this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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Explain Like I'm Five
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Here's a curious thing: Kids going hungry cannot be explained by the profit motive alone. The food industry wants to be paid to feed those kids. The food industry benefits from SNAP and other food welfare programs, which amount to transfers of money from taxpayers to the food industry with a side-effect of providing food for poor kids.
So, kids going hungry isn't an "economics thing". It is not an economic necessity of mixed-economy capitalism. We can tell because there are other mixed-economy capitalist societies that don't have anywhere near as many kids in food insecurity.
It's a "politics thing".
It's about ensuring the existence of a deprived underclass, because some people's ideology demands one.
It's our legacy of slavery, by creating such an impoverished underclass with no dignity during chattel slavery it made the lowest rung lower even when slavery was over. We never finished reconstruction on a social level so if you have no money you matter even less.