Dan Rather opened a CBS Evening News broadcast in 1991 by declaring, “One in eight American children is going hungry tonight.” Newsweek, the Associated Press, and the Boston Globe repeated this statistic, and many others joined the media chorus, with or without that unsubstantiated statistic.
When the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Agriculture examined people from a variety of income levels, however, they found no evidence of malnutrition among those in the lowest income brackets. Nor was there any significant difference in the intake of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients from one income level to another.
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That should have been the end of that hysteria. But the same “hunger in America” theme reappeared years later, when Sen. John Edwards was running for vice president. And others have resurrected that same claim, right up to the present day.
Ironically, the one demonstrable nutritional difference between the poor and others is that low-income women tend to be overweight more often than others. That may not seem like much to make a political issue from, but politicians and the media have created hysteria over less.
The political Left has turned obesity among low-income individuals into an argument that low-income people cannot afford nutritious food, and so have to resort to burgers and fries, pizzas and the like, which are more fattening and less healthful. But this attempt to salvage something from the “hunger in America” hoax collapses like a house of cards when you stop and think about it.
Burgers, pizzas, and the like cost more than food that you can buy at a store and cook yourself. If you can afford junk food, you can certainly afford healthier food. An article in the New York Times of September 25 by Mark Bittman showed that you can cook a meal for four at half the cost of a meal from a burger restaurant. So far, so good. But then Mr. Bittman says that the problem is “to get people to see cooking as a joy.” For this, he says, “we need action both cultural and political.” In other words, the nanny state to the rescue!
Since when are adult human beings supposed to do only those things that are a joy? I don’t find any particular joy in putting on my shoes. But I do it rather than go barefoot. I don’t always find it a joy to drive a car, especially in bad weather, but I have to get from here to there.
An arrogant elite’s condescension toward the people — treating them as children who have to be jollied along — is one of the poisonous problems of our time. It is at the heart of the nanny state and the promotion of a debilitating dependency that wins votes for politicians while weakening society.
Those who see social problems as requiring high-minded people like themselves to come down from their Olympian heights to impose their superior wisdom on the rest of us, down in the valley, are behind such things as the hunger hoax, which is part of the larger poverty hoax.
We have now reached the point where the great majority of the people living below the official poverty level have such things as air conditioning, microwave ovens, either videocassette recorders or DVD players, and either cars or trucks.
Why are such people called “poor”? Because they meet the arbitrary criteria established by Washington bureaucrats. Depending on what criteria are used, you can have as much official poverty as you want, regardless of whether it bears any relationship to reality.
Those who believe in an expansive, nanny-state government need a large number of people in “poverty” to justify their programs. They also need a large number of people dependent on government to provide the votes needed to keep the big nanny state going.
Politicians, welfare-state bureaucrats, and others have incentives to create or perpetuate hoaxes, whether about poverty in general or hunger in particular. The high cost to taxpayers is exceeded by the even higher cost of lost opportunities for fulfillment by those who succumb to the lure of a stagnant life of dependency.
As always, Mr. Sowell is right on the mark, and in fact echoes what VDH has written about several times in the past several months. No one wants the poor to live in abject, Dickensonian poverty. But "poor" somehow does not match up with what the eye sees: virtually no falling-apart cars on the road anymore, everyone has a cell phone, most of us are well overweight, poor inner-city kids have better clothes and more bling than I ever did as an upper-middle class doctor's son -- the list could go on. Just because I may have less than you do does not mean I am poor.
Perhaps some of these people are poor in spirit, because they are certainly not poor in the more temporal measures of wealth.
YO...you're missing the point. Of course it is less expensive to make home cooked meals, but it assumes you have access to a suitable grocery store in your neighborhood which many of our poor neighborhoods do not have. Access to proper grocery stores is only part of the answer but it certainly contributes to the problem.
In the U.S. of A., fortunately, there are grocery stores where there are people who buy groceries. Similarly, there are fast food joints where the people eat fast food.
I know of areas where people live where there are no grocery stores. Camden New Jersey, where I went to school, comes to mind. It wasn't a conscious decision by the grocery store owners to screw the residents of the area, but, rather, a decision on the owners' part not to get robbed from. Of course, smaller stores with a more ethnically targetted inventory were available, and did thrive.
Not sure that poverty in itself takes away from the poor the ability to buy at a grocery store, but the crime rate which often follows certainly does. If a nanny state wants to help out, perhaps doing a better job dealing with crime, a duty certainly within the purview of government, would be the better way to go.
Is it too obvious to point out that there are fewer grocery stores in areas where people don't shop at them. I get confused: if the evil corporations care about nothing but profits, how come they refuse to build grocery stores in these poor areas? Perhaps because there are no profits, because there is no demand. It's that last head-smackingly obvious word that causes "food desert" activists to cringe, because it puts the responsibility on the individual, rather than on government and business. Unless we're truly suggesting that Food4Less has sn agenda to advance malnutrition at the cost of profits, this argument leads only to where the activists depart with reality. Some people make terrible nutrition choices for the same reason they make all their other terrible life choices.
At least in Portland, Oregon, where we have a variety of effective and highly accessible forms of public transportation, I'm not buying the food desert thing. Yuppies here ride bikes miles to go to farmer's markets, and that's for fun, not survival.
On Wisconsin Public Radio this morning, the guest was Daniel Hamermesh, author of "Beauty Pays: Why attractive people are more successful." He suggests that bad looking people should be made a protected class. When a caller asked who gets to decide, he answered that judges and juries can tell whether there's a pattern of discrimination.
Just what we need -- another case of the nanny state using coercion to "correct" human nature, and shield us from the slings and arrows of the un-elite.
I agree with you. There is no real hunger problem in the U.S. I have been dismayed at how many people work at Thanksgving turkey giveaways without discerning that most of takers are just there for free stuff and then the people serving relate how bad things are based on how much was given away.... not noticing that the folks taking the food weren't the least bit hungry just greedy. However, I want to explain the inner city problem from the inside. When you're part of the working poor working two jobs or 60-70hrs a week in one job to make ends meet coupled with raising a family by yourself, it's that cooking isn't cheaper. It's that and grocery shopping/cooking is time and energy you don't have. Not a excuse... just the reason.
Cuzisaso touches on another aspect of poverty: single parenthood. There are very few permanently poor (other than those who through no fault of their own are victims of illness or disability) who follow these guidelines: 1. Work hard in school to get as much education as you can. 2. Get married before you become a parent. 3. Stay married.
I agree with you. There is no real hunger problem in the U.S. I have been dismayed at how many people work at Thanksgving turkey giveaways without discerning that most of takers are just there for free stuff and then the people serving relate how bad things are based on how much was given away.... not noticing that the folks taking the food weren't the least bit hungry just greedy. However, I want to explain the inner city problem from the inside. When you're part of the working poor working two jobs or 60-70hrs a week in one job to make ends meet coupled with raising a family by yourself, it's that cooking isn't cheaper. It's that and grocery shopping/cooking is time and energy you don't have. Not a excuse... just the reason.
Let's declare "mission accomplished" in the War on Poverty. Instead, let's fight the War on Hunger. Overweight people obviously are not eligible for free food. (I am overweight myself.)
I agree with the point about finding time to shop as well as cook. However, planning the meals for a week and then doing one shopping trip (on Saturday or Sunday) ought to take care of that. It requires a certain amount of organizational skills, but surely some nanny-state meddler will publish a shopping list and set of menus/recipes tailored to a family of whatever size.
Also, why not prohibit use of poverty/hunger funds at restaurants? I suggest the implementation difficulties could be managed.
Eating healthfully requires planning and effort. Of course it is easier to just buy a pre-cooked fast food meal, but it isn't cheaper and it isn't better. If you don't have a "suitable" grocery store in your neighborhood, then once a month or so go OUT of your neighborhood and do your shopping for the month.
Another way to add healthful food to your diet is to grow it yourself. In our urban neighborhood the elderly Asian folks who live in a highrise apartment building got permission to plant the strip of ground between the parking lot and the street in tiny gardens. The methods they use are intense and the amount of produce amazing. But it takes effort and planning.
I'm afraid that thinking ahead, planning, and work are the keys to both eating healthfully and getting out of poverty. Government efforts are in many cases ineffectual or even counter-productive.
True...govt programs are almost always ineffectual or even counterproductive...BUT "then once a month or so go OUT of your neighborhood and do your shopping for the month" reveals how little you know about the finances of the poor. Many middle class workers can't afford to shop only one time per month.
Dr. Sowell, you have once again written a common sense and insightful column on a topic that addresses one of the most serious issues of our time. Welfare reform in the nineties began the essential changes needed to get people off of welfare and into the work place where they would be able to begin earning their own way to prosperity and develop the self esteem that results from doing so.
However, Obama, once elected, almost immediately dropped those reforms, and he is now working on creating a class warfare mentality in this country (even though we supposedly don't have classes in the US) that could destroy everyone's future, except maybe the politicians who live off of cheap discontent.
This country was founded on the idea that anyone with the motivation to achieve and the willingness to work hard to do so can reach his/her American Dream.
It is very difficult, no argument there, and not everyone becomes "rich," whatever that really means, but I truly believe that anyone, except those truly disabled, is capable of taking care of him/herself and achieving a comfortable life.
On the other hand, in the nanny state in which we now live, politicians garner votes by appealing to the laziness and "taking the easy way out" mentality that results when one can "get something for nothing," in other words the lowest common denominator of human behavior.
I listen to and read about those who complain about how tough their lives are, and I wonder if they have any knowledge of how this country was founded or of the principles on which our Constitution is based. Would anyone today even be capable of taking all they own and setting out in a wagon for an unknown territory to settle in a land with no promises of what's to happen. I doubt it because one of the greatest hoaxes being pulled on the young in this country is the fact that they don't know or understand US history and, consequently, have no idea how we have accomplished so very much in the past 235 years.
I hear and read about how all children in Detroit schools, regardless of economic background, will receive free lunches (funded by taxpayers) so no child feels "different" for being eligible under Federal guidelines. Instead of providing free food, how about providing those kids with the proper education to escape poverty. The lack of that education due to a plethora of reasons, not the least of which is teacher unions, is what's really hurting those living in poverty. With the right tools, including a solid education base and the desire to improve his/her circumstances, anyone in this country can achieve a decent living and the self-satisfaction of having done it for him/herself. No one ever appreciates the things which he/she is given for "free" as much the things that he/she has earned for him/herself. That is why we have such a prevalent "entitlement" attitude throughout this great land. No one thinks about where the money is coming from; they just want what they consider their "fair share."
We're turning into a socialist country in which those who work are expected to "give more" of their earnings to those who have chosen to take the "easy way out" with politicians and their "giveaways" encouraging them. How sad! Our Founding Fathers must be turning in their graves. This isn't the US to which they pledged their lives and honor.
I generally agree with what Dr. Sowell has said in this column, but with a minor exception. When my teen-aged sons participated in church-sponsored mission trips to Appalachia they witnessed small children left to fend for themselves all day while their parents were elsewhere. At noon these children would wait by the roadside for the kind person from a local church who would provide sandwiches and other food items. So my point is, hungry and impoverished children do reside in the U.S.; but I have no idea of their number.
This is the area of poverty that is so hard to eradicate. Many programs provide food for the poor, but if parents take the food stamps and sell them for money to buy alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, etc., the children still go hungry. I have no sympathy for those adults. I don't believe that healthy adults with no children should recieve public assistance. But the idea of any child going to bed hungry is anathema to all feeling people. And we can not legislate good parenting.
I see food stamps being used in my suburban-large full service grocery store all the time -- and not to buy bulk foods or produce. Heavy on the chips and soda.
The "true poor" of The United States are not and have not asked Washington's bureaucrats to make concessions for them. They are the people who are working 12 to 16 hours a day to make a living for themselves and families, later to be entrepreneurs. These folks are better known to the larger population as "hard working immigrants". They do not even recognized that they are categorized and targeted as "poor" by "politicians who live off of cheap discontent." There is no time in their lives for political foolishness.
