A paradox of plenty – hunger in America
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –
Call it a paradox of plenty. In the world’s wealthiest country, home to more obese people than anywhere else on earth, almost 50 million Americans struggled to feed themselves and their children in 2008. That’s one in six of the population. Millions went hungry, at least some of the time. Things are bound to get worse.
This the bleak picture drawn from an annual survey on “household food security” compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and released in mid-November. It showed the highest level of food insecurity since the government started the survey, in 1995, and provided a graphic illustration of the effect of sharply rising unemployment.
This year’s picture will be even bleaker – the unemployment rate more than doubled from the beginning of 2008 to now, at 10.2 percent the highest in a quarter century. It is still climbing, and for many the distance between losing a job and lack of food security is very short.
In keeping with the American predilection for euphemisms, the word “hunger” does not appear in the report which classes food security into several categories, from “marginal” and “low” to “very low.”
Marginal food security means, in the lexicon of the USDA, “anxiety over food shortages or shortage of food in the house.” The second category, low, means “reduced quality, variety or desirability of diet,” but not necessarily less food.
The most severe category, “very low,” used to be labeled “food insecurity with hunger” and is defined as “disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.” That applied to around 17 million people, up from 12 million in 2007. Black and Hispanic families and single-parent households are the most affected.
This is the result of corporate citizenship. Corporations are citizens under our law. They use their well payed lobbyists to champion their interests. While the interests of true citizens are sold away.
The price, a career in politics that is profitable and long.
Term limits need to be instituted in the legislature. The courts must strike down corporate citizenship. Only when the legislature is composed of people who truly wish to serve the interests of the citizen, will meaningful change begin.
Corporate interests give lip service to “values” and living a in a morally upright society where everyone is respected. But at the same time they destroy society by stealing money intended for the honoring of contracts and call it “profit”, and by their blatant disregard for those who’s lives have been decimated by their corruption and greed.
Meanwhile our politicians feed this diseased economy for their own profit. They prove their disgust for the citizenry by not even having the honor to limit their terms for the good of the nation they claim to love so much.
The result is that companies can get away with degrading our food supply. They get away with throwing thousands if not millions, of families into destitution. And they are free to profit from the suffering they cause and are encouraged to do so. This they call economic growth. And we are supposed to believe that this is good for us.
Where are the people of reason who see this? They should be speaking more. They should be making their voices heard and their presence known.
One or two voices pointing out the obvious won’t do it alone. The rest need to speak up as well.