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Comment by rienbdj | Hacker News Reader

Time is extremely scarce for poor people. Cooking healthy and cheap meals means research, planning and batch meal prep. This also requires being a forward-looking state of mind.

Personally, I think the government should be investigating ways to raise income levels for the poorest. I don’t know what form this should take - UBI? negative income tax? - but fix that and the rest would follow for many people.

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I generally support measures like increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit but I'm skeptical that would really solve this particular problem. Poor people in other countries manage to cook healthy and cheap meals from a few staple ingredients. There's no research or planning involved, they just get on with it.

Lack of calories is not an issue in the USA. There are redundant pathways to get the staples people need, food banks, stamps, ect.

The few percent of the population that suffer insecurity do so as a symptom of other complex causes. Children of addicts and mentally unstable will struggle to get dinner, even if there is a food pantry down the block. A homeless schizophrenic living out of a backpack wont always have food with them.

For reasons like this, there is a floor to the practical floor to the elimination of hunger.

Also, if you havent, I would recommend reading through a food insecurity survey if you haven't. The definition is broader than most realize.

If you look at malnutrition rates in the US, I think you get a much clearer picture.

And what would increasing the income do for changing the state of mind, or for better time management ?

Are you suggesting people are poor because they don't have good time management?

Many of them, yes. And a plethora of other complex problems. Severe trauma, drug and alcohol addiction, low executive function are all in the mix.

This isn't an attempt at blaming, just a statement that there are significant hurdles.

There are certainly “innocent” poor if you want to use the term - those who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own and are working hard to get out of it.

And just as certainly being poor can be a result of bad choices and other things. Denying that either is possible is a recipe for disaster.

What we should do is work on the things that will work for those who need help and help them improve their skills or provide them a structured environment where are those skills are not necessary.

FWIW when you look at other countries, there are many out there where the word "poor" implies much less wealth than it does in US, yet poor people in those countries routinely cook their own meals. Indeed, historically it is the norm for basically everybody but the topmost layer of society.

Speaking as an immigrant, from what I've seen in US, it is mostly a cultural issue, not lack of time or ingredient availability.

UBI is a good idea but orthogonal to all this.

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