> The big question is how do we get the bottom percentage to have a life where they don't have to struggle to find a place to live and making sure they never go hungry?
I'm sorry this sort of thing is ridiculous. Are you European? The vast majority of American cities have multiple organizations attempting to give away food and unable to find takers. Our own church throws away so many pounds of food that we receive from donations. We are in a west coast city with a large homeless problem. None of them are starving. None want food. Literally we advertise and spend endless hours attempting to give away food. We had the same 'issue' at our former church in San Francisco and my aunt is a volunteer at a food pantry in southern California. Same problem.. too much food.
The United States has a lot of problems but a lot of the problems are not caused by lack of money or goods or food. If anything, the problems are caused by too much money.
Ok, that may be but hunger and homelessness is still an issue in the US [0]. Why are there so many people living in the streets of the big cities? I live in a large city in the US. I see streets with tents on the sidewalks with people living in them. The failure is drugs, mental health issues, people unable to understand how to work the system, people unable to work, people just unwilling to work and whatever else. Something failed in their lives. We need to deal with them and fix the system so it does not fail again. You can blame the people and criticize them but that has not fixed the problem. We can say it's their fault over and over again but the problem continues. One of the richest countries in the world has a homeless problem of 100s of thousands. It's shameful.
Even from the most selfish point of view, it's a quality of life issue for everyone that lives in the big cities. No one wants to see tents and trash on their streets every day.
> Why are there so many people living in the streets of the big cities?
Because the US is an extremely decadent society and people have a lot of free time to become addicted to drugs. In my home city of Portland, where we have a huge homeless problem, a solid portion of the homeless actually come from families with higher-than-median income, and are choosing to be homeless. I just recently went to a talk by a local homeless non-profit group and the social worker flat out said the majority of the people he interacts with do not want treatment. They exist on the street simply because the city tolerates it.
> Something failed in their lives.
Yes... indeed. The United States is too rich and this is a 'we have too much money' problem, and a 'too much freedom' problem. No one is willing to do what's necessary to force the homeless to live in a civilized, hygienic manner.
Look.. my family is from a third world country. Whenever we visit... we see true homelessness. True homelessness is when families are simply too poor to be able to afford housing and live in slums. This looks nothing like the homeless in Portland, who are all single men / occassional single women. These are mentally addled drug addicts, not simply 'normal' people down on their luck. Contrary to what the activists say, poverty itself does not cause people to behave this way. In my parent's home country, the poor homeless behaved normally, they just didn't have homes, and should one give them enough money, they would move into one. In Portland, no one wants to move into a home, which is why we have empty beds every single night.
My mother was a public school teacher in a very poor district. Realistically, the social science researchers that study these things are often well-off academics who have no idea about the reality on the ground. The majority of hungry children are due to flat out parental neglect. Should the parents be interested in availing themselves of the resources, they would have food for their kids. Unfortunately, the social scientists keep telling us to spend more money despite decades of that not working.
I mean... if a parent leaves a child in the home and doesn't come back for days at a time and the child is hungry, despite social programs to pay for that child's food... is that a problem with food availability or parental neglect?
Parental neglect is a real problem, I have no doubt.
However.
13 million hungry children are 13 million hungry children. A government can't just blame their parents and avoid any responsibility; they still gotta feed them.
You don't get to just ignore the problem by pointing at all the food wasted in America either - the 13 million kids are still hungry.
Those children won't learn properly, they won't feel safe, they'll have lifelong problems. We'll all have problems because of their problems.
We'll end up paying for it as a society, in 13 million ways; far more than it would cost to just _feed them_.
And the point - if you remember - is the inequality of it all. There are neglectful wealthy parents, just as there are neglectful poor parents - but only the poor kids are going to school hungry. In a country of such incredible wealth!
If we spent as much money feeding the hungry as we did on interest alone for the "war on terror", we'd have the whole planet fed 7 times over. The money is there - but it's dangerously unequally distributed.
There is also food stamps (SNAP) which is meant to be supplemental, but technically speaking is enough to survive off of if you do not have any income.
I'm sorry this sort of thing is ridiculous. Are you European? The vast majority of American cities have multiple organizations attempting to give away food and unable to find takers. Our own church throws away so many pounds of food that we receive from donations. We are in a west coast city with a large homeless problem. None of them are starving. None want food. Literally we advertise and spend endless hours attempting to give away food. We had the same 'issue' at our former church in San Francisco and my aunt is a volunteer at a food pantry in southern California. Same problem.. too much food.
The United States has a lot of problems but a lot of the problems are not caused by lack of money or goods or food. If anything, the problems are caused by too much money.