SNAP benefit delays could mean millions go hungry - despite Americans wasting almost $400 billion of food a year
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/snap-delays-hunger-food-waste-b2857058.html
126 points · 11 comments · view on lemmy.world
11 Comments
givesomefucks@lemmy.world · 35 pts · 297d
We didn't build a system to distribute food...
We built a system to maximize profits on selling food to people. Not even selling the most food, just making the most profit.
If that means 25% of people starve but profits go up 10%...
That's not even a trolley problem for a corporation. That's barely a choice.
Edit:
Mamdani's solution is city owned grocery stores that pay employees fairly and a focus on providing healthy foods at affordable prices
While ideally states and other cities would do it, a progressive Fed could distribute funds to get it built up and self sustaining.
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 297d
City owned grocery stores don't really solve the affordable food problem.
Grocery stores aren't particularly profitable in the scheme of things. Neither are distributors, food processors, or farmers.
Each link takes a bit of profit of course, but for most non-luxury foods there's just not a lot of profit along the line.
In order to solve it for real, you need to a) make farming cheaper, especially for certain labour intensive foods b) control the entire supply chain from farm to grocery store
However, this tends not to work well for any sort of non-commodity food item like say cookies or ice cream. There are just too many different preferences for that to work well. The government could produce 3 types of cookies really cheap, but if they tried to produce even 30 different types they'd just end up being worse than what we currently have and we currently have 300 types.
UltraMagnus@startrek.website · 4 pts · 296d
I would be OK with losing out on random novelty hotdog-flavored chips.
That being said, you could get around this problem by focusing on staples (rice, flour, vegetables, salt, etc.) since the vast majority of folks don't really have a preference on this sort of thing, aside from allergies/gluten free.
derek@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 296d
I agree that city-owned grocery stores won't solve the food affordability problem on their own. I do take issue with this statement though:
That's bullshit. 🙂
Kroger posted ~$150,039,000,000 in revenue, ~$33,364,000,000 in gross profit, and ~$2,164,000,000 net profit for 2025. They posted a gross profit margin of ~22% and a net profit margin of ~2%.
That's pretty profitable. Profitable enough for the CEO to walk away with ~$15,400,000 of it. That's not as profitable as economic abortions like FAANG but I'd argue nothing should be.
Even if it weren't: we don't have to make farming cheaper or control the entire supply chain. The issue is primarily top-down. Not bottom-up.
If, after we enforce the paying of livable wages, a crop is too labor-intensive to be economically sustainable then we ought to either subsidize that expense because we collectively agree that's the best option OR stop mass-producing the inefficient food.
Capping C-level salaries to a reasonable percentage of the company's lowest paid worker and capping profit per-item based on total cost to create, process, house, and distribute each item to retailers would be much more effective means of lowering the cost of groceries nationally.
Corporate logistics, especially for perishables, already have all of this information and more. It's how they know how much they can gouge the consumer (or what price to set if colluding in price-fixing schemes).
City-owned grocery stores don't solve the whole problem. No single solution can. It's a good beginning for the effort though. Starting with the top-end of the stack, where most of the waste occurs purely due to corporate and individual greed, makes sense and sets the stage for addressing other systemic issues within that industry's supply chains.
The cookie variety concern also seems misplaced to me. Though you didn't list it as a blocker. Just a problem these kinds of solutions can't solve.
I agree. I don't see why a municipal grocer would need to match the variety offered by the private sector though. Their aim is to provide consistent access to safe and affordable staple food stuffs. Not help Nabisco weasel into additional market segments so numbers go up and make investors happy. The municipal grocer should only care about making their laborers and shoppers happy. We don't need cookies for that! Though I'd bet putting a handful of options from locally-owned bakers on the shelves would help.
Reality_Suit@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 297d
Businesses are wasting $400 billion per year. Our leadership needs to start accepting responsibility for what their policies are doing and quit blaming the population. This applies across the entire world.
TheFogan@programming.dev · 13 pts · 297d
That's indeed such a big issue... fact is the trash problems of our cheap wrappers etc... were so huge... what prevented regulation. The endless spree of ads saying "You terrible people, stop throwing your trash on the ground".
etherphon@midwest.social · 2 pts · 296d
venusaur@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 297d
I thought Trump was gonna be forced to use available funds for SNAP. Or was it just an empty threat?
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de · 5 pts · 296d
A court says to do something, trump says no. We've played this game before. The few times the admin actually follows the rulings end if it gets to the supreme court.
tal@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 296d
Yes, but the fund sources that the administration is required to use are not sufficient to fully pay for all of SNAP for this month, and my understanding is that it is very possible that benefits will be only partially paid. There are apparently other sources that they can use to fully pay them if they want to do so. There should be more clarity in the next few days.
This is also only talking about November.
SylviaPlathm@feddit.online · 5 pts · 297d
Is it just to make room for more? In other words, he's ending so called lives in a cruel manner
tal@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 296d
Note that there are some states moving on providing some form of state-level contingency plan.
This article was written a few days ago, prior to the ruling that required the Trump administration to at least partially fund SNAP for November:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/map-shows-every-states-plan-011500589.html
EDIT: I do think that it's a bit interesting that the policy split here is not really along a Republican/Democratic basis. California and Hawaii are very Democratic and Utah, Lousiana, and West Virginia are very Republican, yet all are moving early on providing state-level food support.