
Why Can't America Solve the Hunger Problem? - palidanx
https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2017/06/why-cant-america-solve-the-hunger-problem/530151/
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danielvf
> "Walmart doesn’t pay its workers very well."

I've worked with the very low income, and Wal-Mart (and McDonald's) are at top
of their respective categories as desired jobs. Both pay _better_ than most
alternatives. Our state's Wal-Mart entry jobs pay 20% more than minimum wage.

> "pays its workers so poorly, they have to rely on food stamps and food banks
> to make ends meet."

Wal-Mart, by quota, hires people their diversity report calls "people of
color". In 2015, 51% of people Wal-Mart hired were "people of color". At least
in my state, African-Americans are six times more likely to be on food stamps.
If Wal-Mart hiring matched the general population ratios, then their food
stamp stats would look much more like the general population.

There are real problems in the word, but Wal-Mart's wages aren't one of them -
they pay better than the alternatives. I really don't get the Wal-Mart hate.

But having helped someone fill out a job application for McDonalds, I'd
personally take a programmer interview any day. That was way too many fricking
questions.

~~~
Fradow
I have a different take on the article. Wal-Mart is merely an example that the
author found relevant. You can substitute by any other alternative.

The point the author wants to drive home is that the minimum wage is so low,
workers can't provide for their family without supplementing it with food
stamps. Because they have food stamps, Wal-Mart and alternatives keep the
wages low. Food industry also profit from food stamp massively, so they have
incentive to keep wages low so more workers need them and spend them here.

This is a vicious circle, that doesn't help worker escape food insecurity.

~~~
ams6110
Minimum wage is not intended to be "support a family" wage, and it never was.

~~~
david38
Yes it was. It was specifically designed for a man to support a family of four
with a modest lifestyle.

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rayiner
> They’re using those resources in a way that allows corporations to come in
> as problem solvers rather than problem causers—but to also not really
> address the root causes and to perpetuate the problem through just treating
> the symptoms of it.

I feel like I would understand what the whole article means if I could unlock
the mysteries of this paragraph.

Food banks as a concept don't make any sense. We already have a well-developed
food distribution system: it's called grocery stores. There is no way food
banks can accomplish the procurement and delivery function at lower cost than
existing retail channels. That militates towards simply writing people a check
with which to buy food.

There is a small subset of the population that would use that check to buy
drugs or the like instead of buying food for their kids. Those people don't
need food banks, they need to be assigned a social worker.

~~~
ABCLAW
The idea is akin to this: You have a cold, but you take medication to prevent
it from hampering your work. However, this means you do not rest, which would
cure the cold. The moment you stop receiving the medication, the cold
resurfaces.

In this situation, the cold is the root cause, the medication is the corporate
'problem solution', but the medication is also perpetuating the cold by making
the proper solution less attractive.

The proper solution would be to change incentives such that sick workers are
allowed to, and comfortable with, taking time to let the cold clear.

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civilian
I read most of this article and skimmed the rest--- there doesn't seem to be a
consistent thesis?

Allowing soda and other "junk" food maybe isn't the best thing, and I'm sure
there is some mild bed-sharing between Kraft/BigSoda and the foodbanks, but
I'm also in favor of letting people spend their benefits how they choose to.

Andy Fisher also recommends a higher minimum wage, which I disagree with. It
makes it harder for people to get started in a job, and also if there are a
lot more people applying for $15 jobs than there are jobs, it opens the
likelyhood that discrimination will take place.

Economists are kinda uncertain about this though:
[http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/15-minimum-
wage](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/15-minimum-wage) The conclusion seems
to be "$15 isn't that high of a wage so it won't distort the market that
much."

~~~
jerf
"I read most of this article and skimmed the rest--- there doesn't seem to be
a consistent thesis?"

Hunger isn't a solved problem in the United States, and it's either because
the food banks aren't doing a good enough job, the corporations are too cozy
with the "anti-hunger complex", the government isn't doing a good enough job,
income inequality is too high, or because the public thinks that that food
drives do more good than they actually do.

I'm first in line to point out that things in reality have complicated causes,
but I have to agree that this is all over the board and if I put on my
manager's hat, I don't think any group comes away with any actionable items
from it.

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notadoc
Is there a hunger problem, or is there a poverty problem?

The USA has an obesity crisis and the overwhelming majority of the population
is fat, obese, or morbidly obese. Is that hunger? Or is that from poverty? Or
something else?

~~~
Simulacra
It's from bad food. It's been overly processed to where there is no nutrition,
so actual problems of hunger and malnutrition are no longer addressed. Just
cravings.

~~~
notadoc
But is someone really hungry or starving if they're overweight or obese?

They may be feeling hungry, or have cravings, or have some other side effect
of destroying a bodies ability to handle insulin, much like a drug addict
feels cravings for their drug, but is that hunger? Or just a side effect of
abusing food like any other vice or intoxicant?

I'd imagine where hunger is real elsewhere in the world, and people are
genuinely starving, lacking food, and otherwise malnourished, they'd find this
type of discussion in the fattest country on earth to be offensive.

~~~
ensiferum
Nutrition is not only about the quantity of calories but also about their
quality. If you look at the food Intake of some impoverished fat person you're
likely to find that they consume too many calories of low quality food void of
proper nutrients fats and proteins but full of sugars and fast carbs. That's
not only because of education but also cause the crap food is the only thing
accessible and affordable to someone in the low income end and/or living off
food stamps.

~~~
notadoc
> but also cause the crap food is the only thing accessible and affordable

I hear this often, but it is much more expensive per meal to buy prepackaged
garbage food, microwaveable meals, junk etc, than visiting the vegetable
section along with bulk rice or beans, and meat. The difference is the latter
requires 20-30 minutes of cooking and some minimal effort, whereas microwaving
the package garbage meal takes 2 minutes.

Not everyone likes to cook, and many people don't want to deal with cooking
after they're tired from a day at work, but it's not really about
affordability until you're approaching organic foods.

------
metalliqaz
Because America isn't trying to solve the hunger problem.

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sidcypher
I wonder about America's utility function.

"The hunger problem" is clearly someone else's problem, but what would be
America's problem? Something about competing with other countries in various
aspects of power, while mainaining and servicing its internal power structure,
probably.

How relevant is feeding people to that?

~~~
elihu
> How relevant is feeding people to that?

It doesn't generate shareholder value. Unless you're a grocery store or food
producer whose customers are subsidized by food stamps or similar programs.

Feeding people also reduces the risk of a revolution (whether peaceful or
violent) forcibly changing our power structures.

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ThrustVectoring
The root cause, IMO, is rent-seeking. Various groups can achieve their goals
through making it more expensive to be poor. Parking tickets, land rents,
civil forfeiture, bank fees, occupational licensing and restrictions,
regressive taxation, de-facto requirements for university degrees, wage theft,
and probably more things that I don't have the time to dive into.

We the resources to end hunger in America. The massive reduction in workforce
dedicated to agriculture is evidence of that. The problem is that "or you'll
starve" is a highly effective tool to coerce economic rents out of people, so
efforts reducing the amount of hunger just means that rentiers can squeeze
more out of those barely making it.

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dragonwriter
America can't solve the hunger problem because a significant and politically
powerful segment of America is ideologically devoted to capitalism, and hunger
(more generally, the threat of being unable to meet basic life necessities) is
the whip at labor's back on which capitalism depends.

Hunger is not a problem for capitalists, it's a solution.

(The article seems more about the network of interests that have grown up to
profit off the determination of America to _not_ solve hunger while paying lip
service to the ideal of doing so, but that's not the root of the failure
tomsolve hunger.)

------
soared
> Sixty percent of the non-elderly who receive food stamps are in households
> where there’s at least one person working.

This was the stat I was curious about. But it is generally underwhelming..
Should 1 person working in a household really expect to be able to feed,
house, and clothe everyone? And if 40% of people on food stamps don't have
jobs.. that seems like a much more obvious starting point. They are
potentially capable* of working, but are not. Why is that?

*barring mental illness, disability, etc. Which is another issue I think could be solved sooner than rebuilding the entire food welfare system.

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Isamu
To read this headline:

hunger problem => food insecurity

where "food insecurity" is not the same thing as starving, or getting enough
calories in a day to survive (although it can include severe lack of food.)
Food insecurity can be more about not being able to afford balanced meals, or
not getting enough to eat some of the time.

I recommend the linked report, Household Food Security in the United States in
2015: [https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-
details/?pubid=797...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-
details/?pubid=79760)

------
accountyaccount
Because Americans get really mad when someone else gets something for free.

~~~
fwefwwfe
Unless it's farm subsidies.

~~~
civilian
No, we get mad at those too. Trust me, if I could I would shred the IRS Tax
Code and simplify it.

I also canvassed in Des Moines, Iowa in 2008 for a presidential candidate who
was _not_ in favor of farm subsidies, and was especially against corn-ethanol
subsidies. It, surprisingly, didn't come up that much?

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ams6110
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.

~~~
sp332
What would you teach "a man" to make a living in this economy?

~~~
ams6110
I am simply pointing out that you do not "solve hunger" by just handing out
daily rations of food at a food bank.

You can keep people from going hungry by doing that, but it doesn't address
the underlying problem and in fact it likely perpetuates it.

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mbrodersen
The US throws away 50% of all food produced. Because it isn't "pretty enough"
to be sold in retail stores. So America absolutely can solve the hunger
problem. It just doesn't want to.

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gozur88
America can't solve The Hunger Problem because every time we do people who
make a living in that business change all the language to resurrect it.

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tabeth
If you think about it, all social problems stem from a single word:

superiority.

So, why can't America solve the hunger problem? Because there are some who
want to be superior to others. The end. The main value of being a "have" is
not being a "have not". So if you give things to the "have nots", then you've
undermined the "haves" (the distance between them has decreased)

~~~
red75prime
Socialism wasn't very economically successful. But, well, we had our
(imported) bread aplenty and butter was rationed equally.

~~~
cies
Well, by some markers they were quite successful. When comparing socialist
countries with capitalist counterparts of the same GDP/capita then the
socialist countries were doing remarkably well.

Sure we are not thought this in the west. Remember "history is written by the
victors"?

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muninn_
"Why doesn't" is the better question. We clearly can.

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Simulacra
Because American's food supply has been so overly-manufactured and processed
that it doesn't really satisfy hunger and nutrition, but rather addictive
cravings.

~~~
vturner
This. I've worked in food banks and an operation offering low-income persons
and the homeless free food. While I applaud the organizations and people
trying to do something, a lot of the food we give out is junk. Lots of high-
carb, highly processed, high-additive containing foods.

The sad part is that I recall when at one operation I worked at people didn't
want the fresh stuff when we got it. Sadly, I think they are addicted to the
processed garbage.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
... or they simply don't have the time to do much cooking.

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emersonrsantos
North Americans are the most wasteful people in the world [1] and I have a
suspicion that the USA Government is the most wasteful in the world too (tons
of articles about wasteful spending).

[1] [https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-
IP.pdf](https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf)

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minikites
> Walmart is perhaps the most egregious example of this. Walmart doesn’t pay
> its workers very well. And because it pays its workers so poorly, they have
> to rely on food stamps and food banks to make ends meet. So then, Walmart
> goes ahead and uses its charitable donations to pay food banks, to pay anti-
> hunger groups to support SNAP—which enables [Walmart] to pay its workers low
> wages. And then it also redeems about 1 in 6 SNAP dollars around the
> country.

Yet another argument for raising the minimum wage in the short term and moving
to basic income in the medium-to-long term. The current system boils down to
company scrip with added obfuscation.

~~~
MadSax
What if the premise is wrong or misguided? In other words, Walmart doesn't pay
well because retail doesn't pay well. Nobody is forcing people to work at
Walmart, and if they could, wouldn't they find better paying jobs? What keeps
people working at walmart? Is it possible the rest of the retail sector isn't
able to pay much more so they're all in the same boat?

~~~
sp332
If your company makes so little money that your employees literally can't eat
and make rent, then your business has failed and it's not up to the government
to prop it up.

~~~
MadSax
I get it, but most of retail is Hemorrhaging money. Don't get me wrong, I want
to see everyone being paid what they're worth and then some but most people I
see argue about retail wages, they single out Walmart but don't have any data
to explain why.

