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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

Its worth clarifying that the article is specifically addressing the fallout from the pandemic: Unemployment and poverty due to failing economies and shuttered restaurants and bars. In the US, Despite our country having vast and endless supplies of food from megafarms and their accompanying subsidies, there is very little safety net in America to ensure anyone is fed at all once they are unemployed.

worth posting, a crash course on making sourdough bread:

https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code/blob/master/bas...

I also maintain a git repo for frugal living.

https://gitlab.com/nimbius/frugal/

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"In the US, Despite our country having vast and endless supplies of food from megafarms and their accompanying subsidies, there is very little safety net in America to ensure anyone is fed at all once they are unemployed."

This is where a legitimate government worth the trust of the people would say, "Do not worry America, we will feed you," and do whatever it took, including mobilizing the National Guard, to distribute that food surplus to those who need it most.

This is where a competent government would do this in the safest possible manner, including having personal protection equipment, training on how to use it properly and how to practice social distancing while getting the job done.

This is where true leaders would inspire the people to help keep each other safe, healthy, and well fed.

Recall the inspiration, organization and funding that kicked off the Space Race, the Manhattan Project, and the New Deal.

Where is the leader who can say with a straight face that "we do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard"? One that can say and be believed that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?

Instead of being inspired to work together on what could be the greatest challenge of this generation we're left to fend for ourselves, left to cower home alone, to hope the scraps we've managed to scrounge will be enough to last us however long it takes for life to return to some semblance of normalcy, for the most destitute of us to face starvation, with a lack of trust in each other, in our leaders, and in society.

California literally has the National Guard supporting food banks across the state right now: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/21/coronavirus-governor-...

I agree with your overall sentiment that we would benefit right now from inspirational leadership with strong messages of solidarity.

But at the same time, it's not all doom and gloom. There's a lot of good happening as well.

California is and always has been an outlier when it comes to using government resources to help and protect people.

California is an outlier in most ways viz-a-viz the US.

Population is ~40M, which is more than Canada (~38M) or Australia (~28M). If California was an independent country it would be something like the 9th largest economy in the world. It's a massively productive farming region on top of having the high-end of US technology, and has other national or international-tier industries like Hollywood.

If I want a barometer for the US, tell me how Ohio is doing.

Ohio had to close all their indoor trampoline parks. It's getting real out there folks

Can’t help seeing the irony of the US being bankrupt by an ilness - someone on Twitter

It's not really ironic on either side. The US is well aware of its healthcare issues. The damage from the pandemic will not be due to a failing healthcare system, but the fallout from much of the economy hitting the pause button for weeks if not months.

> In the US, Despite our country having vast and endless supplies of food from megafarms and their accompanying subsidies, there is very little safety net in America to ensure anyone is fed at all once they are unemployed.

On the contrary, food stamps (SNAP) is pretty much the only federal welfare program that covers everyone based only on need (i.e. low enough assets and income).

There is a 3-month limit for many people (e.g. able-bodied males who don't have kids) but states have the power to extend it in times/locations of high unemployment.

> states have the power to extend it in times/locations of high unemployment

The federal government under Trump took some of this ability away in December, with changes targeted to take effect April 1st. The plan was that roughly 700,000 people would lose the ability to receive food stamps in order to, according to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, "restore the dignity of work to a sizable segment of our population." I wish I was making that up.

Today, the unemployment rate is likely to spike so high just about everywhere that the new rules will probably not make a difference, but it's important to keep in mind that there's a portion of the US body politic that is happy to see some people go hungry, as long as it's the right people.

(e.g. able-bodied males who don't have kids)

I doubt it is gender specific.

that being said a better safety net is needed. A savings account started in high school would be nice as well.

there is very little safety net in America to ensure anyone is fed at all once they are unemployed.

Everything I have read and experienced suggests this is not true.

You may be unaware of it if you have never been desperately poor. A lot of the food aid available to the poor in the US is handled very quietly because it's done by local organizations trying to take care of the local people who actively want to avoid letting predatory vagabonds know where they can get a free handout.

I have read in the past that America would look a lot better on paper if we counted emergency food stores as part of our assets in the same way European countries typically do.

Decades ago, I read about a study that indicated that only one half one percent of Americans qualified as "poor" by the standards of people in India when based on metrics like food access.

I have read that most housed Americans get three meals a day and most homeless Americans only get two meals a day. There are places in the world where two meals a day would be pretty good food security.

I'm sure we are facing some very real challenges. I'm not convinced that America is as precariously positioned as some people seem to think.

I see comments in this discussion indicating that people who have known serious privation are fairly unperturbed. I think the people freaking out are mostly comfortably well off who think giving up a few comforts is a nightmare scenario.

I'm all for actively promoting information for how to feed yourself cheaply while we actively forbid a lot of people from going to work. Cooking from scratch is a terrific way to both save money and give yourself something constructive to do so you aren't going stir crazy and heading for going postal.

But there are many Preppers in this country who already had a year or more of stored food and the things I'm hearing suggest hoarding is being done in a bizarre pattern that suggests a lot of upper class emotional BS is going on.

According to the research in Diet for a Small Planet, at the time the book was written, every country had the means to feed their people. Famine was due to political and social forces, not due to absolute lack of food supplies.

More recently, I have read of cases where food aid sat on the docks rotting because the whole reason people were starving was due to civil war. The food aid was de facto intended to feed people who were more or less being intentionally starved out and the people in power absolutely weren't going to give them free food from other countries.

Venezuela was in a real world of hurt before covid19. They were hunting wild donkeys and breaking into zoos to steal the animals from zoos. They are going to see terrible problems.

The US doesn't have to. We need to figure out what works so we can avoid unnecessary hardship.

A lot of people are working on it. We aren't just sitting here idly waiting for the four horsemen of the apocalypse to show up.

You say this:

==Everything I have read and experienced suggests this is not true.==

I only see examples of things you have read. What about the experiences you mentioned?

Oh sorry. I was homeless for nearly six years.

I've gone to soup kitchens, been on food stamps, gotten food from food pantries, eaten free meals at churches, gotten handouts of food from random strangers.

I've gotten by at times on very little food and I've been seriously underfed at times. But there was usually an element of choice because soup kitchens, etc, aren't very good in terms of cleanliness and food quality and I have a serious medical condition. Being picky about cleanliness and food quality is a large part of how I stay off the drugs I'm supposed to be on.

But in absolute terms, food is usually available. A lot of it is food that doesn't do a good job of meeting my special needs, so I often pass on the opportunity and prefer to buy my own, but actual literal starving to outright death seems rather unlikely to me.

I worry much more that I will be forced to resort to eating things that will aggravate my very serious medical condition.

That isn't intended to dismiss the concerns of people saying "That's been sold out where I live." But if they go hungry, I think it will be more due to comfortably well-off people hoarding food irrationally rather than due to absolute lack of food stores in the country per se.

Maybe some of the Preppers can come out of the woodwork and give a portion of their hoards to food pantries and soup kitchens. Some of them have several years worth of food stuck away.

It would make more sense to try to reduce the degree to which society comes apart at the seams than to sit on it waiting for things to start looking like a zombie apocalypse movie.

I'm curious if anyone has numbers on how much a homemade sourdough loaf costs on average. My experience is that flour is quite expensive (and currently not available in UK shops).

I've also noticed a spike in electricity costs since we've started baking regularly. (Difficult to calculate exactly)

My guess is that baking your own is a bit cheaper than going to some artisanal baker, but a lot more expensive than a standard load.

I'm pretty sure you would be correct.

The cost (assuming you have at least a minimal amount of equipment--including an oven obviously) is basically the flour (which, as you say, can be hard to find right now).

A 5 pound bag of flour is normally around $4-$5 in the US, and a large boule (5 cups of flour) takes about 600 grams (~1.5 pounds) of flour, so maybe $1.50. The other ingredients in a basic loaf are negligible and the electricity is about 30 cents at a typical US price (ballpark of 10 cents per KWh).

Call it about $2 all together. So, yes, less than an artisanal loaf but maybe a bit more than cheap supermarket bread (though that's a larger loaf as well.)

Is this some kind of specialist flour? 1 USD per pound seems high.

King Arthur flour (one of the big national brands) at Walmart in 5 pound bags. They probably have their own brand which is cheaper.

Great Value flour here lists for ~$0.22 a pound in a 5 pound bag. Website says they are out of stock though.

(Great Value is the Walmart store brand)

King Arthur is absurdly expensive. I'd say Gold Medal is a much better benchmark and it's usually about half the price.

Grocery Outlet's store brand of bread has been $1.59 a loaf for a long time. White or whole wheat.

Approximately 0.35 EUR per loaf containing 250g flour, assuming you bake 3 loaves at once in an electric oven, and aren't considering the effects of the heat produced on your heating/cooling costs.

For ultimate economy it is possible to filter whole grains you can find at a feed company and carefully grind it into flour with automatic means. You just gotta be careful not to ruin the grain mill. I've made bread using a waffle iron. Actually english muffins can be made with a grill. Quite good fresh!

Home ovens use something similar to 2KW to run for an hour.

(it's gonna vary between models and temperatures and so on, I think 2KW is good enough for the sake of discussion)

So from there, 5KW or so is probably a good upper limit for a bread cooking cycle (it's probably less than that). Here that's ~$0.50, and then small retail packages of flour are ~$0.50 a pound. $0.25 for yeast, and trivial amounts of salt/sugar.

So (here) 2 large loaves of bread is less than $2 of ingredients and energy.

Flour is out of stock on the online store I just checked here also.

> My experience is that flour is quite expensive

My mom loves making baked goods. At some point, she switched to buying 5+ lbs. bags of flour. It turns out that flour bags from 1-25 lbs. are priced way closer than you'd expect.

USDA is active in the state of Ohio. If you have your ear to the ground you can find when they start giving stuff away. Sometimes you can find it on church builtins or job and family services. Sometimes no proof of income is required. The USDA spring and summer give aways usually have a sign up for a year and that's all.

since you seem to be from Germany, do you now a good recipe of a Genetztes (Bauernbrot)?

Most Americans live in a state where unemployment benefits is easily enough for food.

Millions of Americans who are gig workers are not be eligible for any unemployment benefits.

what about rent? medical supplies? hygiene items?

Personally unemployment insurance does not cover my rent. It’s enough to stretch out savings dramatically, but saving on food budget would then be even more important. Especially if you’re considering cashing in some 401k stocks in a down market.

Renegotiate your rent during the crisis.

It's extremely unlikely your landlord is going to be able to rent it to someone new in the foreseeable future. Most landlords are highly leveraged and need income.

Make an offer to cut it in half and see if they bite.

I own several rental properties, and I’ve already told my property managers that I’m receptive to rent reductions - less rent still beats an empty property. Any landlord who expects to get through this without a reduction in income is just delusional.

I know an absolute ton of small businesses owners. Every single one of them has tried to renegotiate or get forbearance on rent this week.

They have had 0% success and the only response is really that rent is due on the first.

There will be a massive commercial real estate crisis soon.

I don’t know what it is, but it seems commercial landlords would rather have an empty property than accept market rent in a down market. I saw a lot of that in the last recession.

I suspect that the managers of REITs and partnerships that own most commercial property worry that accepting lower rent would make it harder for them to delude their investors into thinking their property values haven’t tanked. “We appraise this property based on a rental income of $5k/mo, it’s just between tenants right now”

I think it's sometimes because they see the value of future higher rent after a void is worth more, in straight up cash value, than accepting lower rent with a long term commitment.

I've seen it for years: Empty shop buildings, a glut of local businesses wanting to rent them, but they are kept empty until some chain willing to pay double turns up a year later. For the landlord, it's worth waiting if that will be the outcome.

any self-employed person who sees a dramatic reduction in income (perhaps even 100%) is also (AFAIK) not eligible for unemployment benefits.

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