What is hunger in the U.S., and how many people live it? The economic research website by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (http://www.ers.usda.gov) says, “In 2010, 48.8 million people lived in food-insecure households. 11.3 million adults lived in households with very low food security.”
It ocntinues, “16.2 million children lived in food-insecure households in which children, along with adults, were food insecure (see the ERS report, Food Insecurity in Households with Children: Prevalence, Severity, and Characteristics).”
While a portion of those considered “hungry” may include college students, on the issue of redistribution of wealth, 19-year-old Heather Webb, Social Sciences Education Major at WSU said, “I’m kind of middle ground.”
She said, “Sure, I’d be all for receiving money, but on the other hand I’m not okay with taking it from someone who honestly earned it and giving it to someone else.”
Webb added “It really would depend on what the taxes were being used for. If they were being used in a situation where everyone could gain from said taxation, such as a European model of healthcare, I would find it acceptable.”
There are probably a good number of people paying taxes which are being redistributed to the benefit of someone else’s medical care, whom cannot themselves afford medical attention.
Benjamin Johnson, Columbus spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Communications Department, said today “under the current healthcare program, able-bodied, child-free adults are not eligible for medical assistance no matter what their income is.”
That includes low-income, very low income or no income at all.
Webb, said she does not agree with the concept of one person’s loss [in the form of taxation] contributing to the gain of a select few.
Johnson said, “Non-pregnant mothers and fathers are currently eligible for medical assistance with incomes up to 90% of the Federal Poverty Level [see 2012 FPL Guidelines at HHS.gov] and children and pregnant women are eligible for medical assistance with incomes up to 200% of the FPL.”
“In 2014 when the Obama healthcare plan comes into effect”, Johnson continued, “non-pregnant mothers and fathers will be eligible to receive medical assistance with incomes up to 133% of the FPL, and able-bodied, child-free adults will become eligible with incomes up to 133% of the FPL also.”
Johnson said, the only help an able-bodied, low-income, child-free adult could possibly receive would be a little food aid.
Johnson also clarified, “Medicaid eligibility for the aged, blind and disabled is much more complicated with a different set of eligibility factors. This discussion simply pertains to low-income eligibility.”
According to the Feeding America website (feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america), “Both the definition of poverty and the poverty thresholds have been criticized on grounds that they do not accurately reflect families true financial resources, nor the amount of money families actually need to be economically self-sufficient.”
Although acknowledging the very young and vulnerable should not suffer without food or medical aid, Thomas Gillmor, a 21-year-old Management Information Systems Major at WSU, said, “I don’t think government redistribution of wealth is a good idea because the government is already in debt as it is.”
Gillmor added, “Those receiving government money might just assume they don’t have to work for it. I believe it will create more problems.”
50-year-old Jeff Briggs, a Social Sciences Education Major at WSU and retired WPAFB Medic, said Government Redistribution of Wealth “taxes success.”
Briggs said, “The welfare state does not reward success, and the Soviet Union died on such premise.”
Briggs continued, “Graduating college students are looking to be successful.”
He questioned, “Are you willing to give your hard-earned earnings away to someone else who is less ambitious and less willing to succeed?”
While Briggs can understand helping support the truly incapable, or mentally or physically handicapped, and even someone who needs temporary assistance, “The long-term, never ending welfare aid is no good,” he said.
Briggs claimed he recognizes the population of people who actually do work full-time, but are still poor and ineligible for help. He said the government should “train trainable people for jobs and skills that pay well.”
Dr. Naidu, WSU Economics professor said, “When there is talk about helping those who are hungry or those who are unable to survive, then we typically are talking about the working poor in the U.S. These are people who are working but still cannot make it.”
Naidu asked, “The right question to ask is why a person who works 2-3 jobs (or even one full-time job) is not able to satisfy some of the basic needs of his or her family – food, shelter and clothing? Are we not paying our workers sufficient?”
Naidu added, “How is it that businesses have continued to make profits for most of the past few decades while at the same time workers do not have sufficient means to survive with (unless they take on debt)?”
Many people in this country would simply respond to an inquiry such as Dr. Naidu’s with the common response, “Those people should just get a better job.”
Another proposed solution, that of paying low-wagers better wages, typically gets hammered with the ideology that if you increase the cost of a laborer’s pay, then you will in turn increase the price of a cheeseburger – with the result being everyone pays a higher price for the cheeseburger and no one really getting ahead.
But is that a simplistic and presumptive formula that only holds true when all other economic variables definitively remain constant?
In RamaaVasudevan’s May 23, 2011 article at sanhati.com, Vasudevan explains, “While wages for the average worker have remained relatively stagnant, compensation paid to the upper end of the corporate hierarchy has grown over the past decades.
The compensation paid to the average CEO increased from 40 times that paid to the average worker in 1980, to nearly 300 times in 2000, before declining slightly to 240 times in 2008.”
The website feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america, states “Though the populations affected by poverty and food insecurity overlap, they are not identical. Not all poor people are food insecure and the risk of food insecurity extends to people living above the federal poverty level.”
“Families that do not receive public benefits for which they are income eligible (either because of bureaucratic barriers or because the programs are not entitlements and are insufficiently funded to reach all who are eligible) may be more likely to be food insecure,” said Feeding America.
Feeding America continued, “Moreover, many families whose incomes exceed the eligibility cut-off for these programs may still be unable to avoid food insecurity without assistance if the costs of competing needs such as energy or housing are overwhelming.”
Briggs said, “paying taxes so someone can buy a new flat screen television is wrong. Paying taxes to send someone to school is good.”
“But,” he added, “Don’t choose a major that won’t result in employment.”
Feeding America said, “based on the official poverty definitions, in 2007, 37.3 million people lived in households with incomes below the poverty thresholds in the U.S.”
Feeding America claims, “Each week, approximately 5.7 million people receive emergency food assistance from an agency served by a Feeding America member.”
James Weill, the director of a food center said, “Many people are outright hungry, skipping meals.”
He said, “Others say they have enough to eat but only because they’re going to food pantries or using food stamps. We describe it as ‘households struggling with hunger.’”
In an articles on sanhati.com Vasudeva blames the hardships of those on the bottom, along with widening income gap, on unfair policies and the forced dependence on debt of the vulnerable.
Vasudeva says, “A big chunk of the income earned by the top 1% of the income distribution in the U.S. is earnings from financial capital – ownership of stocks, bonds and other financial assets.”
Vasudevan dared to boldly go where few men have gone before, declaring, “The earnings of the rich derive in large part not from “working” but through ownership of assets.”
Vasudevan wrote “The growth of [stock market ownership] ownership was disproportionately geared towards the top wealth classes. About 37% of the rise in overall value of stock holdings was garnered by the top of the top 1%, more than 80% by the top 10%, while as much as 90% went to the top 20%. The distribution of stock market gains to the bottom 40% in contrast was a meager 0.5%.”
Vasudevan said, “This lopsided distribution of the gains of the surge of stock market wealth is further evident in the concentration of stock ownership by wealth class.”
Vasudevan says there’s a “steady attempt to dismantle worker protection and bargaining power, and the tightening predatory grip on poorer households through debt.”
Vasudevan continued, “The U.S. state is caught up in the need to bail-out large banks and balks at touching the earnings of the executives, but the contracts guaranteeing pensions and benefits to ordinary workers or the recourse to personal bankruptcy to shake off the yoke of debt is not viewed as favorably.”
