Soviet-style Breadlines come to America.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Here's the link.

Downturn forces more in US to rely on free food

MONROE, Ga./DOUGLAS: In the richest nation on earth, a rising number of people line up for free food because they are struggling to put meals on the table at home.

Demand at food banks in the United States is up 15 percent to 20 percent over last year and many food banks are having difficulty coping, according to America's Second Harvest, the largest US food bank provider with 200 in its network.

Food bank networks procure nonperishable and fresh produce from suppliers, then stock it in warehouses before distributing it via a chain of community food banks across the country. The total number of people who use them is not known but the upward trend is one sign of a US economic downturn in which soaring fuel costs and the rising price of other basic goods have pushed many people on low incomes or without jobs into hardship. The banks say more people with steady jobs are turning up at their centers to wait in line, fill out forms and collect rations of free or reduced-price food. In a parallel development demand for government food stamps is also rising. "Having a (low wage) job isn't enough anymore. Having two or three jobs isn't enough anymore," said Marcia Paulson, spokeswoman for Great Plains Food Bank in North Dakota, where nearly half the households receiving food stamp benefits have one or more working adults. Olga Medina's story illustrates the dilemma for many on low wages who said they considered their need to resort to free food a humiliation in a country that prides itself on independence and stresses work as a sure route to success.

Medina works full time providing homecare for old people in Douglas, on Arizona's border with Mexico. She said she earns $1,100 dollars a month with which she also supports her parents and a sick son, but is unable to make ends meet due to rising food and fuel costs. Most weeks she forages for milk, fruit and vegetables in dumpsters outside the Safeway supermarket. One day last month she waited in line with 147 others outside the Douglas Area Food Bank for a grocery handout because she had no bread. (ed. -- emphasis added.)

"We have to put up with a lot of humiliation just to survive," she said, putting on a pair of sunglasses to hide tears. "It's not dignified but we are hungry and hunger is ugly."

Providing food: At a giant warehouse in Monroe, Georgia, scores of volunteers and paid workers using fork lifts or pallet jacks load food onto big trucks -- everything from carrots to frozen spare ribs to canned goods.

The warehouse is part of Angel Food Ministries, a national organization headquartered in Monroe that offers food at half price to people who need it. A typical food pack contains $60 of family groceries and is sold for $30. The organization, which is linked to a church, purchases food in bulk at a discount and passes the savings on to 500,000 families a month who use its service in 35 states, distributing through a network of churches. Its founder, Joseph Wingo, argued that perceptions that the US economy was doing better than is reported failed to take into account a different reality for millions of Americans, not least senior citizens. "Go into any community that has been devastated by job losses and you will find there's more people (struggling to provide food) than you think," said Wingo, who set up the organization in response to demand in Monroe.

Broken dreams: For Selena Lewis, 28, who owns a boutique in Alpharetta, Georgia, going to the North Atlanta Community Food Bank brings an added irony -- just last year she donated some of her money to the bank as an act of charity. But the downturn has stifled demand at her boutique and some days she makes just a single sale, not enough to pay off debts and feed herself and her son and leading to a dilemma about whether to close the boutique and seek other work. reuters

And before anyone comes into this thread saying "Well, it's just poor people!" let's remember that I think we can all agree that the wives of Apparatchiks didn't have to wait in Soviet-style bread lines either. Welcome to the new America, by the way.

[The Grim Squeaker]

How is charities giving food to the poor, or unfortunate unique? We've had it here for years.

Wasn't the unique thing in Soviet Breadlines being the government subsidizing bread due to there simply not being enough of other food types, and that being the only thing they could supply to the public?

This is Great depression style breadlines, except for, Y'know, it not being anywhere near the scale, nor in affluent areas, and people doing it to supplement their income, not due to their not being any other food available, let alone affordable.

You've rediscovered Food donations for the poor.

[K. A. Pital]

Wasn't the unique thing in Soviet Breadlines being the government subsidizing bread due to there simply not being enough of other food types, and that being the only thing they could supply to the public?

Um... no, nothing particulary special about bread at all. There was enough other food types (especially lots of meats due to expansion of livestock on foreign feed grain). The difference between meats and milk and bread was... very little. Milk, Breat, Meat... everything could be in shortage in the last years of the USSR. Hell, even soap.

[Broomstick]

Marina, over 20 years ago, during my first trip through the Poverty Tunnel, I was eating such free food - if I recall my official US government ration was 5 lbs flour, 1 lb butter, 2 lbs powdered milk, 5 lbs cheese (ah, the infamous "government cheese", the only thing Ronald Reagan ever did for my benefit...), and random assortments of canned goods stamped "salvage". That was supplemented via private food banks. I ate a LOT of potatoes because a 20 lbs bag is cheap, a lot of cabbage, and a lot of bruised vegetables.

In other words, what has you getting your panties in a twist is nothing new. Yes, the demand is up, but that's hardly surprising given the times.

My mother remembers the food lines and assistance from the Great Depression - her father and brothers would wait in line nearly all day for their rations. She remember one Thanksgiving where the only food was a pot of thin gravy spread on a couple slices of bread for each person.

The rising demand is concerning, but this is nothing that hasn't happened before in the US, and at times on a much greater scale.

[Natorgator]

They have Angel Foods ministries all over in the south. I'm kind of tempted to use them, since you can basically get a month's worth of food for $30.

[Coyote]

While technically true that there is nothing much new about this, the difference is (IMO) in the past, what we had was piss-poor economc policies that were mis-managing resources. The resources themselves were there.

This time, though, we have poor management and the realization is beginning to sink in that we are pretty much out of resources, or at least our fuel oils (to an extent). The bad management by itself would be a short-term problem, but now food rationing may well be the camel's nose in the tent.

The ripple effect of a loss of gasoline is not only driving up food transport & production costs, but cropland is also being diverted --at the urging of the government-- to make fuel instead of food, thus adding a double whammy.

A couple years from now, this may not seem so alarmist, so much as a harbinger of things to come. Let's see how it plays out in October, 2017!

[phongn]

Er, I don't see how this represents a Soviet-style breadline at all. There's no shortages forcing rationing of bread supplies here, but instead unfortunate people who need to get subsidized food. It's not like the normal food supply is being constrained for all but the elite few in the US.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Hmm, I quite remember in New Orleans 2k1 when I was briefly homeless waiting in line at something very similar to your 'Soviet-style breadline'.

This was before 9/11 when we were riding high from knocking off the Soviets without a care in the world while singing 'We're America! We're Americaaa! Suck our diiiiiicks! We're AMERICAAAAAAAA!!!!' We hadn't even heard of Peak Oil or Global Warming, and we weren't expecting to find ourselves attacked or swept up in war, then flooded, burned, and robbed by bad government policy.

There still were breadlines in New Orleans back then.

[Illuminatus Primus]

This is not a Soviet-style breadline. Poor people line up for free food? Wow that's never occurred outside the Soviet Union. I can't wait for Ossus to see this.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Marina, over 20 years ago, during my first trip through the Poverty Tunnel, I was eating such free food - if I recall my official US government ration was 5 lbs flour, 1 lb butter, 2 lbs powdered milk, 5 lbs cheese (ah, the infamous "government cheese", the only thing Ronald Reagan ever did for my benefit...), and random assortments of canned goods stamped "salvage". That was supplemented via private food banks. I ate a LOT of potatoes because a 20 lbs bag is cheap, a lot of cabbage, and a lot of bruised vegetables.

In other words, what has you getting your panties in a twist is nothing new. Yes, the demand is up, but that's hardly surprising given the times.

My mother remembers the food lines and assistance from the Great Depression - her father and brothers would wait in line nearly all day for their rations. She remember one Thanksgiving where the only food was a pot of thin gravy spread on a couple slices of bread for each person.

The rising demand is concerning, but this is nothing that hasn't happened before in the US, and at times on a much greater scale.

Broomstick, this isn't me getting upset, it's about a little fuckshit with a vendetta who needs to be put in his place, because among other reasons, as Stas eloquently pointed out, Soviet breadlines weren't like what he was claiming them to be anyway. The crucial thing is that demand for bread has resulted in people waiting in massive lines. There are, objectively, bread lines in America, fullstop. That's the only thing I was interested in, primarily, because I do not take kindly to little capitalist assholes trying to humiliate me over a matter of months, distorting out of kind everything I said, and then, lo' and behold, exactly as I said, we get bread lines in America.

Are they necessarily a sign of anything more serious? In some respects yes; it means the number of poor people has increased, doesn't it? That's a useful metric right there. Can we read more into that? Not really, but I never claimed we could in the first place. I just said we'd have long breadlines in the United States by the end of the year, and 147 people waiting for bread certainly counts.

[Darth Wong]

Er, I don't see how this represents a Soviet-style breadline at all. There's no shortages forcing rationing of bread supplies here, but instead unfortunate people who need to get subsidized food. It's not like the normal food supply is being constrained for all but the elite few in the US.

So ... as long as it only affects those worthless poor people, it's not really a bread line, even though it looks like one?

How many other problems are not really problems as long as you personally aren't affected by them?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

This is not a Soviet-style breadline. Poor people line up for free food? Wow that's never occurred outside the Soviet Union. I can't wait for Ossus to see this.

The food is, if you'd read the article (you little worthless shitstain), subsidized to about half price, not free. And why exactly is it not a Soviet-style breadline? Is there anything which makes the Soviet breadlines different? Do you seriously think that everyone in the USSR had to wait in line in breadlines? You apparently didn't notice Stas observing that there was actually a fair amount of food, and even plenty of meat, available, so it's obvious that nobody was starving in the upper levels of society. It was all about the margins for them as it is for us.

[Sea Skimmer]

There are, objectively, bread lines in America, fullstop.

Read your own freaking title. You said breadlines come to America, implying that it’s a result of very recent problems. That is not true in any way, it’s not like all these food banks sprung into existence in the last three years.

[Darth Wong]

There are, objectively, bread lines in America, fullstop.

Read your own freaking title. You said breadlines come to America, implying that it’s a result of very recent problems. That is not true in any way, it’s not like all these food banks sprung into existence in the last three years.

Did they always have long lineups, even during the boom times? If so, that's absofuckinglutely shameful.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There are, objectively, bread lines in America, fullstop.

Read your own freaking title. You said breadlines come to America, implying that it’s a result of very recent problems. That is not true in any way, it’s not like all these food banks sprung into existence in the last three years.

Did people wait in line? We're not talking about whether or not food banks exist, after all.

The simple fact is that industrial capitalist society has run its course--we are now in a phase in which the limitations are starting to be apparent, and the realization that the leftists of the 18th century (the liberal economists, the philosophes, etc) were all fundamentally wrong--they brought to us the highly destructive free market capitalist system, and now only 250 years after it became extensive, it has begun to fail, inevitably reducing our circumstances if not (and god, may we hope so) our technological condition, back to the medieval standards they claimed they must lead us from. That will certainly take decades, but the perfect storm is finally here.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There are, objectively, bread lines in America, fullstop.

Read your own freaking title. You said breadlines come to America, implying that it’s a result of very recent problems. That is not true in any way, it’s not like all these food banks sprung into existence in the last three years.

Did they always have long lineups, even during the boom times? If so, that's absofuckinglutely shameful.

The answer is no, they didn't, I volunteered at food banks many years ago and those certainly didn't have immense lines, just a steady flow of people coming in and out throughout the day, with rushes at certain hours, exactly like a grocery store would, except it was subsidized.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

What I want to know is why people think Soviet breadlines were any different than really, really long breadlines, which 147 people certainly is?

[Sea Skimmer]

Did people wait in line?

They sure as shit did, do and will, any food bank that accepts walk ins (some only do prearranged stuff) is going to have lines. I worked as volunteered at a food bank in Chester when I was a kid, and since we had minimal staffing, volunteers are hard to come by and paid staff was limited to a handful of key part time people, everyone who wanted food had to be processed by one person. My job was making up bags once we knew what a given person needed, if they had young kids or elderly people back home ect… we’d customize the food order as best we could.

BTW, last time I was at a grocery store I had to wait in line to buy the items I’d picked up from huge piles on the shelves.

We're talking about whether or not food banks exist, after all.

Yeah, not sure that’s what you really meant, but food banks have existed for about fifty years, and before then the same kind of assistance still existed, it was just less formal and more directly oriented around Churches and other religious institutions. Today virtually all food banks are directly died into religion, but many like the one I worked at aren’t exclusively supported by people of one dominations, they are joint efforts via a network of different local institutions which all send in food, money and volunteers.

But of course religion is the worst thing ever.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I also find it particularly amusing that Americans are so wedded to their failed capitalist system that even the nominally left-leaning ones like IP freak out at these realizations of its flaws. Ironically enough the Right understood this 250 years, back when we sat on the right side of the King, and basically predicted the ultimate and savage tragedy that the collapse of the medieval social protective systems would have when completely removed for purposes of the free market. The liberals triumphed, dominated society, and then were pushed to the right by the rise of leftists who were desperately trying to undo the results of the mass chaos the liberals had proclaimed--which was, of course, frequently just as bad (re: Marxism). Unfortunately, I have no column of Loyalist troops to lead, but I can certainly be grimly amused at what is next to come. As Simon Schama so daringly observed about the French Revolution, it came about because of liberal modernization, not because the King was a reactionary. He wasn't--Louis was a ruthless modernizer who didn't realize what his adherence to free market principles was doing to the common people. What the revolting peasants wanted in the Revolution was simply, at first, the restoration of all the old medieval social mechanisms which had previously protected them, that had been stripped away in the past decades in favour of modernization.

[phongn]

So ... as long as it only affects those worthless poor people, it's not really a bread line, even though it looks like one?

What? I didn't say it wasn't a breadline, only that it wasn't a Soviet-style breadline - which would imply that the majority of people would have to stand in line for their allotment of bread, affordable or not. I didn't mean to imply that this isn't a problem at all.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

They sure as shit did, do and will, any food bank that accepts walk ins (some only do prearranged stuff) is going to have lines. I worked as volunteered at a food bank in Chester when I was a kid, and since we had minimal staffing, volunteers are hard to come by and paid staff was limited to a handful of key part time people, everyone who wanted food had to be processed by one person. My job was making up bags once we knew what a given person needed, if they had young kids or elderly people back home ect… we’d customize the food order as best we could.

BTW, last time I was at a grocery store I had to wait in line to buy the items I’d picked up from huge piles on the shelves.

That was not my experience in the same circumstances.

Yeah, not sure that’s what you really meant, but food banks have existed for about fifty years, and before then the same kind of assistance still existed, it was just less formal and more directly oriented around Churches and other religious institutions. Today virtually all food banks are directly died into religion, but many like the one I worked at aren’t exclusively supported by people of one dominations, they are joint efforts via a network of different local institutions which all send in food, money and volunteers.

But of course religion is the worst thing ever.

Sorry, that was the opposite of what I'd meant, of course.

[Sea Skimmer]

What I want to know is why people think Soviet breadlines were any different than really, really long breadlines, which 147 people certainly is?

Duh, because virtually the whole population had to wait in them, as opposed to this example in which we’ve seen a 20% rise in use of facilities used by at most a few percent of the total population. The Soviet lines stemmed from actual shortage and a failure to invest in more bread. If anything like that situation existed in the US food banks could NOT EXIST because they wouldn’t even able to get food at any price, let alone get it so cheap they can sell it at half the normal cost!

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Duh, because virtually the whole population had to wait in them, as opposed to this example in which we’ve seen a 20% rise in use of facilities used by at most a few percent of the total population. The Soviet lines stemmed from actual shortage and a failure to invest in more bread. If anything like that situation existed in the US food banks could NOT EXIST because they wouldn’t even able to get food at any price, let alone get it so cheap they can sell it at half the normal cost!

Which is why of course there was plentiful amounts of high calorie meat in the USSR in the same period?

[Darth Wong]

Seriously, all of the food banks are tied to religious institutions? That's not the case here.

Today virtually all food banks are directly died into religion, but many like the one I worked at aren’t exclusively supported by people of one dominations, they are joint efforts via a network of different local institutions which all send in food, money and volunteers.

But of course religion is the worst thing ever.

The fact that they attempt to tie charity to religiosity hardly exonerates them from any of the criticisms being leveled against them.

[Sea Skimmer]

Which is why of course there was plentiful amounts of high calorie meat in the USSR in the same period?

I forgot a word back there, I meant to say invest in more bread ovens, that’s the real Soviet failure but its result was an actual shortage of bread. As Stas already pointed out they could fatten up cattle because they imported feed for them, which would not be fit for human consumption, especially if you couldn’t bake it. Still not the same thing as a food bank for the poor having a line.