NO Excuse

Starving children? Quick .... somebody cut the capital gains tax!!!

Capital gains double tax is a joke. The perfect rate for CG is 13% anyway, in terms of omptimal income, which would help to feed starving children.

So yes, cut capital gains tax!!

The perfect rate for CG is 13% anyway, in terms of omptimal income, which would help to feed starving children.

#3 | Posted by andyuhenet at 2009-12-12 02:30 PM | Reply

Of course, but not as much as ending the "death tax" though.

Do you suppose there is any chance this thread could stay on topic and talk about hunger in America?

But no...we're going to discuss how poorly the wealthy are treated.

Is it any wonder hunger continues on?

Eat the rich.

Isn't free food a priority over free health care (just wondering out loud)?

Be Well.

And here I was thinking we had an obesiety epidimic in the USA.

It wasnt that long ago that a thread showed up stating we throw away 40% of our food in this country.

#5

Well said.

I think a large part of the problem in this country is that people no longer know how to cook. You can feed a family fairly cheep if you stay away from processed foods and stick to the basics. Beans and rice and oatmeal. Works if your poor, broke or just trying to cut expenses and pay down the debt.

"I think a large part of the problem in this country is that people no longer know how to cook"

I agree with that!

We have evolved into a "fast food" society. People are on the go and find convineince more important rather than what is actually good, healthy and affordable.

Folks just don't cook like they used it.

"Works if your poor, broke or just trying to cut expenses and pay down the debt."

It can also be better for you and quite tasty if you know how to do it right.

It seems like a good portion of the problem isn't accessibility of food but knowledge that food is out there or that there are cheaper options to obtain food:

"She is bad, she knows, at budgeting. In early November, when $650 in food stamps came [for a family of 4], she splurged on $18 in Chinese takeout."

"At W.G. Smith Elementary School in South Philadelphia, 155 of the school's 380 students came for a free breakfast on a recent Monday. Many parents simply bring their children to school too late."

Is this more an educational problem versus an availability problem? If there were classes made available to these people to teach budgeting and even cooking (as stated above), I believe childhood hunger would drop drastically. If $650 a month doesn't last to buy enough food for a family of four, you're spending it on the wrong stuff.

People are on the go and find convineince more important rather than what is actually good, healthy and affordable.

There's a generational aspect to it too. The foods you enjoy in the early part of your life will have a special place in your heart. We hand down recipes, sometimes we even keep them secret if they're that good! At Thanksgiving, the flavors, the recipes, everything is exactly the same every year. It's a tradition.

But in the past 40 years or so, the tradition is less and less home-cooked food and more and more fast food. Fast food owes its success to the fact that food itself is so much cheaper today. For the cost of raw ingredients years ago, you can get prepared fast food today

I recently discovered I love tater tots. Love 'em. I didn't much love them when they were part of my school lunch year after year, but now they've imprinted on me.

Quoting from Fast Food Nation, "Every month about 90 percent of American children between the ages of three and nine visit a McDonald's." Those tastes will become their comfort foods.

I feel lucky that both my parents can cook and fast food was but a peripheral part of my upbringing.

Lately I've been making bread. It's so easy, and it's so good! And so cheap!

Is this more an educational problem versus an availability problem?

Both. It's an educational problem, "Teach a man to fish" applies here. And it's an availability problem, the working poor taking the slow bus to work have that much less time available to cook than the more well-to-do driving to work.

#14

Good post Snoofy!!

"This agenda will cost millions of jobs, plunging more people into poverty"

"The skyrocketing cost of energy (electricity, gasoline, etc) will cause food prices to soar, since food cannot be produced, transported or preserved without electricity and gasoline."

"All of these consequences will have a devastating effect on the poorest of the people in the United States in the world. This is one of the things that makes this despicable purpose the most hypocritical: it is being pushed by people who claim to be advocates of the poor, yet they are hurting the poor more than could the indifferent wealthy."

"It is one of the most maddening, most frustrating, of notions that those who deem to care so much for the poor are pushing an agenda that does more to harm them than to help them."

I wonder what the numbers really are.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.
Herman Melville
US novelist & sailor (1819 - 1891)

We cook at home every night. Eating out is a luxury, to expensive. We eat a lot of deer, grouse, and pheasant. Elk, (if I'm lucky which I wasn't this year.)

When I was a kid, my parents were broke. They raised us almost completely on wild game.

Montana doesn't have a lot of money around, but there are a lot of resources you get with effort instead of money, like wood for heat.

#19 | Posted by kingcuke

Melville never saw a McDonald's.

Melville never saw a McDonald's.

#21 | Posted by STIRSUMUP at 2009-12-13 12:45 PM | Reply

That is ironic since Melville's books and McDonald's restaurants both contain enormous white whales.

Speaking as a poor person cooking is definatly a key to keeping kids fed on the cheap. However as soomone else pointed out the poor have much less time, it is also harder to scrape together the funds for bulk ingrediants. EG I can buy a box of pasta for $1.25, in order to make pasta I would have to spend about $20 bucks on ingrediants. Which is easier for a poor person to come up with. Same goes for the pasta sauce. A meal I can make for 5 for 4 bucks would cost about 30-40 if I were to start with the raw ingrediants. However the ingrediants would make a lot more than 10 meals. It's a catch 22. We also lack the fancy appliances some take for granted. We didn't have a microwave or toaster oven till a year ago so leftovers were hard to heat up. Our stove is functional but the heating element in the oven is unreliable so you have to watch what you are cooking very carefuly. Our fridge is tiny so has to be organized carefuly (more time) and there is not much room for leftovers so food tends to go to waste if we don't use it right away. Sure minor problems but they all add up.

My kids aren't starving though. However at the end of a pay period beans and rice for a couple meals in a row is not unheard of.

But no...we're going to discuss how poorly the wealthy are treated.

Of course. It is much more egregious that 3% of all people who die pay a wealth tax or that someone bears the unbearable tax of 15% of their capital gains.

The parents of these starving children are lazy selfish trashy pigs.
Parents with children can always get food for their kids.Free school breakfasts, lunches, free lunches in the summer. These parents are spending their food money on the latest cell phones, cable TV interweb service and cigarettes, and giving their money to the Indians at their casinos,gambling is a suckers game.
These parents are too lazy to prepare food cooked at home, Mickey Dee's every night, why are the foor such fat fucks in America any way??

#23 | Posted by TaoWarrior

No offence meant, but you obviously are on a computer on a Sunday afternoon. Internet access and computers are not free. Being poor is a state of mind. I've been poor and I've been broke. There's a difference.

Wow - Warwolf
Could you possibly find a broader brush to paint with???

"35 million people in the U.S. are hungry or don't know where their next meal is coming from, and 13 million of them are children. If another country were doing this to our children, we'd be at war."
-------Jeff Bridges

Stir,

No offence meant, but you obviously are on a computer on a Sunday afternoon. Internet access and computers are not free.

Both of my computers were gifts and they are 3yrs and 4yrs old. So they are legacies of better times for me and for my mother-in-law who bought them both for us when she was running two business. Internet access is not free but high speed plus a magic jack costs a good deal less than just phone service. So yes I have internet but if it were not for IPtelephony I would not have internet.

I am not as poor as some but 35k a year income with a family of 5 is just a whisker above the poverty line which is of course unrealisticly low to start with. Frankly if it were not for my previous finacial success I would not have a TV, computer, internet or phone service. My house payment + escrow + dues come to less than rents for an equivalent place would be. I bought the house with savings from those better times. If I were to have to rent again we would have even less money than we currently do. My cars are paid for also a legacy of those better times.

While I am most certainly better off than many many people to say I am not poor (or broke) is just wrong.

Melville never saw a McDonald's.
#21 | Posted by STIRSUMUP at 2009-12-13 12:45 PM | Reply

That is ironic since Melville's books and McDonald's restaurants both contain enormous white whales.

Outstanding work.

And there's also Starbuck's coffee.

THe reason that poor people are obese is because of the quality of food they buy--not fast food. You can't spend foodstamps on fast food or chinese take out, that is a lie, but fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains breads, are all 3 to 4 times more expensive than hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and canned applesauce. THe "real" hungry familes are not the families that are getting foodstamps. It's the working poor that are hungry. I would kill to have $650 a month to spend directly on groceries. We are lucky to spend $300 for a family of 5. My kids don't starve. It gets a little lean around here some days, but we make do. Believe me, I would rather have a chicken breast and steamed vegetables a couple of nights a week or OMFG, a pot roast, oh I would kill for pot roast, instead of spaghetti, again, or (ughhh not again) macaroni and cheese and hotdogs. My kids, on the other hand, would gladly live on cold cereal (gotta be generic because heaven forbid, I can't afford $4 for real cheerios when they can eat a box a day) and peanut butter sandwiches, and they LOVE macaroni and cheese and hotdogs, damn 'em...lol!

Miss,

Well said, try doing it as a vegetarian! Making sure the kids get enough protein gets nuts. Every once in a while when I have had a good week we get the morning star farms chick nuggets or their prime gillers. Great source of protein for the kids (and adults) but a box is almost 4 bucks and it takes 3 boxes to feed us. With veggies like 15 bucks on one meal!!! Good greif healthy food can be expensive. A normal dinner for us cost more like 3 bucks for everything.

Although I will say fresh veggies do not cost that much more than frozen or canned, it's the fresh fruit where they get you.

Oh and like you said thank god for malt-o-meal a good for 3-5 days of breakfast for the kids for 4-6 bucks.

'While I am most certainly better off than many many people to say I am not poor (or broke) is just wrong.'

We make about the same money with a family of four. We do alright. I think we're a long ways from poor. The key is staying out of debt. We only owe three months on the wife's car and its ours. That's 250 bucks a month. Things are good for us, we're better off than a lot of other people around here. At least we don't live in a trailer.

Wurster nice. Probably not quite the same however I won't get into a who's more poor contest. I aplaud anyone who can support a household that size on that income. I do it so I know it's hard. We have managed to stay out of the trailer but only by a bit. My wife just started watching a child we know the mother so she is doing it super cheap but every little bit helps.

Bike stands, low functioning airports, and the like are far more important to the government than a bunch of hungry children. A pox upon our houses!

The key is staying out of debt.

BINGO wurster!

I made the debt mistake early in life. It took me 3 years to dig myself out. But by the time I was 30, I never bought anything I couldn't pay cash for except my home, of course.

Life's easy when you learn that simple rule -- stay out of debt!

The key is staying out of debt.

Rich or poor, that's true.

I think a large part of the problem in this country is that people no longer know how to cook. You can feed a family fairly cheep if you stay away from processed foods and stick to the basics. Beans and rice and oatmeal. Works if your poor, broke or just trying to cut expenses and pay down the debt.

#10 | Posted by STIRSUMUP at 2009-12-13 10:37 AM

I don't think government issued cookbooks and nutrition guides will solve the child hunger problem.

Poverty (because of ) for whatever the reason and access seem to have been/is the major reasons for hunger, lack of political will and indifference for the lack of a solution.

How do you debate how much a food program will cost when in my memory one has never passed that covered ALL the US hungry.

Have you ever seen a poor person's shopping cart? Seems like it usually full of chips, snack foods, and frozen dinners. I imagine you could make a large pot of something that will keep in the fridge for a couple days for just the cost of one bag of chips. Basic chili comes to mind!

#38 | Posted by LIVE_OR_DIE

I still make black bean chili about once a month. 5 bucks and a single guy could eat good for almost a week. It last my family one dinner with lunch left over for one person. Still just 5 bucks. I've got a first class kitchen now and still use a crock pot at least once a week. What kills me is the cost of milk with four kids.

I know what would help, tax cut for the rich. I can probably get 40 US senator to side with me on that one.

Perhaps if states like Missery WOULDN'T inflate their food stamp statistics...: