by Scott Hughes
Do you remember 9/11? I cried.
2,819 people died in the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers [1].
16,000 children die every day from hunger [2]. That’s about one child every 5 seconds.
No doubt we have to end hunger, especially childhood hunger. This terrible horror plagues the whole world, not just isolated places. For example, 14 million children in the United States are food insecure [3]. There is no question about the horrible nature of hunger, nor about the need to reduce and eliminate this problem, ASAP. The only question is: “how?”
I think the biggest threat to successfully reducing and eliminating hunger isn’t from the lack of answers to that question. The biggest threat to eliminating hunger isn’t from the apparent apathy of certain people. I think the biggest threat to successfully reducing and eliminating hunger is the false methods, the fools gold that hunger and poverty activists chase after.
Welfare will never end hunger nor poverty. While these activists dream up some amazing deux ex machina, involving some fictionally philanthropic government swooping in and saving everyone, in the real world children are starving to death. We have to end hunger and poverty, but welfare and government spending will never solve those problems.
Taxation
First of all, social spending such as welfare is funded through taxation. I don’t know what these hunger activists are thinking when they come up with the idea of stealing from the rich to end hunger. It’s unfeasible for so many reasons, namely because the rich have too much power. If you try to steal $100,000 from the rich, the rich will just buy politicians for $10,000. The rich never end up paying the taxes, the working-class ends up footing the bill.
Taking from the working-class only hurts the hungry and poor more. Unlike the rich, working-class people live with the poor and hungry, and work with the poor and hungry. In fact, many times the hard-working working-class people are poor. Depending on the criteria of “working poor“, there are between 6.4 and 28 million working poor people in the United States [4].
When the working-class have money, they invest it in their communities by opening businesses, schools, and local stores that increase communal wealth and alleviate hunger, poverty and unemployment. But, these foolish hunger activists ask the government to rob the working class, and thus indirectly rob the hungry.
When a parent finally finds a job that may at least feed half, clothe, and house half of her children, are we actually going to pilfer her earnings though taxation?
By robbing the middle-classes in the name of the poor, these hunger activists increase class war and hinder the lower and working classes. Theft can’t end hunger, but why would we want it to?
Debt
The United States government is in debt trillions of dollars. There’s no money to give the hungry and poor, anyway. Again, the rich aren’t going to foot the bill on this. They’ll push it down to the lower and working classes. In turn, that will just perpetuate the artificial rat race that oppresses the poor, hungry, and working classes.
Dependency
Even if there was a magical money tree to fund these gifts, welfare will never work because of dependency. By just giving away what little wealth they can muster, these activists won’t fight hunger. The way to fight hunger is to stop the cause of hunger. Just giving food to these people will make them dependent on the gifts rather than on actually solving hunger.
As Lau Tzu said, “Give a man a fish; you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish; you feed him for a lifetime.”
What even Lao Tzu didn’t mention was that when you give a man a fish, that man also becomes lazy and dependent on that gift. The man won’t have any reason to learn to fish if you give him one for free. The efforts to end hunger must involve employing the poor and reconnecting labor with wealth. Unfortunately, the working-class don’t get the full fruits of their labor, because a non-working upper-class gets it. To fix this, we can’t just try to give away stolen money. We must find a solution that will give the money back to the working. We must find a solution based on production.
To do that we must utilize education. Education and loans are the key to solving hunger.
There’s no way an under-educated populace will change the non-meritocratic system. So, the first step is education, which can easily be funded with loans. What’s a more secure thing to invest in than education? Additionally, food, clothing, and housing can be included in tuition costs. Best of all, student loans don’t need to be taken from government. Private investment can fund student loans, and even turn a profit via interest.
Welfare won’t work because it requires large amounts of non-existent funds, breeds dependence, and increases class war. Instead of helping solve the problem, welfare and the promotion thereof increases the problem. The solution isn’t welfare, it’s education. Although I believe private education is more effective, government sponsored student loans still don’t have the drawbacks of government-sponsored welfare, namely because loans have no net cost. Essentially, we can fight hunger for free.
About The Author: Scott Hughes owns and operates Millions Of Mouths – a website dedicated to ending hunger. You can discuss hunger on the hunger and poverty forums. Read more articles like this at his hunger and poverty blog on MillionsOfMouths.com:
http://millionsofmouths.com/blog/nfblog/
[1] http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm
[2] State of Food Insecurity in the World 2005. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
[3] Nord, M., Andrews, M., Carlson, S. (October 2005) Household Food Security in the United States, 2004. Washington, D.C.: Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_poor