Why Can't America Solve the Hunger Problem?

https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2017/06/why-cant-america-solve-the-hunger-problem/530151/

by palidanx • 9 years ago

29 76 9 years ago

metalliqaz2• 9 years ago

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

minikites2• 9 years ago

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.

seanp2k2• 9 years ago

Yeah, Walmart uses welfare to subsidize their business. From a capitalistic standpoint, it's a genius strategy. From a moral standpoint it's deplorable IMO.

KekDemaga2• 9 years ago

Anyone who hires low wage workers domestically does this really, if I was supreme leader I'd abolish the tax write off for firms that pay a wage below the cost of living and consider additional taxes directed at that group (also resolve the welfare cliff but that is a separate issue keeping wages low) to level the playing field. Our tax code incentives behavior that we want to discourage.

MadSax2• 9 years ago

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?

sp3322• 9 years ago

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.

KekDemaga2• 9 years ago

I applied for a Walmart job years ago, when they told me the rate of pay (below what I was making back then) I declined and they asked a few demographic questions and printed out a sheet with all the "benefits they can offer me". It was a list of all the welfare programs in my state. It's part of the sales pitch for the job, they will also keep you part time just below the threshold of where you lose benefits at your request. As a capitalist I'm tired of subsidizing Walmart and businesses like it they simply aren't acting in good faith.

rayiner2• 9 years ago

Except the article basically argues for the opposite of guaranteed minimum income. For example, it argues against the food choice provisions of the SNAP program.

Consultant324522• 9 years ago

I used to say this too, but then I realized I didn't actually believe it. In order for that to be true I'd have to believe that we could remove SNAP and Walmart workers would be unaffected because they'd just be able to demand higher wages. Since I don't believe Walmart workers would be able to demand higher wages, then SNAP must not be subsidizing Walmart's payroll.

I do agree with the last sentence of your first paragraph though. Walmart benefits MUCH more from non-employee SNAP beneficiaries than it could ever save in employee wages. And it's not just the SNAP dollars it redeems. Every earned dollar not spent on food (because of SNAP) is a dollar that same person could spend on clothing or other goods sold at Walmart.

Yet another argument for raising the minimum wage

Raising the minimum wage harms the lowest skilled and most poorly educated workers. If your productivity warrants $10/hr but the minimum wage is $15/hr, you're simply unemployed. First we provide poor people with abhorrent schooling in our failing public school system, denying them the skills they need to get a decent job, and then we require employers prejudice against these same vulnerable workers. Sure, the workers on the margins of being worth $15/hr get a boost, but everyone under them on the economic ladder is harmed until inflation catches up and washes out the raise.

frgtpsswrdlame• 9 years ago

Raising the minimum wage harms the lowest skilled and most poorly educated workers...

Actually economists are uncertain about that. It's not as simple as you make it seem.

bryanlarsen• 9 years ago

"If your productivity warrants $10/hr but the minimum wage is $15/hr, you're simply unemployed"

That assumes that your productivity is absolute and not relative. And productivity is always relative. In other words, what makes a company viable is the cost structure of its competitors. If competitors are local than a minimum wage rise has little effect on employment. If competitors are international than a local minimum wage rise has a major effect.

The vast majority of minimum wage jobs in the States are in service industries with local competitors.

harryh2• 9 years ago

raising the minimum wage in the short term

Why should it be the responsibility of businesses that require low skill workers to pay above market wages as a form of social welfare instead of having the government handle it using taxes collected from everyone?

kasey_junk• 9 years ago

Because minimum wage is a form of direct payment that is not antithetical to certain political persuasions and direct payment subsidies tend to be more efficient than other forms of governmental social welfare?

(Note: I don't feel qualified to argue this point but its the common response and there is lots of evidence of improved social welfare in places with higher minimum wages)

Simulacra2• 9 years ago

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• 9 years ago

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• 9 years ago

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

ams61103• 9 years ago

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

sp3322• 9 years ago

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

ams61103• 9 years ago

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.

omegaworks• 9 years ago

Teach enough men to fish and let them sell their fish on an open market:

No more fish.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2006/november8/ocean-110806.ht...

rayiner2• 9 years ago

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.

tunesmith• 9 years ago

That paragraphs seems to be a (somewhat mangled) summation of a lot of systems dynamics thinking. By trying to solve the symptoms of a problem, you might turn a knob in exactly the wrong direction it needs to be turned, which would exacerbate rather than relieve the root cause.

ABCLAW• 9 years ago

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.

maxerickson2• 9 years ago

It does kick off with a discussion of such direct supports being withdrawn by the government.

accountyaccount• 9 years ago

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

fwefwwfe• 9 years ago

Unless it's farm subsidies.

civilian9• 9 years ago

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?

civilian9• 9 years ago

TANSTAAFL

sidcypher• 9 years ago

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• 9 years ago

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.

muninn_• 9 years ago

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

notadoc4• 9 years ago

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?

Simulacra2• 9 years ago

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.

notadoc4• 9 years ago

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.

maxerickson2• 9 years ago

About 1/3 of the country is at a normal or underweight BMI.

About 1/8 of the country experiences food insecurity.

So there is plenty of room for the majority of the food insecure to not be obese. I'm not making a claim either way, just pointing out that there is lots of room for that explanation in the statistics; further information required.

_m8fo5• 9 years ago

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)

civilian9• 9 years ago

?? This is a really weird and judgemental angle to take.

minikites2• 9 years ago

It's true, many republicans run on spite: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/opinion/05krugman.html

But the Obama administration’s plan to expand coverage relies in part on savings from Medicare. And since the G.O.P. opposes anything that might be good for Mr. Obama, it has become the passionate defender of ineffective medical procedures and overpayments to insurance companies.

It's also worth noting that Obamacare was originally a republican idea but since it was associated with Obama, they hate it.

grasshopperpurp• 9 years ago

I don't think so. Why do you?

red75prime• 9 years ago

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

cies2• 9 years ago

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"?

_m8fo5• 9 years ago

I fail to see what socialism has to do with my comment. I am not even making a value judgment on whether or not superiority is bad, it's just an empirical fact.

cies2• 9 years ago

superiority

I'd say it is "oppression".

_m8fo5• 9 years ago

Why does one oppress? Oppression is a symptom, not the cause.

civilian9• 9 years ago

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 The conclusion seems to be "$15 isn't that high of a wage so it won't distort the market that much."

jerf2• 9 years ago

"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.

emersonrsantos• 9 years ago

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

danielvf2• 9 years ago

"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.

Alex3917• 9 years ago

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.

Are you saying that people of color are six times more likely to be on SNAP at the same household income level, or that if Wal-Mart hired white people then they would pay them more?

danielvf2• 9 years ago

In my state, at the same individual income levels, people of color have a higher rate of being on SNAP than the overall the population at that income level.

Fradow• 9 years ago

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.

metalliqaz2• 9 years ago

I think one of the main issues here is assuming that jobs that pay minimum wage are (or should be) meant to support a family. There is all kinds of politics swirling around this issue, but one simple fact remains: a worker must create more value for their employer than it costs to compensate them. Just raising the minimum wage isn't going to help if the work isn't providing the necessary value. Sure, prices can rise to the consumers, but other market pressures will be at work to counteract such a rise (think automation, etc).

I think it is much more important to try and train/educate workers such that they aren't dependent on minimum wage jobs for their livelihoods. Then those jobs can be what they are supposed to be: entry points to the workforce that allow workers to develop skills and move on.

civilian9• 9 years ago

The author might have been using Wal-Mart as an example, but in general there's a trend in the American political left to shit on Wal-Mart because of the reasons given, and because they're a gigantic business. It gets kind of tinfoily-hat.

ams61103• 9 years ago

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

ThrustVectoring• 9 years ago

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.

gozur88• 9 years ago

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.

soared• 9 years ago

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.

Isamu• 9 years ago

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...

dragonwriter2• 9 years ago

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.)

mbrodersen• 9 years ago

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.

Why Can't America Solve the Hunger Problem?

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