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As of 2018 40 million Americans received more than 57 billion dollars in SNAP. It seems like largely the US has been and will continue to keep people fed. Note
by jsonne 7y ago
As of 2018 40 million Americans received more than 57 billion dollars in SNAP. It seems like largely the US has been and will continue to keep people fed. Note also that this is just 1 Federal program and doesn't mention the multitude of other state level and city level programs that exist as well as private charities, religious organizations, etc.
Please note I am not saying the system is perfect, shouldn't be expanded, or is beyond criticism in some way. I just think that a more nuanced conversation is warranted if we're going to talk about these sorts of things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assista...
- Hello71 7y agoand yet according to the USDA, "11.1 percent of households were food insecure at least some time during the year, including 4.3 percent (5.6 million households) that had very low food security".
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoSo where’s the disconnect here? SNAP is widely available, so we need to investigate the gap.
- jsjddbbwj 7y agoThe gap are people who are given food stamps and they use them to buy soda or to exchange them for other goods.
- soperj 7y ago57 billion into 40 million people = $1425. That's without any overhead. Say there was no overhead, that's $3.90 a day.
- AlgorithmicTime 7y agoWhich is actually more per person/day than me and my wife spend on ourselves... and we eat perfectly well!
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoSNAP is $200 per month per person for low income, at least it was when I was on it.
- oorza 7y agoGiving people money won't solve this problem. The food desert phenomenon is very real and very unsolved.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoHot take: You need a food equivalent of Medicare, where you can walk into the equivalent of a public good supermarket (Aldi would be my example, perhaps adjacent to a library and community center, with a "dine in" meal area), and walk out only with healthy foods or a healthy meal. Regarding food deserts, you need to force the distribution chain where it isn't, even if it isn't profitable (we don't look at the profitability of school lunches, soup kitchens, or food banks, for example). Citizens also need help understanding nutrition and health diets (existing efforts are woefully inadequate), and direct cash benefits (SNAP) are suboptimal for that, considering food industry marketing efforts (looking at you Coca Cola).
- thanatropism 7y agoThe purpose of Coca-Cola is to sell fizzy sugar drinks. Why would it be to blame for food deserts or people not managing their purse strings? I mean, if you want to ban Coca-Cola (like many want to ban marijuana), that's sort of a valid belief?
- toomuchtodo 7y agoOne cannot ban soda (or other unhealthy foods), see what happened with the uproar over choice over a minor tax on soda in NYC. You can not provide it at your establishment though. That's what I'm advocating for; free food (basics or prepared), but only healthy food. Making something difficult to obtain is somewhat equivalent to banning it, without the fight. "Choice" is what got us into the problem of so many having "Western" disease [1] (overweight, pre-diabetes do to diet choices). Small nudges [2] in the right direction. If I'm providing free meals for those who need it, I'm going to provide water (cheap, healthy, and readily available in the developed world) with it, not a can of Coke. [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and... [2] https://smile.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness-ebook/dp/B00A5DCALY https://smile.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Ha...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jefftk 7y ago"food insecure" may be a relatively low bar: it looks like it includes "reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake." https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/definitions-of-food-security/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
- dickjocke 7y agoI don't think that's a low bar. The US is an advanced economy. Why would people being unable to get fresh produce or have a balanced and varied diet be acceptable? Especially when you consider the obesity problems the country is facing. I think that food insecurity meaning literal hunger pains is way too low a bar for the US. That number should be literally 0%. Food security for us should mean food that is healthy and excellent.
- jefftk 7y ago"food insecure at least some time during the year" includes people who at some point during the year didn't like the food they had available ("reduced desirability"). For example, someone could be getting their food from Meal Hubs and still be counted as food insecure. If you surveyed specifically on whether people had access to fresh produce you'd get a much lower number.
- dickjocke 7y agoI personally don't think that ~10% of people who are in the low food security box are doing great. They still seemed to do horribly in some of the metrics they gathered. For example, 80% of them felt they could not afford a balanced meal. Then if you look at the very low security group, roughly 4% or 5 million people, it gets really worrisome. 32% of households said an adult had gone an entire day without eating anything. And I think this is compounded by something like Covid-19. 85% and 95% of the low and very low food security groups said they were worried food would run out. What happens to them when people make a run on the stores like this last month? Their ability to buy food is strongly tethered to the day of the month when their EBT card is reloaded. I think a lot of this is subjective, and globally the US is doing quite well compared to all countries. But I suspect we do poorly compared to other industrialized/advanced economies.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoThe USDA definitions are extraordinarily misleading. “Food insecure” includes people who are at no risk of going hungry, but wish they had better food or a larger variety of food.
- vb6sp6 7y agoYou'd be feeling pretty insecure if your only options for food was the boxed garbage from a gas station.
- oh_sigh 7y agoWhose only option is that?
- vb6sp6 7y ago23+ million Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
- oh_sigh 7y agoThat's not what that article says
- vb6sp6 7y agoYou have to read past the first sentence "A food desert is an area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food,[1][2][3] in contrast with an area with higher access to supermarkets or vegetable shops with fresh foods, which is called a food oasis.[4] The designation considers the type and quality of food available to the population, in addition to the accessibility of the food through the size and proximity of the food stores.[5] In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that 23.5 million Americans live in "food deserts"
- oh_sigh 7y ago
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoDidn't the federal gov't just cut SNAP benefits? The maximum a single person can receive is 6$/day, the average a single person receives is $4/day.
- munk-a 7y agoYes - the cuts went into effect two days ago on the first.
- alexgodin 7y agoThe average SNAP recipient receives about $4 a day and sees their balance run out after just 17 days. This is not enough.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoThis is somewhat misleadingly worded: it makes it sound like what they receive each month is 17*4 = $68. The actual average per month is $127/recipient. Arguably this is still insufficient, though.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rabidrat 7y agoyeah they get 31*4, but they can only make it 17 days with that. I doubt I could make it even 17 days with only $127.
- rubidium 7y agoI ate plenty well as a grad student on $120 a month. If that’s $127/person that’s plenty for just food. If that’s $127 for a family of 3 that’d be rough.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoThat's the average per recipient. The average per household is higher.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jakearmitage 7y agoSource?
- 7y ago
- mcherm 7y agoThe cost of the program is not a very good way of evaluating it. the number of people it feeds and how well it does so would be a much better criterion.
- TuringNYC 7y agoTotally agreed. But for those who feel the need to justify costs -- instead of looking at the good it does -- consider the capitalist benefits: - Hungry people are not productive to the economy - Hungry people are more likely to be sick and burden the healthcare system - Hungry people, if desperate enough, might steal from you - Hungry children do not learn as well, and become a future burden society needs to carry
- adrr 7y agoAre people going hungry in the US? Obesity rates are at an all time high and the highest in the population below the poverty line. What metric should we look at in terms of quantifying people going hungry?
- Loughla 7y agoJust as a note on this - low income have higher obesity rates, because many of them live in food deserts, without access to quality produce, or other regular staples. Further, high-calorie, low nutrition foods are cheaper in the US, and therefore more accessible. Fat people =/= healthy distribution system of food.
- adrr 7y agoCurious on this food desert thing. Is access to food less than it was 50 years ago? Access to fruits and vegetables during winter/fall months is a new thing since now we have better supply chains and international trade(winter crop is from Mexico). Its weird to me since i grew up in Saudi Arabia on a compound, a true food desert and lived off powdered milk, ramen, and other non perishable foods we could buy from the commissary store. There is something like 5000 Walmarts in the US that covers 90% of the population. They have fresh vegetables and fruits all year round.
- pjc50 7y ago> 40 million Americans received more than 57 billion dollars in SNAP. 57bn / 40m = $1425 $1425 / 365 = $3.90 While that's doable, it's really not a lot.
- mysterydip 7y agoWhat's enough? We have a grocery budget of $500 a month for a family of 5. That's $3.30 per person per day.
- somacore 7y agoYou're assuming a lot about people's ability to thoughtfully shop at a grocery store once per week. It isn't just about money per person.
- SkyBelow 7y agoBut then why criticize money if the issue is that people are not good enough with money to budget it? Either the suggestion will be that we provide people without enough money that even with poor budgeting and planning they will stay fed (and do we really cover everyone, the difference between 99% of people and 100% of people is like the difference in 99% server up time and 100% server up time). Or is the suggestion to remove the need plan by providing them food instead of money? You probably provide more food this way if optimized (economics of scale) and you would get more buy in from some people, but you would face heavy criticism and inertia from others who see this as looking down on others. We could go for education, but many people do not take education even when offered for free.
- cglace 7y agoSo what do you propose?
- kurthr 7y agoWe used to have a much lower grocery bill in a very expensive part of the country... for nice stuff! But now we eat out a lot less and our grocery bill has doubled cooking at home all the time (and no lunches for either of us at work). I'd say it matters a lot where you live and how you live. It's easy to live on far less than 100$/person_week in NY (or Tokyo, or Paris) with a tiny fridge and single burner stove, when you eat out 15 meals a week, or when you work at Google, or when you live in a rural area where prices are lower. But if you're urban, without a car, buying from tiny expensive bodegas, with growing kids, and can't afford to eat out, your bills will be significantly higher... Dog forbid you're buying pre-packaged or snack foods 'cuz it's easier than listening to home-alone teenagers complain.
- bloopernova 7y agoIncorrect, SNAP and other federal/state programs do not go far enough to feed a family. And the poorest families are constantly demonized as some sort of "Welfare Queen" living large on steaks and top shelf liquor.
- bluedino 7y ago>> living large on steaks and top shelf liquor More like frozen foods and sugary drinks
- Spivak 7y agoWhich is just as pejorative. Please don't say that we're at the point where microwave meals and canned soda are too much a luxury for people who come home exhausted from work. Are we really gonna ask someone who's already poor and tired to spend even more energy they don't have to make something from a few kinds of cheap dried grains. Either give out enough money to buy food that actual humans want to eat or just cook and deliver it. A commercial kitchen and a few trucks would probably do wonders for an area that's underfed because individuals don't have enough time and money to make food cheap.
- linuxftw 7y ago> Are we really gonna ask Yes. We shipped jobs over seas, we have tons of immigration and low to no tariffs, high taxes and regulations domestically. Domestic labor has been completely gutted.
- gowld 7y agoFrozen foods are cheap and healthy. Freezing is a cost-effective way to distribute vegetables and meat.
- gamblor956 7y agoWhich is silly, considering that you can't purchase steaks or liquor using SNAP or Welfare. (Grocery stores denote items that can be purchased on governmental assistance programs, for example, look for WIC on the shelf price tag the next time you shop.)
- bobwaycott 7y agoTo piggyback on what siblings point out, focusing on the total expenditure often leads one to different conclusions than focusing on the benefit available per-person per-day. It is much more insightful and meaningful to assess the efficacy of a program like SNAP by recognizing it’s $4 per day, or $1.33 per meal (and assumes an individual only drinks tap water). More importantly, there’s something wrong when a society is organized and operated in such a way that people have to rely on private charities and religious organizations to be fed. That’s a signal of social failure—especially when food is abundant. I’d suggest a more nuanced conversation should focus on the ways in which offloading a problem to charitable organizations enables people to ignore the problem by means of letting them feel good about themselves for donating time/supplies—which wouldn’t be needed if we ensured the problem didn’t exist in the first place.
- nuanceiswron882 7y agoMore nuance is exactly the problem. This isn't a matter of a specific little bit of math inside a bigger ball of math or highly custom machine that needs nuance. This is a literal effect we have on other humans by letting them go underfed. Why do we need more nuance in the rules around apportionment in the well walked context of "people got to eat"? This is just asinine at this point in human society. Especially with a much more educated society that can argue cogently around it sitting on their hands wanking their custom theories, tacitly enabling this. Society needs to focus on stable support of our shared human needs first, stores of usable foods, basic products, etc. It does not need to enable everyone's imagined pipe dreams, and emotional castle building, to become literally true. That's romanticized emotional ideology the others don't have to enable. Free speech does not mean you get what you're asking for. When you're hording toilet paper and flour, but shelves are full of garbage caffeine tricks, sodas, "craft beer", sugar bomb cereal, you know your society has jumped the shark.