[HN Gopher] US hunger crisis persists, especially for kids, olde...
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US hunger crisis persists, especially for kids, older adults
Author : atlasunshrugged
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-04-01 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| zozin wrote:
| Did anyone in the comments even read the article or did they just
| skim the title and decide to chide America since that's so du
| jour right now?
|
| The gist of the article is that an enormous crisis created
| strains on connecting people and free meals, but various entities
| stepped up to the plate and came up with flexible solutions
| (school districts delivering meals on school buses or making food
| available for pickup, cities paying restaurants to feed seniors,
| expansion of federal funding, food banks and churches expanding
| their food operations, etc.).
|
| The title could've been "US system of free and subsidized meals
| bends but does not break", but that just doesn't get clicks, does
| it? Negative title creates negative emotions, which leads to
| negative thought patterns (America sucks!!), and then the cycle
| continues.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| This idea that people are actually going hungry due to poverty in
| the US is absurd. A full day's worth of calories can be had for
| less than $3. And I'm not just talking about going to McDonalds
| and ordering off the dollar menu, which is certainly an option
| occasionally. I mean real food.
| https://www.upstart.com/blog/lowest-cost-per-calorie-foods
|
| And in fact, it is firmly established that it's the poorest
| people in America who tend to be the fattest. And what free
| school lunches often solve is not _hunger_ but _neglect_. There
| are lots of shitty parents who don 't care enough to deposit
| lunch money in the school account or pack lunch for their kid, or
| who make appalling dietary choices for their children.
|
| I wish people would have a little more skepticism and apply some
| independent common sense when consuming statistics. People
| getting food from food banks or consuming free lunch doesn't mean
| that they are otherwise going hungry. It means they are accepting
| something offered for free. There are myriad, complicated reasons
| why those patterns would change. But it's a strong, unjustified
| conclusion to say it's because they would otherwise go hungry.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Eat cold lard for a month challenge.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| Eggs - $1.61 per 2,000 calories
|
| Spaghetti - $1.49 per 2,000 calories
|
| Pinto beans - $1.39 per 2,000 calories
|
| Whole milk - $1.37 per 2,000 calories
|
| Peanut butter - $1.25 per 2,000 calories
|
| White rice - $0.41 per 2,000 calories
|
| Top ramen (beef & chicken) - $1.82 per 2,000 calories
|
| Potatoes - $1.79 per 2,000 calories
|
| And if you do more research, you'd see that a loaf of bread
| is about $2 for about 2000 calories.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Are you supposed to eat the spaghetti uncooked? What about
| the eggs? Where are homeless people getting the
| refrigerators to store their milk and eggs?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _A full day 's worth of calories can be had for less than $3_
|
| The problem is that people often don't have that $3.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| Believe it or not, America is a welfare state and while not
| as generous as Europe, no one is lacking for $3 to buy food
| unless they are blowing their government money on something
| they shouldn't be.
| Valkhyr wrote:
| > Believe it or not, America is a welfare state [...]
|
| Compared to where? Certainly not most industrialized
| western countries.
| swebs wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social
| _we...
| Valkhyr wrote:
| Thank you for the source.
|
| I can't help but feel confused how the US can spend so
| much per capita on social welfare, yet I hear all those
| horror stories about medical costs, people having to work
| multiple jobs etc.
| bhupy wrote:
| Believe it or not, the United States has a higher median
| income PPP adjusted after taxes and transfers than pretty
| much every European nation; it's ranked #3 in the world:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_pe
| r_c...
|
| The US also has a lower percentage of low-income people
| than almost any European country, despite having greater
| inequality:
|
| https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1376074233642557442
|
| Also, the US is ranked #11 in the world for food
| security, ranked higher than Canada, Germany, Denmark,
| New Zealand, France, Norway, and Australia (to name a
| handful): https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _no one is lacking for $3_
|
| I mean, it must be nice to believe this, but the lived
| experience of millions of Americans would beg to differ.
| bhupy wrote:
| "Lived experience" is just a fancy word for "anecdote". I
| can also point to the lived experience of millions of
| Americans that enjoy dinner every day (myself included),
| and we'd be no better off in understanding what the truth
| is.
|
| Per the data, the US is ranked #11 in the world for food
| security: https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index
| soared wrote:
| There are other factors besides money at play. I only know the
| basics so I'm sure someone can do a better job, but a few
| examples:
|
| * Food deserts. Many low income neighborhoods don't have
| grocery stores, so residents would need to take public
| transport both ways with all of their groceries.
|
| * Building on above, it takes time to cook your own food.
| Especially if you're riding the bus to the store, and to work,
| and to pick up the kids, etc.
|
| * Education. Many low income people are taught mcdonalds is the
| cheapest food, and so thats what they buy. Can you blame
| someone for something they do not know?
|
| * Financial planning and decision making. Same as above.
|
| Its difficult for us to understand the low income situation. A
| family member of mine is a counselor at a high school for kids
| who get expelled. All these kids want to be lawyers, police
| officers, or government workers when they grow up because
| they've literally never seen a white collar worker in real
| life. They don't know that data science exists, much less step
| 1 in getting there.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Food deserts are a matter of lack of demand, not supply.
| Where poor people want fresh food the market is quite willing
| to sell it to them.
|
| > THE GEOGRAPHY OF POVERTY AND NUTRITION: FOOD DESERTS AND
| FOOD CHOICES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES
|
| > We study the causes of "nutritional inequality": why the
| wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the
| U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new
| supermarkets and households' moves to healthier
| neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments have
| economically meaningful effects on healthy eating. Using a
| structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income
| households to the same food availability and prices
| experienced by high-income households would reduce
| nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is
| driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-
| related demand differences are partially explained by
| education, nutrition knowledge, and regional preferences.
| These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional
| inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food
| deserts.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Supply/demand is a feedback system. Both are the cause.
| When trying to change a feedback system, you don't look for
| a root cause because it's literally an infinite loop.
| Instead you either look for a way to break the loop, or
| look for a variable you can change that has the best ROI.
|
| In the case of a food desert within a residential area,
| it's probably a lot easier to boost demand by artificially
| increasing supply, rather than the other way around.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I used to wonder this too, and it's a much more nuanced (like
| everything!) problem than just money/calories. But the point
| you make is more or less addressed in any literature or
| documentation on food issues in the US should you care to find
| it. I suppose here's the modern starting point for most people
| engaging with a topic they don't understand:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States
| igammarays wrote:
| If all of your money is going to rent, health bills have
| bankrupted you, and you don't have the energy and clarity of
| mind that comes with healthy food and a stable home, you're
| expecting such a person to have the mental energy required to
| cost-optimize on $3/day?
|
| Cost-optimization is a hard problem, which is why companies
| spend a lot of money for consultants to do it, and programmers
| spend a lot of time figuring out ways to optimize CPU/RAM, for
| example. So yes, it's actually very easy to end up in a
| situation where you would go hungry without food banks, even in
| America.
| brink wrote:
| The negative side-effects of lockdowns is so grossly under-
| represented in discussions, especially of those in power.
| Depression, joblessness, separation of families, separation of
| bi-national couples, suicides, financial stress, hunger, a
| collapsing economy.. These things need to be taken seriously.
|
| Many politicians have been acting like these things don't exist
| while ordering more and more stringent lockdowns, giving passing
| condolences at best, and it borders on negligence. There needs to
| be a balance. Yes, avoiding the chance of death matters for you
| and those around you, but what is it worth if you're miserably
| suicidal and have lost hope as a result of it?
|
| I know this has been said before, but I feel the need to keep
| saying it, as it's still a problem to this day.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "Many politicians have been acting like these things don't
| exist while ordering more and more stringent lockdowns, giving
| passing condolences at best, and it borders on negligence.
| There needs to be a balance. Yes, avoiding the chance of death
| matters for you and those around you, but what is it worth if
| you're miserably suicidal and have lost hope as a result of
| it?"
|
| I personally am very happy not to have to make decisions in
| this situation. Unless you have dumb luck (the pandemic is not
| as bad as thought originally but there was no way you could
| have known that) either you will get heat because businesses
| are dying or you will get heat because people are dying. Or
| both. It pretty easy to criticize what's going on but how can
| you make decisions with very little input data and dire
| consequences either way?
|
| Us techies want people to believe us on tech matters because we
| are subject matter experts but it seems we are not willing to
| believe what scientists in multiple countries are recommending
| because somehow we know better. Brazil clearly shows that
| ignoring the pandemic is not exactly a recipe for success. So
| what's a leader to do?
|
| One reasonable thing would be to keep businesses open as much
| as possible while having super strict masking and disinfection
| requirements. But somehow there is this correlation between
| people wanting businesses to be open and at the same time not
| wanting masks. Reminds me of the abortion situation. Abortion
| opponents also up often oppose sex education and contraception.
| So they oppose the one thing that would help their cause the
| most.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Where? In the US? Is this overview lying?
| https://www.usatoday.com/storytelling/coronavirus-reopening-...
|
| It seems to indicate the vast majority of places are loosening
| restrictions. Only one state out of 50 is currently imposing
| more stringent lockdowns.
| Pyramus wrote:
| I see this argument more often and I don't fully understand it.
| No elected official (in a Western democratic society) wants
| lockdowns. The electorate does not want lockdowns. I do not
| want lockdowns. Nobody I've spoken to has said, let's keep
| lockdowns. Lockdowns are bad for exactly the reasons you've
| described. No elected official I know has said, well, the
| economy, children's mental health, education, joblessness -
| these are just minor issues, let's do lockdowns. Not at the
| county, district, state or national level.
|
| We are currently in a loose-loose situation - either way people
| will suffer, and different (Western democratic) societies are
| sharing this suffering differently. E.g. in the US, the
| consensus has been to trade more loss of life for personal
| freedom than in European countries.
|
| I do not want you to suffer. In fact, if you are in a state of
| distress through no fault of your own, I do want my taxpayer
| money to go directly into your pockets.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _No elected official I know has said, well, the economy,
| children 's mental health, education, joblessness - these are
| just minor issues, let's do lockdowns. _
|
| This is precisely the problem. Our leaders refuse to
| acknowledge that their myopic quest for safety from covid at
| all costs has serious repercussions. They bluster on citing
| data from the CDC and all, but without more than a wink at
| the collateral damage - all the time buoyed by sycophantic
| supporters chanting, "follow the science!". It's as if
| biology is the _only_ science, and there 's no need to
| consult economists.
| Pyramus wrote:
| I do not live in the US, so YMMV, but I can only re-iterate
| that this has absolutely not been my experience.
|
| Have you actually spoken to somebody 'in power'? Go to the
| next council meeting, speak to your local mayor, call a
| local representative. We have been doing this for over a
| year now and in my experience they know very well what the
| toll of lockdowns is.
| ryandrake wrote:
| But this article is about the US, where there have been no
| lockdowns. Only (mostly) unenforced stay-at-home orders,
| (mostly) unenforced business closures, and (mostly) unenforced
| mask mandates. I don't see the link. Lots of people have been
| out horsing around, doing whatever they wanted this past year,
| and sidestepping the token, unenforced roadblocks that were
| half-assed by governments. Something must be causing all these
| terrible things, but it's not lockdowns.
|
| I would start looking at _lack_ of government action rather
| than the little they actually did.
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| I don't live there, but isn't there a large portion of the
| student population that is returning to schools after a year?
| I doubt most parents in that case were setting up play dates,
| so in effect this has been almost a lockdown for those
| children.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| Santa Clara County in the middle of Silicon Valley
| aggressively enforced lockdown rules and fined hundreds of
| businesses. This wrecked many segments of the local economy,
| and drove people into poverty and hunger.
|
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/28/why-san-mateo-
| county-...
|
| Those of us fortunate enough to still be employed can help by
| donating to local food banks like Martha's Kitchen.
|
| https://www.marthas-kitchen.org/donate.html
| ryandrake wrote:
| What wrecked the economies was the length of the pandemic.
| If we _actually_ locked down for a month or so we might
| have had a shot at beating it with less long-term misery,
| but since covid was so politicized and government was too
| timid to actually do that, we half-assed it instead, and
| here we are a year later.
|
| Go outside Silicon Valley and a few other metro areas, and
| you'll still see widespread lack of enforcement. Most of
| the good behavior has been voluntary. Good
| people/businesses listening to health guidance. Nobody is
| getting pulled over in rural America and fined for
| violating stay-at-home. If I wanted to, I could
| "unessentially" drive across the state of CA right now, sit
| down at a fully-open bar or restaurant unmasked, and nobody
| would lift a finger to stop me.
| swiley wrote:
| >unenforced business closures,
|
| No, these were enforced by the police and courts in most
| places (certainly where I live.) Lots of people didn't/don't
| have work.
| msrenee wrote:
| It was not enforced at all where I live. We had a mask
| mandate in our county for less than a week this summer.
| Businesses chose what measures to take and they were all
| over the place. Thankfully it's a pretty well-to-do county.
| Only 2 counties in my state had any kind of regulation and
| there were no mandated business closures to my knowledge in
| either.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > I would start looking at lack of government action rather
| than the little they actually did.
|
| The simple reality of it is that there was a colossal finance
| related economic crash, similar to 2008, that was blamed on
| the lockdown when the lockdown wasn't really to blame. We're
| still in the "dead cat bounce" phase of that crash.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Hit the nail on the head. The pain of the 2008 crash was
| just kicked down the road by bailing out banks. We will
| have to reckon with the consequences of government economic
| meddling at some point. Shutting down the economy was just
| a shove towards the cliff.
|
| I think that we are going to really see the crash kick off
| whenever the eviction moratorium is lifted. There is no way
| that all landlords are able to service their loans. Anybody
| that has been patient with savings will be cleaning house
| snatching up cheap properties and businesses.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| The eviction moratorium is overblown. Forbearance on
| mortgages is an extremely cheap way to keep landlords
| from feeling the pain, and lenders have little upside and
| much downside from mass selling among landlords when
| financing is so cheap nowadays. Anyway NY state is $61b
| estimated lost rent which is comparable to student loan
| debt (like $40b), neither of these things matter as much
| as people think they do.
|
| Why? These people are already in default. The renters who
| need the moratorium were already "in default," you just
| didn't account for it yet. To the degree that the market
| has known NYC and LA renters' rent was "too damn high"
| for decades now, it's hard to see how people predictably
| on the verge of default (ie economic default) now having
| to live somewhere they can afford (ie accounting default)
| will cause a crash. If anything REITs prices will rise as
| information (ie who is really capable of paying rents)
| flows into the system. The renters who can actually
| afford to live in NYC and LA are richer, and the people
| who move out will be richer than many people where
| they're moving to.
|
| Another way to look at this is that CDOs were responsible
| for the 2008 crash. Not people taking mortgages they
| can't afford.
|
| Constantly economic crashes are the result of
| derivatives. My feeling is that we will find out what
| toxic derivative will crash the economy for real when
| someone takes a long look at PIPEs for SPAC transactions.
| Another place I would look for nasty derivatives is
| untaxed cash of large corporations in offshore accounts,
| especially of the major tech companies.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > We will have to reckon with the consequences of
| government economic meddling at some point.
|
| Not necessarily, the Fed isn't obligated to unwind its QE
| purchases. They may not even be willing to, see 'taper
| tantrum' and Oct-Dec 2018. We won't see another bear
| market without another black swan.
|
| House prices may come down when the moratorium is lifted,
| back to 2020 prices. There won't be as much selling by
| landlords as you think, lots of them likely qualified for
| forbearance which makes non-payment of rent a virtual
| non-issue. It'll take a 2.5-3% 10y yield to really push
| mortgage rates up enough to where it starts to affect
| house prices, or the Fed needs to stop buying MBSes, or
| both.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Yeah sure lol, the federal reserve is willing to float
| asset prices indefinitely. Neither party wants to be
| incumbent the one that deals with the fallout of raising
| interest rates. Anyone who has been patient with savings
| will get wrecked by inflation.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Only if you're savings is in USD. If you have the
| foresight to see the impending crisis you would also have
| the foresight to exit USD well before it happens. Savings
| isn't just cash.
|
| The way I see it playing out is the government is going
| to try to print prosperity. Foreign governments stop
| buying our debt and move on to a new reserve currency
| without the US. If the US is willing to use force to try
| to maintain USD reserve status things get really ugly.
| Domestically this is a world of hurt for middle and low
| income classes. Any country that is preparing for this
| eventuality is going to do better. But, all countries are
| playing the same monetary debasement game. Just a few
| countries are increasing their purchase of gold and
| decreasing their purchase of US debt.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Another great reason for bitcoin/ethereum
| Pyramus wrote:
| Absolutely. Now add the absence of a welfare system that is
| meant to alleviate the distress.
| swebs wrote:
| The USA is actually in the top 10 welfare states in terms
| of spending per capita, behind only some northern
| European countries.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social
| _we...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Spending pocketed by wealthy middlemen.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >But this article is about the US, where there have been no
| lockdowns. Only (mostly) unenforced stay-at-home orders,
| (mostly) unenforced business closures, and (mostly)
| unenforced mask mandates. I don't see the link.
|
| Your privileged, pedantic ignorance of the major
| socioeconomic problems caused by the covid 19 response
| perfectly illustrates OP's point.
| Pyramus wrote:
| No it doesn't. We have been doing the whole spiel for over
| a year now, running different experiments in different
| countries.
|
| Lockdowns are not silver bullets - what drives viral spread
| is behaviour, not legal measures. In fact, if _everybody_
| would stay at home for 14 days, the virus dies (decays
| exponentially).
|
| What actually happened is that folks made the wearing of a
| piece of cloth, meant to protect others, a political
| statement and a 'restriction of personal freedom'.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Your emphasis on "unenforced" ignores the fact that there's a
| huge amount of people trying to do what they're told is the
| right thing, even without a gun to their head.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| How could these policies be disconnected from the average Joe's
| experiences?
|
| They were agreed by our politicians and doctors who's kids
| tutor were happy to not have to commute to their suburban
| estate.
| swiley wrote:
| we're starting to hear it. Fresh air (part of APM/NPR and
| typically much less factual than NPR news) noted that drug
| overdoses were up by 26% last year although I'm not sure they
| attributed it to the lockdown.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Depression, joblessness, separation of families, separation
| of bi-national couples, suicides, financial stress, hunger, a
| collapsing economy.. These things need to be taken seriously._
|
| It seems to me as if many politicians have never taken those
| things seriously, before the pandemic or during it.
|
| I've also noticed that some politicians suddenly say that they
| care about those problems during lockdowns, yet they haven't
| pushed for any legislation to actually help mitigate those
| deep-seated issues. It seems to me like they're just using
| those issues, and the suffering of others, as tools to complain
| about policy they don't like.
| hn8788 wrote:
| The difference is that before you could try and do something
| about those problems, even if politicians didn't care. Now
| those problems still exist, but people are forced to stay at
| home because keeping a low infection rate is all people care
| about.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There are certainly responses politicians could have made
| to help with mental health, loss of income, hunger and
| homelessness before the pandemic and during it. The
| problems existed before the pandemic and required a
| solution, and the problems still exist during the pandemic
| and require a solution.
|
| The issue is that the solution to either of those problems
| upset those who finance politicians. There are powerful
| people who would rather have others starve, die from
| exposure and go without treatment for their mental
| illnesses than give them the resources they need to live
| dignified lives.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Plenty of countries have paired lockdowns with rent&mortgage
| freezes, furlough, assistance for the needy in general, etc.
|
| Both problems have solutions.
| TaylorSwift wrote:
| A lot of my peers are in a certain age that should be dating.
| But it's been 1 year now, and there are paranoia and concerns
| about safety. It's really tiring. Missing out on 2 years of
| developing a healthy social relationship with other people --
| it really is a lost of time in a prime age.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I can't honestly imagine how bad indirect negative impact
| of all related to covid will be, I would say at least on
| scale of direct deaths / long time sufferers (although
| those things are obviously not directly comparable). And
| yet despite all these costs, most of the world failed
| desperately and repeatedly in handling it and the show is
| far from over.
|
| Meeting the other sex is a topic on its own - all normal
| venues often just disappeared, especially here in Europe.
| No bars, no restaurants, concerts, schools, group sports,
| and most importantly not that much work in the office,
| arguably the most common place for folks to meet their
| significant other.
|
| I am just a remote observer of this, we were lucky to get
| married in summer 2019 - one year later the marriage would
| be with 6 guests max if it would happen at all. But still
| can't wrap my head around all this no matter which angle I
| try to look it form.
|
| Me, my wife and my son been through covid in February, my
| parents back home are going through it now and I really do
| have respect from this unpredictable sickness. But as
| damage mounts in each one of us and there is always this
| fleeting political promise that in next 2 months it will be
| much better, I am getting tired of largely inefficient yet
| very restrictive constraints and starting to lean more
| towards 'fuck it, keep basic measures mandatory everywhere
| and lets go back to behavior as it was before covid'. It
| may be just a stupid kneejerk reaction, but over 1 year
| wears one out
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Certainly years of this are not sustainable. That's why the
| approach taken by a few countries to eliminate local
| transmission are preferable (China, Vietnam, New Zealand,
| South Korea).
| makomk wrote:
| Every country has had plenty of people who fall through the
| holes in whatever assistance programs they have in place, and
| the US media has downplayed their downsides compared to what
| the US did. For example, there's been a tendency in the
| American press to push the UK's furlough program as better
| than the US approach because it kept more people off
| unemployment, but as far as I could tell the US enhanced
| unemployment was substantially better for the worst-off
| amongst you than UK furlough, and those who didn't benefit
| from furlough and had to go on unemployment - for example,
| because their employer went out of business, or they were
| between jobs, or had started a new job too recently - were
| _much_ worse off here.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The UK certainly didn't do enough either, so many here are
| in rent arrears for example. Rents should've been frozen as
| the first act.
| [deleted]
| bloaf wrote:
| Economic slowdowns have historically been associated with
| increased life expectancy, despite their impact on mental
| health:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00210-0
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Lockdowns wouldn't be necessary if half the country didn't
| insist on living like barbarians.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| On the other side, I see many positive side-effects, we're
| forced to adapt, to take care of others who can't, to eliminate
| non-necessary things and consumption from our life, which is
| good
| watwut wrote:
| How was it underrepresent when major political party, the one
| in power, went out of its way to prevent lockdowns and other
| measures?
|
| Also, suicides rose, but not enough to counteract stats.
| Domestic violence went up too, but still not enough to
| counteract anything.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Isn't this just embarrassing? A country that sent people to the
| moon decades ago and spends 2,600 USD per inhabitant per year on
| their military can't even _feed_ their people _today_?
|
| Excuse me but _what the fuck_.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > "It got really ugly," said Silvia Baca Garcia, 33, a Phoenix
| resident from Honduras who scrambled to feed her three children
| and granddaughter during months of unemployment caused by the
| viral outbreak. "It had been a lot easier when my two boys were
| in school and getting their hot breakfasts and lunches
| everyday."
|
| It's not explicitly stated, but many of these examples are
| very, very likely to be non-legal immigrants, who do not
| qualify for SNAP aka food stamps. That is a huge political
| hairball. I'd be pretty surprised if many citizens fell into a
| similar category.
|
| (with older adults I'm not sure what's going on, but my guess
| is communication or service literacy problems are a large part
| of it. ie, just getting people registered who don't know that
| they are eligible.)
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's not that we can't, we choose not to.
|
| Like the only reason that children get shamed for not having
| money for school lunch is because some people like it that way.
| There's no lack of resources.
|
| This is more than embarrassing.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| But the USA are the embodiment of democracy. How can't you
| choose something better? /s
| jfengel wrote:
| Because a lot of people believe that if you're hungry, it's
| because you're stupid, lazy, or morally deficient, and thus
| deserve to be hungry.
|
| I suspect you think I'm joking. I'm not. "Work is better
| than welfare" is a common refrain. Here it is on a state
| government web site:
|
| https://www.dshs.wa.gov/esa/chapter-1-engaging-parents-
| workf...
|
| It's widely considered that if you feed people for free,
| they will have no incentive to work. They will live off of
| your effort, have more children who will learn from their
| parents that work isn't required, and possibly commit
| crimes to obtain more. There is a genuine fear that they
| will literally lead more comfortable lives than you do by
| working.
|
| Again, I suspect you think I'm exaggerating, or that this
| is an extreme minority opinion. This is a very common
| opinion among Americans -- effectively universal among
| conservatives, and significant among progressives.
|
| We don't choose better because the things that you think of
| as "better" are supported by only a minority of Americans.
| Most Americans think it will make us lazy, weak, and
| stupid.
| kmonsen wrote:
| This is like the ultimate example of this, coincidentally
| at the very beginning of the pandemic (before anyone
| could know how bad it would be) the previous
| administration proposed to cut SNAP, or what is commonly
| called food stamps by ~30%:
| https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-
| assistance/presidents-202...
|
| It would also make work requirements for adults to be
| eligible.
| kbelder wrote:
| You don't think work is better than welfare (at least for
| anybody that's capable of work)?
|
| I find that weird, and a little sad.
| bhupy wrote:
| That same country is ranked higher in food security than
| several other high quality of life industrial nations in the
| world: https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index
| throwawaysea wrote:
| We do fund programs to feed people - for example the federal
| food stamps program, which is formally known as SNAP
| (https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-
| assista...). Around 10.5% of households in the US experience
| food insecurity, a term that includes both households with
| uncertainty but no disruption to eating patterns (for example
| households successfully relying on federal food assistance
| programs), and also households that experienced disruption to
| food patterns at some point in the year (at least once). The
| definitions of these terms are at the USDA website
| (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-
| assistance/fo...), and there we see 4.1% experienced "very low
| food security" in 2019, meaning they experienced disruption to
| normal eating patterns at least once during the year.
|
| SNAP covers 11% of Americans, and its covered benefits were
| expanded by 40% at the start of the pandemic
| (https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-
| in-...) - so it's not like no effort was put into trying to
| manage food insecurity under the pandemic. However, we don't
| have very precise metrics on how well people are covered by
| SNAP. Because the definition of "very low food insecurity"
| includes those with disruption to eating patterns at least once
| in a given year (from self-reported surveys), we don't have
| measures for sustained malnutrition or hunger.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Unfortunately with the pandemic it was kind of no win for a
| politician.
| technofiend wrote:
| Yeah this one really tears at the heart strings. Google "food
| insecurity charity" or Charity Navigator or Charity Watch to find
| one you trust if you'd like to help.
|
| https://www.charitynavigator.org/ https://www.charitywatch.org/
| imnotlost wrote:
| Charity is great but...
|
| None of these issues will be improved, much less solved,
| through shaming and moralizing, hoping 330M individuals will
| make charitable contributions and recycle.
|
| Give a can of food while doing your Christmas shopping so the
| super-corps can pay less tax and claim it gives to charity.
|
| Just another systemic problem pushed to the individual, and
| swept under the rug.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Through all of history, charity has never been enough to
| solve those issues. It would be wrong to think that your
| charity alone is enough to solve those problems.
|
| However, while the solutions to those problems aren't being
| implemented, charity can help soften the blow. It would be
| correct to think that your charity helps somewhat, but much,
| much more needs to be done.
|
| Get involved with charity, but also get involved in policy at
| all levels, local to federal.
|
| To give an example about why this is important, several
| places I've lived have criminalized things like addiction,
| homelessness, feeding people who need food, and community
| gardens.
|
| It was local and state activism that made so that if an
| overdose was called in via 911, everyone who helped the
| victim didn't get arrested as a result. That stopped the
| trend of people not getting help for overdoses, as well as
| disturbing trends like overdose victims being left on the
| side of the road.
|
| Local and state activism helped get affordable housing
| measures passed, as well.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| As an aside, without comment on this particular issue: we really
| need to stop using words like "crisis", "emergency", "justice",
| etc. I am very much desensitized to these words from their
| overuse, especially since very often the terms are used in a
| hyperbolic fashion for maximal effect when pushing political
| goals. I find them to be imprecise and unhelpful.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| It's not a coincidence that a number of New Deal programs were
| focused on meeting the basic needs of kids (e.g. school lunches
| and the CCC) and the elderly (e.g. Social Security and Medicare).
| kazen44 wrote:
| in history, it is also one of the first needs people who want
| to gain power deliver. (think of gangsters feeding communities,
| or revolutionaries establishing schools in occupied territory).
| tehjoker wrote:
| The graphic in the article is telling. While the coronavirus is
| shocking in the severity with which the lack of response has
| impoverished people, it is only a 1.5x worsening of the
| situation! This tells a story of longstanding institutional
| neglect that allows millions to remain in a state of
| impoverishment indefinitely.
|
| Moreover, the chart shows that food distribution was growing
| prior to the pandemic, which could mean the problem was worsening
| (or more locations appeared, or more food was distributed per
| capita).
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Impoverishment of lower classes is the direct result of
| monetary debasement. There is simply no way to move up when
| what little you earn buys less each year. Monetary debasement
| is also why we have seen an increase in the wealth gap.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| If money was truly debased, you'd see wages and product
| prices rise. The asset classes we've seen increase in price
| are stocks, bonds, healthcare, education, and property. What
| we haven't seen increase are food, consumer goods, or
| _wages_. You can say that the currency is being debased, but
| the numbers are the same for 2010 as they in 2020. The issue
| is that there simply is no way to accumulate wealth on the
| amount earned -- there 's nothing left after expenses.
| Inflation or deflation wouldn't help this.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Wages haven't grown with monetary supply inflation. Every
| dollar earned buys less each year and wages stay mostly the
| same. Without debasement what you earn buys mostly the same
| amount of stuff the next year. Then you are able to save
| and count on your money actually being worth something when
| you need it. We have had over 100 years of debasement that
| increased in rate after 1971. You need to look at a longer
| time frame to see how badly we have all be fucked.
|
| We haven't had obvious consumer price inflation because the
| money supply is hitting the financial class first. Instead
| we have seen asset prices increase rapidly. With the
| stimulus checks every citizen has had a taste of what has
| been happening with banks for a century. But, we have had
| price inflation. Instead of raising the price at the store
| most manufacturers have opted to reduce package sizes for
| the same price. They didn't do this for your health. The
| price creep up is slow enough that it can be hard to
| notice. I am not sure how old your are. Think back of how
| much a dollar bought you when you were young. Can you buy
| those same items for a dollar now? How about 5 dollars?
| This is the pernicious result of debasing the currency.
| mdoms wrote:
| Wealthiest nation in the world.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| The top 10% owns over 50% of that wealth. The bottom 50% owns
| 2% of that wealth. Wealthy for some, hungry for many.
|
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
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