5 ms·

Not where I live. 5% of my state suffers from "food insecurity" which means they dont know where their next meal is coming from. I went on a field trip as a c

by pj 17y ago

Not where I live. 5% of my state suffers from "food insecurity" which means they dont know where their next meal is coming from. I went on a field trip as a child through a state park and the game ranger warned us all, he said, "Don't poach deer kids. If you are hungry and your parents want to poach deer out of season, tell them to call me and we'll help." He wasn't saying this as a joke. Many families here do procure a lot of their meat from hunting and fishing. A white tail deer can give you 100 lbs of meat. Thats $300-400. Rabbits, squirrels, quail, dove. Commonly eaten around here and much cheaper than the meat section at Wal-Mart. Once, at wal-mart, I was checking out and a large family in front of us was buying chicken in ten pound bags and I could smell it -- it was cheap because it was rotten. It smelled foul. Thank goodness the check out lady smelled it too and told them to go grab a different bag. I think perhaps some had leaked out and tainted the outside of the bags. I actually do think that some people may starve. I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this." It's worse than we realize. Our faith in the system has collapsed. We don't believe in it anymore. That isn't something that can be fixed by flooding society with more imaginary paper money.

erlanger 17y ago
> A white tail deer can give you 100 lbs of meat. Man, that brings back memories...I felt like Bubba back when I was in second grade...venison burgers, venison chile, venison steaks, venison soup, venison tips, etc etc
BigZaphod 17y ago
"It smelled foul." Nice.
philwelch 17y ago
Hunting and fishing can also, sometimes, give you better quality of food than you could otherwise afford. I always grew up with smoked salmon on the cheap because we caught it ourselves and own a smoker. Fishing isn't a cheap hobby but it sure gets you a lot of fish out of the deal--often more than we could eat ourselves. And the fish are a lot fresher than anything you could buy.
sfphotoarts 17y ago
"I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this."" I'm curious what, exactly your grandmother is seeing now that is worse than the great depression? Or quite possibly it's not worse than you think at all. I don't think you can speak for all with your notions of faith and belief. Economics doesn't need you to believe in it or have any faith in it. Its grounded in real and concrete math. Just because greed and poor practitioners of the science caused some instability in the system doesn't mean we need to resort to such outdated notions as faith. "it was cheap because it was rotten." - that doesn't make sense. I presume when the woman at the check out told them to find another bag it was the same price. Selling rotten food for a discount price will get Wal-mart into court. Enough of this survivalist sensationalism please.
- jonah 17y ago
  "Economics doesn't need you to believe in it or have any faith in it. Its grounded in real and concrete math." Oh? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=717293 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=717293
tokenadult 17y ago
It's worse than we realize. Our faith in the system has collapsed. What do you mean "we"? I think the current housing bubble collapse may end up being something bad like Japan's Lost Decade spread all over the world, but it will be nothing like a return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle anywhere in North America.
Xichekolas 17y ago
"I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this."" I'm sorry, but in what way does the current financial turmoil even approach the Great Depression? As much as the media likes to say 'worst X since Great Depression', that doesn't mean X is actually anywhere near as bad as the Great Depression. And before you start digging up obscure values of X that actually are statistically worse in some way, point me to the 25% unemployment and millions of middle class folk turning into migrant workers and living in their cars.
lionheart 17y ago
"I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this."" My parents and I lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is nothing. This is nothing compared even to the last 5 years of the Soviet Union's existence. You can go to the store and buy cheese. We had to make our own. Wake me when you can't buy cheese in stores anymore.
kragen 17y ago
"I actually do think that some people may starve." Yes, that's been happening for a long time in the US; as you said, 5% of your state (and many others) suffer from food insecurity. The rates are going up now, I'm sure. 'I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this."' I would like very much to hear what your grandmother has to say in more detail.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  that's been happening for a long time in the US What you were agreeing with is the proposition that people might starve, by implicitly claiming that some people in the United States already do starve. Where? Has anyone in the United States, and I mean anyone, actually died of a cause attributable to undernutrition caused by anything other than mental illness in the lifetime of anyone posting here? Who? There are people in the United States who cannot buy food out of their own family budgets, and there are children who are not well fed by their neglectful parents, but I don't think there is any adult who actually lacks enough food to live. Where is the example?
  - kragen 17y ago
    The WHO's figures are that in 2002, in the US, about 7400 people died of "nutritional deficiencies", broken down into 4300 deaths from "protein-energy malnutrition" and 2500 deaths from "iron-deficiency anaemia". That's a total death rate of 2.5 per 100 000 population that year. It's not one of the major causes of death, it's less common than suicide and far less common than diabetes, and it is indeed much more common in many other countries (the rate in Cameroon, for example, is five times higher) but it's a little higher than the estimates for more socialist countries like Canada, Sweden, Japan, and especially Finland. (But not France.) If that rate were typical over our lifetimes, which seems optimistic (surely the rate was much higher in 1932, and for that matter in 2009) that would add up to a few hundred thousand deaths by starvation over the last 80 years. These rates don't include deaths in which malnutrition was only a contributing factor. Malnutrition grossly increases the risk of death from infectious diseases, for example. If you think that out of those hundreds of thousands of deaths, not a single one was caused by anything other than mental illness, you are the one with the mental illness. In fact, I think that just by posting your comment, you have demonstrated that you are really out of touch with the reality of what's happening in what I assume is your own country. You need to adjust your estimates of your own competence downward by a few orders of magnitude in order to have a chance of having an opinion that is worth something. Right now you're living in a dream world. Figures from the World Health Organization Global Burden of Disease report from 2004: http://www.who.int/topics/global_burden_of_disease/en/ http://www.who.int/topics/global_burden_of_disease/en/ (There's a spreadsheet floating around there somewhere with the per-country stats, although I'm not having any luck finding a link to it.)

by pj 17y ago

erlanger 17y ago

> A white tail deer can give you 100 lbs of meat. Man, that brings back memories...I felt like Bubba back when I was in second grade...venison burgers, venison chile, venison steaks, venison soup, venison tips, etc etc

BigZaphod 17y ago

"It smelled foul." Nice.

philwelch 17y ago

Hunting and fishing can also, sometimes, give you better quality of food than you could otherwise afford. I always grew up with smoked salmon on the cheap because we caught it ourselves and own a smoker. Fishing isn't a cheap hobby but it sure gets you a lot of fish out of the deal--often more than we could eat ourselves. And the fish are a lot fresher than anything you could buy.

sfphotoarts 17y ago

"I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this."" I'm curious what, exactly your grandmother is seeing now that is worse than the great depression? Or quite possibly it's not worse than you think at all. I don't think you can speak for all with your notions of faith and belief. Economics doesn't need you to believe in it or have any faith in it. Its grounded in real and concrete math. Just because greed and poor practitioners of the science caused some instability in the system doesn't mean we need to resort to such outdated notions as faith. "it was cheap because it was rotten." - that doesn't make sense. I presume when the woman at the check out told them to find another bag it was the same price. Selling rotten food for a discount price will get Wal-mart into court. Enough of this survivalist sensationalism please.

jonah 17y ago
"Economics doesn't need you to believe in it or have any faith in it. Its grounded in real and concrete math." Oh? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=717293 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=717293

tokenadult 17y ago

It's worse than we realize. Our faith in the system has collapsed. What do you mean "we"? I think the current housing bubble collapse may end up being something bad like Japan's Lost Decade spread all over the world, but it will be nothing like a return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle anywhere in North America.

Xichekolas 17y ago

"I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this."" I'm sorry, but in what way does the current financial turmoil even approach the Great Depression? As much as the media likes to say 'worst X since Great Depression', that doesn't mean X is actually anywhere near as bad as the Great Depression. And before you start digging up obscure values of X that actually are statistically worse in some way, point me to the 25% unemployment and millions of middle class folk turning into migrant workers and living in their cars.

lionheart 17y ago

"I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this."" My parents and I lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is nothing. This is nothing compared even to the last 5 years of the Soviet Union's existence. You can go to the store and buy cheese. We had to make our own. Wake me when you can't buy cheese in stores anymore.

kragen 17y ago

"I actually do think that some people may starve." Yes, that's been happening for a long time in the US; as you said, 5% of your state (and many others) suffer from food insecurity. The rates are going up now, I'm sure. 'I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this."' I would like very much to hear what your grandmother has to say in more detail.

tokenadult 17y ago
that's been happening for a long time in the US What you were agreeing with is the proposition that people might starve, by implicitly claiming that some people in the United States already do starve. Where? Has anyone in the United States, and I mean anyone, actually died of a cause attributable to undernutrition caused by anything other than mental illness in the lifetime of anyone posting here? Who? There are people in the United States who cannot buy food out of their own family budgets, and there are children who are not well fed by their neglectful parents, but I don't think there is any adult who actually lacks enough food to live. Where is the example?
- kragen 17y ago
  The WHO's figures are that in 2002, in the US, about 7400 people died of "nutritional deficiencies", broken down into 4300 deaths from "protein-energy malnutrition" and 2500 deaths from "iron-deficiency anaemia". That's a total death rate of 2.5 per 100 000 population that year. It's not one of the major causes of death, it's less common than suicide and far less common than diabetes, and it is indeed much more common in many other countries (the rate in Cameroon, for example, is five times higher) but it's a little higher than the estimates for more socialist countries like Canada, Sweden, Japan, and especially Finland. (But not France.) If that rate were typical over our lifetimes, which seems optimistic (surely the rate was much higher in 1932, and for that matter in 2009) that would add up to a few hundred thousand deaths by starvation over the last 80 years. These rates don't include deaths in which malnutrition was only a contributing factor. Malnutrition grossly increases the risk of death from infectious diseases, for example. If you think that out of those hundreds of thousands of deaths, not a single one was caused by anything other than mental illness, you are the one with the mental illness. In fact, I think that just by posting your comment, you have demonstrated that you are really out of touch with the reality of what's happening in what I assume is your own country. You need to adjust your estimates of your own competence downward by a few orders of magnitude in order to have a chance of having an opinion that is worth something. Right now you're living in a dream world. Figures from the World Health Organization Global Burden of Disease report from 2004: http://www.who.int/topics/global_burden_of_disease/en/ http://www.who.int/topics/global_burden_of_disease/en/ (There's a spreadsheet floating around there somewhere with the per-country stats, although I'm not having any luck finding a link to it.)