Food Stamps For Thought, Part 6

Via Digby, the LA Times reports some 20% of Californians had trouble feeding their households at some point in 2010.

One in five Californians struggled to afford enough food for themselves and their families last year, according to a new report by the Food Research and Action Center.

The rate in California was slightly higher than the national average of 18%.

Jim Weill, president of the Washington-based nonprofit, said the figures underscore the need for a strong nutrition safety net — including food stamps and school meals — for families that continue to struggle as the economy begins to recover.

"While the nation's Great Recession may have technically ended in mid-2009, it has not yet ended for many of the nation's households," Weill said in a statement Thursday. "For them, 2010 was the third year of a terrible recession that is widely damaging the ability to meet basic needs."

The report was based on data collected for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which conducted telephone interviews with more than 350,000 people in 2010, including 35,543 people in California.

Just over 20% of California respondents answered yes to the question: "Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?"

That places the state at No. 16 in the nation for food hardship, the report said. The highest rate was recorded in Mississippi, where nearly 28% said they did not always have enough money to buy food. The lowest rate, just over 10%, was in North Dakota.

It's that 18% national average that bothers me.  Roughly one in five Americans couldn't buy food in 2010.  The last 30 years of income inequality is catching up to us in our time of need.  We have people going hungry and the austerity battle is already over, it's just a question of how much more average Americans will suffer as we cut taxes on corporations and the rich and cut spending on programs to help the least of us.

Ireland, Greece, and the UK have shown us brutal austerity plans don't solve the problem, they only make it far, far worse.  And yet, that's exactly what we're heading for at a time when food, gas, and basic expenses are ratcheting up in price.

It's going to get messy and fast, folks.  Strap in.