4 ms·

There's a kind of language creep throughout all of these discussions. When people are no longer hungry, we start talking about the "food insecure" in the same t

There's a kind of language creep throughout all of these discussions. When people are no longer hungry, we start talking about the "food insecure" in the same terms. Nobody ever seems to notice that we went from "hungry" to "food insecure" or even what "food insecure" is supposed to mean (although I'm sure it has some academic definition). What I do know is that when I was briefly on food stamps my food budget doubled and I wasn't ever anywhere near going hungry on the prior budget, so it's really hard to know what I'm supposed to take away from these designations.

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
It's a hard problem. The flip side is, there's gotta be a way to talk about problems that exist today even if they're less severe than the ones in the past. When we talk about "medical malpractice" today, the bad treatment is typically much better than what you would have gotten 100 years ago, but I don't think that proves it's a bad term.
- cycrutchfield 4y ago
  It’s politics. The term was synthetically created to push a political agenda. The term was chosen to be as emotionally-charged as possible: “How can you be against paying people a Living Wage?” We can and should talk about problems like this, but I hate that it is being done in such a nakedly political and disingenuous way.
  - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
    What better term would you propose? I've seen "decent wage", "honest wage", and "fair wage", but they all have similar issues. I'm not sure there's any term that wouldn't become emotionally charged when used for the phenomenon of "some people are paid a lot less than I think they ought to be".
    - shortstuffsushi 4y ago
      While the term "fair wage" is obviously something that's more "arguable" (e.g. what's fair?) it seems to me a less loaded phrase than "living wage," the alternative to which, on its face, seems to imply death.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
There is actually a fairly firm definition of food insecurity. I have some links in this post [1] It is based on survey data with set questions. Answering yes to any of the following can categorize you as food insecure A parent lost weight (for any reason) Adult(s) cut size or skipped meals in 3 or more months of the year Relied on few kinds of low-cost food to feed child(ren) If Elon Musk skips breakfast to lose weight and succeeds, his family qualifies as food insecure. This is why you see very different summary statistics. 1 in 5 children suffer food insecurity versus 0.9% of children have gone hungry at lest once in the last year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31277978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31277978

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago

It's a hard problem. The flip side is, there's gotta be a way to talk about problems that exist today even if they're less severe than the ones in the past. When we talk about "medical malpractice" today, the bad treatment is typically much better than what you would have gotten 100 years ago, but I don't think that proves it's a bad term.

cycrutchfield 4y ago
It’s politics. The term was synthetically created to push a political agenda. The term was chosen to be as emotionally-charged as possible: “How can you be against paying people a Living Wage?” We can and should talk about problems like this, but I hate that it is being done in such a nakedly political and disingenuous way.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  What better term would you propose? I've seen "decent wage", "honest wage", and "fair wage", but they all have similar issues. I'm not sure there's any term that wouldn't become emotionally charged when used for the phenomenon of "some people are paid a lot less than I think they ought to be".
  - shortstuffsushi 4y ago
    While the term "fair wage" is obviously something that's more "arguable" (e.g. what's fair?) it seems to me a less loaded phrase than "living wage," the alternative to which, on its face, seems to imply death.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

There is actually a fairly firm definition of food insecurity. I have some links in this post [1] It is based on survey data with set questions. Answering yes to any of the following can categorize you as food insecure A parent lost weight (for any reason) Adult(s) cut size or skipped meals in 3 or more months of the year Relied on few kinds of low-cost food to feed child(ren) If Elon Musk skips breakfast to lose weight and succeeds, his family qualifies as food insecure. This is why you see very different summary statistics. 1 in 5 children suffer food insecurity versus 0.9% of children have gone hungry at lest once in the last year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31277978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31277978