According to an AP article yesterday, almost 50 million Americans are going hungry. I guess that’s one way to deal with the obesity problem within the United States. Although the article didn’t mention the amount of lbs lost among the participants, I’m assuming the executives behind The Biggest Loser are watching. This is definitively a startling number, almost 15% of American households.
Although the 3.5% increase from 2007, labeled ‘unsettling’ by President Obama, is mostly blamed on the recent economic hiccup, I am wondering a little bit on why the number is so high. I don’t think it surprises anyone when the news of another famine, I’m sure there are a few, in Africa. Stories like that don’t gather enough attention (that means high enough ratings) for our big news channels to devote too much time to them. I’d be unsettled if I heard that’s the number of hungry families in an Easter European or South American country. But United States? That number is much, much too high to be in the United States. Obama misspoke, that news isn’t ‘unsettling’ it’s downright ’shocking’.
While it is easy to laugh at this as just another fad diet, shouldn’t we ask ourselves as Americans if this is acceptable? These aren’t some people we’ve never met that are going hungry. These are probably our neighbors, the people we see on the streets, we might walk past them everyday in the store. While there is welfare, and other programs for the poor.. are they enough? A lot have suffered because of our economic crisis. Retirement accounts have been devastated, homes have been lost, our schools have funding, people are going hungry, and yet we continue to spend billions of dollars on foreign wars that have no purpose or benefit.
I believe that citizenship in a country is a contract. It is a contract not just between you and the government and the elected officials, but it is also a contract between you and all the other citizens in that country. While we pay taxes and volunteer to fight in the armed forces as expected from our part of the contract, we also expect the government to live up to theirs. The government has to provide us with security, protection, education. I think sometimes individual citizens cannot live up to their sides of the contract. I don’t think the government should ever be allowed to fail to deliver what is expected from them. The fact that 15% of American households are going hungry is a terrible failure on the part of the government.
I’ve mentioned that I believe that there is a contact between individual citizens. Much like a family, I think we owe it to those less fortunate Americans to help and support them when they are unable to do it themselves. That is why I believe we should have universal healthcare, despite the monetary costs it will burden us with. That’s why I also believe that we should also have more expansive socials programs that ensure we don’t have 15% of American households going hungry. While I realize that many people will disagree with my views, I honestly believe that our first priority, before healthcare and our foreign policy obligations, we should ensure that no more children in United States go hungry. While I do not intend to take away from our troops, to me it is more patriotic to work towards eliminating hunger within United States, then hunting terrorists half-way across the world.
Just my two cents.
-Golden Arple
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JLancaster
