Almost half the US population used to smoke. Simply telling them smoking was bad for them wasn't enough to mostly end the practice though. We had to beat it into them over the course of decades with regular, dramatic, in their face ads telling them how bad their tobacco use is for both them and their children while actively discouraging the practice with high taxes on smokes. We haven't even come close to trying that with obesity yet.

Underrated movie!

Lots of Americans. Obesity might effect the affluent at a lower rate than the poor but their rate of obesity has still gone up dramatically over the last few decades. Being good at earning money != being good at other things.

For most (not all) the weight is just a symptom of bad lifestyle choices that will continue to effect their health even after the weight is lost though. Never mind that going by childhood obesity metrics in the US, many of these folks are passing on their bad lifestyles to their kids which means a lifetime of health problems for them as childhood obesity is quite bad for a person's long term health even if the weight is later lost.

The flip side is that we have dramatically more obese people now than we ever had in the past so a lot of these folks shouldn't need medication and really aren't solving problems for themselves that they could and for the sake of their health, should. It's even trickling down to kids, we're currently raising the fattest generation of Americans ever.

These drugs are great for folks like yourself who can't lose the weight on their own but they're enabling a lot of bad lifestyle choices for a ton of others.

Where are the constant awareness commercials telling people they are endangering the lives of themselves and their children with their lifestyle habits? Where's the heavy taxes on the stuff we know is killing Americans. We have never taken the issue of obesity as seriously as the issue of smoking in this country.

Ugh, manor = manner. Typo...

Well no, the best option would be doing more to encourage people to live in a healthy manor. We spent a ridiculous amount of effort to stop smoking in this country but have done almost nothing in regards to obesity which is killing far more people than smoking ever did.

Most modern ladies I know aren't too keen on the smell that comes from smoking cigarettes so unless you're hitting on a lady who's also a smoker you likely won't have much luck chatting up the ladies while smoking nowadays.

How much harder would it be to just call the animal shelters within range of where the pet might be? Or they could have just put a chip in their pet or use old school tags on a collar. This doesn't at all seem like the big deal the person in the article is trying to make it out to be.

Maybe it would be nice for pet birds I guess?

We're not quite there yet but we're pretty close to wide spread practical laser defense systems to shoot down missiles. I know the Israeli's added laser systems to their Iron Dome for instance. These systems will be far more accurate than current systems and should be able to be used at a fraction of the cost of even these missiles

I never said we changed tags during store hours. Our store level POS also aren't hanging tags their full shifts, I'm not sure what else we have them doing but it seems like only about half their job or less is physically hanging tags. Our stores are also a pretty good size with more individual SKUs present than most traditional grocery stores given that we're technically a "mix" store which carries both natural foods (like Whole Foods) and conventional food categories although our identity is more on the natural foods side.

POS just isn't a big cost for a grocery stores and given that grocery stores carry more SKUs than most retail businesses that then means POS isn't a major cost for most retail in general.

I hate to tell you this but Whole Foods uses a major natural foods distributor called UNFI for most of its product that delivers to stores in traditional big rigs. I don't think that ruins your whole point but what you're saying in your last post here doesn't match up to reality in regards to Whole Foods.

It varies by state. I know California requires retailers to honor all floor pricing but that is not universal across the US.

What? I currently work for a small chain of grocery stores with a very large product selection. We employ one person full time and split another with another department to do all our store level POS stuff in each store. POS isn't some kind of huge hurtle for a properly staffed store to manage.