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Comment by moffkalast | Hacker News Reader

The rich also need to well... eat. It benefits them as much as anybody.

For example milk started to be regulated more only after someone in Al Capone's family got poisoned and he bribed the right people to make it a thing. You're kidding yourself if you think any of that was to benefit the poor in the first place lmao, just happens to be a side effect.

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The rich do need to eat, but they can and generally do eat from places with much higher margins and higher-value brands. Those places have less incentive to cut corners and more incentive to keep their customers healthy. The poorer you are, though, the more constrained your choices are and the more risk you may have to take. Food safety laws act as a quality floor (or a risk ceiling if you prefer), so they help poor people more than the rich.

While this is true, the OP's argument could also include other reasons they wanted this such as avoiding costly sickness in their employees.

I can assure you that amazon and walmart care at least a little about the health of the minimum wage workers they depend on to move inventory.

Amazon is famous for not caring about the health of their workers, compared to competitors in the same industry. They pay above the market and replace the market's healthy workers with workers with health issues. They don't care to optimize their process towards worker health as currently the supply outstrips their demand.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/study-amazon-workers-suffer-...

But I do agree with your general argument, a healthy workforce is better for a country's economy.

The sources rich people buy their food from have historically been less likely to be unsanitary.

A lot of our food safety regulations are a result of public outrage over horrendous conditions in factories that produced low cost foodstuffs primarily eaten by the poor in the early 20th century.

Though you could easily argue that the rich still benefit from these laws because they help insure a healthy labor pool.

Rich people can eat at at places to nice and clean that the work areas are probably cleaner than some of the tables and chairs in the customer areas of low end dining places.

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