The Agriculture Secretary was promoting his department’s new hunger (or, in contemporary parlance: “food insecurity”) survey on CSPAN this morning, and promising to expand the federal government’s role in feeding children. We do a good job with school lunches and breakfasts, Secretary Tom Vilsak said, but in the summer months, when kids are out of school, we need more centralized locations to give them their breakfasts and lunches.
Is it really the case that a minimally competent mother (we won’t even contemplate fathers here) in this fabulously wealthy country where food is so cheap cannot give her child a healthy breakfast in the morning? Granted, doing so at low cost entails shopping for food low on the processing chain and, horrors of horrors, actually cooking it. A portion of rolled oats in a large discount container costs pennies and takes five minutes to cook. Too onerous? I know that there is a shortage of decent supermarkets and fresh food in the inner city, a result of low demand and high crime. (Actually, there’s not a decent supermarket in all of New York City.) But a little planning should be able to overcome that shortage by occasional trips to someplace where you can buy in bulk. Here’s a test of whether someone is really suffering from hunger or even just “food insecurity”: Are you willing to cook legumes for a few hours? If not, you’re not starving and have no claim on the public purse.
If such minimal foresight and involvement is beyond the reach of a mother, she obviously shouldn’t have had a child in the first place, and now that it’s too late, maybe should not have custody. Of course the feds, ever eager to expand their reach, are not going to point that out. But the more that the government acts as a surrogate parent, the less parental responsibility we will get.
How insensitive! How can we expect parents to cook food for their children? We all know that “cooking” is only a Western construct used by the ruling classes to oppress people of different cultural backgrounds. Instead of putting things in rigid boxes like “food” and “not food”, we need a dialogue to address the needs of all in our society.
Not a decent supermarket in all of New York City? Really? Being a country girl, I find this amazing. But I do remember another NYC resident complaining that it was impossible to buy what I would consider standard feminine hygiene products in NYC.
I understand that cars are not a convenient or even financially responsible thing to own for many city dwellers and that it’s difficult to carry more than one sack of food home at a time…
So, why are not these “liberal bleeding-heart activists” not promoting the establishment of businesses that would actually help the poor overcome one problem?
Sorry… this just seems completely bizarre to my southwestern small-town mind.
According to the USDA press release, the cost will be ten billion dollars over ten years.
Heather, I have no idea where you live, but for you to write that “there’s not a decent supermarket in all of New York City” suggests either that you haven’t been here for a while, or are willfully blind. Two large Fairways – one of them in supposedly crime-ridden Harlem; Zabar’s; D’Agostino’s everywhere; Fresh Direct; and top-of-the-line specialty shops everywhere. What on earth are you talking about? And while I’m at it, WHAT high crime? New York is the safest city in the US.
But let me get to a larger point: For you to express puzzlement over the fact that there hungry kids in this country, and to suggest that the problem is a result of inadequate or unqualified parenting, is to be out of touch not only with New York City supermarkets, but what is going on in this country as a whole. For God’s sake, and your own, do some basic research, Heather. In the past year – and we don’t live in the city – my wife and I have had to offer mothers in front of us on the supermarket checkout line funds out of our own pockets to help them pay for basic foodstuffs for their kids. If you haven’t had that experience, and seen the tears . . . well, maybe that explains how truly out of touch you are. Ignore the anecdote if you like; there’s plenty of data.
Sheldon – for those of us who are “out of touch”, can you explain exactly how the poor in this country are starving despite welfare, food stamps, soup kitchens, etc?
@Sheldon
Really, they get into line with food and without money? Do grocery stores in your city use haggling instead of price stickers?
I believe Heather is intentionally overstating the “onerousness” of providing breakfast for humorous effect; while it may be true that grocery stores are not as well-stocked in the inner city, they certainly exist.
I’ve been all over south central Los Angeles and you can’t go a block without seeing a Ralph’s (aka Kroger), Food4Less (aka also Kroger), Vons (aka Safeway), Jons (the work of a local entrepreneur who realized that he could buy unprofitable Vons and rebrand them by changing *one letter*), Gonzalez (a very high end Spanish-language chain), Big Saver (a mid range Spanish-language chain) and Valu Plus (a low-end Spanish-language chain).
And then you’ve got innumerable drug stores and convenience stores selling a reasonable selection of food products, albeit without much produce.
And those are just the large stores — the chains. I live next to an Argentine-owned delicatessen that has an *astonishing* selection of moderately-priced fresh fruits and vegetables, in the classic style of an inner-city bodega. And virtually every community in Los Angeles has a weekly farmer’s market — some have several per week in close proximity.
Heather’s simple point is that any idiot can stuff bread in a toaster, slice up some fresh fruit and pour a glass of milk for their children, and do so with *far more* efficiency than the state can.
It seems to me that there are three reasons children end up in school lunch and breakfast programs: their parents are working early and need to send them to school early, their parents are genuinely poor, or their parents are incapable of doing the right thing. The first reason isn’t very valid, the second reason might justify some kind of welfare, the third… well, what are you going to do? Some parents are drugged out of their gourds.
“how the poor in this country are starving despite welfare, food stamps, soup kitchens, etc”
Not everyone is capable of obtaining such aid. If you’re a natural-born citizen of illegal aliens, your parents may be afraid to get help for fear of deportation. If your parents are engaged in illegal activity, can’t read, whatever.
The idea that society should make some reasonable attempt to level the playing field of opportunity for the children of the incapable is a basically noble one, but school meal plans are laughably inefficient and historically offer very low quality food (although there have been moves in recent years to address that problem).
Mike, I didn’t say people were “starving”; I suggested there was hunger.
If you don’t think there is, you haven’t done your homework. Ethan, you are even more clueless: People don’t have ENOUGH money, as the price of food keeps rising. Why this most basic of economic points eludes some conservatives is beyond me. I agree with some of what RickRussel said – large numbers of people do not or cannot obtain even the aid that’s out there. But I would add this: for some kids the school lunch is their only nutritious, if not their only, meal of the day. Think about that.
Sheldon, your anecdote reminds me of a “Sixty Minutes” episode on poverty I saw ages ago, in which a woman told a heartrending story about how her children saw pictures of grapes and oranges on their family color television, and she had to explain to them what grapes and oranges were, because she had never been able to afford to buy them. Clearly, though, she could afford the television, and wasn’t going to give it up to purchase fresh fruit. The penniless folks in the grocery line may not have had their priorities staight. Or…dare I suggest that they might have been con artists?
I’ll save you the trouble of so doing and stipulate that I’m a very cruel, heartless, greedy, and unfeeling person. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than watching children go hungry, unless it’s kicking puppies and drowning kittens. I’ll return shortly…now I must be off to find a blind person to trip.
Susan, I don’t think you’re all those negatives. I do think your ideology leads you to to explain flaws in our economic system – flaws that in my opinion require intervention – by blaming the victim. Not a new phenomenon at all, so don’t feel you’re being bravely original against this liberal. Seriously, what is your point? That some parents are dysfunctional? Readily agreed. Some questions: What should our response be for the children of such a parent? Ignore their situation, and over time hope that that in the long run the dysfunction disappears because we’re not subsidizing it? The argument was answered by Keynes: In the long run we will all be dead. In the meantime the needs and suffering will be considerable – and that’s even without suggesting that the basic conservative premise that we have poverty because we’re subsidizing it is laughably flawed. More broadly, your response to my anecdote was another, seemingly contradictory anecdote. Susan, I hope you don’t really think that hunger in America is due entirely to parental malfeasance. If you do, you are equivalent to the cleric who wouldn’t look through Galileo’s telescope. Not a bad person, just someone unwilling to take a second look at his or her premises. Seriously – do some basic Google searches on the issues of American poverty and then come back and tell us how it’s all the fault of the poor.
@Sheldon
Such a troll! It’s silly to argue with a troll, so let’s just stipulate that you’re right about everything macro. You only need to tell better made-up anecdotes, that’s all. Like Edwards’ girl-with-no-coat story, anyone who actually thinks about it will have to find it funny. Not because children freezing or starving is funny, but because clumsy patently false grabs at heartstrings are funny. Anyway, carry on! I strongly suspect you of being Razib.
Premises? I don’t need no steenking premises. Now, as to what do about the issue of hunger, or “food insecurity.” It may well be that creating another monster bureaucracy dedicated to improving “school meal performance” (read the USDA press release) will solve the problem. Maybe we need Domestic Food Inspectors–kitchen police, if you like–who will make surprise visits to randomly selected homes to insure that any children on the premises are receiving regularly balanced meals. Maybe we should require parents and guardians to submit, on a monthly basis, detailed reports of what they’ve fed their kids. Maybe we should deny government-subsidized health care to anyone who doesn’t follow government-prescribed nutritional guidelines. (That’ll teach the buggers!)Maybe we need more education–although when I was in elementary school, which is a bit longer ago than I care to reveal, we were instructed in the five food groups and enjoined to eat our fruits and vegetables. And since everyone is required by law to go to school, at least up to a certain age, I can reasonably assume that everybody must have learned pretty much the same thing as I.(By the way, where does that leave those people who sue Mcdonald’s because no one ever told them that eating three Big Macs a day isn’t quite as good for you as, say, consuming a salad and a cup of homemade vegetable soup for lunch?)What do you suggest we do with parents so dysfunctional that they can’t adequately feed, shelter, and clothe their young? Put the kids in orphanages?
Says the guy who wrote “Really, they get into line with food and without money? Do grocery stores in your city use haggling instead of price stickers?” We’re deep into pot vs. kettle territory here, so I’m done.
@Ethan
Aw, come on, Ethan, you KNOW the sight of a starving child sends you into fits of glee.
Where’s the evil grin icon when you need one?
Ultimately pretty much everyone in the Western world who can’t feed themselves or their family is a) mentally deranged or b) uses up resources for other things deemed more important either due to addiction or stupidity. Both things imply you shouldn’t be in charge of another person ergo you do not deserve custody of children.
If there’s one thing the 50+ year history of the welfare state around the globe has shown is that transfer payments do nothing to fix social ills and in fact provide incentives for the dysfunctional to perpetuate their squalor.
The whole idea of free lunches for kids is based on the fact that there are millions of parents incapable of providing even basics for their kids because they are too dumb and/or too malevolent. Now you can take two avenues here, the first option is to let them do what they want but don’t give them taxpayer money to fund their lifestyles. If charities wanna help them, leave them to it. A pretty clean solution but overall maybe a bit too “nasty” for current societies.
The second option is to say we need to help the people and their kids. How do you help the people though if you just provide them with other people’s money in order to make their dysfunctional lifestyles work and you keep increasing the sum until I suppose they have enough to fund a crack habit and send their kids to private school. Trouble is of course even at that point most of the lot would probably rather buy jewelry spelling out their names or platinum toilet seats than send their kids to a decent school. In other words, you provide zero incentive to change their ways at all.
And how do you help the kid really by giving them free food every day of the year but leaving them in the custody of someone who you know is not even capable of providing the very essentials of human life to them. If they can’t feed them, what are the odds they can raise them to be good citizens who do not resort to crime and other anti-social behavior?
No, Heather is right, if the state funds the crap he also has the duty to make sure the money raised by society overall is used even at the micro level in ways that benefit society overall. What welfare staters today ask for is a state that pays and pays and pays (i.e. the taxpayers) but otherwise keeps their nose out of everything: you can do what you want, we’ll pay you, we’ll feed your children even. Just go on and enjoy yourselves. Now I prefer to keep the state out of stuff because that’s how you guarantee freedom, but I’d rather have a state that controls how society’s resources are used than a free-for-all funded by taxpayers (who I suppose end up being the idiots in that scheme)
NYC may not have huge supermarkets (high rents being a major obstacle) but they do have them. They also have (at least did when I moved south in 1989) a great many wonderful Korean-owned fresh produce markets that beat anything here in rural Virginia.
Speaking of which a local entrepreneur recently opened a “fresh” fish market. He drives 200 miles or so twice a week where he buys East Coast and (wait for it) West Coast “fresh” fish. Compare with the large number of genuine (again Korean-owned) fresh fish retailers in NYC.
I began to suspect that either people were no longer going hungry or else they are seriously deprived in understanding what food is when I noticed that tens of thousands of geese happily walk around in the Philadelphia parks. Quite a lot fewer of those geese would be walking around if I or my kids were hungry.
Seriously though, as Heather alluded to, a 2 pound package of 15 bean mix, a can of diced tomatoes, a head of cabbage, a few potatoes and a couple cloves of garlic makes a meal for about fifteen at a cost of about 10 bucks which can be earned (after tax) in a couple of hours at a McDonald’s. Oatmeal and lentils cost virtually nothing.
I’ve often thought that the government should simply make those and similar foodstuffs available on a “pick up what you need within reason” free basis for holders of welfare cards. A lot cheaper than administering food stamps.
I didn’t go hungry as a kid. That wasn’t because of government programs; it was because my parents fed me. If kids are going hungry today, it is because their parents aren’t feeding them. So yeah, it is the parents’ fault.
My parents taught me a key lesson early in my adolescence: if you are close to broke when it comes to your food budget, buy oatmeal, beans, peanut butter, potatoes and apples. You’ll survive. May not like it after week 11 on that kind of diet, but you’ll survive.
Oh the drama. I’ll give you an observation from working in public schools. First, it is true that the majority of kids on free lunch do have great clothes and the latest electronics. Second, many take the free lunch, then have cash for goodies. Third, in the Federal Register a few years ago, I stumbled upon a reg. that wanted states to verify free lunch applications. For instance in TX, the applications were way out of line with income tax reporting. So, people cheat on the free lunch application. Fourth, if you’re not convinced, the waste left behind by students in general is appalling; especially, when it’s free for them, but not for the others paying for it.
It’s interesting how they’re boiling this healthy eating stuff down to poverty. My upper middle class white parents never provided me with a healthy breakfast, even if they had time. They knew how to make a healthy breakfast — they were just too lazy. I usually just ate a donut. Around middle school, they stopped making me lunch too, so I often just resorted to packaged Ramen. This was a typical pattern at my school, which was dominated by affluent whites. On the other hand, I had relatively poor friends who had healthier (and tastier) meals than I did. Then again, they had immigrant parents (from Asia and Latin America), where mothers are actually still expected to cook homemade meals for their children.
@muffy
Well, the salient distinction, I suppose, is that Vilsack isn’t proposing a ten billion dollar “Give Muffy a Decent Breakfast” program.
Rather, the Muffys of the world will foot the bill for the 10 billion dollar program to encourage the poor to do what we couldn’t even get our own parents to do. Great.
@muffy
Just keep repeating to yourself: “It’s for the children”…and join me in a vodka martini.