[saalweachter]

Well, sort of.

In the US, about 85% of households are "food secure". Non-capitalist sources -- eg, charities or government assistance -- close the gap for about 9% of households, and in the remaining 6% of households one or more people are missing meals.

I don't really think that's a success.

[JumpCrisscross]

Being able to complain about 94% food security is something of a social miracle, in the grand arc of history.

[1stop]

Well sure if you limit your sample size to "The richest country in the world" then yeah you are doing great! 5 Stars! The world is perfect. Go Team America!

Meanwhile there are more people than the entire population of the US starving else where. I'd hazard the guess that that's worse than at any other time in history.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Meanwhile there are more people than the entire population of the US starving else where. I'd hazard the guess that that's worse than at any other time in history.

Considering that there are more people now than at any other time in history, this almost always a safe and lazy guess to make (that their are more people in situation X than at any other time in history).

[1stop]

Right, which is why I made it. But to use that as an excuse is to say: "An individual Human life is worth less now than before", which is at the very least controversial.

[seanmcdirmid]

As a fact, it's vacuous. No one was using it as an excuse.

[saalweachter]

Yeah, I'm not sure whether to say "only 85%[1]" or "a full 85%". Regardless, it's less than the 100% we should be aiming for.

[1] Side quibble: 94% is capitalism + socialism; capitalism alone is only giving you 85%, and that's if you don't count minimum wage as non-capitalist.

[mattmcknight]

charity isn't socialism.

"Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

[saalweachter]

"capitalism + redistribution of resources by the state", if you prefer. But I fear the American-English battle for the word "socialism" is lost.

While food banks are important, as nearly as I can tell most people aren't relying on private charity alone. (I wasn't able to find a number online, but the numbers I did find were that a boatload of people are relying on SNAP, and a huge fraction of the people on SNAP are also relying on food banks, and that number is roughly comparable to the number of people who visit food banks each year, so the number of people who visit food banks without relying on SNAP must be quite small.)

[pistle]

Which is good enough... let us be judged against hunter gatherers. We kick ass.