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Comment by inetknght | Hacker News Reader

I count myself to be lucky in the top 20% of earners in America and have friends who also fit in the range. I've met a lot of people who struggle to put food on the table whose income is in the middle 50%. A lot of them have the same complaint: they don't qualify for help because they make too much. But they also struggle to pay their bills because they don't make enough.

I don't know where you think 12% of Americans "struggle from food insecurity". But I don't trust your numbers because my anecdata says different.

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It may be that the definition of "food insecurity" is broader than your intuition.

Per Federal Reserve studies, ~10-15% of US households have no discretionary income after all essential expenses, which includes food. For people in this financial state, any unplanned expense will cut into their already limited budget for food. Even though they have food, and won't starve, this risk is likely sufficient to be deemed "food insecure". However, in practice this is often offset by the myriad USDA and other food subsidy programs.

We received a lot of free food from the US government when I was a child, and I doubt the programs are less generous today. I definitely would have met the definition of "food insecure" at the time even though we always had food.

I'm not saying any of the people you've described fall into this category, but: there are plenty of people who struggle to pay the bills but not through lack of income. They struggle to pay the bills while always having the latest iPhone, designer clothes, drinking $7 lattes every day, etc.

On the other hand, I know people who spend less than $7 per day on their entire food budget. They receive just barely enough money per month to cover rent and food (and a little left over to pay for wifi and a small savings for computer upgrades) but they don't struggle from food insecurity. I live in Canada, though, so I don't know about the welfare situation in the US.

The 12% is close to the USDA ERS survey finding that 10.5% U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2020.

That might be a place to begin investigating the difference between your lived experience and more systematic data collection efforts.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...

I mean just think for a second. There is a maximum for 4 people for every person in the top 20%. It literally cannot be “dozens” even if the entire bottom 80% was struggling for food.

Yes, in the same way that the average energy density in the universe is zero, sure. But there's parts of the country where the local averages are much more skewed relative to the rest of the country.

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