Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 40

In
ndex (1973=100)

Food security—freedom from hunger—is indivisible from economic security. What Americans are looking for today is a fair deal, a social contract that will cover everyone from childhood through adulthood and into retirement. The New Deal helped to restore public faith
in government by making it clear that government was on the side of ordinary citizens, and
that’s what the public is looking for from government today.
Concern for the common good, the common “weal,” is an endemic feature of the American
character. It was so important at the founding of our country that four of the newly unified states
kept the title “commonwealth”
rather than calling themselves
Figure i.12 Change in Real Hourly Wages for Men by Wage
“states.” But a common weal

Percentile, 1973-2009
seems to exist mainly in history
150
books. Prosperity for a few, not
for all, is the track we’re on now.
95th
140
Conditions for all members of
society can be improved through
130
90th
proven investments. The Hunger
80th
Report highlights a number of
120
these, such as the minimum
wage, early education, improve110
ments in human resources and
50th
100
physical infrastructure, nutrition
10th
programs such as SNAP, and
20th
90
other federal programs such as
Social Security, the EITC, and
80
1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009
assistance with college tuition.
Just as corporations seek to
maximize their return on investSource: Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz (2012), The State of
Working America, 12th edition, Economic Policy Institute. EPI analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
ment, so should our country’s
economic agenda build on
policies and programs that have been shown to have multiplier effects, producing the highest
returns for the common good.

The Way Forward
There is no good reason for hunger in the United States—and yet hunger persists, ruining
lives and crippling the nation. It is a political problem: the lack of political will to take hunger
seriously, to make it a national priority, and to develop a comprehensive plan to end it once
and for all. Every day people travel to the Capitol in Washington, DC, and to state capitols,
and tell elected officials what they want them to do to make America a stronger nation. In a
democracy, if enough people demand something, politicians will act, or else they are replaced.
It is important that constituents become more vocal about making hunger and poverty here
at home a priority, calling for a commitment and leadership from policymakers. Setting a
goal to end hunger—a goal with a deadline—will help our elected leaders do the right thing.
It is a means of holding them and ourselves accountable. We must do this together. That is
the only way it will get done.
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