Colin L

Everyone (bar a couple of percent of people who have actual diseases) gets fat when they eat more calories than they expend. It's easier than ever to consume many calories, and expend very few. But that doesn't remove responsibility for anyone's actions. People still have a choice of what they eat and whether and how they exercise, regardless of the fact that it's easy to eat a lot and exercise little. I said predestined. I've acknowledged that there are genetic influences on weight gain, but at the end of the day non diseased people have a basal metabolic rate of within +-300 calories for their height and weight. It's a calculation of calories in calories out, and in order to balance it all you need to do is change your eating and/or exercise habits.

Of course there are genetic influences on ease of gaining/loosing weight and how a person looks. But it's also obvious that a huge share of obesity is related to modern living conditions and the choices that people make. If it were true that genetics predestined most people to a certain weight, then we wouldn't see the humongous rises in obesity that come about with industrialised food production and sedentary Western lifestyles. It really doesn't take "several hours a day" or "6 days a week" for the average person. Most people are amazed at how much weight they lose when they just cut out things like soda and packaged foods from their diet, and if you add some light cardio (or even just getting up and walking for a bit) every day and maybe weight training for 30 minutes three times a week, it's enough for most to remain fit and healthy. Do people have to do these things? No, but it is an excuse if they forgo them while claiming that how they look must be genetic. That weakness of character is broadcasted to other people, and it can't be wished away as misogyny or the promotion of anorexia. It's not about the fact that women don't look like her. It's about the fact that people in general want to do the least effort, while expecting others to believe them when they say they did the best they could. People do make excuses, and it's incredibly sad to see them do it. They say: "this is just how things worked out, and there's nothing I could have done to change it". It's the same whether it's a woman who resigns herself to weight after pregnancy, or a person born into poverty who resigns themselves to being poor all their life. The most respectful thing that can be done for them is to not accept their bullshit that they're completely powerless and without agency.

The answer is that it really shouldn't be thought of a policy, at least not in the political sense we use the word. Can McDonald's afford to play its workers more? Probably. I'm sure there are also plenty of part time teenagers working there who could afford to be paid less than minimum wage. But those are questions of economics and negotiation rather than ethics, and the idea that guns should be used to decide them is ridiculous. McDonald's has an implicit desire to pay as little money for as much work as possible. McDonald's employees have an implicit desire to be paid as much money for as little work as possible. It's up to the company and its employees to resolve this by working out some sort of contract that each can agree on, whether with a union or not (but above all, voluntarily). And as was already pointed out, the business climate in the Germanic countries is very different from that of America, and they generally don't have government mandated minimum wages, operating instead with a collective bargaining system.