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Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year
- ktallett 11mo agoIt will only get worse whilst costs are not regulated of essentials such as housing, food, utilities, and public transport. The rich need to be taxed on all UK based assets and income no matter where you live and we need to restrict profit and pricing accordingly. We can't keep being held hostage by those who wish to increase their bank balance year on year. Now we have no incentive right now as those who are in government make far too much from the status quo. We need to remove this current governmental style by removing the option to have multiple jobs and remove the ability to be given cash or any benefits from private companies whilst working for the public. Capitalism is failing the vast majority and we need to realise that.
- wtcactus 11mo agoOh, yeah. Regulating the food prices is the trick here. That went really well in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China... just to name a couple of examples. It's funny that for some people, the answer of the enormous failings of Marxism is always "We need even more Marxism!"
- zwnow 11mo agoAt what point will it get worse, a planned economy or a free economy based on greed? Life is getting more unaffordable with each passing day. Corporations need to be put in their place given that politicians dont even have backbones anymore as soon as they smell corpo money.
- wtcactus 11mo agoA planned economy will always, always get worse. All historical examples show us that. But you are free to give us an example of a planned economy that worked properly and brought freedom and prosperity to their citizens. Just one single example will suffice. P.S. I see the downvotes, but I don't see a single example. Just one...
- zwnow 11mo agoSo you are blind to the current economies, gotcha
- tock 11mo agoI'm curious. What is an example of any economy that has only worked properly and brought freedom and prosperity to their citizens and has never ever gotten worse?
- ktallett 11mo agoWhat are your stats measuring good and bad and therefore what do you count as worse? Would it be better all have a home, job, access to education, food?
- sixtyj 11mo agoIn long term, corporations can buy everyone, unfortunately. This is the fact, and I would say that almost no one is immune to money offer. (You have to be very financially secured. But then, you are probably from the similar class as corporate people. -> simulate level of greed) If you (as governmental employee) have some issue to solve, e.g. alimony or faster mortgage repayment, you are vulnerable… and you have to have very strong conscience not to accept any “services”. It is similar to be strong not to ear sugar or fat-loaded chips or drinking…
- beeflet 11mo agoSo much money flows through the government that I would say it is already a planned economy
- nialv7 11mo agoFood production is heavily supported by the government in China in order to keep food affordable. Food price is also incredibly low in China. If that's failing that the Western world is in hell now.
- carlosjobim 11mo agoToday's China isn't Mao's China.
- psychoslave 11mo agoCertainly, but it's officially communist, which is at least as true as western countries being capitalist free market democracy where every citizen is equal.
- kjksf 11mo agoPer AI, comparative food production subsidies are the same in US and China. China spends a 2x total but they have more people so per farmer support is more or less the same. So if that's your metric, US is at par with China. US food is affordable. To the extent that food in China is cheaper, I'm pretty sure the main reason is dramatically lower cost of labor. But the premise of your comment is just wrong. Money doesn't grow on trees. It's taken by the government from people. Subsidies don't make things cheaper. They just obscure the real cost and can be used by politicians to buy votes from pickFrom([farmers,students,renters,teachers,...]) If US government didn't spend $35 billion/year subsidizing food production, food would be more expensive but an average worker would have $214 more per year to spend on food.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- ukrefugee 11mo agothe government spends 50% of GDP, as much as everyone else combined If you still don't have enough, it's out of sheer incompetence and greed
- sixtyj 11mo agoRegulation is one of few solutions. Issue to solve is not make the rich more rich. But as housing has been commoditized, it will be very tough fight to change it. Even people in governments can be land lords… All other branches are commoditized as well and owned by big players who own markets.
- varispeed 11mo agoIt's not capitalism, but corruption. Subsequent governments have been shovelling billions to tax avoiding multi national corporations without checks and balances. "Taxing the rich" is a distraction. Correct action is investigate corruption and cut spending. For instance NHS reliance on agencies - they pay agency for a nurse £2,500 a day, nurse gets £500 from agency if lucky, £2k goes offshore. That's how our money is sucked out of the economy. Multiple that by every local authority to government departments and you'll see billions are going to waste. But current government is too corrupt to do something about it. Soon they'll claim we have best food banks in the world and support for working people... whilst corporations are laughing all the way to the bank.
- orwin 11mo agoCapital is power in a 'free market'/liberalist world. I like the idea of free markets, but capital accumulation makes the capital owners able to decide more and more on policies that allow them to accumulate even more capital/power. in any case, most of it isn't corruption, it's only people seeking more capital for themselves and their families.
- varispeed 11mo agoThe rot is in the state: procurement rackets, sweetheart deals, and policy capture by corporations who get access no ordinary voter ever will. When a government sits down with giant asset managers, then magically “discovers” Digital ID is its national priority, that’s not the invisible hand at work. That’s the very visible hand of influence bypassing democratic process. People love saying “it’s just capital seeking returns” as if that explains anything. It doesn’t. Accumulating money isn’t the issue. Being able to buy policy outcomes is the issue. Once private interests can tilt regulation, spending, and national infrastructure in their favour, you no longer have a market problem. You have a governance problem. Food banks didn’t explode because Jeff Bezos has too many zeroes in his account. They exploded because governments funnel public money into offshore middlemen, contractors billing ten times the real cost, multinationals avoiding scrutiny, and regulators pretending this is all fine. That’s not the “cycle of capital”. That’s a parasitic state captured by rent-seekers.
- beeflet 11mo agoI am pretty skeptical of rent-control like policies, but if is being proposed for somewhere else I completely support it. Also, removing the option to have multiple jobs?
- psychoslave 11mo ago>Also, removing the option to have multiple jobs? Well, not necessarily but a cap of the number of hour before you vastly exceed the poverty threshold is obviously a must have be it by law or sheer force of lore and habits. Otherwise this is in practice driving society to tolerate slavery, just tagged differently. If all that an individual is able doing all days through is serving mercantile work, this person represent a net negative to its society.
- ktallett 11mo agoWhat is your reason for being sceptical locally? Yes, I am not of the view that a public official should have a private career too. It creates influence.
- cjbgkagh 11mo agoWe have oligarchic corporatism, not democratic capitalism, though I guess that is what is meant by the phrase ‘late stage capitalism’. The problem is that we already have regulatory capture, a more powerful regulatory system leaves us with fewer ways to escape the oligarchs control.
- varispeed 11mo agoThe problem isn’t the number of regulators or how muscular they are. It’s that there’s no functioning enforcement. You can design the neatest regulatory framework in the world, but if the people meant to uphold it look the other way, you may as well print it on kitchen roll. Take MI5. Their remit explicitly includes safeguarding the democratic system. Yet when you’ve got a government holding cosy meetings with global asset managers and, like magic, Digital ID turns into a flagship national policy nobody voted for, where are they? Nowhere. They’re busy pumping out LinkedIn-based “espionage alerts” about Chinese headhunters while ignoring policy capture happening in broad daylight. They don’t even need the Prime Minister’s blessing to investigate that kind of threat. They just… don’t. So yes, we have oligarchic corporatism. But the real failure is that the institutions meant to keep it in check have basically checked out.
- cjbgkagh 11mo agoIn my opinion these institutions only had stated intentions of keeping democracy in check. I think they’ve always been tool for oligarchic forces to use against the masses and each other. To me the apparent incompetence of the SFO is better explained as a mechanism for the UK gov to double dip on bribes / campaign donations when the first one was insufficient. I think the effective anti corruption institutional culture was built when there was competition between empires and it was in the empires interest to do so. There is still a general perception that the UK has comparatively low levels of corruption but I attribute this to low levels of petty corruption. It is still in the interest of a corrupt state that lower level corruption is effectively policed as they are in competition. So it’s very possible that the majority of the population will not be privy to corruption while at the same time the majority of important decisions made are corrupted.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- newsclues 11mo agoBlaming capitalism for government failures while stating the solution is more and bigger government seems to be a misunderstanding of what the root cause is.
- ktallett 11mo agoAre we saying that worldwide the significant changes are exclusively government failures worldwide? A government works with a people led view, not the grifters that exist at the moment, hence why I do not agree a publicly employed person should be allowed to have another job.
- jmyeet 11mo agoFor the last 50+ years, Western governments have largely acted to funnel wealth from the poor to to the wealthy. Each economic crisis seerms to have ushered in a big jump in inequality. The OPEC oil crisis, 1987, recessions in the 1980s and 1990s, the dot-com bubble, the GFC and Covid. Ultimately this is going to correct. My preference is that it corrects by governments enforcing a fairer distribution because otherwise it's going to end violently and we're rapidly approaching a point of no return where the wealthy hold so much power and there's nothing left to steal. Basic human necessities like food, water and shelter are being eroded. You can look at a bunch of warnings like this. Food bank usage, claims for various forms of welfare (such that it is), homelessness (and housing insecurity more generally), levels of debt, etc. Sadly, I personally believe we're beyond the point of no return where it comes to solving these problems with electoral politics. The world is going to sink deeper into fascism and for awhile "order" will be maintained with ever-increasing police states. In the UK in particular, Labor has predictably completely failed to address affordability issues. Keir Starmer will likely be ousted in a leadership challenge and the likely winner of the next election is Reform. All so a handful of people can have even more wealth they just don't need.
- ukrefugee 11mo agotax revenues are higher than ever, government spending is higher than ever, social programs and social spending is higher than ever also self entitlement, reliance on the government is at the highest, individual autonomy is at the lowest ever
- barbazoo 11mo agoSource?
- ukrefugee 11mo ago24 million people receiving benefits (aka cash) in uk https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-benefits-statistics-august-2025/benefit-combinations-official-statistics-to-february-2025 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-benefits-statis... in addition to the usual free everything free health care free roads free housing (often) free education free riding and on top of it you get to complain about the rich!
- mytailorisrich 11mo agoThe title was edited for some reason, the actual one is: "Budget 2025: how inflation and the two-child benefit cap has increased poverty" And indeed this is an article against the 2-child benefit cap. This is obviously full of warm feelings but ignores the tough question of the individual responsibility not to have more children than one can afford. The article interviews a family with 4 young children and apparently no money, for example... Regarding poverty in general, I think the main issue in the UK is that there has been no economic growth since the financial crisis and GDP per capita is decreasing, i.e. people are getting poorer, which bites those on low/no income first and most.
- wood_spirit 11mo agoPeople made the decision to have each child at least 9 months before the child was born. And in the subsequent years and 9 months anything could have happened, eg illness or losing a job. So even careful planners might be unlucky enough to need food banks?
- mytailorisrich 11mo agoThis can of course happen but it is obviously disingenuous to imply that this is what usually happens in response to my comment.
- Loughla 11mo agoI don't think that's what they're implying. They're simply saying that careful planning isn't necessarily always what's needed. Consider carefully your sentences before making deep moral judgements about people and situations you might not be familiar with. That, I think, was their implied point.
- solumunus 11mo agoI think the point is that you can’t easily isolate these issues. Are you suggesting that someone should wade through the cases and determine who should get benefits for every child, or are you saying that you find the collateral damage to the “truly deserving” worth it?
- graeme 11mo agoThis is a good read on why the UK is producing less than it did before. https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-britain-doesnt-build/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-britain-doesnt-build/
- 6510 11mo agoThis reads like either the author believes all the propaganda they read or they are willing participants in it. > political willpower is not enough That the economy is in terrible shape shouldn't get in the way of the rich getting richer. No one knows where all that money is coming from but people are also miraculously to poor to buy, build or rent a home. With all that nice scarcity in the market, whatever units are left make a lovely investment opportunity to put all that extra money into which again feeds into the scarcity. So much winning it's tiring!
- jasoncartwright 11mo agoStrange to see an article about UK food banks on the Hacker News homepage. At the same intersection as my work... https://www.givefood.org.uk/ https://www.givefood.org.uk/ https://www.givefood.org.uk/api/ https://www.givefood.org.uk/api/
- webdevver 11mo agounfortunately a growing segment of people see food banks as a place where you can grab goodies for free, a-la 'you'd be stupid not to!'. i think they had a similar problem in Canada. ultimately its a very politically difficult situation since you're entering the quagmire of what constitutes being poor. that's a discourse where political careers go never to return - easier to just throw your hands up in the air and just give everyone as much free food as they want. ofcourse this then leads to the discussion of "wait... why don't we just do that anyway? arne't we a first world country?" but then you wind up with a whole enterprise of getting food for free (or steep discount) only to sell it to another community that doesn't have access to it and taking a profit. i think a similar problem (?) exists in the US, with SNAP food rations being (re?)-sold to latin americans.