Nearly a Quarter of People in Greece and the U.S. Can't Afford Food
Hunger has grown dramatically in Europe since 2007
More
A Greek man eats food distributed by the Athens Municipality on January 30, 2012. (Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)
No
matter where you're from, not having enough to eat is the ultimate
signifier of economic distress. Food is the base of Maslow's hierarchy.
It's the
first concern in disaster zones. It's usually the last thing to go
-- after the car and the nice apartment -- when you lose your job.
If you can't afford food, there's really nowhere to go but up. That's why it's so shocking just how many more hungry people there are now in what were formerly known as the world's well-off nations. According to a new Pew report released today, almost a quarter of people (24 percent) in the United States and Greece answered "yes" to the question, "Have there been times during the last year when you did not have enough money to buy food your family needed?"
The levels in other Western countries weren't quite that high, but the rate at which hunger has swept the eurozone since 2007 is still really dramatic:
3 comments:
When a quarter of the population goes hungry, and most of those numbers are the elderly and children, there exists a failed state. We are on the same page this holiday. I just finished reading William Pitts article in Truthout: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16593-the-end-of-the-beginning-of-the-end
Peace----MandT & Bodhi
Thanks for the link...truly depressing.
If the irony weren't great enough, a former deputy PM of Greece, Theodoros Pangalos, blamed the country's economic collapse on "lazy" workers and starving children... and Pangalos is an immensely obese man. I suggested that he feed a few dozen hungry kids by fasting for a week or two.
There is no excuse for that kind of hunger in Western Europe, and most certainly not in the US, where resources are plentiful when not hoarded by the wealthy. The more I think about where this all will end, the more I am grateful that I don't have several decades left to live. It's ugly now, and it's going to be horrible before it's all over.
Post a Comment