I believe it does in the form of farm subsidies, although many (probably most) Dopers are more educated on farm subsidy issues than I am.
Glee, Chief Pedant and Alessan are all right. But for a rare and very isolated case (in more ways than one) of someone starving to death in the U.S., see: Into the Wild - Wikipedia
Yes, except no one in Europe or North America is starving to death due to a shortage of food. We have government policies to artificially maintain overproduction of certain crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) and reduce production of other crops to maintain higher prices.
Yes, food was exported from Ireland during the potato famine. But what does that have to do with Europe and North America today? The shelves of supermarkets are groaning with cheap food. Charities are eagerly giving away free food. Governments are providing free food. Vast amounts of perfectly good food can be scavenged from restaurant dumpsters.
Yes, people do die from malnutrition or starvation here in the US. But this happens to a very few categories of people:
-
People lost in the wilderness for months. Except you usually die from dehdration or hypothermia long before you starve to death.
-
Children or other dependent people who are starved by caregivers with mental illness.
-
The mentally ill, who could be starving due to anorexia such that they refuse food, or paranoid schizophrenia such that they are so out of touch with reality that they don’t know how to access the abundant supply of free food.
-
Those with other illnesses that make it impossible for them to eat enough to stay healthy. People with AIDS or cancer often waste away because they can’t eat, and can’t keep down the food they eat. You can give people IVs and tube feedings and antinausea drugs, but sometimes this isn’t enough.
Note that this list does not include people who are so poor they can’t buy food. People who are too poor to buy food can readily access all kinds of free food. And even the very poor can buy all kinds of cheap food. In the US obesity is positively correlated with poverty, not negatively.
Yep. Don’t you agree that must happen to thousands of people every day in the U.S.? What can we do to stop it? Eskimo potatoe erridication programs? Backpack control?
I’ll join any such committee you agree to chair. 
Note that I’d classify the Christopher McCandless case as category 3, mental illness, rather than category 1, lost in the wilderness.
Seconded, please. While I acknowledge India has some fairly corrupt officials and this may be a possibility, I fail to see anyplace it was mentioned in the thread!
I’d be interested to know what your friend thinks is the motive behind the doctors’ deception. What does he think they have to gain?
How many people actually die in the US each day?
This is my question, too. As usual with bizarre conspiracy theories, what’s missing is any reason for a large group of people to participate. What’s the benefit to doctors of (a) thousands of people dying everyday and (b) hiding that? And as usual with bizarre conspiracy theories, the assumption is made that a large group of people would willingly toss aside personal morality and professional ethics in order to participate in the conspiracy.
Doctors vow to “First, do no harm.” Hard to see how thousands of doctors in thousands of hospitals all across America could square that with covering up mass starvation.
A quick search shows about 6500 people in the U.S. die every day. The statement that “thousands” of people die of starvation indicates that at least 1/3 of people in the U.S. die of starvation and it could be many more. This thing is bigger than AIDS, skydiving accidents, malaria, and botulism combined. We will have to wait until the presidential race progresses to find out what is going to be done.
According to this, the annual mortality rate in the U.S. in 2004 was 8.2/1000. Given a 2004 poplulation of 285.7 million (cite), divided by 365 days, that would be a daily death rate of 6400 American deaths per day.
ETA: Shagnasty beat me to it, and it looks like he didn’t even have to do any math.
Adding to what others have beaten me in stating, the sources I’ve found hover around 830 per hundred thousand per year, so in a population of ~300 million, that means ~6800 dead Americans a day. Further checks break down that 6800 roughly into:
Heart disease: 1792
Cancer: 1507
Stroke: 411
Chronic Lower Respiratory diseases: 339
Accidents: 297
Diabetes: 199
Alzheimer’s: 180
Influenza/Pneumonia: 168
Nephritis: 117
Septicemia: 91
Leaving about 1700 from “Other causes” that didn’t make the top ten, including suicides, homicides, HIV, liver diseases, kidney diseases, Parkinson’s, combat deaths, etc. I can’t find “starvation” anywhere. By comparison, the death rate in Swaziland is almost four times higher, and I bet most people there don’t live long enough to even get heart disease, cancer or a stroke.
Also, the OP’s nutty friend posits that these deaths all happening in hospitals. And that of probably millions of physicians, nurses, paramedics, hospital porters, candy stripers, and friends and family visiting who pass through these hospitals, nobody seems to have had the courage to blow the whistle on all these skeletal, balding people being given death certificates that say “stroke” and “vehicular accident.” That’s some conspiracy.
[hijack]I remember an article in which someone described a conversation with a Russian emigre in which the writer was talking about poverty and starvation in America, and the Russian pointed out that if it was really that bad here, there wouldn’t be any pigeons in the parks.[/hijack]
There may be some overlap in those categories, though. Lung cancer, for instance, is simultaneously “cancer” and a “chronic lower respiratory disease”. And some of the others sometimes combine in a one-two punch that’s difficult to disentangle: For instance, if someone with advanced Alzheimer’s wanders out into the middle of a busy interstate and gets hit by a truck, is the cause of death there “Alzheimer’s” or “accident”?
He would say something like “All the doctors work for corporations now and since there is no profit in feeding the poor, they are allowed to starve, and that all the corporations work together to make sure this isn’t publicized.”
He seems to think Appalachia is a hotbed of this. I guess he thinks that West Va = Sub Saharan Africa. :rolleyes: For a guy that never leaves his back yard except to go to work, he sure is familiar with things happening thousands of miles away. 
I agree with the other posters that his assertion is ridiculous.
He would say that many of those people actually died of starvation, so this doesn’t help. The doctors are covering it up, remember? He is always accusing me of “believing everything they tell you”. Of course, where he gets his “information” is never quite made clear.
My friend is not a nut, he is just an old commie that can’t believe Marx was wrong about everything. Like many of his dying breed, cognitive dissonance has caused him to start fantasizing, I think. Nice guy, but he just can’t believe the revolution didn’t come and solve everything. I have never actually *seen *a copy of “The Weekly Worker” at his house, but it would explain a lot.
He still won’t believe Houston doesn’t have zoning either, even after being shown numerous sources. The concept of a city without central planning is so impossible to his mind that he just won’t accept it. Maybe I need a new drinking buddy.
It was probably overeating. If he had been thinner the truck would have missed him…
You gotta be kidding me… :dubious:
Absolutely he’s a nut.
I would agree to thousands of people in the USA go to sleep hungry everyday. Your friend surely has had some facts go astray and come up with this hybrid creature you heard uttered.