Hunger & Food Banks

There should be no hunger in America. 

I can't speak to other nations' means, but I can speak to ours. 

GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS HAVE FAILED and they will continue to fail to feed the needy, no matter who is president or who sits in the legislature. I am not talking about food stamps, which are regularly traded for drugs (going rate is $1 foodstamp for $.30 worth of narcotics on the street). I'm not talking about government subsidies, which have had a checkered past and limited value. I am talking about food and food banks which survive based on the charity of good people.  To cite a well used metaphor, the government couldn't pour sand out of boot if the instructions were on the heel. You'd be paying three times the value of a can of beans for the government to hand it out.

I returned a few minutes ago from the local food bank and there was a long line of people waiting for a bag of food each (fresh fruit) and a bag of food each (canned goods). Those people were not standing in line because they had a dark motive for a hand out. They were standing there because they were hungry.

Our family has a practice. When we go to Costco or a warehouse store, we buy a flat or two of canned goods or peanut butter each time. Every month or so we drop that bounty off at the food bank.

Government hand-outs at taxpayer expense provide the excuse or perception that the poor are cared for. In most states, we're tapped by the federal and state government at an obscene level to "care for the poor". What we do is create massive bureaucracies with vast overhead costs so that 90% (or so) of the money is consumed by the government jobs and a trickle goes out the other end to the poor. People feel as though the thousands of dollars they pay annually for the sake of the poor actually go to the poor. People feel as though they've done enough when they look at their check stub (what they earned, minus what they pay in tax) and for a long time I felt the same way.

Sadly, it's not enough. We need to do what we can, when we can, because there is no excuse for hunger in America.