[falcolas]

I'm going to be a bit US centric here:

Definitions such as food security? We don't have that. Housing for every person? Nope. How about the ability to ensure our health? Nope. Jobs? Nope. Help when you need it for your mental health? As if.

Poverty is still a scourge on humanity.

[jimbokun]

The fear of insufficient calories to survive is all but eradicated. Obesity is the new marker of poverty.

Agreed on lack of housing, which is largely due to progressive local governments preventing the construction of new housing. Housing is far more plentiful and cheaper in red states.

Agreed on health. Replace the US system wholesale with one of the many more successful models in other countries. Ironically, our existing government run programs are already better in terms of cost and quality than private insurance.

Recent unemployment rates reflect essentially full employment.

So a mixed bag.

[falcolas]

> The fear of insufficient calories to survive is all but eradicated. Obesity is the new marker of poverty.

Tell that to the millions of families in the US who are food insecure TODAY. And calories alone are not enough.

"the USDA found that nearly 7 million households were so financially squeezed last year that they had to skip meals at times because there wasn't enough food to go around. Almost all of these households said they couldn't afford to eat balanced meals." ~NPR

As for employment, that 4.3% unemployment (per MSNBC on 8/3/24) still represents some 13 million people. I'd hesitate to call that "full employment" by any metric. And it doesn't count the other roughly 20% who are not counted in that statistic who are not working (intentionally or not).

[refurb]

The very fact we came up with a new phrase "food insecurity" tells you that the type of need has changed drastically.

[falcolas]

"Food insecurity is an official term from the USDA. It's when people don't have enough to eat and don't know where their next meal will come from."

How is this a drastic departure?

Also, some of the earliest research into food insecurity was done in 1798, and the phrasing came out of the aftermath of WWII. So, neither is it new.

https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/20864

[refurb]

It's a departure from what we previously worried about - people not having food to eat.

Look at the definition of "low food security" - the most extreme food insecurity the USDA measures.

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.

"obtained enough food to avoid substantially disrupting their eating patterns or reducing food intake". So none of these people actually didn't have enough food to eat, they just had to change how they got their food.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...

[ben_w]

Obesity, and large gold (-ish) chains. Or at least, was so in the UK before I left.

Don't count so much on housing being so easy to fix, much of the rest of the world is also having a hard time with that. (Except China, I think?)

[robertlagrant]

In terms of food security - what does that mean? I hear (unverified) there are places such as Venezuela where the population is starving, which is horrendous, but I haven't heard of this in the US.

[falcolas]

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/10/26/1208760...

And if you don't trust NPR, feel free to pick another one of dozens of sources under the google search "food insecurity us"