The notion that 10k people are starving to death a year in the US is ridiculous. You need to stop living in ideologically driven fantasy land.
Are all people in the US perfectly food secure? No. Is starvation frequent? Absolutely not. The notion that 10k people die every year from “malnutrition” is also bogus. I’m not sure where you got that number from, but it is utterly made up.
I grew up in a place with very intense poverty. I know what social programs are available. Food is much, much less a problem than shelter.
So the figure I got from some simple googling came from an estimate that was claimed to be based on food insecurity statistics. 10K in a country with a population of 330M is pretty low compared to much of the world. But we can probably do better
This source cites a figure of .89 PEM deaths, which for that population stacks out to more like 3K. Still low compared to the world, but high compared to many other rich nations.
Either way, not even gonna break the top ten causes of death, but the claim made was "no one has to starve" to which I am simply asking "then why is anyone starving?"
Personally, I'm just looking for this information on the internet, and don't have a vested interest in a particular outcome. You, on the other hand, are arguing from incredulity and just kinda flailing at me with derisive ad-hominem invective, which doesn't fill me with confidence about your command of the facts, but does make me think you must be quite a hit at parties
You haven't even provided a source for the 10k number, so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to argue against it.
> 10K in a country with a population of 330M is pretty low compared to much of the world. But we can probably do better
I agree that would be a mostly low rate, but we aren't even close to that. There are not even 10k people dying of starvation in the US.
> "no one has to starve" to which I am simply asking "then why is anyone starving?"
Most of the PEM number in the US is due to people who have some sort of wasting disease in the hospital. There are also some rare cases of people starving who are elderly and suffering from severe dementia (other rare cases: people with ED who do not receive intervention soon enough). If you want to count those as starvation, sure - but even then it doesn't cover 10k.
> just kinda flailing at me with derisive ad-hominem invective
I called you ideologically driven after your initial content-free mocking reply. You've called my claims bizarre and said I suck at parties. I don't think that this is a case of a one-sided derisive attack.
> Personally, I'm just looking for this information on the internet
A few comments ago you were certain that 'so many' in the US were starving.
Having repeatedly moved the goalposts in your favor (People who are food insecure will frequently describe themselves as "starving", but this was apparently unsatisfying), I produced multiple sources, where you have produced none, and merely argued your incredulity and derision. All you've really expressed is that you're hopping mad about some kind of "ideology" that you've attributed to me. But yes, I used a pretty mild ad-hominem attack in the sentence discussing how you were relying on ad-hominem invective, that was indeed the joke, well done
The truth is, you made a pithy statement that you believed was undeniably true, which omitted significant complexity inherent in the claim. For example, social programs in the United States are seldom if ever implemented on a federal level, the verb "to starve" is not a technical and precise description of a particular phenomenon, etc. When I made an equally pithy and oversimplifying (but I would still argue more true) statement, you and others started making demands for statistical rigor, something which I don't claim to have done here to the standards of a scientific study or a court of law, but at least did any of at all. The pattern of isolated demands for rigor and what appears to be the product of some kind of emotional escalation - vagaries about how you've lived in poorer countries before and thus can speak to the conditions of 330M people simultaneously without sources while demanding sources from others, and the assertion that merely arguing with you about this is indicative of delusion. I guess that you're elevated here specifically because you claim that I must be motivated by "ideology". This statement is on its face tautological: any argument either of us makes is going to be somewhat shaped by our respective worldviews of course. But a common usage of "ideology" as a criticism by political pundits is designed to evoke conspiracies out of cold war spy stories, a rhetorical tactic designed to evoke the visceral reaction that someone following an "ideology" must be part of some sort of well-organized enemy faction, rather than merely an individual who has come to some conclusion on their own
I felt the need to edit this post to spell this out because I find the ease with which people slip into this way of thinking, especially on the internet, pretty disturbing. I would like for you to take a step back from this kind of brinksmanship here, because even if I'm wrong, I don't think that means that we are enemies, and I would like to think that if you thought about it, you would agree with at least that
Are all people in the US perfectly food secure? No. Is starvation frequent? Absolutely not. The notion that 10k people die every year from “malnutrition” is also bogus. I’m not sure where you got that number from, but it is utterly made up.
I grew up in a place with very intense poverty. I know what social programs are available. Food is much, much less a problem than shelter.