I think those in poverty have an awful lot less ways to supplement bought food these days, they are largely legislated out of foraging in any meaningful way. So I think actually a large percentage will starve to death or be in prison.
The notion that people will simply roll over and literally die for profit margins is absurd. The system will break and be rebuilt in that situation.
Yeah, I don't know why people seem to not understand this.
There are so many guns in America.
If the shit really hits the fan economically and a significant amount of people can't legally afford to buy their next 3 meals, there is likely to be a lot of excess deaths, but many of them will not be from starvation.
the guns will be user to kill each other, not the elite
in a way, doing the elite work, no need to kill the underclass, they will take care of pruning itself
Then they simply starve to death.
The "preppers" are some of the worst too. They'll be shooting people before that week is even done. Meanwhile their absurd "stash" only actually pencils out to about a month of supplies, then they also starve because they never seemed to notice that you have to start farming at some point, and therefore, have to be friendly and supportive with your neighbors instead of shooting them at the first sign of trouble.
The system never has to rebuild. Stable points aren't always at global inflection points. Feudalism can go back to reigning for the rest of human existence.
I'm much more worried about what housing looks like in the future.
I've done social-work–adjacent stuff and I know a lot of NGOs in my country are quite strained (of course, probably housing more than food, so I don't disagree that might be more of a concern). I imagine it wouldn't be too different in America.