For all the talk of a recovery in the US economy, the rebounding financial markets (with Wall Street at 13-month highs overnight), gold at record highs, and a rise in October retail sales, a grim reality has been outlined in Washington for all the world to see.
America can’t feed all its 303 million people, with one in seven going short at some stage in a week.
The country’s agricultural department (the full study is available here) reckons 49 million Americans struggle to get enough to eat, the highest reading in an annual survey in the 14 years it has been conducted.
And the figure probably understates the problem because the survey was done at the end of 2008 when unemployment was starting to accelerate and was a long way from the current reading of 10.2% (about 15.7 million) out of work.
America’s underemployment rate is a nasty 17.5%, or more than 25 million people.
About 36 million people are estimated to be on food stamps, and yet there looks like there’s another 13 million or more who are unable to get enough food to eat and who are beyond government help.
Details of the survey were in the USDA’s annual report was based on a survey conducted in December 2008, soon after financial markets slumped.
The report said that about 14.6% of US households, equal to 49.1 million people, “had difficulty obtaining food for all their members due to a lack of resources” during 2008, up 3.5 percentage points from 2007 when 11.1% of households were classified as food insecure.
About 5.7% of households, or 17.3 million people, had “very low food security,” meaning some members of the household had to eat less. Typically, food runs short in those households for a few days in seven or eight months of the year, USDA said.
During a briefing last week, a senior Wal-Mart executive said his company had noticed people lining up at some of its stores at midnight on the night before federal food aid or state unemployment benefits were due to be paid into their bank accounts. He said these people entered the stores soon after midnight and started buying food and other goods in bulk when they had confirmed the money was in their accounts.
The executive said that anecdotally, the company had discovered that many of its poorer customers went without meals in the days approaching the payment of benefits to make their meagre resources last.
The department said this year’s report also revealed “that one third of food-insecure households had very low food security (food intake of some household members was reduced and their eating patterns disrupted at times during the year). This is 5.7% of all US households or about 6.7 million. This is up from 4.7 million households (4.1%) in 2007, and the highest level observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995.
“Even when resources are inadequate to provide food for the entire family, children are usually shielded from the disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake that characterise very low food security. However, children as well as adults experienced instances of very low food security in 506,000 households (1.3% of households with children) in 2008, up from 323,000 households (0.8% of households with children) in 2007.
This must be another good reminder of the sickening reality of the US and the world at large. The people who run it never go hungry, nor do they really care if less fortunate individuals do. “Take care of your family” or “every man for himself” applies. It stinks.
Food stamps….I can’t get over that the USA has food stamps. Whenever I think Australia isn’t doing too well all I have to do is tell myself one of the so-called wealthiest countries on this planet feeds millions with food stamps.
” Land of the free ” my arse.
For nearly 50 million or 16% of all Americans the much vaunted brass ring of opportunity will never be available.
The ‘ winner takes all ‘ mentality of the hordes former European peasantry who fled oppression only to impose it on the less fortunate themselves, has resulted in the world’s richest country with limited medical services for the poor, a revenge based judicial mentality, a totally lopsided education system ….. and nearly 40 million of these sare classified as working poor i.e. both parents work part time and or full-time but between them don’t make enough to clear the poverty line. When I hear the fat cat US managerial flacks boasting of how the US doesn’t have any problems with unions, I think of these millions of working poor making US6.60 an hour (the basic wage hourly rate) cleaning in up-market retirement homes etc etc, while the ‘entrepreneural class’ wallow in the obscene wealth such ventures generate….
Many of my American friends sadly agree with my moniker “USA… land of the twee “.
Well you are talking about a country that until it elected it’s new president was on course to spend nearly US$13 billion on new Presidential helicopters. I don’t imagine you could feed many hungry people with that sort of money.
I’m a big fan of NASA and the work it does, but you do often wonder how they morally justify spending approx US$1.3 billion per shuttle launch like yesterdays, to deliver equipment to a space station that they intend to crash back in to the atmosphere in 5 or 6 years from now when 1 in 8 of their own population is going hungry each week.
Glenn -“gold at record highs” is the antithesis of a sound economy. ObL couldn’t have imagined that the Fed/Greenspan, in reaction to 9/11, would do something so insane as reduce interest rate to (effectively below) zero. Capitalism is usury. Without interest of at least 3-5% it cannot exist.