Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

In fact, according to the last statistics I saw about this, 30 million people in the United States are suffering hunger. 30 million is a lot of people, you know, and that means plenty of children.8 In the 1980s, hunger declined in general throughout the entire world, with two exceptions: sub-Saharan Africa and the United States—the poorest part of the world and the richest part of the world, there hunger increased. And as a matter of fact, between 1985 and 1990, hunger in the United States increased by 50 percent— it took a couple years for the Reagan “reforms” to start taking hold, but by 1985 they were beginning to have their effects.9 And there is just overwhelming evidence, in case it’s not obvious from common sense, what the effects of this kind of deprivation are on children—physically, emotionally, and mentally.