Luckily, in my lifetime here in the US we’ve never faced food shortages. In fact, we’ve had the opposite problem, and have resolved it by having the government (that so many seem to want to NOT provide food to the hungry) pay farmers to not grow crops in order to keep prices up. I have a clear memory of a TV news show when I was a child that showed dairies spilling milk on the street.
But suppose there were shortages? Your comment about forcing production seems to indicate that the problem is not lack of the ability to grow food, but lack of willingness of the agricultural segment to do so. I suspect taking away the government payments to not produce food would go a long way towards resolving that problem. And all “the market is perfect and solves all supply/demand problems” people can chime in with their response.
But let’s look at the other way in which there’s not enough food: Inability to produce enough. I suspect climate change could actually bring this about some time in the future. I’m not sure what should happen then, but I’m leaning toward some kind of rationing. I have one greatnephew (rest of my sibs’ kids have not yet reproduced). Billy’s parents are hardworking teachers in Louisiana, where teachers don’t get paid very well. If there are food shortages, I cannot get my head around why Baron Fucking Trump would be worthy of not starving, but Billy wouldn’t.
You might be right if I had used the word “starvation”, but not in the case of malnutrition. It’s not politically realistic even for the most strident Republicans to have poor people dying as a directly visible proximate result of their policies. This is why, as much as they oppose any form of government assisted or regulated health care or UHC, oppose the ACA, and originally opposed Medicare, it was necessary to pass EMTALA to prevent patient dumping by hospitals such that the poor were being thrown out to die in the streets. Instead, those who are seriously ill but poor and uninsured are stabilized but not provided real treatment or ongoing care, and die later on, so that everyone’s conscience is clear. Likewise, I’m sure that no one would be allowed to literally starve to death for lack of food and money, but malnutrition is different. If the poor get reduced food stamp funding and have to subsist on low quality unhealthy foods, their premature deaths will not be sufficiently proximate to the root cause to be able to hang it on the kind of policy Trump is proposing, so dying of malnutrition is a plausible outcome.
Suppose, hypothetically, that Medicare was replaced by a universal health care system defined by broad federal guidelines and a system of subsidies to the states who would administer their own single-payer systems. Do you think the nation would fall apart because some basic founding principle was being violated? Likewise do you think the nation would fall apart if there was a stronger social safety net?
I understand that you may not agree with those specific policies, and that’s your prerogative. But to suggest that they are an existential threat to the nation’s well-being strikes me as a peculiarly hyperbolic way of asserting your disagreement. This is the nation that saw the enactment of the social programs of the New Deal, and arguably is much better off for them. The same can be said for Medicare. Much of the right-wing extremism we’re seeing is the result of relatively recent political developments, not founding principles.
Sure they have a vote. We have evidence of that effect right now. I’m saying that in societies in which there is greater social solidarity and regard for one’s fellow man, I’m pretty sure the kinds of people you describe would be regarded as borderline sociopaths, much like the guy they elected.
And yet, an estimated 45,000 people a year do die from lack of adequate health care, a situation that is entirely preventable with universal health care. Similarly, while no one has actually established the starvation of the poor as a policy goal, it’s certainly plausible as I suggested above that malnutrition may cause premature deaths, especially in conjunction with substandard health care.
And for someone who accused another poster of strawmanning (in #96), your presumption that you would be required to expend all your own savings to achieve UHC is deeply ironic. In fact it’s doubly ironic, because UHC once fully implemented is demonstrably far cheaper than the current fiasco, and because among the many failures of the present system is that people often do have to expend all their own savings if they have a serious illness, sometimes even when they thought they were insured: Medical Bills Are the Biggest Cause of US Bankruptcies: Study.
That number is widely disputed in terms of its accuracy, as is the conclusion that whatever the number is it’s “entirely” preventable. It’s unclear how many of those deaths are due to lifestyle choices as opposed to lack of health care. And that’s an odd argument to make since every country in the world that is not ranked as the #1 country in providing health care can be said to have “preventable” deaths. Are we to believe that socio-economic status has nothing to with life expectancy in countries with UHC?
And just to be clear, I am not making an argument against UHC-- I’ve come to be a supporter during the years that lead up to the passage of the ACA. But let’s not just throw stuff out there in support of it regardless of how accurate it is.
Cutting to the chase, would the death certificates say, “Malnutrition,” as a cause of death?
Your construction is so broad that a wealthy industrialist who dies after a heart attack brought on by Big Macs and Beefeaters has succumbed to poor nutrition.
No. But since there are a plentitude of available options north of “the nation falls apart,” I regard the question as meaningless.
I argue that these programs have both created positive results and created negative results, and that among the negative results rests a derogation of the national vision of plenary state authority.
Fair enough, but OTOH, your assertion that it’s “widely disputed” could be interpreted to mean “might just be all bunk” which is assuredly not the case. This is the study from which that particular number comes, and it’s from a respected peer-reviewed journal and well-qualified research, and is notable for its conclusion that the number of deaths from lack of insurance is higher than previously believed. There have been a large number of such studies, however, and if the actual number is lower, it doesn’t change the basic argument. Factcheck.org had this to say about it:
Now, on to the tough question: Is the 45,000 figure accurate? We can’t say for sure, but scores of other studies also conclude that persons without health insurance have a higher chance of dying prematurely than those with health insurance. A committee headed by Dr. John Z. Ayanian of the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine reviewed nearly 100 such studies released since 2002. And in March he summed up the findings for Congress this way:
[INDENT]Ayanian’s testimony to Congress, March 2009: Uninsured Americans frequently delay or forgo doctors’ visits, prescription medications, and other effective treatments, even when they have serious disease or life-threatening conditions. … Because uninsured adults seek health care less often than insured adults, they are often unaware of health problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or early-stage cancer. Uninsured adults are also much less likely to receive vaccinations, cancer screening services such as mammography and colonoscopy, and other effective preventive services.
The 45,000 estimate is at the high end of estimates, but earlier studies also have put the number of excess deaths from lack of insurance coverage in the thousands … http://www.factcheck.org/2009/09/dying-from-lack-of-insurance/[/INDENT]
So while I acknowledge your comment on the potential accuracy of that particular study, I wanted to qualify your “widely disputed” claim with the appropriate background.
With regard to your question about socioeconomic status, what I can recall from some pertinent studies in that regard is that yes, socioeconomic status makes a difference to health and life expectancy, even under UHC regimes, but it makes far less difference where UHC is available than where it presents an obstacle to health care access.
Both food production and health care in the USA are awkward compromises between a pure laissez-faire free market and socialism. No one doubts there ought to be something better, we’re just not sure what.
Our current government agricultural policy is inherited from the 1930s and 1940s, as a response to the Great Depression and World War Two. After a decade of downsizing in the 1920s as mechanization drove out the more marginal farmers, then the Great Depression hit and we had a commodity crisis as people in the cities went hungry and yet farmers could not sell crops for what it cost to raise them. Then we had WW2 in which the government needed more of everything and needed it yesterday, and agricultural production became a wartime priority.
Our resulting policies became something like the following: keep enough farmers in business that a sudden surge in demand could be met, while keeping commodity prices low but not below a guaranteed floor. Encourage the trend of maximizing potential productivity through mechanization and advances in per-acre yield (hybrid crops, pesticides and herbicides and fertilizer). Raw commodity production is heavily government-controlled. The resulting foodstuffs are so cheap that market competition has shifted to the value-added retail end of the business.
The hunger problem in the USA has been addressed in three imperfect ways: Government food subsidies for the poor have been sold basically as part of the regulatory flow- helping sustain sufficient demand for the food producers. Charity distribution of food is a similar endeavor on the retail end: tax-deductible donations of expired food cushion the uncertainty of the retail business, with private organizations picking up the distribution cost. And finally the goal is to end poverty and unemployment, to enable people to pay for food.
Ultimately it comes down to this: food in the USA is cheap and plentiful but not free. And therefore we can’t quite guarantee food as a birthright.
Saw this and thought it’d be somewhat relevant (note: this is for able-bodied adults with no dependents. So no “but what about the children?” problems)
Thirteen previously exempted Alabama counties saw an 85 percent drop in food stamp participation after work requirements were put in place on Jan. 1, according to the Alabama Department of Human Resources.
…
Among the 13 counties, there were 5,538 adults ages 18-50 without dependents receiving food stamps as of Jan. 1, 2017. That number dropped to 831 - a decline of about 85 percent - by May 1, 2017.
I believe it is an unrealized right. Similarly, many of our rights today we did not always have until there was a breaking point and that unrealized right had to be secured or protected. As another poster said, U.S. society has made it a thing to make sure its people are fed. I think that indicates what we know is a right whether people want to admit it or not.
The U.S. is made on some principles, though many were not fully practiced until wayyyy later. One of those principles is the common welfare (which my mind immediately links to healthcare and food stamps, etc etc.) And then that leads to the problem of federal vs state. I’ll go ahead and say I don’t trust States to step up. I just really don’t. I can’t really think of a time when they did step up for something that matters. Some things we now accept as rights, States didn’t quite give a damn back then. So, yeah, that’s where I stand.
Please, tell us your opinion on the concept of taxation and government existing, I’m sure it’ll be enlightening.
Mainly because your response is friendlier than misdemeanor assault.
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What if my next-door neighbor disagrees with both those views, and says that charity, to be meaningful, must come from the heart, not mandatory taxes, and resists both state and federal solutions?
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I think your neighbor needs to get over themselves. Their statement makes sense if you add a few words: “For charity to be meaningful to the giver, it must come from the heart.” That’s something I could, at some level, understand. But the person who matters here is NOT the one doing the giving. It’s the recipient. And to a person struggling to feed their children, the issue of, “Oh, someone did something nice for me” matters a heck of a lot less than, “Oh hey, we aren’t going to starve to death this week,” regardless of whether the food is coming from a local charity drive, tax-based redistribution programs, or the legion of doom trying to recruit new lackeys. Maslow’s hierarchy and whatnot. What matters is not the warm, fuzzy, happy feelings both people get from having performed or received an act of charity, but the fact that little Timmy can get some calcium.
Because it’s not an act of individual or collective charity, but recognition of a collective obligation as a society to maintain its own security?
You’re not going to win them all. You just need to win enough to win the necessary votes, and to win enough “buy-in” to whatever X is from the paying classes for collective provision to be seen as a part of normal social life.
I noticed this press release specified these results, but did not mention what actually happens to the 85% no longer on welfare. Maybe I am being unfair, but this seems like the stereotype of conservative policies: cut costs by targeting relatively inexpensive, politically weak groups, and then basically show no concern for the people losing their government assistance. So what happened to this 85%? Do they all have jobs now? Are they homeless?
I thought the same thing when I looked into it. Did they successfully obtain jobs or were they just given the boot? The question wasn’t brought up or answered in the article. I wasn’t gonna say anything though
But I think it gets to the heart of why the OP wrote his OP. It could be that principled conservative voters and politicians wish that certain programs are removed from the federal government and handled more locally. It is difficult to know without hearing the policy proposal, and I am not sure I trust conservative intentions when so many of these policies are coupled with campaigns that demean beneficiaries of government programs. These campaigns dehumanize the beneficiaries and lead to programs with press releases like the one Okrahoma linked to. I just want to know what they think is the best way to handle these problems.
The requirement to receive food stamps for these able-bodied adults with no dependents was to be working OR in a training program that was offered. If they didn’t find work and refused to get into the training program, they lost the food stamps. It was worth $126/month. You think that tipped them toward homelessness?
I didn’t think the homeless part but the other part, yes. “Were they just booted” is what I said. I’m suspicious about it still because nobody would “refuse” to go into a training program, because they have to eat.
If that is the case then, yes, apparently so. Unfortunately that’s not something we can legitimately speak to because we only know the numbers not the reasons behind them.