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Thomas Malthus And EP-Thompson's Economic System

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“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well”(Virginia Woolfe). People in modern times often think of food as an everyday chore in terms of taking the time out of their busy lives to prepare the meal and eat. Even the homeless in modern times are thought of as not struggling as much due to there being able to obtain food through local food banks around the city and the welfare system. However, in the 18th and 19th century food was not seen as a basic necessity to the people and often due to imperialism and industrialization their ‘basic need’ was not met. The ideas of political and moral economy represented by Thomas Malthus and EP Thompson propose two different economic systems in which the goal is to decrease …show more content…

The “poor laws established workhouses and mandated imprisonment those who did not comply.” These laws established a way for people to earn money and gain their basic necessities by working, the harsh stipulations that came with taking this aid was supposed to dissuade those that did not truly need the aid and were just attempting to take advantage of the system. However, even these harsh laws were argued against by proposing “public assistance is too expensive and might encourage recipients to become dependent on charity.” Since the political economy is about individual choice Malthus inspired many to believe that it was the individual’s choice they were poor and hungry. It did not help that he stated that the lower class were not component about handling the money they received, “when they have a opportunity of savings they seldom exercise it, all that is beyond their present necessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale house.”(Malthus Chapter V, paragraph 13, lines 8-13). Thomas Malthus put the thought into everybody’s mind that the poor were really not able to handle money and that giving public aid to the poor was wrong since it was going to be taken advantaged of. His ideas instigated the wariness around foundation of the welfare system in the US. However, he can not be fully responsible due to it being other people enacting these harsh benefits and reinforcing this ideology. Even today there are disputes over the policies that include food stamps and cash aid from the government. People still today have a hard time giving money from their own paychecks to give to the government to aid others in need. It is hard to give away part of something you earned to help others, humans inherently want stability and the way to that stability is to have

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By challenging common assumptions and being ethical he effectively claims that the solution to solving these global hunger problems is foreign assistance. Paarlberg shows Pathos, Ethos and Logos through the thought of unravelling worldwide starvation by being realistic of the view on pre-industrial food and farming. Pathos is clearly evident in Paarlberg’s article through the presentation of the food insecurity problem in Africa and Asia. He uses impassioned words as an attempt to reach out to his target audience on a more emotional level by agitating and drawing sympathy of whole food shoppers and policy makers. Paarlberg employs Pathos during the article when he says, “The majority of truly undernourished people -- 62 percent, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization -- live in either Africa or South Asia, and most are small farmers or rural landless laborers living in the countryside of Africa and South Asia” (page 611-12).

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World hunger has always been a problem that has plagued humanity, and through the years, it has remained an almost impossible problem to solve. However, industrialized agriculture has become a possible solution to world hunger with its ability to produce more food on less land than traditional methods. Industrialized agriculture is the solution Robert Paarlberg offers in his article, “Attention Whole Food Shoppers” which first appeared in April 2010 edition of Foreign Policy. Paarlberg attempts to use specific criteria to demonstrate the benefits of industrialized agriculture, such as its impacts on world hunger, the income gap, and global politics. Paarlberg was to an extent successful at proving his points and persuading his intended audience.

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In 1990, author Wendell Berry had a collection of essays released together in a book titled What Are People For?. Among these essays is one titled The Pleasures of Eating, focusing on the responsibilities of eating which includes self-awareness regarding what one’s consuming. Berry begins his essay voicing his solution on how city people can bring new life to American farming and rural life. Berry’s solution is simply to “Eat responsibly” (1). He elaborates on this stating that “Most eaters … think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture” (Berry 1).

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Document 1 introduces Thomas Malthus, an economist who claims that the populations of Europe are growing at too quick of a rate to maintain. Malthus believes that regulating the populations of Europe will improve the livelihoods of citizens. Malthus explains, “poverty has little or no relation to forms of government, or the unequal division of property; and as the rich do not in reality possess the power of finding employment and maintenance for all the poor.” It makes sense that Malthus’ claim should go against the three other groups ideas of changing the government or the rights of the people because he is simply maintaining his belief that regulating population will improve livelihood. In Document 2, David Ricardo claims that, “wages should be left to the fair and free competition of the market.”

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Between 1450 and 1700, almost half of Europe was living in poverty. As famine, war, and economic dislocation grew rampant, there were regions where 80 percent of the population faced starvation daily. The massive poor population led to a myriad of attitudes and responses towards the poor, including that the poor were idle, that they needed to be regulated, that helping the poor was the moral thing to do, and that the poor should be helped because it will improve the life of the donor.

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Industrial production dropped by half, breadlines, soup kitchens, and the homeless shelters became popular in America’s town and cities. In Document six, it explains how consumers have to reduce purchases and cut back on spending habits and how farmers struggled not being able to afford to harvest their crops( William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932, 1958). Also in Document seven, and eight it states that, people and families have to stretch and makes ends meet on what they have and also finding a way to make things cheaper (Paul Blanshard, “How to Live on Forty-six Cents a Day,” The Nation, 1929/ Fortune, February

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In the world, there are one billion people undernourished and one and a half billion more people overweight. In this day and age, where food has become a means of profit rather than a means of keeping people thriving and healthy, Raj Patel took it upon himself to explore why our world has become the home of these two opposite extremes: the stuffed and the starved. He does so by travelling the world and investigating the mess that was created by the big men (corporate food companies) when they took power away from the little men (farmers and farm workers) in order to provide for everyone else (the consumers) as conveniently and profitably as possible. In his book Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, Patel reveals his findings and tries to reach out to people not just as readers, but also as consumers, in hopes of regaining control over the one thing that has brought us all down: the world food system.

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In both the pieces “Women on the Breadlines” and “Americans in the Great Depression” it has a similar belief of how people should act. They both know that pride and ego makes people starve just as much as starvation and sickness. In “Americans in the Great Depression” it says,” It becomes necessary for these people, who have never before been in want, to ask for assistance.” People who were rich with money in the bank, and a big house, and lots of food, and a good job suddenly find themselves homeless, starving, broke, and unemployed. The proud feeling those people had from their old life is now gone.

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In today’s world, there are various people facing various problems such as hunger. For many centuries people in this world have faced this problem. People die of starvation every day and nothing has been done to end this problem. There has been a tremendous amount of people who have tried to end world hunger, but it seems like anything they do is just not the right solution to end this enormous dilemma. There are solutions to ending world hunger that people will find it extremely outrageous and inhumane that are mentioned “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift and “Let Them Eat Dog” by Jonathan Foer.

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Last week I was brought the news that “soap, fat, cheese, butter and eggs” were unavailable to my citizens, and that we were obliged to establish “'meatless' and 'fatless' days” to preserve as much food as we can (Herwig 206). I write this with an ache in my heart, that change must come quickly for our lives are transforming for the

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1984 Synthesis Essay Poverty negatively influences how the minds of people work in the world. The fact that poverty exists itself, obstructs people from changing their circumstances in what is known as “the cycle of poverty.” The lower class is incredibly disadvantaged in that it lacks the necessary social and economic resources needed to increase chances of social mobility. In return, the absence of these resources may increase poverty. Therefore, the lower class is unable to change its situation because the majority believes that any efforts to climb the social ladder is highly inefficient.

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Corn Laws were created in Britain in 1815-1846, which were putting tariffs on corn imports so that British people would only buy domestically and support their domestic prices. The reason for that was because of the relative law prices of the competitors outside Britain. On one hand Malthuas favored and supported these laws accordingly because he thought that in order to ensure sufficient agriculture capacity in times of war, domestic production should be prioritized and secured from foreign imports. While recognizing that sometimes positive role of market foresees are necessary, Malthus rejected a doctrine of laissez-faire. In his Principles he wrote that ‘it is impossible for a government strictly to let things take their natural course’ (Malthus, 1836: 16)).

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The proponents of this theory argued that food scarcity occurs when the availability of food is less than the food necessity of the population. The primary developers of this approach were Adam Smith and Malthus who argued that famines are primarily caused by a sudden decline in food availability. They consider natural drivers as the main causes for food insecurity and analyses their influence on harvest failures and advances in prices. They are supply oriented, in this sense the Food Availability Decline theory differs from climate theory. Food availability decline theory is vulnerable to criticism because it confined on food availability at local levels instead of including assessments on food availability at aggregate or macro levels.

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But, can’t we have a little heart and give to the needy? It’s also ironic that 98% of the world’s hungry live in developing countries such as Asia and Africa, which have vast lands and are rich in resources. Yet, it is hard for us to distribute our resources, and that is the fault of our system. One organization which has been

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