When Violence Has a Benevolent Face: The Paradox of Hunger in the World's Wealthiest Democracy

Abstract

During the last two decades, Americans initially discovered that millions of fellow-citizens were going hungry, then acted to virtually eliminate the problem, and, in the 1980s, learned that hunger has reappeared in epidemic proportions. Hunger, particularly in a wealthy democracy, is most appropriately seen as a form of institutionalized violence, the product of ideologies that fail to distribute national abundance in a manner that achieves the possible goal of preventing hunger. The return of hunger to the United States is associated with economic and tax policies that have reallocated income distribution from poor and middle-income groups to the wealthy, and with a concomitant reluctance to utilize the federal government to protect needy citizens from undernutrition associated with growing economic deprivation.