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Time magazine has a great photo essay entitled “What the World Eats,” which shows families of various sizes from around the world surrounded by the food they eat in one week. Not unexpectedly, there are some huge differences in types and amounts of food. Cost in US$ is provided, but not adjusted for local income levels. What was interesting to me was not so much the cost of food, since the article provided no real comparative data on the topic, but rather the kinds of food and the packaging. Many families–not just American families–were surrounded by dozens of bottles, cans, and plastic packages. Compared to most other countries, Americans had very few vegetables, especially unprocessed vegetables. Fast food meals were represented with the assorted disposable bags, boxes, and cups in which they are sold. Interestingly, Corn Flakes appeared on many peoples’ tables.
Obviously, one family’s table can scarcely be thought to represent the way every family eats, but the essay does really underscore (for me) the dark side of “progress” and technology. I bet the refugee family is the most likely to reuse their burlap packaging for next week’s meals.
Time essay: What the World Eats
Barbara Ehrenreich’s blog is always a good poverty read; for those of you not familiar with her work, she is the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America and other fascinating books on the state of the American working class. Her post today caught my eye, as it dealt with immigrant issues related to taxes and public benefits. Among the valuable information she cited was a small quote from a larger fact sheet by the San Diego ACLU. The information on the ACLU website is so compelling that I wanted to repost it in its entirety here. [Quoted from here.]
- The nation’s 34 million immigrants collectively pay more in taxes than they consume in public services and benefits, according to a National Research Council study. Washington Post, April 15, 2006
- Undocumented immigrants annually pay an estimated $7 billion more than they take out into Social Security, and $1.5 billion more into Medicare. (New York Times, April 15, 2005.) A study by the National Academy of Sciences also found that tax payments generated by immigrants outweighed any costs associated with services used by immigrants.
- All consumers, including the undocumented, pay state sales and consumption taxes when making purchases. Additionally, whether they own their own home or taxes are passed through to rents, everyone pays the same real estate taxes. The majority of state and local costs of schooling and other services are funded by these taxes.
- The Social Security Administration has estimated that three quarters of undocumented immigrants pay payroll taxes, and they annually contribute $8.5 billion in Social Security funds that they will be unable to claim.
- The Internal Revenue Service issues ‘Taxpayer Identification Numbers’ (ITIN) to allow undocumented workers to pay income taxes. Since 1996, 9.2 million of these numbers have been assigned. In 2005 alone, 1.2 million people paid taxes using this number. (Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2006.) At congressional hearings in July 2006, the commissioner of the IRS testified that between 1996 and 2003, undocumented immigrants paid almost $50 billion in federal taxes.
- According to the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, ITINs and conventional mortgages taken out by undocumented workers could be worth as much as $60 billion over the next five years; that is, immigrants also pay property taxes. Business Week, July 13, 2005
Food for thought.
For all you Oregonians out there, today’s Election Day. It’s obviously too late to mail in your ballot, so take it to a drop box near you. You can even vote the old-fashioned way, in a booth, at your county elections office. But why do that when you can fill it out at home with the comfort of the internet’s help?
If you’re not from Oregon, our elections process might sound a little strange. We, in fact, have universal vote-by-mail in the state. In 1998, Oregon voters passed a ballot measure requiring statewide vote-by-mail. Ballots are sent out two weeks in advance of elections, and can be turned in at any point between then and Election Day. Results, of course, are not tallied until voting closes on Election Day.
The ballots themselves are sent out with two envelopes: one, a secrecy envelope that does not identify the voter. The ballot is placed in the secrecy envelope and then that envelope is placed in the return envelope. This one has the voter’s name and address, and it must be signed to be valid. Signatures on every envelope are checked against the signature on file with the voter’s registration. Around 75% of Oregon’s population that is eligible to vote is registered, and turnout for the general election last fall was 70.8% of registered voters. Bill Bradbury, our Secretary of State, wrote a great op ed in the WaPo about our vote-by-mail system [link]. If you’re not up on your American government knowledge, our state SoSs are generally in charge of overseeing elections.
(In a side note to Oregon voters, Bradbury is done serving in 2008, and we’ll be electing a new SoS–a really critical post if we want to continue to have fair elections–you know, elections in which minorities are not mysteriously kept from voting due to machine breakdown in low-income neighborhoods and in which all the eligible ballots are counted.)
As of a moment ago, voter turnout in Multnomah County, where I live, was 17%. I checked to see whether my ballot had been received last night, and it had not yet been counted in the total. What’s really great about this system is that you can make sure that your ballot made it in, and political groups know whom to target for contact before the deadline. Not that I like political calls myself, but…it does help get out the vote.
Oregon Secretary of State website
Vote-by-Mail links on SoS site
Multnomah County Elections 2007 turnout
Wikipedia Vote-by-Mail article
After receiving an email from a friend who wondered if I’d survived the food stamp challenge, I realized that a final update might be in order. The media continue to report on Oregon’s governor’s participation in the challenge, which I’m glad to see. I’ll believe we’ve talked about it enough the day that every family in the US has adequate food resources and doesn’t need to fear poverty-induced hunger.
For my part, I did pretty much make it through the week. I didn’t go over budget, but that was in large part due to two factors: free food and long work hours.
I started the week with free food last Sunday. I ended the week with free food Friday night and all day Saturday; I attended Renn Fayre at Reed College on Friday night, and Saturday I drove home to Roseburg to visit my family–in the process spending $40 on gasoline to get to my food for the day. Lunch on Wednesday was compliments of my boyfriend.
The other factor that helped me stay within my budget was the fact that I worked around 70 hours last week. (This also kept me from writing regularly about the food stamp challenge.) A lot of meals simply didn’t happen because I didn’t have time to eat, and when I did, it was with an awareness of the functional role of food in getting things done. Another bowl of black beans or yogurt was simply a step in being able to get my grant work plans done. If I’d had more free time, I could have had more variety in my diet–and maybe used more of the fresh foods I had on hand. The tomatoes, potatoes, onion, and chilis are all left, and most of the cheese is as well. I ate oatmeal, yogurt, apples, and black beans for most of my meals last week, although generally not all at once.
I think that the coincidence of working so much during the food stamp challenge may actually have been helpful. It was as if I was working a couple jobs, which is where a lot of low-income people are at. Last fall, at a Portland City Club debate between Kulongoski and Republican candidate Ron Saxton, Gov. Kulongoski misspoke when listing his accomplishments as governor and wound up saying “more people have more jobs.” It was kind of funny at the time, but it’s true in Oregon and elsewhere. More people do have more jobs, and that impacts their lives on a basic level while still failing to move them out of poverty.
Chris did well; in fact, he had enough money left that he bought donuts for the office on Friday. More free food for me.
I’m fortunate to have access to a microwave, refrigerator, and sink at my work. This means that it’s pretty convenient to bring a variety of food, store it, and heat it when I am hungry.
Last night, after a mere 10-hour day at work, I was home early enough to make a pot of black beans. I also used a couple of the tortillas and a handful of cheese to make quesadillas, which is somehow exciting after having a LOT of oatmeal these past few days. The cost of my lunch today, a bowl of black bean soup, must be around 20 cents, if that. The problem is that it took me four days to find time to cook the dry beans.
Anyway, back to eating my bean soup.
Due to my work, which at this time of the year has me working on grant renewals until late at night, I haven’t cooked any black beans. I’m now in the fourth day of the challenge, and the diet is getting decidedly dodgy.
Last time I talked about the food I had on hand, I had $8.26 remaining. I have since decided to charge myself $1.26 for a pound or so of bulk oatmeal I had on hand; I’ve been eating that and yogurt at work, although I did remember to bring apples when left from home this morning.
Then, yesterday, which was a really long day, saw me hit the food budget again for $2–I got some fast food. It turns out that Chris also broke down in the mall food court yesterday.
At this point I’m down to $6. Having limited foods that take time to prepare is really hard when you work long hours.
My lunch today? Provided by my boyfriend, who kindly came and took me to eat. It takes a village, I guess.
…or “lateria,”* as one Latina farm worker described the kind of food she finds when she needs to access community food banks after her monthly allotment of food stamps runs out. “What do I do with canned beets?”
Although it’s a statement that might potentially raise the hackles of any number of people who believe that poor people should be grateful for whatever handouts they get, I knew what she meant; I despise beets in general and canned beets in particular, and canned goods have not played a large part in my experience of food. I met her at a farm worker meeting we were running. We had asked for participants to talk about their experiences accessing a variety of key resources in their communities, and it came to light that everyone present had been to the food banks. When their compañera mentioned canned food, they all nodded their heads and started telling their stories. I eventually heard similar concerns all around the state: why all the canned food? Can’t we have beans and rice? How do we prepare this food? Continue reading Yo no quiero canned food…
Sunday was a good start to my $21 week–I got free food! My friends Misty and Lindsey, who know about the food challenge and are fellow social services gurus, watched as I made three trips to the snack table at Quaker meeting during social hour and filled up on cheese and crackers. I spent the rest of Sunday afternoon and evening with my boyfriend, working on the grant renewals I am responsible for while he read pending legislation and puttered, and I admit that the likelihood of free food with him was on my mind, which has never before been a consideration when I thought about spending the day together.
I feel oddly mercenary.
The downside to the free food on Sunday is that, since I was not home, I did not have a chance to cook a pot of black beans. That was my plan to get me through the beginning of the week. Now it’s Monday, and all I have that’s ready to eat for lunch is yogurt. Making a small food budget work assumes time available to go to the grocery store and prepare food, if there’s any hope of nutritional value. I didn’t have that time, and as a result, I am really hungry–and really tempted to take the remaining $8 dollars or so and buy something that’s already prepared, but will take a big chunk out of my budget that remains.
I gathered my receipts from my most recent trip to the grocery store and made a chart of the food purchased on those trips that I plan to consume this week. Their costs are subtracted from the $20 remaining in my budget, after I took $1 off the top for random condiments like salt, pepper, garlic, and the other necessities of life. Here’s what I wind up with–my baseline foods, and a balance of $8.26 for the other items I need.
| Food description |
Qty |
Price |
Remaining
balance |
| Dry black beans |
1.62 lbs |
$ 1.09 |
$ 18.91 |
| Flour tortillas |
12 |
$ 0.98 |
$ 17.93 |
| 6-cheese blend |
8 oz |
$ 1.68 |
$ 16.25 |
| Yukon Gold Potatoes |
1.1 lbs |
$ 0.98 |
$ 15.27 |
| Serrano pepper |
2 |
$ 0.11 |
$ 15.16 |
| Yellow pepper |
1 |
$ 0.12 |
$ 15.04 |
| Braeburn Apples |
1.11 lbs |
$ 1.10 |
$ 13.94 |
| Yellow onion |
.75 lbs |
$ 0.74 |
$ 13.20 |
| Tomatoes |
.75 lbs |
$ 0.97 |
$ 12.23 |
| Romaine lettuce |
I bag |
$ 1.78 |
$ 10.45 |
| Nancy’s plain yogurt |
1 quart |
$ 2.19 |
$ 8.26 |
It’s fairly obvious to me that there’s not going to be a lot of variety, but I really wanted to have some fresh foods and some active bacteria in the mix. Three things I still want to buy include brown rice, oatmeal, and a few eggs. The rice and oatmeal will be from the bulk foods section, of course, and unless I can buy 6 eggs for about .89, I’ll skip them. Some bread would also be nice, and I’ll have to see if I can afford to “buy” the bread I purchased last week for consumption during the food stamp challenge.
The other thing? Coffee! There’s no wiggle room for my Stumptown whole beans that I take to work for use in my French press.
This shouldn’t be too hard for me; for one, I have a pretty good grasp on nutrition, know how to cook from raw ingredients very well, and have actually lived on less than this amount a week for food for extended periods of time. I remember a lot of weeks of eating only rice when I first went to college, and making vegan pancakes for my boyfriend, who is allergic to eggs and dairy, is no challenge because I know from experience that you can easily make pancakes without all the “expensive” ingredients like eggs and milk. I’ve lived on food stamps before, and it was, frankly, completely fun after not having any money for food at times.
It’s actually tempting to give myself a further handicap because of that experience, but I’m going to refrain. Instead, I’m going to do some extra work and see how healthful and appealing of a diet I can create for myself on that amount of money. I can do this in part because I have had the benefit of a $120,000 college education, and also because I am fortunate enough to have internet access, a couple of computers, Excel skills, and a bit of free time this weekend. I don’t have to look for childcare, stop by a payday loan store, or look for a third job–or even a second job.
To start out with, I’ve assembled the receipts for groceries I’ve bought these past couple of days and will want to use rather than letting them spoil. It doesn’t seem reasonable to throw them away, especially in this context. Once I deduct the cost of those foods I choose to eat this week from my $20 that remain, I’ll know how much I have left to work with. Time to plan.
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