[diamondap]

There are more people struggling these days than the mainstream news reports. The lines at the food banks where I live are much longer than they were before COVID. One of the local food banks says they're distributing three times as many meals per month as they served before the pandemic. And this is an area of relatively high employment.

People working service jobs simply can't afford the basics, and that's a problem. Part of capitalism's implied promise is that if you work full time, you should be able to feed and house yourself. But for huge numbers of people, that doesn't seem to be true anymore.

[hollywood_court]

It's really getting out of hand. I see it here with my coworkers in our small company. There are only 6 employees here total. 3 of my coworkers commute for 1hr+ away each way because they can't afford to live in our town. And then they don't eat. With their work schedule and their commute they're gone from home for 12hrs or more per day so they can't meal prep. And they can't afford to dine out. So they simply don't eat breakfast or lunch.

I told my CEO that my past success and my wife are effectively subsidizing his company. Because I could not afford to work here it I had not been so successful earlier and if my wife didn't have a great job with great benefits. In fact, I'm seriously considering leaving my role when the summer starts because childcare for my 5 year old son is going to cost ~55% of my net pay each month.

But my CEO and his family of 4 have been to Disney World twice since October 2023. And they're going to Europe for 2 weeks this summer.

[saalweachter]

I feel like the owner/operator of a six-person company styling themselves the "CEO" is symbolic of something, somehow.

[hollywood_court]

Definitely. And his wife is the "Executive Assistant" although I've only seen her in the office 4-5 times since I started in October.

[bbarn]

A 2 week vacation and 2 long weekends to Disney World don't seem out of reach for any middle class family, let alone a company owner. My sister is an adjunct professor and I think has been to disneyland 3 times this year already.

The rest of it certainly sucks though. There would have to be a VERY good motivation for me to travel that far for work. Most of us on here are involved in software and I'd be shocked to see if less than half of us were remote or partly remote.

[yoyohello13]

> A 2 week vacation and 2 long weekends to Disney World don't seem out of reach for any middle class family, let alone a company owner.

The fact that this person is going on all these vacations while his workers forgo meals is just kind of fucked up. The fact that people don't seem to see a problem with this is the problem.

[hollywood_court]

Yes but it shouldn't take 5 people working 50+ hours per week to support just one family. The CEO's family is the only one taking vacations. They're the only family that has healthcare.

[ProllyInfamous]

"Keep up all your hard work and next year I'll take you for a drive in my new sports car!" —Some Boss, probably

[hollywood_court]

I know you're kidding, but one of my neighbors gets super excited because his boss allows him to job his sports car to lunch sometimes. My neighbor can't afford his own sports car but at least he gets to drive one to McDonald's a few times per month.

[ProllyInfamous]

One of the worst paying jobs I ever had had the "perk" of occassionally driving ~$100k sports cars home, about once per month.

I absolutely beat the shit out of those perks.

[mlinhares]

There’s no such implied promise, it’s the other way around: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour

[rangestransform]

This sounds vaguely like the observation that retail checkout employees get stupider when the economy is good, because everyone with 2 brain cells to rub together moves to more gainful employment, and walmart has to really start scraping the bottom of the barrel

[diamondap]

OK, maybe it isn't capitalism but US society that implies that promise. Many (insensitive) people respond to tales of economic woe by saying, "Get a job!" As if that's going to solve even your basic money woes. As others in this discussion have noted, many people employed full time still struggle to provide the basics. That part of the social contract just isn't holding up for a lot of people. And that's a recipe for social unrest.

[mariodiana]

I also don’t understand people on a tech forum not being more sympathetic about the economy’s troubles. Is tech not in a recession? That’s ludicrous. Tech is in a bad way.

[cpursley]

I don’t think I’d define the situation we’re in as capitalism.

[resource_waste]

> The lines at the food banks where I live are much longer than they were before COVID.

what does this really mean? Like food is so cheap we are obese. So does this mean more people want freebies? Tasty brand name foods? My neighbor thought we were poor and gave us food they got from a foodbank, it was really nice (but odd) stuff.

In 2024 I can't really understand using food as a measurement. There is too much.

[btbuildem]

Well, if you can't understand, why such strong opinions?

Read up about basics of nutrition, about how poverty and obesity are correlated, what "food deserts" are, the differences between processed and healthy foods, etc.

[lupire]

Poor people are fat because they don't cook well, not because food is expensive. Good cooking is expensive, and bad cooking is available. Healthy basic cooking is cheap. Food is so cheap that you can eat when you can't afford to anything else! In other words, obesity is cheap entertainment, not a good cost issue.

[resource_waste]

Funny you mention that. Its my expertise.

Food Deserts are defined in a way that is unhelpful, I live in a food desert in one of the richest counties. I have 0 grocery stores within 1 mile. But I have 6 grocery stores within 3 miles.

Go ahead with the conventional sayings: Tell me the fallacious remark about McDoubles being the healthiest cheapest food ever. Go ahead and say something incorrect like processed foods are cheaper than fresh foods. In a few years you are going to change from thinking Fat is the devil to carbs are the devil. Then you will take up fasting, then keto, then gluten free.

People in the US have too much money to care about food. These are people getting dopamine from food pleasure. No one wants to admit it.

[swader999]

I largely agree, but lately eggs, butter, cheese, meat have sure surged ahead in price. They cant really shrinkflate around these items. Even the kids selling eggs as a side hustle in my rural community are jacking their prices.

[mythrwy]

Price of chicken feed is up as well which might explain locally jacked egg prices.

[btbuildem]

No one will push against the claim there's far too many calories available, on average, in Western countries. That consumption is the automatic answer to anything that ails, it could be argued as well.

It reeks of ignorance and obstinate privilege to claim people are too rich to care about food [1] [2], that having to travel 3 miles to get food is not a barrier to access [3] [4]. Saying that processed foods are more expensive than fresh is an outright lie [5][6][7].

The HN discussion forums are one of the last remaining places where we can expect civil and informed online discourse. Please try and keep with that spirit.

1: https://www.feedingamerica.org/about-us/press-room/53-millio...

2: https://gitnux.org/food-bank-statistics/

3: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/food-bank-use-highest-in-cana...

4: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-are-food-dese...

5: https://foodispower.org/access-health/food-deserts/

6: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9967271/

7: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/healthy-vs-...

8: https://www.aier.org/article/why-unhealthy-food-is-cheap-and...

[resource_waste]

> Saying that processed foods are more expensive than fresh is an outright lie [5][6][7].

This is faux-intellectual. Your sources never even back up your claims.

Low-quality googling and nice formatting won't change reality.

Go check out the website Efficiency Is Everything, that website actually compares foods objectively.