The fall of capitalism: Quarter of US children went hungry last year

[Cael]

New government data shows nearly 50 million Americans—including a quarter of all children—struggled to get enough to eat last year. The Department of Agriculture found that nearly 17 million children lived in households in which food at times was scarce last year, four million children more than the year before. The government data has startled even anti-poverty advocates. Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America, said, "This is unthinkable. It’s like we are living in a Third World country.” The total number of Americans going hungry is likely even higher. The report is based on 2008 data when the unemployment rate maxed out at 7.2 percent. Since then the unemployment rate has jumped to over ten percent. David Davenport runs the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas:

David Davenport: “I anticipate that as the months go on, the next four to six months, we’ll continue to break distribution records, we’ll continue to have to expand programs like the mobile pantry, and we’ll continue to have to do more and to do it with less resources.”

Democracy Now! | Headlines for November 17, 2009

[eyeswideopen]

At the same time, the rich got richer. Since the Reagan government in the 1980s the answer to falling rates of profit has been to attack the unions, cut taxes for the rich, cut social services, education and training and shift industry off shore to non-union locations - including Ireland. When Clinton got people back to work, it was in very low paid jobs.

Ronald Reagan's War on Labor (Labor) by Dick Meister

Some wages are so low that working two jobs, or collecting food stamps, is the only way to get by. Some people are on wages so low that they would have to work 130 hours a week to pay rent. Hence many hundreds of thousands who live in homeless shelters, even though they have a job.

The "middle class" is squeezed too

Poverty among University academics -
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkuovJRIZr0&feature=related"]YouTube- The Academic Working Poor[/ame]


Obama, in his second book, emphasises how much he admires Reagan.

[Cael]

One in five New Yorkers depend on free food kitchens:

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utgb_K6jRbI&feature=fvw"]YouTube- Working poor stand in food lines[/nomedia]

[Cael]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaSXlF2x1Es&feature=related"]YouTube- How the wealthiest American make money off the poor-1/2[/ame]

[Hazlitt]

..food at times was scarce last year..

As a matter of interest Cael, giving that I don't see any link to the actual report (have you read the actual report?) - why specifically do you not attribute the shortages to government interference (state direction of investment in certain crops, quantities, etc?) in agriculture? That's just one possible cause that I also conjured like a magician off the top of my head, I'm just wondering why ardent anti-capitalist Cael decided to blame the free market on "scarcity of food".

I agree that people having to cut back (sometimes dramatically) is a terrible thing (nobody doesn't), and to highlight a news story on this report is obviously not a bad thing, but you haven't shown free markets to be the cause of these shortages whatsoever.

Perhaps I'm wrong, I'll wait for a link to the report, but according to the Washington Post, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "attributed the marked worsening in Americans' access to food primarily to the rise in unemployment, which now exceeds 10 percent, and in people who are underemployed."

So my question to you is, if an increase in food shortages is due to a rise in unemployment, is the rise in unemployment due to the free unhampered market, or government intereference in the economy? I'm just interested in what you are basing your judgement on? To me it seems purely on ideology.

For example, on a free market shortages can be the result of governments setting prices for crops, farmers wages, subsidies, quotas etc below market clearing levels, this could be exacerbated by government directing farmers to grow the crops decided in an office. Now, we do know that the government does interfere in the agriculture market in the USA, so I'll ask the question again, what are you basing your judgement on?

[sauntersplash]

Youtube is not a well respected resource for factual sociologicalcstatistics as far as I know. Got any other links?

[Cael]

As a matter of interest Cael, giving that I don't see any link to the actual report (have you read the actual report?) - why specifically do you not attribute the shortages to government interference (state direction of investment in certain crops, quantities, etc?) in agriculture? That's just one possible cause that I also conjured like a magician off the top of my head, I'm just wondering why ardent anti-capitalist Cael decided to blame the free market on "scarcity of food".

It says that food was scarce in the households - not that food was non existant in America. The New York Times also carries a story on this report:


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17hunger.html?_r=1

[Hazlitt]

It says that food was scarce in the households - not that food was non existant in America.

Yes, and like I said - on what basis do you not attribute the cause of this to government interference in the free market as opposed to Capitalism?

The story is in the Washington Post also, according to it: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "attributed the marked worsening in Americans' access to food primarily to the rise in unemployment, which now exceeds 10 percent, and in people who are underemployed."

So my question remains, is unemployment and the subsequent rise in the scarcity of food in househoulds due to government involvement in the free market? The reason I ask this is that you have attributed this to "Capitalism" with absolutely nothing to back up your statement.

[Malcolm X]

We need capitalism to sustain parasites like those below

[eyeswideopen]

As a matter of interest Cael, giving that I don't see any link to the actual report (have you read the actual report?) - why specifically do you not attribute the shortages to government interference (state direction of investment in certain crops, quantities, etc?) in agriculture? That's just one possible cause that I also conjured like a magician off the top of my head, I'm just wondering why ardent anti-capitalist Cael decided to blame the free market on "scarcity of food".

I agree that people having to cut back (sometimes dramatically) is a terrible thing (nobody doesn't), and to highlight a news story on this report is obviously not a bad thing, but you haven't shown free markets to be the cause of these shortages whatsoever.

Perhaps I'm wrong, I'll wait for a link to the report, but according to the Washington Post, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "attributed the marked worsening in Americans' access to food primarily to the rise in unemployment, which now exceeds 10 percent, and in people who are underemployed."

So my question to you is, if an increase in food shortages is due to a rise in unemployment, is the rise in unemployment due to the free unhampered market, or government intereference in the economy? I'm just interested in what you are basing your judgement on? To me it seems purely on ideology.

For example, on a free market shortages can be the result of governments setting prices for crops, farmers wages, subsidies, quotas etc below market clearing levels, this could be exacerbated by government directing farmers to grow the crops decided in an office. Now, we do know that the government does interfere in the agriculture market in the USA, so I'll ask the question again, what are you basing your judgement on?

For a start, no one has suggested that there is a shortage of food. There may well be gluts. What there is is a dysfunctional failure of resource distribution, characteristic of capitalism. In order to maintain profit rates, the US government and bosses from Reagan on broke the trade unions. The US became a low wage economy in which people often need two jobs to survive.

Tommy O'Brien's posts on union vs non-union employment here are interesting
http://www.politics.ie/current-affai...ml#post2291904

The US shipped its modern industry off shore to avoid taxes and unions. What was left was rust belt industry, now closed or closing, mass unemployment, homelessness and hunger.