The important take-away from your statement, though, is that these people are still getting food. The fact that developed nations have the basic survival necessities taken care of to the point that everyone has time and money to spend on things as seemingly frivolous as smartphones (and the fact that something as insane as a smartphone is even affordable) is a testament to capitalism, not a point against it.
Sure they may be getting some food, but just barely.
"...for 1 in 6 people in the United States, hunger is a reality"
"These are often hard-working adults, children and seniors who simply cannot make ends meet and are forced to go without food for several meals, or even days"
http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts.asp...
Would you agree that "very low food security" translates to "hunger"? If so then the number is close to 1 in 18. In my opinion this is still a high number.
One person in hunger is too many, as I'm sure many politicians before me have said. But there's a massive difference between 1/6 and 1/18, and if we can't be accurate about just how bad things are, how can we know if we're improving? (And of course, we are: Hunger was a much greater problem among the poor decades ago).
What pains me is that some of the people I personally know who are affected by this have jobs. Heck, some have two jobs! Several causes: minimum wage, part-time jobs pay too little, having two or three kids is expensive, housing is relatively expensive, some people prioritize luxury goods like iPhones and cable over necessities like food and savings.
everyone has time and money to spend on things as seemingly frivolous as smartphones
Smartphones are cheap in both time and money. You can have an iPhone in the US for twenty dollars a month, and all you have to do is recharge it every so often.
Food costs a lot more each month. This testament to capitalism is that people can't afford food but that's okay because they can have something that costs less; a phone.
You're picking apart my example of a luxury, not the argument. People aren't forced to spend money on iPhones. If they spend money of iPhones that they need for food they otherwise couldn't afford, then that's their problem, not the world's. Substitute 'iPhones' for any other luxury item. Plus, the agriculture industry is highly regulated, while the cell phone industry is relatively free, which I think has a strong impact on this price discrepancy.
My point is that capitalism allows a significant majority of people to have the basic necessities of life taken care of in exchange for some other contribution to the world.
My point is that capitalism allows a significant majority of people to have the basic necessities of life taken care of in exchange for some other contribution to the world.
Fair enough. My point is that something is going very wrong, as here we are in what is apparently some kind of recovery yet in the United States, one of the richest nations in the world, more people need food stamps than before. Luxury? A phone is cheap. It's not a luxury. Food is becoming a luxury. This didn't happen last time, or the time before that.
