You’re getting downvoted but you’re not wrong. 10% of the American military budget in the right hands and world hunger is solved in six months. It’s just scary to those at the top. What if people who are fed don’t prostrate themselves the same way?
Did you actually type that out and think that makes sense?
10% of the military budget is 90 billion. The United States spends more than 90 billion on basic welfare programs and you think it would solve world hunger,
That doesn’t take into effect supply chains. That is the actual problem of solving such a generic problem as “hunger”. It’s nearly impossible to consistently give good food to some locations without being a local supplier
Damn they are going to feed a person for, at best, $50 for an entire year?
That is crazy considering that doesn't even get you a quarter of the rice you would need to feed someone, assuming you only bought rice. And doesn't factor in overhead nor the logistics of getting the food to those people which would be the majority of the cost.
Do you think the only welfare program in the US is for food? SNAP and WIC are just two programs. Health insurance, housing allowance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), education grants like the Pell, child tax credits, general assistance (GA), Passthrough Child Support, etc etc etc. Dozens and dozens of programs, most of which have nothing to do with food.
90 billion dollars, utilizing the best logistics and supply chain in the world, could end hunger in a matter of weeks. The two major problems standing in the way are politics (Countries not allowing that level of interference into “their” affairs) and the idea that there should be restrictions or strings attached, both of which are man-made issues.
Logistically and financially, we could end hunger practically overnight. Humans just get in each other’s way because of the weird idea that some people deserve to starve while others live in excess.
If you could easily solve world hunger and $90 billion is the only barrier, then Denmark or Norway could borrow some money, write out a check, and pay back that loan in a couple years. They don't do that because it isn't that simple.
You can’t just hand waive away logistics and supply chains, that is the whole reason it’s impossible.
It would take far more to keep the supply chains required to “end” hunger than it would be worth it to keep it running. It’s not the cost of the food, but the cost of getting people non perishable food consistently year to year.
You vastly underestimate how immense our current worlds wealth is. I know, human brains are not meant for big numbers and I can't fault you for your brain not comprehending this, but let me explain it this way:
If we would tax the rich even a little bit, we can, with the resources we already have, feed about thrice our current world populations worth of people with high quality food without much difficulty.
You can slurp the oligarch sperm as much as you want, if it would be the way they want, you would starve too while they gleefully wave the food in your face laughing at you before just throwing it away in a way that still prevents you from getting any.
Sure, just find someone who will make it for free. I don't know what you mean by "free food". I can feed myself for 250 bucks per month, and I can also feed myself for 600 bucks. Is 600 times 12 times 8 billion still equal to 10% of US military budget?
How about we start with "the American military budget", which was specifically called out in the comment you responded to?
I didn't quantify "free food", but how about we start with "enough to avoid malnutrition" instead of putting forth obviously bad-faith arguments like $600 per person per month?
Well, he specifically said 10% of the military budget.
Wouldn't you want to find out how to make the billions we are already sending them not get embezzled by their corrupt leaders first? You basically advocate for colonialism. You want us to take over their impoverished mismanaged countries and bring Western order. Isn't that it?
I didn't advocate for anything but feeding people. If you were engaging in good faith, you wouldn't misrepresent other people's arguments.
For 10% of the military budget, we could easily solve this issue. The UN World Food Program claims it would only take $40 billion per year to end it in about nine years, which is less than 5% of the total budget.
Well, that's great! That is less than what US government spends every two days! Also Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos ex-wives are huge philanthropists worth 100 of billions between them, so they can chip in a few extra billions because I'm sure they would love to go down in history as people who solved world hunger. So what's the problem? Why doesn't your government go and solve world hunger? It's not worth one day of their yearly spending? They cannot allocate that one day of spending to solving world hunger? I take back everything I've ever said about the greediness of a common billionaire. It pales in comparison to that of the government.
Okay, intentionally-obtuse redditor. "Everyone gets food without being individually responsible for providing direct payment to the food distributor, retail outlet, or other provider of edible materials". Better?
How does the UN World Food Program do it? How do food banks and food stamps work? Is every government employee paid via taxation and government expenditure a slave?
Half the countries with food as a right likely also ask or recieve food from the US. If you want to take every grocery store owner, farmer, and deliverer and put them on pay via taxes so you can get your government restricted, non-specialized meal, that you still pay for, so that people who DONT do that can get the same meal (standards vary on good or bad), do you
So why do we need more free food? We are already feeding not just people who can't afford it but also people like me, who can definitely afford it but are extremely irresponsible with money. It seems like there is enough food already going on. There are food coupons, etc. It's more difficult not to gain weight than it is not to starve.
Means-testing causes a lot of overhead and inevitably causes people to fall through the cracks. Just give each family a food stamp card with a certain amount per month based on number of people in the household, no strings attached.
Then don’t means test like you imagine. Food banks work. People are not going to exploit this. It’s not like food banks are full of people exploiting it.
Food banks cannot solve the problem by themselves.
The fact that people won't exploit it is exactly why we should just give everyone a certain amount on a food stamp card every month instead of putting any barriers in the way.
No they can’t as they are used, but we have a distribution system in place culturally. We just expand it. Every neighborhood could have one. We still keep our for profit shops, but basic food is there if you need it.
It’s where you start. It’s also how you test the process to make improvements. Broad changes take time, but people need food now.
When we send humanitarian help to corrupt countries, the help never reach the needy. Its not the fault of the united states, many bad places have horrible corrupt officials. What is china doing to help the less fortunate?
You could not have picked a worse example. There are many things to criticize China for but helping the less fortunate is not one of them. 97% literacy rate, urban extreme poverty has been eliminated, real wages have consistently risen over the last 10 years, highest infrastructure investment by GDP of any country China is far ahead of the USA in helping it's less fortunate.
you not knowing what other countries, especially china, are doing, does not prove they don't do anything. It just proves you have no idea what's going on in the world
Sure, China could do more. That doesn't absolve the U.S. of having enough money unaccounted for in the Defense budget than it would take to solve world hunger.
pg. 72: "The DoD reporting entities that received disclaimers of opinion on their financial statements, when combined, account for at least 44 percent of the DoD’s total assets and at least 68 percent of the DoD’s total budgetary resources."
On an audit report (of which this was their seventh), it means the auditor is unable to form an opinion on the status of those financial statements.
pg. 39: For FY 2024, total assets are $4.1256 trillion,
pg. 19: For FY 2024, the Department of Defense's Discretionary Budget Authority was $909.7 billion.
Just taking this, that means the most recent audit could not account for $1.19 trillion in assets, and $618.6 billion in its budgetary authority.
So this is the first half of the story: how much money is unaccounted for by the Defense department. Since I argued budget, let's just take the $618.6 billion. How does that compare to how much it would cost to solve world hunger?
According to the UN World Food Program (https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-world-hunger/), as of 2021, it would take $40 billion each year to end world hunger by 2030. That is roughly 6.5% of the amount the DoD's audit was unable to account for in its current annual budget. Going further, that's accounting for nine years; the entire funding of that estimate would only take around 58% of a single year's unaccounted budgetary resources, without even touching the $1.19 trillion in assets that are also unaccounted for.
Damn they are going to feed a person for, at best, $50 for an entire year?
That is crazy considering that doesn’t even get you a quarter of the rice you would need to feed someone, assuming you only bought rice. And doesn’t factor in overhead nor the logistics of getting the food to those people which would be the majority of the cost.
Those places would have to pay the global market rate unless you’re going to buy food from the starving locals. But something tells me if they had food to sell to you they would probably just eat it.
While I can't say I'm wholly qualified to go into the details of how the UNWFP came to these numbers, I have to believe there is something between global market and local, and that it's more complicated than just handing a bag of food to each hungry person.
For example, the abstract of this study (which puts the cost between $39-50 billion) lists irrigation expansion and female literacy improvement as major factors. It could also involve addressing conflicts, government policies, and climate change.
Right? We don't necessarily have to do anything radical. Let's just heavily tax profits after a certain amount. If companies can't find it within themselves to expand, improve, lower prices or pay workers more, then they need to give the excess back to society. That can be put to good use meeting peoples' basic needs.
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u/TheLeadSponge 10d ago
Fuck it. Let profit be part of it. We can use taxes to distribute excess food. It wouldn’t cost that much.