The US Could Feed the World, Yet Many Struggle to Feed Themselves

America produces the greatest amount of excess in the entire world. Hundreds of millions of American laborers and businesses work to produce and consume a larger quantity of wealth and surplus than the world has ever seen. Meanwhile, about 40 million of those laborers live below the poverty line. 

A developed, productive society should produce adequate living conditions for all its citizens. John Rawls’s veil of ignorance offers a useful analogy for deciding what level of inequality a society ought to tolerate. Essentially, he argues that we should structure society so that we would be willing to accept the position of its lowest member. That is, even the poorest or least favorably endowed member would still live a life with acceptable living conditions. 

So, would you be willing to accept the living conditions of the least endowed member of American society? 
There is no question that America produces enough. It is a matter of policy and politics to decide whether or not the American economy is working for everyone. 

The economy has been growing healthily for the better part of the last century. The sharing of that wealth, however, is increasingly owned by less and less of the population. In fact, the entire middle class (defined as the middle three-fifths of income classes) now owns less wealth than the top one percent. 

The COVID-19 crisis only exacerbated poverty and inequality issues. In 2020, the official poverty rate increased by 1 percentage point (roughly 3 million people). 

However, this trend was reversed following receipt of government stimulus. The Supplemental Poverty Measure measures post-tax income including stimulus payments. After this aid was distributed, poverty fell 2.6 percentage points (over 6 million people). 

Government aid aimed to satisfy Rawls’s condition of elevating the living condition of the lowest earners. Despite its modest success, over 30 million Americans remained impoverished and below the quantified ‘adequate’ standard for human life while inequality trends persisted.  As the median earnings of the working-class fell, the top 1 percent of earners gained $4 trillion, or about 35% of all new wealth. 

The top 1 percent is defined as those who make upward of roughly $500,000 annually. The US poverty line is set at $12,800 annual income. 

There’s a lot of wealth in America and most of it sits at the top. As of June 2021, the total net worth of all US households amounts to $141.7 trillion. If that wealth were evenly distributed among the entire US population, it would equate to roughly $430,000 per person, or over $1 million per average household. 

This wealth, however, is not evenly distributed. A full third is held by 1 percent of earners and the bottom 50 percent own less than 2 percent. These statistics are even more egregious when you zoom in on a small handful of top US earners.
US billionaires, comprising a small group of 614 Americans (.00018 percent of the US population), boast roughly $5 trillion in collective wealth. This is sixty percent more than the bottom half of US earners who collectively possess roughly $3 trillion. 

The coronavirus pandemic intensified the funneling of US wealth as well. As low- and middle-income earners saw pay cuts and lost their jobs, the wealth of US billionaires grew by over seventy percent. 

US laborers and citizens collectively contribute to the bustling American economy but increasingly have proportionately less to show for it. This unfortunate reality is underscored by the lack of sufficient social safety measures. In a society that could adequately feed the world, nearly 40 million Americans struggle to feed themselves. 

Alex Day

​Alex is a third year Batten student from Williamsburg, Virginia. Alex’s policy areas of interest include privacy, inequality, and foreign affairs.

The views expressed above are solely the author’s and are not endorsed by the Virginia Policy Review, The Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, or the University of Virginia. Although this organization has members who are University of Virginia students and may have University employees associated or engaged in its activities and affairs, the organization is not a part of or an agency of the University. It is a separate and independent organization which is responsible for and manages its own activities and affairs. The University does not direct, supervise or control the organization and is not responsible for the organization’s contracts, acts, or omissions.