the list each year—this in spite of our Gross Domestic Product per capita (wealth) of $36,200 (adjusted), last year the second highest in the world after Luxembourg’s $48,900.
At right in the table, I have tabulated the CIA’s figures for GDP per capita (and rank, out of 225) for each longer-lived country. Third-in-longevity San Marino, for example, enjoys a per-capita GDP of $34,600—making its inhabitants fifth in the world in this measure of prosperity.
I have highlighted the top ten wealthy countries in red in the “Rank” column. This shows that at this level there is some correlation between wealth and longevity—though far less than you might expect: 160th-ranked Saint Helena, 145th-ranked Montserrat and 132nd-ranked Jordan all enjoy longer life expectancy than the USA, which is ranked second in GDP per capita. Populations of all of the world’s top ten prosperous countries live longer than Americans.
This is in spite of the fact that Americans are said to have the world’s best doctors, hospitals and medical equipment, and in spite of the fact that on the whole Americans smoke less than people in other countries.
Americans are, however, fat. The government says 60% of the residents of this fair land are overweight, and casual observation of a crowd confirms this dour assessment. Americans overeat, consume too much junk food and don’t get the exercise to walk it off. Instead, we cruise Suburbia in our cars, because that is the kind of habitat we have created with zoning.
This alone is insufficient to fully explain America’s poor performance in life expectancy. Canada, for example, is #11 in longevity to the US’s #48, despite the fact that all of the foregoing observations about nutrition and exercise also apply to Canada.
The difference, of course, is that America’s broken health insurance shambles regularly denies some people paid access to the health care they need to stay alive, while Canadians mostly get the care they need. In the US, people die prematurely because they have no health insurance and hence don’t go to the doctor in a timely fashion, or because they have switched from one greedy, profit-grubbing insurance company to another—only to find that their heart condition is now a pre-existing condition, and their much-needed and expensive valve replacement operation is not covered. They can’t cough up a couple of years’ salary, so they die instead.
The bottom 48 on the CIA’s longevity list looks like this:
Most populations that die young inhabit the wretched countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and here you can find a pretty strong correlation between poverty and early death. The exceptions are relatively prosperous South Africa ($10,000 GDP per capita), Namibia and Botswana. These countries are in the throes of a raging AIDS epidemic, and South Africa has such a high murder rate that it must show up somewhat in the life expectancy figure.
Miami Beach:
Miami Beach doesn’t look much like the rest of the country. For starters, Miami Beach is a real city in which people walk to go shopping or to work. Another reason is that in Miami Beach the inhabitants are mostly in good shape.
The good-body demographic groups in Miami are: a.) professional models, both female and male, both straight and gay; and b.) hangers-on, who are there because they are attracted by group “a” and need good bodies of their own for credibility with their marks.
A pit bull and his dog
Peculiar to Miami Beach is an extremely large population of Italians: upper-middle-class, young and stylish Italians from Northern Italy, some immigrants and some pro tem entrepreneurs—not the descendants of poor Sicilians we are used to thinking of as Italians in such cities as Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco. These Italians are in Miami Beach because of demographic groups “a” and “b” and because they like the stylishness and urbanity of Miami Beach; it is a real city and it reminds them of home. (It reminds me of Italy). One of these expatriate Italian fashion-mongers was famously murdered by his lover.
Italians have set the style for South Beach. This is why you will see so many Miami Beach residents of both sexes wearing black. Those in colorful t-shirts and cut-off jeans are tourists; you can also recognize them from their flab.
Tourists:
This man didn’t want his picture taken. Maybe that isn’t his wife.
In San Francisco, I believe that the biggest impetus for the goodbody culture comes from gays. The topography definitely plays a part; it makes inadvertent exercisers of all San Franciscans; aerobics without the boredom.
That this all translates into better health is beyond dispute; numerous studies reveal enhanced life expectancies for such places as San Francisco and (of course, if you think about it!) New York, where people walk. This has become an argument for New Urbanism.
For a little anecdotal evidence, here is a photo taken at Boston’s Quincy Market, an in-town suburban shopping mall to which suburbanites flock, especially on weekends. Here they are on Easter weekend:
Can you find a single person over ten years old who is not overweight?
* * *
LARD ASSES AND LONG LIFE
In the United States we are not only lard asses, but we pay for it with our lives.
The CIA lists 225 countries and almost-countries on its website, and gives you the statistical skinny on them all. The CIA will give you the facts by country or ranked in tables by category.
Here is the CIA’s table of top 48 countries ranked by life expectancy, out of 225. The United States is number 48. This means there are 47 countries in which the average person lives longer than in the United States, including Macau, Japan, Australia, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Italy, France, Spain, Israel, Greece, Germany, New Zealand, Britain, Bermuda, Cyprus and Jordan (Jordan!!)—and even including our own territories of Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico.
The table shows that the average Andorran lives 6.4 years longer than the average American.
While life expectancy is increasing in almost all countries, including the U.S., we drop further down the list each year—this in spite of our Gross Domestic Product per capita (wealth) of $36,200 (adjusted), last year the second highest in the world after Luxembourg’s $48,900.
At right in the table, I have tabulated the CIA’s figures for GDP per capita (and rank, out of 225) for each longer-lived country. Third-in-longevity San Marino, for example, enjoys a per-capita GDP of $34,600—making its inhabitants fifth in the world in this measure of prosperity.
I have highlighted the top ten wealthy countries in red in the “Rank” column. This shows that at this level there is some correlation between wealth and longevity—though far less than you might expect: 160th-ranked Saint Helena, 145th-ranked Montserrat and 132nd-ranked Jordan all enjoy longer life expectancy than the USA, which is ranked second in GDP per capita. Populations of all of the world’s top ten prosperous countries live longer than Americans.
This is in spite of the fact that Americans are said to have the world’s best doctors, hospitals and medical equipment, and in spite of the fact that on the whole Americans smoke less than people in other countries.
Americans are, however, fat. The government says 60% of the residents of this fair land are overweight, and casual observation of a crowd confirms this dour assessment. Americans overeat, consume too much junk food and don’t get the exercise to walk it off. Instead, we cruise Suburbia in our cars, because that is the kind of habitat we have created with zoning.
This alone is insufficient to fully explain America’s poor performance in life expectancy. Canada, for example, is #11 in longevity to the US’s #48, despite the fact that all of the foregoing observations about nutrition and exercise also apply to Canada.
The difference, of course, is that America’s broken health insurance shambles regularly denies some people paid access to the health care they need to stay alive, while Canadians mostly get the care they need. In the US, people die prematurely because they have no health insurance and hence don’t go to the doctor in a timely fashion, or because they have switched from one greedy, profit-grubbing insurance company to another—only to find that their heart condition is now a pre-existing condition, and their much-needed and expensive valve replacement operation is not covered. They can’t cough up a couple of years’ salary, so they die instead.
The bottom 48 on the CIA’s longevity list looks like this:
Most populations that die young inhabit the wretched countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and here you can find a pretty strong correlation between poverty and early death. The exceptions are relatively prosperous South Africa ($10,000 GDP per capita), Namibia and Botswana. These countries are in the throes of a raging AIDS epidemic, and South Africa has such a high murder rate that it must show up somewhat in the life expectancy figure.
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