Unfettered capitalism. Capitalism held in check by government oversight doesn’t seem possible when from supreme court justices all the way down to state senators and even ‘city councils’ - are bought and paid for. Notice how they haven’t made an ethics package they’d have to abide by? It’s because they have no ethics and don’t intend to get any, either. Capitalism held in check, however, with tax rates making sure this game of “how many trillions can I take from everyone else?” - tax rates precluding the possibility of surpassing millionaire as ‘top of the food chain rich’. You know, sensible.
Reminder that obesity is one of the biggest health issues amongst the poor in the United States… There are tons of issues but no one is starving in the US.
Someone didn’t read the entire link they posted lol. There’s a whole section talking about the unusual link to poverty, starvation, and obesity in the US. Both is happening simultaneously.
“Thus, in many poverty-dense regions, people are in hunger and unable to access affordable healthy food, even when funds avail. The double-edged sword of hunger and poor availability of healthy food is, however, unlikely to be the only reason as to why obesity tracks with poverty.”
I’ve read the article. I’ve posted it on this instance before. To my original point there are problems but no one is starving. This is an issue more complex than the stupid meme wants to admit.
"Food insecurity" also means someone is more likely to go for garbage, empty calorie food like ramen, cheap fatty/highly processed meats, and barely any fresh vegetables due to financial reasons. You can be obese and malnourished at the same time.
Good food is more expensive than shitty food in the US. Our whole food economy is centered around fats and sugar.
I don’t disagree in regard to the general nutritiousness of their options. At the same time there is extremely poor education around food and life skills in general. Presented with two options most people in America would choose the least healthful one.
The poor don't get many options. Ever been to a food bank in America? It depends a bit on each bank but 99/100 you are going to get more carbs than veggies. You almost always get one or two boxes of sugary cereal crap, one loaf of bread, and a mountain of pasta since it never goes bad.
If you do get veggies they are likely rejects no one else wanted to buy. If you are lucky they are just ugly. If you are unlucky they are already starting to go and you have to cut around rot and eat them in a couple days. You will likely get canned veggies that are unpopular like cannelloni beans or something. If it's frozen veggies they are likely frost burned to the point of barely being edible.
Whenever we have hit a tough patch and needed help from a food bank we gained weight and feel like shit. Meanwhile the best diet that ever worked for me (keto) required fresh veggies and plenty of butter (or other fats), eggs, and meat. It isn't cheap when you are broke and you really have no choice. It's a societal issue, just knowing what is right yourself won't help if everyone else is ignorant.
Poor options doesn’t mean no options. People aren’t starving or “not eating” as the meme suggests. I never said “Poor people have it great, get everything they want and have a great diet”. My point is that poor people have so much food (of varying quality) that they are obese which is in contrast to the rest of the world. Don’t forget that most middle class Americans are obese too. Statistically most people in America eat poorly regardless of their income.
Fair enough, in that you are absolutely right. From my experience the poor who are hungry are usually the ones with bigger issues, drugs, violence etc.
I was just trying to stress that the poor are only left with bad options. It's a systemic issue stemming from capitalism and lobbying to create the unhealthy diet paradigm that the U.S. is only starting to shake. Even for middle class, there is always the drive to save a few bucks which leads to worse diet.
At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Food-insecure households include those with low food security and very low food security.
Low food security
These food-insecure households obtained enough food to avoid substantially disrupting their eating patterns or reducing food intake by using a variety of coping strategies, such as eating less varied diets, participating in Federal food assistance programs, or getting food from community food pantries.
Very low food security
In these food-insecure households, normal eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake was reduced at times during the year because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.
I’d say Ramen only would fall under low food security, because it’s a less varied diet.
Yep, by the definitions of food security capitalist countries have always done better than communist ones. In the USSR, only Ukraine, Belorussia, and Kazakhstan produced a surplus. Famines resulted when food was forcibly taken from them to feed the rest. By the above definition, the 70% of the USSR was food insecure.
China didn’t look much better and the less centralized they were, the worse it got. (before folks come out of the woodwork to claim that it wasn’t true socialism or anarchism) All non capitalist systems we have ever seen including feudalism and socialism have required violence to force production. That’s just slavery with extra steps.
You must be speaking about the USSR’s early period, transitioning from a rural backwater into an industrial power house. They experienced a famine then (and unfortunately it was the routine even before communism), but once they completed collectivication, there no longer were any. In other words, communism ended the pattern of famines in Russia and Ukraine.
Correct, once they shifted from smaller communes where people were free to do what they wanted and shifted to directed labor, they solved their productivity problem. Slaves do make for greater production.
Forced labor is when labor is done involuntarily, under the threat of penalty. That would be what the working class is subjected to under capitalism. You must work for your capitalist overlords to give you enough for basic subsistence. Don’t work, face the repercussions of poverty, even though we already produce enough to feed you.
The USSR never fully achieved communism, even by its own admission. So they still operated under a capitalist mode of production with respect to the global economy. So people were also required to work, but there were many improvements. Worker conditions and rights we’re far better in the USSR. The USSR had the “right to work” policy, meaning as long as you are willing to work, you’re fine, even if it means sitting in an office doing little. The USSR also operated the means of production in a centralized manner towards bettering its society and reducing working hours.
You called it “directed labor”. Not sure what you mean by this, but you later called it “slavery”. I suppose you could call it wage slavery, as it still operated in surplus production, but it was an improvement on capitalism and towards achieving communism. People were working for their own interests and needs, not for capitalist profits.
An improvement on capitalism because surplus production was enjoyed by the political elites instead of the capital owners with no chance to gain it without gaining the favor of the party. This cronyism still survived in the largely centralized Russian and Chinese corporate systems to this day. The initial years were attempts to achieve that idealized form of decentralized communism which is why it resulted in famine. The centralization under a single party made it fascism without the corporations, aka totalitarianism. The primary burdens of a centrally dictated economic system is not suffered by the majority but minority regions. This is why Russians look back fondly on communism and every border partner in the union cannot get away from them fast enough. They were able to control not only the means of production, but the goods and surplus produced for their benefit. A system where the means of production are privately owned has a natural resistance to that.
Totalitarian slavery of the minority is what ultimately results from even a democratic socialist system. Any sufficiently decentralized system is eventually forced to centralize and locals lose their power to determine what they produce and where it goes. True socialism and communism at scale has been tried and it fails to take care of its people at the smaller level.
Centralization results in centralized autocracy, militarism, forced suppression of opposition, and the subordination of individual interests to that of the state every time. Yes, it’s literally the definition of fascism and it’s a powerful thing. Terrible, but powerful.
I’m happy in a liberal society that accounts for capitalist externalities with social programs. I’m quite happy owning my tiny portion of the means of production as things rapidly become more decentralized and artisanal these past few decades. Most people are okay leaving a little on the table for people that make things possible instead of everything on the table to be wasted by the state or for corrupt bureaucrats. We have enough of an issue with them in their limited capacity now. You won’t make them better by giving them more power.
There weren’t really famines in the USSR after the beginning, when they fucked up collectivization and then went through a long and brutal war for their people. Same thing with China. They messed up some stuff a lot but they were also basically the first two countries trying a new thing.
But capitalist countries have gone through famines as well, even more so because there have been more of them, and when they were in the same pre-industrial and early industrial periods of their development as well. UK controlled India went through its own famine due to human causes, there was the Great Dust Bowl in the US, basically half of Africa and everything that has gone on there, etc.
Soviet famine of 1932-33? Poor leadership, demographic malice, or failing logistics can cause famine. Starvation is never intentional in any system (though, one would argue, government seizure of grain didn’t help)
I mean even Lenin admitted that the Soviet Union was just state capitalism so the point still counts. Also it is still baffling to me that we could feed 10 billion people and still have whole populations that are starving. And obviously a system that is just there to be evil will most likely not exsist. But have it as by product often occurred in systems which only focused on (the growth of) power (money is just another form of power). This includes the former west and the former east bloc.
The failures of communism are somehow the fault of capitalism, though, somehow. It it weren't for those pesky capitalists and their capitalism, communism would never have failed.
except in a system literally built on the commodification (and creation of artificial scarcity) of the basics required for survival, for the benefit of a tiny group of people
The difference here is that there is no humanitarian crisis occurring, yet 10% of the population is starving because of profit seeking in agribusiness. On average for most of the existence of the Soviet Union, homelessness was essentially eliminated, every single person had the opportunity to work for a wage, and calorie consumption was higher than any other country.
I can anticipate the response to this. No, I don’t think the USSR was a flawless, shining beacon of proletarian democracy. It was a deeply flawed state that had it’s own issues. But at least the poorest people had their needs met for most of it’s existence.
It’s intentional in capitalism. Any surplus will cause the price to plummet, so for it to function properly there has to be unsatisfied demand. The government even pays some farmers to not grow things on their land.
It seems like the only central planning the US ever does is to prop up capitalism from some inherent flaw instead of just fixing the underlying foundation.
In this specific example, my question is why pay farmers to not grow crops instead of encouraging them to create a surplus and just paying them the difference in the price drop?
In this specific example, my question is why pay farmers to not grow crops instead of encouraging them to create a surplus and just paying them the difference in the price drop?
The farmers are getting paid to do nothing ergo if you stop compensating them for doing nothing they will grow crops instead to make up for the difference. The government is whole reason this scenario is messed up in the first place.
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