Feed the hungry or feed political ads?

[tackattack]

I read a news article at Fox News about John legend and mark Cuban having a twit-fest over where people should spend their money. Cuban was advocating spending money on food banks and John suggested both.

While I think initially that Cuban was being short sighted I thought more about it and he’s right. While hunger is a big problem and it would take government level action to decrease the need for more charity, he does make a good point. Feeding money into a system ( senate run off in GA in this case) that is just trying to retain/gain power, even when the purpose is to better the system, ignores the Impactful imperative for self sustainment And greed within that system. He claims defunding the politics and shunting that money into the need will be more impactful.

What I hope he doesn’t miss is that on the class distribution he’s in the one percent. I hope he still feels the same about defunding the 1% and distributing their wealth to the needy. Thoughts from the group on prioritizing needs or long term vs short term solutions?

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm completely unsurprised when the one percent argue over which of their tax avoidance options are the most useful. Nevermind that food charity doesn't work, literally can't work, and has been disastrous. Anything to avoid those taxes.

[Brian37]

I read a news article at Fox News about John legend and mark Cuban having a twit-fest over where people should spend their money. Cuban was advocating spending money on food banks and John suggested both.

While I think initially that Cuban was being short sighted I thought more about it and he’s right. While hunger is a big problem and it would take government level action to decrease the need for more charity, he does make a good point. Feeding money into a system ( senate run off in GA in this case) that is just trying to retain/gain power, even when the purpose is to better the system, ignores the Impactful imperative for self sustainment And greed within that system. He claims defunding the politics and shunting that money into the need will be more impactful.

What I hope he doesn’t miss is that on the class distribution he’s in the one percent. I hope he still feels the same about defunding the 1% and distributing their wealth to the needy. Thoughts from the group on prioritizing needs or long term vs short term solutions?

Of course we should feed the hungry, but I am sick of Billionaires using times like this to hide behind the long term fact that livable wages would make more people independent. Corporate charity is just PR, it helps some, but livable wages from the start would help far more.

[The Grand Nudger]

Counterintuitively (and acknowledging that it's a great idea for a whole lot of other reasons unrelated to hunger), a wage increase in the us would lead to further starvation - but if a wage increase in the us would give us another moral safety valve to feel better while avoiding the problem, as charity has done - we'll do that instead of resolving the issue...and it's not like we couldn't use the money.

People starve despite having the cash in their pockets to purchase a given product. They starve despite having the cash even when they produce the product, themselves, in their own community... for export to communities like ours - communities with greater purchasing power. This is why increasing the purchasing power of our community will exacerbate rather than alleviate this specific suffering. They starve because the producers take a bigger loss from diverting their goods from the more profitable market than they stand to gain by selling them in the starving one.

That's it. That's the whole thing. The entire problem. The Wife convinced this entire manufacturing region to fund a food bank - and even build showers for homeless (or transient) employees...of which she has many. They have a gas pool, they have a disaster pool. All of this helps the subs involved attract employees, retain employees - just generally make more money. It's been plugging along doing what it does..but..it hasn't made a dent in hunger or homelessness and can't. It just works wonders for their labor costs, which is how she sold them on it in the first place.

[Divinity]

Many people could soon be homeless without government assistance. Given that Mitch McConnell wants to do everything in his power (as he has over the last several months) to make sure that people don't get help (Unless they're a corporation, then its different!) I'd say the political donations are worth a bit more at the moment. Imagine if we didn't give so much fucking power to an old decrepit confederate memorial come to life!

[tackattack]

It’s about what we as a society want to value in our corporations, constructs and individuals. We have a generation of greedy consumers. Did life imitate corporate structure or vice versa? Is altruism a better goal than empathy, and is it strong enough to overcome greed?

[Silver]

As much as those Sally Struthers commercials annoyed me, I would rather see those type of commercials than political commercials.

[The Grand Nudger]

Reducing it to simple greed may also send us in the wrong direction. The people who send their goods to a specific market have responsibilities, as do the people who then consume the product sent to that market.

No one grows a cucumber out of simple greed, no one buys a cucumber out of simple greed, and no one in growing or buying that cucumber intends to fuck some other guy over out of simple greed or anything else. The system we have in place constrains the poor to fuck their fellow poor by a set of perverse incentives - but those same incentives are palpably designed to keep the cost of the product low and therefore attainable to the poor. We cnt fight each other over something we cant have, you see, lol. We might start gutting someone else for a change.

[arewethereyet]

The grocery store where I shop has food drives a few times a year that benefit people in this community. Whenever they have those running I purchase one package each time I go shopping. It's immediate help for people who may just be my neighbor.

Now through Christmas is pretty standard but they do others throughout the year as well as the same type of program to help supply kids with school supplies.

My husband and son used to both get a turkey from Pepsi for Thanksgiving when they both worked there. We certainly didn't need two so one always went to the food pantry that's just outside of our subdivision. Clothing and household items go to the domestic abuse shelter. I'd rather give what little I can to the people around here.

Most politicians aren't wondering where their next meal is coming from.

[Angrboda]

I'm confused about the question. Are you asking about food vs ads specifically, or more generally about priorities. Toward the latter, we should pursue priorities on a democratic basis so long as they don't directly conflict. As to the former, the original goal of advertising was to help create an informed electorate who would then elect leaders who wisely and efficiently implemented the public's priorities. Admittedly it has in some sense failed, but one shouldn't judge a philosophy by its abuse. An informed electorate is important, if for no other reason than that the hungry are less likely to be fed by leaders who are responding to less rational impulses of the electorate.