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Comment by INTPenis | Hacker News Reader

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One billion dollars is $3 per US resident. That’ll get everybody one small fry at McDonald’s.

We don't need to get everybody a small fry. We just need to give it to the ones that actually go hungry, and it'll sure go further if it's not wasted on the already comfortable.

One in 8 households experienced food insecurity at some point.

So that’s $24 per person experiencing food insecurity. So a couple big mac meals.

The point being that a billion dollars is mostly nothing for a population of 330 million.

Social security spent 1.4 trillion last year.

“We shouldn’t do this thing, we should increase social program spending by 0.06% instead!” is not a good argument.

I don't know, if you spend $20k per person feeding them for a year, that one billion can feed 50,000 people.

We shouldn't feed 50,000 people and do this other thing instead should probably have a very strong argument.

Yeah, we spent ~$150 billion in 2023 on national feeding-people programs. SNAP, WIC, and others. Any single person earning less than $1,133 per month gets SNAP (modern day food stamps), higher for larger household sizes.

42 million Americans get SNAP benefits (additional people in other programs)

Once again, "let's increase this existing program by 0.1%!" is not a very convincing argument.

I am not going to look for any data, but I suspect that not all the population “takes drugs to escape their miserable reality”.

I know social security is difficult but guys, come on. Let’s make an effort in the counter argument at least.

Safety nets aren’t the root problem. Atomization along many dimensions at once is the root problem.

That's a very abstract statement.

Atomize - to break into small pieces

Along many dimensions at once - in lots of ways

Things breaking into small pieces in lots of ways is the real problem, apparently. What specifically are you talking about?

People getting overly independent, no families or communities, lack of societal cohesion, basically.

At least that's how I read it, I don't think it explains everything though. Beware of anyone too sure about the causes for complex problems.

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