i don’t buy the numbers, i think there’s more people struggling to put food on the table than what this says.
Food insecure
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.
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.
This is false, even by the CIA’s own admission:
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5.pdf
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.
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)
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.
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps. ♪
I’d never heard of that song, so you made me look it up. Thanks, I learned something today.
The government paying farmers not to grow something isn’t capitalism. If anything it’s central planning.
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?
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.
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.
Communism is when 9 in 10 don’t eat.
Wonder how this would look if instead of “households” it was people. Cuz ya know, the unhoused are people too
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.
