US hunger crisis persists, especially for kids, older adults
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Many politicians have been acting like these things don't exist while ordering more and more stringent lockdowns, giving passing condolences at best, and it borders on negligence. There needs to be a balance. Yes, avoiding the chance of death matters for you and those around you, but what is it worth if you're miserably suicidal and have lost hope as a result of it?
I know this has been said before, but I feel the need to keep saying it, as it's still a problem to this day.
Both problems have solutions.
Meeting the other sex is a topic on its own - all normal venues often just disappeared, especially here in Europe. No bars, no restaurants, concerts, schools, group sports, and most importantly not that much work in the office, arguably the most common place for folks to meet their significant other.
I am just a remote observer of this, we were lucky to get married in summer 2019 - one year later the marriage would be with 6 guests max if it would happen at all. But still can't wrap my head around all this no matter which angle I try to look it form.
Me, my wife and my son been through covid in February, my parents back home are going through it now and I really do have respect from this unpredictable sickness. But as damage mounts in each one of us and there is always this fleeting political promise that in next 2 months it will be much better, I am getting tired of largely inefficient yet very restrictive constraints and starting to lean more towards 'fuck it, keep basic measures mandatory everywhere and lets go back to behavior as it was before covid'. It may be just a stupid kneejerk reaction, but over 1 year wears one out
I've seen many weddings in 2020 that were totally unrestrained, 100+ gatherings with the justification being "outdoors". No masks worn, nothing.
I can't stand that there are people who would do that.
If I may ask - given how cautious you sound - how did you get covid?
By far the worst part about this has been the feeling that I have wasted a year, while others chose not to. My mistake I guess, but for everyone who chose to ignore the rules, many spread the virus.
I think the same applies here. You do you and dont worry about all the folks taking risks to go out. Statistically, some of them are responsible for someone's death from COVID or died from COVID. I would rather not be part of that statistic just because I felt like I missed out.
I would start looking at lack of government action rather than the little they actually did.
The simple reality of it is that there was a colossal finance related economic crash, similar to 2008, that was blamed on the lockdown when the lockdown wasn't really to blame. We're still in the "dead cat bounce" phase of that crash.
I think that we are going to really see the crash kick off whenever the eviction moratorium is lifted. There is no way that all landlords are able to service their loans. Anybody that has been patient with savings will be cleaning house snatching up cheap properties and businesses.
The way I see it playing out is the government is going to try to print prosperity. Foreign governments stop buying our debt and move on to a new reserve currency without the US. If the US is willing to use force to try to maintain USD reserve status things get really ugly. Domestically this is a world of hurt for middle and low income classes. Any country that is preparing for this eventuality is going to do better. But, all countries are playing the same monetary debasement game. Just a few countries are increasing their purchase of gold and decreasing their purchase of US debt.
Why? These people are already in default. The renters who need the moratorium were already “in default,” you just didn’t account for it yet. To the degree that the market has known NYC and LA renters’ rent was “too damn high” for decades now, it’s hard to see how people predictably on the verge of default (ie economic default) now having to live somewhere they can afford (ie accounting default) will cause a crash. If anything REITs prices will rise as information (ie who is really capable of paying rents) flows into the system. The renters who can actually afford to live in NYC and LA are richer, and the people who move out will be richer than many people where they’re moving to.
Another way to look at this is that CDOs were responsible for the 2008 crash. Not people taking mortgages they can’t afford.
Constantly economic crashes are the result of derivatives. My feeling is that we will find out what toxic derivative will crash the economy for real when someone takes a long look at PIPEs for SPAC transactions. Another place I would look for nasty derivatives is untaxed cash of large corporations in offshore accounts, especially of the major tech companies.
source?
Not necessarily, the Fed isn’t obligated to unwind its QE purchases. They may not even be willing to, see ‘taper tantrum’ and Oct-Dec 2018. We won’t see another bear market without another black swan.
House prices may come down when the moratorium is lifted, back to 2020 prices. There won’t be as much selling by landlords as you think, lots of them likely qualified for forbearance which makes non-payment of rent a virtual non-issue. It’ll take a 2.5-3% 10y yield to really push mortgage rates up enough to where it starts to affect house prices, or the Fed needs to stop buying MBSes, or both.
What percentage of landlords do you think are qualified for forbearance? It certainly isn't all of them. What percentage of landlords need to default before there is a crisis?
I wouldn't be looking at the Fed to change their practices. They believe they are in the right and can fix the economy with what they are doing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we...
Because if so, I agree.
No, these were enforced by the police and courts in most places (certainly where I live.) Lots of people didn't/don't have work.
Your privileged, pedantic ignorance of the major socioeconomic problems caused by the covid 19 response perfectly illustrates OP's point.
Lockdowns are not silver bullets - what drives viral spread is behaviour, not legal measures. In fact, if everybody would stay at home for 14 days, the virus dies (decays exponentially).
What actually happened is that folks made the wearing of a piece of cloth, meant to protect others, a political statement and a 'restriction of personal freedom'.
Members of the WHO covid team have estimated that lockdowns may well end up doubling world poverty.
Until you acknowledge these negative side effects, rather than narrow mindedly defaulting to american partisan politics, your response again further helps illustrate OPs point.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/28/why-san-mateo-county-...
Those of us fortunate enough to still be employed can help by donating to local food banks like Martha's Kitchen.
Go outside Silicon Valley and a few other metro areas, and you'll still see widespread lack of enforcement. Most of the good behavior has been voluntary. Good people/businesses listening to health guidance. Nobody is getting pulled over in rural America and fined for violating stay-at-home. If I wanted to, I could "unessentially" drive across the state of CA right now, sit down at a fully-open bar or restaurant unmasked, and nobody would lift a finger to stop me.
The only thing a lockdown can do is slow things down in order to have time to get more prepared. The notion that the virus can be extinguished by lockdowns simply is not workable. It's an idea that is attractive because it's simple but only because it ignores the logistic realities of a planet with nearly eight billion people, or on the national level, 330 million people.
Just last week Brisbane Australia had a small outbreak of 3-4 people. We locked down the whole city/region for 3 days to allow contact tracing to occur.
We've now relaxed those controls again but are preventing groups of 20+ people from gathering.
You also must wear masks in all venues where possible, including public transport.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-01/covid-updates-brisban...
It fucking works. The fact that other western countries haven't been successful is nothing to do with the method but the implementation.
It also helps we force interstate and international travellers to enter quarantine for 14 days. But when I'm hearing friends families in Texas going to Prague for Christmas, and didn't have to quarantine when they arrived OR when they went home. Is it that much of a surprise the US and Europe is in such a fucking state?
Edit: just to add another reference to larger lock downs. Brisbane or the state of Queensland has previously had lock downs that went for months previously while we sought to prevent community transmission. Now for the last 4 months we've literally gone back to normal besides international holidays. Pubs reopened. Cafes opened. No restrictions. Dancing in night clubs. No masks.
Lock downs. Work.
I see that [1] 6.7 M people visited Australia in 2020. And 80 M [2] visited the US in 2019. 18 M [3] came from Mexico in 2019.
Perhaps Australia being an island isn't important. Perhaps it is because so few people visited you and you have such low population density.
[1] https://camperchamp.com.au/statistics/australia/#:~:text=How....
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/214686/number-of-interna....
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/214765/number-of-mexican...
There's a reason why the Melbourne/Victorian outbreak which was the worst we've seen in Australia was kept to that city. Noting that exceptions were managed, we still allowed domestic travel for freight and similar so food and goods were still received and sent albeit with delays.
I'm not suggesting the US, Europe and other countries would been as successful as we have been. It's too difficult to say. But what I am saying, is the US and Europe didn't even fucking try.
One thing Australia does have in its favour, is every single state has its own separate state ran government. And each state held others accountable, there's been a lot of political mud slinging but our states enforced those borders and enforced them well. Where the Federal government did the same for international borders (with less success than state borders, e.g New South Wales and Federal Government made a mess of the Ruby Princess: https://theconversation.com/ruby-princess-inquiry-blames-nsw...).
As I mentioned in my grand fathered comment. An anecdote for sure, but I know of people who literally went to Europe from the US for a holiday over the 2020/2021 Christmas. Little to no controls were used. This is why Covid was and is spreading. There's absolutely no desire for either Europe or the US to stop international travellers and Covid spreading events.
I was galled to find the UK didn't make international travel even difficult until the more/highly infectious UK Covid variant came to be and that was only in the last few months. What the fuck was happening prior to then?
I am sympathetic. Countries like Spain have been economically destroyed by Covid because they're so reliant on tourism.
Australia's regions where tourism is the largest part of the local GDP (Far North Queensland, Cairns as an example) are really struggling and even with the Federal Government printing money like there's no tomorrow. That relief is being wound down and it's now starting to bite. But even here we provided more support to business and local people more than what I've seen from other countries internationally.
It's appalling really. There just seems so little appetite from people on the ground or the countries ruling parties to commit to lock down and providing financial support to their workers so they can afford to not go to work.
But, I abhore the 'what you did wouldn't work here' rhetoric. It's bullshit. No one fucking tried.
When it was suggested in the U.S., xenophobia quickly accompanied it.
Do the rich lock down? Nope. Look at how the athletes, people in power, and other celebrities do things when no one is watching. Rules for the little people.
Edit: on accountability, the rich were also stopped. I can't recall the gentleman but a billionaire on his private yacht back during the biggest part of lock down bounced between states on the east coast last year.
When Queensland Police found out, they went to his yacht and forced him into hotel quarantine for the duration that everyone else is expected to.
There are exceptions. Some other billionaires and wealthy members of society have sought exceptions to quarantine at home. But even then it was with the caveat that they are willing to pay for 24/7 surveillance from security/police to ensure compliance.
Other countries actually addressed those questions. The most stringent example is china: They restricted everyone to their immediate neighborhood, then delivered food and other essential goods to each neighborhood in a centrally planned system. Medical emergencies were allowed to leave a neighborhood and drive to the nearest hospital.
Not pleasant, but it worked.
The other question is: what are the alternatives? We didn't even have a vaccine prior to December. Now that we have a vaccine, there are the logistics of immunising everyone willing. Once the willing are immunised, we don't know whether it will be enough to stop the spread and mutation of the virus. On the other hand, ignoring the problem won't protect the economy. High absenteeism due to illness or self-imposed isolation of high risk individuals are the best we can hope for. There are far worse scenarios. Ignoring the problem won't protect the health care system. Even if it could handle the increased numbers without impacting mortality rate due to covid, many procedures could not be undertaken since the risk of infection would impact the outcome of those procedures.
The reality is that we are in a difficult situation. There is no perfect solution, simply solutions that improve outcomes. While vaccination may be a better long term solution, it is not a 100% solution. Also, the simplicity of lockdowns is about more than having time to get more prepared. It is about making the situation manageable. May it be through vaccination or isolation, creating a manageable situation is the key component to eradication.
Looking at the situation from the outside, your point can't be emphasised enough. I live in a region that took the initial stay-at-home orders seriously, imposed self-isolation requirements for anyone entering the region, and got numbers low enough that tracking became a realistic tool for containment. Kids go to school, safely and with relative normalcy. Adults work at home when possible and in their workplace when necessary. Most of the restrictions we face are in the form of public health regulations rather than shutdowns. When there are shutdowns, they are targeted and of limited duration. Yes, certain parts of the economy have been hit hard. On the other hand, they would have been hit hard anyway. Accepting the pain at the start of the pandemic has also protected many other parts of the economy.
My experience in WA and NV was that nobody cares. Even in "liberal" Seattle, a couple weeks after WA reopened indoor dining, we went out and couldn't find a spot in a restaurant in the entire neighborhood without a 20+ minute wait. We traveled to NV a few times in the last few months and it was always like that - everything that is allowed to be crowded, is.
Extended family in MA recently reported on the places nearby closing "due to the pandemic". Extended family in TX had a kid's birthday party at a water park. And, tangentially, MA has more cases and deaths per capita than TX...
If there were no lockdowns, the economy would have been mostly fine all along. The unemployment rate divergence across states seems to bear this out.
Hopefully the lesson learned in 2020 is that actual lockdowns work (see the countries that actually did them), but if you're too timid to enforce lockdowns (like the USA), then don't send mixed messages and do it half way. We could have 1. done a lockdown and gotten on with life after a very short period of economic hardship, or 2. ignored it and let a whole bunch of people die. Somehow our government managed to pick a worse option: 3. implement unenforced and unevenly enforced measures, which both craters the economy long term AND lets a whole bunch of people die. Great work, USA.
Moreover, I am not sure the strictness of lockdowns really correlated with outcomes - Sweden is a famous example, Belgium vs Netherlands another iirc. The only lockdowns that worked (so far) were either islands (meaning very few points of exchange that are easy to control) or totalitarian (e.g. China).
Or a little bit of both, like cops barging into somebody's home in Australia over a Facebook post. At that point I'll take liberty over safety, thank you.
Also, suicides rose, but not enough to counteract stats. Domestic violence went up too, but still not enough to counteract anything.
It seems to indicate the vast majority of places are loosening restrictions. Only one state out of 50 is currently imposing more stringent lockdowns.
It seems to me as if many politicians have never taken those things seriously, before the pandemic or during it.
I've also noticed that some politicians suddenly say that they care about those problems during lockdowns, yet they haven't pushed for any legislation to actually help mitigate those deep-seated issues. It seems to me like they're just using those issues, and the suffering of others, as tools to complain about policy they don't like.
The issue is that the solution to either of those problems upset those who finance politicians. There are powerful people who would rather have others starve, die from exposure and go without treatment for their mental illnesses than give them the resources they need to live dignified lives.
We are currently in a loose-loose situation - either way people will suffer, and different (Western democratic) societies are sharing this suffering differently. E.g. in the US, the consensus has been to trade more loss of life for personal freedom than in European countries.
I do not want you to suffer. In fact, if you are in a state of distress through no fault of your own, I do want my taxpayer money to go directly into your pockets.
This is precisely the problem. Our leaders refuse to acknowledge that their myopic quest for safety from covid at all costs has serious repercussions. They bluster on citing data from the CDC and all, but without more than a wink at the collateral damage - all the time buoyed by sycophantic supporters chanting, "follow the science!". It's as if biology is the only science, and there's no need to consult economists.
Have you actually spoken to somebody 'in power'? Go to the next council meeting, speak to your local mayor, call a local representative. We have been doing this for over a year now and in my experience they know very well what the toll of lockdowns is.
They were agreed by our politicians and doctors who's kids tutor were happy to not have to commute to their suburban estate.
I personally am very happy not to have to make decisions in this situation. Unless you have dumb luck (the pandemic is not as bad as thought originally but there was no way you could have known that) either you will get heat because businesses are dying or you will get heat because people are dying. Or both. It pretty easy to criticize what’s going on but how can you make decisions with very little input data and dire consequences either way?
Us techies want people to believe us on tech matters because we are subject matter experts but it seems we are not willing to believe what scientists in multiple countries are recommending because somehow we know better. Brazil clearly shows that ignoring the pandemic is not exactly a recipe for success. So what’s a leader to do?
One reasonable thing would be to keep businesses open as much as possible while having super strict masking and disinfection requirements. But somehow there is this correlation between people wanting businesses to be open and at the same time not wanting masks. Reminds me of the abortion situation. Abortion opponents also up often oppose sex education and contraception. So they oppose the one thing that would help their cause the most.
What would it have to look like for you to feel that politicians and others in power were taking these issues seriously?
And in fact, it is firmly established that it's the poorest people in America who tend to be the fattest. And what free school lunches often solve is not hunger but neglect. There are lots of shitty parents who don't care enough to deposit lunch money in the school account or pack lunch for their kid, or who make appalling dietary choices for their children.
I wish people would have a little more skepticism and apply some independent common sense when consuming statistics. People getting food from food banks or consuming free lunch doesn't mean that they are otherwise going hungry. It means they are accepting something offered for free. There are myriad, complicated reasons why those patterns would change. But it's a strong, unjustified conclusion to say it's because they would otherwise go hungry.
Spaghetti – $1.49 per 2,000 calories
Pinto beans – $1.39 per 2,000 calories
Whole milk – $1.37 per 2,000 calories
Peanut butter – $1.25 per 2,000 calories
White rice – $0.41 per 2,000 calories
Top ramen (beef & chicken) – $1.82 per 2,000 calories
Potatoes – $1.79 per 2,000 calories
And if you do more research, you'd see that a loaf of bread is about $2 for about 2000 calories.
The problem is that people often don't have that $3.
I mean, it must be nice to believe this, but the lived experience of millions of Americans would beg to differ.
Per the data, the US is ranked #11 in the world for food security: https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index
Compared to where? Certainly not most industrialized western countries.
I can't help but feel confused how the US can spend so much per capita on social welfare, yet I hear all those horror stories about medical costs, people having to work multiple jobs etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
The US also has a lower percentage of low-income people than almost any European country, despite having greater inequality:
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1376074233642557442
Also, the US is ranked #11 in the world for food security, ranked higher than Canada, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, France, Norway, and Australia (to name a handful): https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index
* Food deserts. Many low income neighborhoods don't have grocery stores, so residents would need to take public transport both ways with all of their groceries.
* Building on above, it takes time to cook your own food. Especially if you're riding the bus to the store, and to work, and to pick up the kids, etc.
* Education. Many low income people are taught mcdonalds is the cheapest food, and so thats what they buy. Can you blame someone for something they do not know?
* Financial planning and decision making. Same as above.
Its difficult for us to understand the low income situation. A family member of mine is a counselor at a high school for kids who get expelled. All these kids want to be lawyers, police officers, or government workers when they grow up because they've literally never seen a white collar worker in real life. They don't know that data science exists, much less step 1 in getting there.
> THE GEOGRAPHY OF POVERTY AND NUTRITION: FOOD DESERTS AND FOOD CHOICES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES
> We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments have economically meaningful effects on healthy eating. Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-related demand differences are partially explained by education, nutrition knowledge, and regional preferences. These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food deserts.
In the case of a food desert within a residential area, it's probably a lot easier to boost demand by artificially increasing supply, rather than the other way around.
> Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand.
On the topic more generally
> Dr. Sturm found no relationship between what type of food students said they ate, what they weighed, and the type of food within a mile and a half of their homes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-o...
Original study
> School and Residential Neighborhood Food Environment and Diet Among California Youth
> No robust relationship between food environment and consumption is found. A few significant results are sensitive to small modeling changes and more likely to reflect chance than true relationships.
https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2811%2900849-X...
Cost-optimization is a hard problem, which is why companies spend a lot of money for consultants to do it, and programmers spend a lot of time figuring out ways to optimize CPU/RAM, for example. So yes, it's actually very easy to end up in a situation where you would go hungry without food banks, even in America.
Excuse me but what the fuck.
Like the only reason that children get shamed for not having money for school lunch is because some people like it that way. There's no lack of resources.
This is more than embarrassing.
I suspect you think I'm joking. I'm not. "Work is better than welfare" is a common refrain. Here it is on a state government web site:
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/esa/chapter-1-engaging-parents-workf...
It's widely considered that if you feed people for free, they will have no incentive to work. They will live off of your effort, have more children who will learn from their parents that work isn't required, and possibly commit crimes to obtain more. There is a genuine fear that they will literally lead more comfortable lives than you do by working.
Again, I suspect you think I'm exaggerating, or that this is an extreme minority opinion. This is a very common opinion among Americans -- effectively universal among conservatives, and significant among progressives.
We don't choose better because the things that you think of as "better" are supported by only a minority of Americans. Most Americans think it will make us lazy, weak, and stupid.
It would also make work requirements for adults to be eligible.
I find that weird, and a little sad.
We need to abandon these protestant values because they're not doing anyone any good.
Kids do better in school when they aren't hungry, there, we don't need to discuss what incentives their parents should have because there is a good reason to feed them.
I think that a guarantee of having enough money to feed yourself is better than just about any other option. I think people individually and collectively benefit from others holding jobs, but they can also benefit from unpaid activities like family caregiving. I think the idea that having jobs is good but nobody would do it if they didn't have to, and therefore it is good to threaten people with hunger until they are motivated enough to get one, is absolutely terrible.
And creating art, and starting new software companies, and volunteering. There are lots of things that are worth doing but that nobody will pay for (or won't pay enough to live on). And people want to do them, but instead get pushed into literally any kind of work -- even work that we'd be better off automating or simply doing without.
SNAP covers 11% of Americans, and its covered benefits were expanded by 40% at the start of the pandemic (https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-...) - so it's not like no effort was put into trying to manage food insecurity under the pandemic. However, we don't have very precise metrics on how well people are covered by SNAP. Because the definition of "very low food insecurity" includes those with disruption to eating patterns at least once in a given year (from self-reported surveys), we don't have measures for sustained malnutrition or hunger.
It's not explicitly stated, but many of these examples are very, very likely to be non-legal immigrants, who do not qualify for SNAP aka food stamps. That is a huge political hairball. I'd be pretty surprised if many citizens fell into a similar category.
(with older adults I'm not sure what's going on, but my guess is communication or service literacy problems are a large part of it. ie, just getting people registered who don't know that they are eligible.)
Moreover, the chart shows that food distribution was growing prior to the pandemic, which could mean the problem was worsening (or more locations appeared, or more food was distributed per capita).
We haven't had obvious consumer price inflation because the money supply is hitting the financial class first. Instead we have seen asset prices increase rapidly. With the stimulus checks every citizen has had a taste of what has been happening with banks for a century. But, we have had price inflation. Instead of raising the price at the store most manufacturers have opted to reduce package sizes for the same price. They didn't do this for your health. The price creep up is slow enough that it can be hard to notice. I am not sure how old your are. Think back of how much a dollar bought you when you were young. Can you buy those same items for a dollar now? How about 5 dollars? This is the pernicious result of debasing the currency.
This doesn't even approach the idea that money and debt are fake anyway and are political choices that have been chosen to impoverish weaker citizens.
However, there is also a general economic crisis due to people losing their employment or business income due to the pandemic and lockdowns. People whose income has suddenly been lowered have trouble affording all sorts of basic necessities: food, clothing, household supplies, rent, utilities, health care...
Unemployment insurance can help but it may not be enough. Rent has been mitigated somewhat due to anti-eviction policies but those will expire eventually and the rent will come due.
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ https://www.charitywatch.org/
None of these issues will be improved, much less solved, through shaming and moralizing, hoping 330M individuals will make charitable contributions and recycle.
Give a can of food while doing your Christmas shopping so the super-corps can pay less tax and claim it gives to charity.
Just another systemic problem pushed to the individual, and swept under the rug.
However, while the solutions to those problems aren't being implemented, charity can help soften the blow. It would be correct to think that your charity helps somewhat, but much, much more needs to be done.
Get involved with charity, but also get involved in policy at all levels, local to federal.
To give an example about why this is important, several places I've lived have criminalized things like addiction, homelessness, feeding people who need food, and community gardens.
It was local and state activism that made so that if an overdose was called in via 911, everyone who helped the victim didn't get arrested as a result. That stopped the trend of people not getting help for overdoses, as well as disturbing trends like overdose victims being left on the side of the road.
Local and state activism helped get affordable housing measures passed, as well.
My response was neither meant to shame or moralize, but rather to give people who decide "I'd like to do something right now" a way to do it and get maximum benefit from their contribution.* Should there be other and better responses? Undeniably. Will that prevent me from responding in the meantime and telling others how they may also respond if they want to? No, it will not.
* Before anyone gets pedantic I mean maximizing a charitable contribution's impact by going to an org that uses the majority of the donation to help their target community rather than being sucked up by administrative overhead.
The gist of the article is that an enormous crisis created strains on connecting people and free meals, but various entities stepped up to the plate and came up with flexible solutions (school districts delivering meals on school buses or making food available for pickup, cities paying restaurants to feed seniors, expansion of federal funding, food banks and churches expanding their food operations, etc.).
The title could've been "US system of free and subsidized meals bends but does not break", but that just doesn't get clicks, does it? Negative title creates negative emotions, which leads to negative thought patterns (America sucks!!), and then the cycle continues.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...