If there is a problem of Children actually starving.
That is a child endangerment scenario in which CPS needs to be called.
If you're talking about actual child starvation,
the truth is it does not take that much money to feed a child.
I know I have three of them.
You should be feeding your child before you feed yourself.
>> Ben Shapiro had a fascinating and strange take on what should happen to
children who are suffering as a result of starvation suffering
because their families don't have enough money to feed them.
And so let's listen to more of his argument in context and
then I'll break down what the reality is.
>> If government can protect kids from the sick radical election,
they also protect kids from hunger when it makes sense to strengthen food stamps and
have school lunch be free since some kids are in school lunch debt.
Well, I mean, if you are a school lunches are not going to solve the problem of
child hunger at any serious level.
If there is a problem of children actually starving,
that is a child endangerment scenario in which CPS needs to be called.
If you're talking about an actual child starvation,
the truth is it does not take that much money to feed a child.
I know I have three of them.
You should be feeding your child before you feed yourself.
It's that simple.
There's a much deeper problem at work than school lunches
if kids are legitimately starving.
>> So I think the deeper problem with Ben Shapiro's argument is that he immediately
thought of this issue through the lens of his own experience in life as someone who
is incredibly wealthy, as someone who has never had any issues in providing food for
his three children, which is great.
I wish every American was in that position, but they're not,
a lot of Americans are not in that position.
In fact, child hunger declined in America during the pandemic.
Thanks to the Universal School lunch program that was implemented,
that meant that school lunches were free for students and believe it or
not, there are many students across the country who rely on free school
lunches in order to get the nutrition they need to survive.
It sounds crazy to someone who might be incredibly wealthy,
but it is the truth and this is the result of a system that has led
to stagnant wages for several decades since the 1970s.
This is the situation that we deal with when
we have no labor power in this country.
And Congress that refuses to represent the best interests of its constituents
because they're literally paid by corporate interests not to,
I mean, it's so obvious when you look at the reality of the matter,
when you look at poverty in America, even before the pandemic, before the pandemic,
the Federal Reserve put out a report indicating that nearly half of
the country, half of Americans couldn't even afford a $400 emergency.
So, while it might be super easy for some people like Ben Shapiro to
provide the food, their children need to be happy, healthy and thrive.
Unfortunately, there are a ton of Americans who are not in that position.
So let's get to the details, what's really transpiring with hunger in America,
particularly hunger towards children and
what would it look like if we just snatch children away from their families,
if they were too poor to provide the food their kids need?
Because let me tell you something with all these abortion restrictions in red states,
they're gonna be a lot of poor people ending up with children they can't afford.
And what's the proposal here to take the kids away and put them in foster care?
Which by the way,
if the concern here is government resources going toward social programs or
government programs, how do you think child protective services is funded?
So instead of putting more funding towards child protective services,
we could, make sure the kids have the food they need to survive.
But anyway, let me give you the details.
So school lunches are carried out in the United States by the national school lunch
program.
They provide both low cost or free lunches to children.
And they operate in 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools.
Now in fiscal year 2019, before the Coronavirus pandemic,
the program provided 4.9 Million, I'm sorry,
4.9 billion lunches at a total of about $14.2 billion.
Now, you have to be extremely poor in order to qualify for free school lunches.
How poor exactly?
Well, according to the USDA, students from households with incomes at or
below 130% of the federal poverty line can receive a free lunch.
That is incredibly poor.
What do I mean by that?
Well, 130% of the poverty line for
a three person family is $2,495 a month or
about $29,940 a year.
The poverty level is higher, obviously for bigger families, meaning if you
have more kids, the number could be higher in terms of your annual income and
you still qualify, but obviously you have more kids and that's an incredibly
heavy expense as we know raising children is very very expensive.
Now, with that said, how far does $29,940 go in
a country that is grappling with inflation.
Now, prior to these inflationary pressures,
you can imagine that that income is incredibly low and
incredibly difficult to get by on particularly if you have children.
Now, prices of goods and services are currently at a 40 year high leaving
consumers with less money in their budgets for things like savings and
debt repayment.
Americans devoted 9.1% of their incomes to expenditures in 2021
than in 2020 according to the most recent consumer expenditure survey.
And that's according to reporting by bank rate and
inflation hit food prices pretty hard.
Something we've been talking about on this show a lot.
Something that the right wing actually loves talking about because they want to
blame it on Biden.
So when it's convenient, they love talking about how crippling inflation is,
especially at the grocery stores.
But then when it comes to funding government programs that help starving
children all of a sudden, I mean, if you can't provide food for your kids,
maybe we take them away.
Think about that.
Now, in 2021 households in the lowest income quintile
spent an average of $4,875 on food representing
get a load of this 30.6% of their income.
That is insane.
While households in the highest income quintile spent an average of
$13,975 on food representing 7.6% of their income.
Meaning the wealthiest individuals in this country as a result of their extreme
wealth, obviously spent a far smaller portion of their earnings on groceries.
So the food prices have obviously hit the poorest Americans the hardest.
Now, why don't we take a look at the price changes for food at home categories?
Okay.
So this is from the USDA, the Economic research service using
US Department of Labor and Bureau Bureau of Labor statistics data.
And here's what they found.
Average annual food at home prices were 11.4% higher in 2022 versus 2021.
Now, for context, the 20 year historical level of
retail food price inflation is 2% per year.
But in 2022 prices for all food categories increased faster
than their historical averages from 2002 to 2021.
Prices for nine food categories increased by more than 10% in 2022,
egg prices rose most sharply by 32.2%.
Prices for fats and oils increased by 18.5%.
Poultry increased by 14.6%.
Other meats increased by 14.2%.
You guys get the point, right?
You guys get the point.
So the economic situation for most Americans,
nearly half of Americans was already precarious already awful
prior to the pandemic, the pandemic made things far worse.
In fact, here's a profile on one family and what they experienced.
>> Is there a night that you and your husband go without food just to make sure
the kids have food >> Most of the time.
We will make sure that they have had their portion and
maybe another portion before we would eat.
And me and dad have kinda gotten to the point of now that we only eat maybe
once a day.
Alright y'all, let's settle down.
>> Meet the Gray family, three kids with special needs dad,
a dishwasher and Shawna, a server.
>> So just to get a little bit of food is hard deal nowadays.
>> Both of them lost their jobs when restaurants were forced to close.
>> Some milk this morning.
>> Entering their apartment is humbling.
>> Inequality exploded further during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Americans now have record consumer debt, record household debt and
we keep hearing about like, but they got that stimulus money though.
But if you take a look at their finances, they're struggling.
And so the idea of punishing them by taking their kids away due
to their inability to afford food,
enough food to keep them happy and healthy is insane to me.
And also would be a massive expense if that's all you care about.
If you care about we don't want to fund more government stuff.
How do you make the case that taking kids away from their parents and
having child protective services deal with them is cost effective?
I mean it's incredibly cruel and wrong.
You're punishing the poor by taking their kids away.
But on top of that, it would also be incredibly expensive with that said, let's
also talk about other cost burdens that everyone has to deal with in this country.
But it's particularly difficult if you're only raking in a little more than
$29,000 a year in a three person household.
A report from Redfin for instance, shows that nationally listed rents for
available apartments rose 15% between June of 2021 and 2022.
And the median listed rent for
an average apartment rose above $2,000 a month for the first time.
So let's just quickly do the math $2,000 a month for rent.
How much are you gonna spend on rent in one year $24,000?
So if you are bringing in household income of $29,400,
whatever the number was $29,940, I believe it was.
If you're spending $24,000 of that on rent,
how do you have anything left for all the other expenses including food?
But look, I mean that's average, that's the average cost of rent.
So let me be fair.
Let's get to some specifics on the cheapest rent you could possibly find in
the United States.
If you're really poor, you can't afford food for your kids.
Maybe you move to a place that has cheaper rent.
So you've got Houston, here's the top 10 places to go.
If you're looking for the cheapest rent in Houston,
Texas on average is about 1,349, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1,322.
Let's go all the way down to the very cheapest place to live
according to Clippinger, which compiled this list.
That's Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, $892.
And that's if you can find the absolute cheapest rent in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Okay.
So if a family living 130% below the poverty line is
somehow able to score the absolute cheapest rent on average,
they would still need to spend $10,000,
on rent per year when they're only, bringing in.
Let's just round it out $30,000 a year.
You get what I'm saying?
Like, okay, so that housing expense is out of control, food prices.
Thanks to inflation, out of control.
All of this is out of control.
You gotta deal with utilities, you gotta deal with transportation, clothing and
yes food.
So believe it or not, if you're well to do and
you think like school lunches, what do school lunches do?
School lunches aren't saving people from hunger.
You'd be mistaken.
A ton of students rely on free lunch at schools.
I'd love to live in a country that doesn't have a rigged economic system.
I'd love to live in a country where the Federal Reserve doesn't get to put its
thumb on the scale and
drive some of the insane inequalities that we've seen in this country.
I'd love to live in a country where labor unions have a seat at the table and
are able to negotiate for far better working conditions and wages.
So people don't need to rely on government programs to close the gap.
But we don't live in that country partly because of the policies that the right
wing and just let's just say, corporate democrats as well, like corporate
politicians have fueled, that favors the wealthy that favors corporations and
puts all of us at a disadvantage.
We gotta be real and we got to take care of our fellow Americans.
And it just really pains me to see that anyone would advocate for
taking children away from their parents if they have this
inability to provide sustenance for their kids.
Why do they have that inability?
Maybe we need to address that in the first place?