This is severely lacking in empathy.

You know WHY they are obese, especially including the woman featured here? Junk food is dirt cheap. When you work your ass off for two weeks and have all of $200 dollars to show for it, you are not going to be cooking healthy foods and free range Chicken eggs. You are going to get the cheap stuff, the highly caloric, highly processed stuff. And guess what, she works at McDonalds, which gives employees some food every 5 hours worked.

Or if you don't work there, you can hit a Taco Bell and fullfill your hunger with $5. $5 may be enough to get ingredients to cook a better meal, but again, this person works her ass off in multiple jobs and has a long commute by bus.

If economics and policy actually worked, there would be regulatory feedbacks, but not in 'murica

What you're saying is true, but that's not what everyone believes. If you watch any episode of My 600 Pound Life, you will realize just how unwilling some of these people are to help themselves because it's hard work (and many people featured on the show die as a result). Yes, those are obviously extreme examples, but they're all extremely well documented.

I absolutely agree we should focus on taking care of ourselves before it leads to enormous health issues, but weirdly it doesn't seem the US healthcare system is designed for that.

Doctors should be paid for how healthy their patients are, not for continuing treatments of the chronically ill.

Their two flagship projects (GetCalFresh and Criminal Justice) reform both started off as simple web forms to make it easier to file for SNAP (food stamps) and sealing eligible marijuana convictions respectively. However as they gained traction they were able to engage state and local governments as collaborators and significantly improve the outcomes.

For the criminal justice work that meant fully automating sealing convictions in San Francisco, that then provided the “proof” for a state bill that passed to require all California counties to do the same over then next few years.

So while it seems like getting money out of politics is impossible I’d suggest working on stuff you care about at your state level, and providing working proofs will help people trying to support sensible legislation for reform.

If you're not sure where to start, try researching local candidates that share your views and find out which organizations endorsed them.

If you really want change, then you need to somehow climb the ladder of power and enact the changes yourself. Unfortunately, if you take the political or corporate path, you will most likely be so disillusioned by the time you get anywhere that you will join the other side.

You can also become a revolutionary of sorts, by leading others through your charisma or prose.

Of course none of these are anything a "typical" person can do, but in fact, a "typical" person really has no power whatsoever unless someone atypical manages to organize them together.

> At 29, Brown works approximately 40 hours a week, splitting her time between a McDonald’s in Durham, North Carolina, and a food-service gig a local hospital. “It’s still not enough,” she said. Both jobs are part-time, and she doesn’t receive health insurance through either employer. She can’t afford insurance on her own, either. That’s a problem since Brown is diabetic, and she has to pay for her medical expenses out of pocket. She’s trying to do all she can on her own—she receives no food stamps or other assistance, she notes—but it rarely feels like she’s doing enough.