Not-so-fat cats: How the rich got thin

In amongst the statistics from the survey used for this piece came a couple of interesting notes:

Up to 61 per cent of top male bosses were found to be overweight, which is higher than the U.S. average of 41 per cent among similarly aged men.

In sharp contrast, only 22 per cent of female chief executives were categorised as overweight, far less than the national average of 29 per cent.

I was interested to know how these statistics matched up to the national average. Are fat cats actually fat compared to the rest of society?

According to the British Heart Foundation, the answer is no. In the UK around 66% of men are overweight or obese, 56% of women - and this rises significantly when you get into the middle-age range that most managers are in. For management to be alongside the national average, you'd need way more men to be overweight and well over double the number of women.

Disregarding the stark figures on the requirement for women to be slim to get a top job, which is simply par for the course in a society which judges all women disproportionally on their physical appearance, I'm interested in why our lords and masters appear to actually be significantly below the weight of the general population.

This ties in with a favourite theme of mine in Freedom over the last few years. Back in 2006 I put together a statistical comparison using the most up-to-date data available at the time and came up with the following graphic:

What the graphic shows is the massive difference in terms of how long rich and poor people live, and how long they work. If you're working class retirement isn't a right, it's an achievement. Added to this is the equally horrifying figures on disability - on average, the richest fifth of the population live 15-20 years longer without falling victim to a serious disability than the poorest fifth. So your 75-year-old manager is likely to be fit as a fiddle in comparison to your wheezing 55-year-old worker.

Being a capitalist is linked to a longer life with fewer health problems and leaves you physically fitter than the average. You work in comfortable, physically untaxing conditions and retire earlier. For this you are paid vastly more than anyone else in the company, allowing you time and money to pay for fitness coaches, high-quality food cooked healthily, indulge in sporting pursuits, and generally take the opportunity to take care of yourself to extend your life of leisure once you've retired. You're finally put in the best homes, cared for and pampered until the end of your life. No wonder you're slim.

Meanwhile the people you are screwing have little money or time or facilities to eat healthily and keep up an exercise regimen. They work until they are physically spent, in stressful conditions under threat of sacking and at the whim of tyrants, devoid of dignity. They wear themselves out, falling into disability early and dying early to keep the machine funding your lifestyle whirring. If they are 'fortunate' enough to survive into old age, their lack of cash bites them again as they are thrown onto the tender mercies of the state care system, where poorly-paid, overworked carers one generation away from the same fate try and scrape tiny resources into some sort of order to give their wards a minimal standard of life.

This is what the statistics tell us about life under capital before the credit crunch. This was at the absolute pinnacle of the neo-liberal project, where money was flowing and businesses taking on staff. These were the figures of a bull market. And now the bear has come to eat the poor alive while the rich make their getaway.

The fat cats aren't fat any more - but their greed has built a nation of the unhealthy.