According to the USDA, an estimated 50 million Americans are food insecure, including nearly 17 million children. It is morally reprehensible that millions of people in our own backyards and every Congressional district across this great nation of agriculture abundance struggle with not having enough to eat.
What is often overlooked amidst this tragedy is that almost half of the food insecure have incomes above the typical threshold for SNAP, formerly called food stamps, and one in three food insecure households have income above the threshold for most government nutrition programs, including free and reduced price school meals. The only option for the millions of people facing this situation is to rely on charitable assistance, such as that provided by food banks.
What is also interesting to note is that in America we actually throw away enough food everyday to feed the entire world. Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant will know what I am talking about ....
According to Robert Reich former Secretary of Labor Professor at Berkeley & Author, Aftershock: 'The Next Economy and America's Future' .... we're heading for a double dip recession ...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-truth-about-the-econo_b_842998.html
"consumer confidence is plummeting. It's weaker today on average than at the lowest point of the Great Recession.
The Reuters/University of Michigan survey shows a 10 point decline in March -- the tenth largest drop on record. Part of that drop is attributable to rising fuel and food prices."
192,000 jobs were reported to have been added in february but those numbers all always fudged ...
Remember, 125,000 new jobs are necessary just to keep up with a growing number of Americans eligible for employment. And the nation has lost so many jobs over the last three years that even at a rate of 200,000 a month we wouldn't get back to 6 percent unemployment until 2016.
But isn't the economy growing again -- by an estimated 2.5 to 2.9 percent this year? Yes, but that's even less than peanuts. The deeper the economic hole, the faster the growth needed to get back on track. By this point in the so-called recovery we'd expect growth of 4 to 6 percent.
Consider that back in 1934, when it was emerging from the deepest hole of the Great Depression, the economy grew 7.7 percent. The next year it grew over 8 percent. In 1936 it grew a whopping 14.1 percent.
Add two other ominous signs: Real hourly wages continue to fall, and housing prices continue to drop. Hourly wages are falling because with unemployment so high, most people have no bargaining power and will take whatever they can get. Housing is dropping because of the ever-larger number of homes people have walked away from because they can't pay their mortgages. But because homes the biggest asset most Americans own, as home prices drop most Americans feel even poorer.
So why aren't we getting the truth about the economy? For one thing, Wall Street is buoyant -- and most financial news you hear comes from the Street. Wall Street profits soared to $426.5 billion last quarter, according to the Commerce Department.
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