My Plea for Food: This Land is Made for You and Me

It happened on the way to the grocery store.  It is one of Carly and my favorite places to go.  Some use retail therapy to feel better about their self-image.  They spend money on a new outfit or gadget and feel a temporary rush of excitement.  This isn’t really our style.  We enjoy lingering through the grocery store taking the money that we have budgeted to make the most diverse, healthy, and exciting menus we can each week.  Going to the grocery store is a necessity.  Everyone goes, and their values and budgets are shown in each wire cart.  The problem is that not everyone has the budget to meet their values, or even most basic needs.  Eating is a necessity.  So on the way to one of our favorite places to buy our beloved groceries I asked Carly the simple question, “Do people have the right to eat?”

                She paused for a moment.  I felt her thinking as the air grew in tension and then she said, “of course.”  We decided that food stamps were an important program that was excellent for the people that needed it.  It also has been implied that food stamps are not a permanent solution for people.  I think that a universal food program should go above and beyond any existing system.  It should be for everyone.  Anyone who didn’t want it could use their benefit to donate to local food banks or other charitable organizations; or they could simply not use it.  We walked through caverns of food at the grocery store discussing how utopian it would be if those that didn’t have a dollar in their pocket could walk into a grocery store and at least get minimal sustenance without ever having to apply for food stamps.  We also agreed that something like this should have happened long before we ever had national healthcare.

In spite of the failure for national healthcare to take off we both believe that healthcare is the right of all people in a developing citizenry that has the wealth and conscience to take care of one another.  The constitution is clear in setting a societal framework for a better existence.  In our country we seek to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”  For the sake of our extreme wealth and existing infrastructure it only seems just for more people to have access to healthcare.  Given the fact that heart disease and cancer each wipe out nearly 600,000, disease is a major problem in America.  Obviously everyone dies eventually, so it is impossible to prevent all death; however how many of these deaths could have been prevented or better treated by having a more accessible healthcare system?  Additionally, the hunger problem creates the need to have a healthcare system that treats diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, all epidemics in communities without access to healthy food.  If America thinks it is saving lives by having a military presence in exchange for an infrastructure that provides both food and healthcare we are greatly mistaken.  Consider a foreign enemy in comparison.  In 2011 only 17 terrorism related deaths occurred for private citizens and all of these happened out of the country.  Furthermore, to continue to use 2011 as an example, 566 military died in Afghanistan and 54 died in Iraq.  It seems clear to me that the common defense is not a foreign enemy but a culture that perpetuates disease by both lifestyle and inability to access the healthcare and food already available.

                But this blog isn’t about healthcare.  We already have national healthcare that is in attempts to be implemented.  It is good – well, it could be good and we should make it a value for our culture.  We have gotten our priorities wrong.  We need a universal food program.  It doesn’t take much to realize that there is a tremendous amount of people that are in unemployed poverty in addition to a huge amount of working poor in this country.  In 2012, 49 million Americans, nearly 15% of all households experienced food insecurity.  Insecurity!  We live in an environment where food is everywhere.  It is sold on the street and grows all over.  It rots on shelves and is refined into the snacks and treats we think nothing of.  As the richest nation in history we have 15% of our population insecure about how they might access their next meal, yet our attitude toward food is as if it were a given.  We live in a world that has the capability to feed everyone.  As the richest nation in the history of humanity it is embarrassing that there are people that are hungry inside our country and that we are not doing more to feed the destitute.  Globally we have the capability to produce 17% more calories than what the entire world needs to eat.  Today it is difficult to think beyond America. Things like national sovereignty and other arbitrary ideas keep us from extending humane policy throughout the globe.  We need to start somewhere.  Let’s focus on America.

                America could put food on everyone’s table without much in the way of security sacrifice or new taxation.  When you are born in the United States you are given a Social Security card; essentially a government insurance card that protects against disaster and insures a modicum of financial help late in life.  Why aren’t we doing this with food?  Let’s think of things this way, a national food plan wouldn’t insure that every person would be entitled to steak and lobster.  Consider this, if everyone was given a flat amount of food allowance per month, call it eighty bucks; then people could figure out how to eat and not be hungry.    As of 2012, 25% of American families spent less than $100 a week on groceries, meaning a family of four on a tight grocery budget could take advantage of a universal food program and need to provide very little out of pocket cash to feed their family.  In the same way that social security is available to all citizens, I believe that universal food should also be available and that there should be no sliding scale based on income.  For some, extra help would still be needed and I would want programs like WIC and food stamps to remain in place the way they are currently.  Universal food would be a program for everyone, regardless of income, and those that needed more would still have access to additional help.  Anyone that didn’t want it could easily donate it to local food banks or even international efforts to expand the work of feeding those in need.

                There are some very specific stipulations I would make if I were in charge of setting up a universal food program.  First of all, I wouldn’t only encourage people to go to farmer’s markets as the current system does, but I would make seeds and canning supplies also available.  Our society is far from agriculture after both the industrial and information revolutions.   Food has become something that is in a store.  In a few generations we have forgotten that food comes from the ground, or from the life of an animal.  The food that we eat is wrapped and packaged in ways that make it completely unrecognizable in nature.  It is as if we have forgotten that we were once part of an ecosystem.  By making seeds available perhaps we could have an agricultural renaissance, increasing the food supply and showing the value of food for those who have never seen things grow.  I would also penalize certain foods with an automatic tax against the benefit.  In other words, one could buy a head of lettuce for regular price on their universal food card, but if they wanted something highly processed like candy or potato chips then there would be a penalty that was charged in addition to the shelf price.  The penalty could be used to finance the food program or to finance national healthcare.  After all, it is things like highly processed food that causes many of our health problems in the first place.  By having a food program that not only feeds the hungry but discourages the populace from eating things that are killing them we would not only be “providing for the common defense,” from disease, but also “promote the general welfare” of every person’s right to eat a meal.

                With our tremendous wealth one might think that a program like this would be easy to implement.  National interests have convinced the populace that we are overtaxed, in spite of much evidence that supports the contrary.  With approximately 317 million people living in this country, offering $80 a month ($960 a year) to everyone is a pretty hefty bill.  In fact, it is a $304 billion annual bill.  I think that some more corporate taxation to fund this program is appropriate.  We could start with companies that make the junk food that fills the cupboards of so many American homes.  A 1% tax of core net revenue from  Pepsico alone would bring in $650 million.  That may only be a paltry $2 per person, but if Coca-cola, Nestle, and other major food processors were included in these figures revenue could certainly generate a number of dollars to help create such a program.  Yes, the corporations would likely pass the taxes on to the consumer but would it really wreck your life if you had to spend $1.69 instead of $1.59 on a 20oz. Dr. Pepper?  I would gladly pay more for the vice foods I choose if it meant that I would have a monthly food benefit and that my posterity would have it as well.  In all honesty though, taxation alone is not the answer.  We need to look at expenses that have become unnecessary.  The United States still spends $20 billion a year on maintaining our nuclear arsenal.  As a nation, we have dwarfed the rest of the world in nuclear armament and could stand to disarm.  How many times do over do we need to prove that we can blow up the entire world?  Cutting our nuclear budget could help us finance food without marginalizing our military power at all.  In fact, if we compared our military spending to the rest of the world we could cut our expense in half and still outspend every nation in the world.  In 2012 the United States spent $645.7 billion on defense.  The next closest spender was $314.9 billion dollars by the continent of Asia.  Yes, continent.  That means if we are concerned about nations like North Korea and China we are already outspending both of those nations and all other nations in the continent by more than double.  It seems to me that if we trimmed our military budget by half we could still be on the forefront of defense from a foreign enemy and provide for defense against disease and hunger.  $300 billion dollars for food divided between 317 million people averages out to about $80 a month.  Funny how that all works out.

                I can’t claim to be an economist, military analyst, or foreign policy expert.  I can however do a little research and see that from a cost-benefit analysis perspective, Americans are not getting the most out of their tax dollar.  The truth of the matter is that if cutting the military budget in half meant that veterans would lose benefits then I would be against that.  On the other hand, if a handful of soldiers lost their jobs because nuclear weapons were disarmed, I wouldn’t lose too much sleep.  We need to be a nation of feeding, not one of fear.

                Many people have thrown the word ‘socialist’ around with a negative stigma with the development of national healthcare.  I think that we should remember that having a social security card, calling the police when you are in trouble, calling firefighters when there is an emergency, and attending public school are all forms of socialism.  These are values that we have embraced over generations and to feel anything other than entitlement to receive them seems foolish.  To decry the entitlements of living in this country is to deny the value our culture has placed on humanity.  To make a mockery of those that need the general welfare is to make a mockery of the most vulnerable humans in our culture, it is regressive and unnecessary.

                In the end, I guess I like socialism.  I like the idea of the collective conscious having a collective conscience.  I like the idea that every person, regardless of income or age has the right to access food.  I like the idea that we could encourage people to eat better and grow their own food and take the first step to sustainability.  I remember being told, you can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don’t have any boots.  This is true.  I think a major component to the poverty this country suffers isn’t that people won’t get housing, food, and work – it’s that they can’t.  Or if they can get one, they may have to sacrifice another.  I’ve looked at my paycheck before and had to decide whether it would be rent or food.  Carly and I have had lean weeks in order to make certain that food was available when the kids came home.  We are not destitute; this is what people do to make certain that there is food.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Conversely, we have the bounty of our yard, the provision of employment, and creativity to be generally fed.  I know that I have come into this life with advantages that others have not.  For the goodness of humanity I can feel nothing but duty and love to share my wealth and my table with those that have less and need more. 

                I remember hearing “This Land is Your Land” as a child and it felt like any other patriotic song.  It mentioned geography, “redwood forests, gulfstream waters,” very much like, “purple mountain majesties, for amber waves of grain,” just a song about America.  As I have grown the song has also grown in meaning and depth for me.  This land is my land, this government is my government.  The constitution does not say, “We the corporations,” or “We the military,” it doesn’t even say, “We the legislature” and yet we act as if these forces control our lives.  It says, “We the people.”  We are the government and yet we complain about the government and act as if we are victims of the state.  The government has become something far off in Washington when the actuality is that we have abdicated our power as the people to control the dealings of the state.  I have a better idea.  Let’s be people that have control of their government.  When the state does not follow our values then we should create our own infrastructure and our own system.  The fact of the matter is that we need to do both.  We need to demand both.  We need to move our values outside the state while also forcing the state to comply with what is best for humanity.  This land is made for you and me.  Let’s live as if it is ours and share it for the benefit of all.  Let’s share our wealth and our food and set an example of benevolence for the rest of humanity.