Are Food and Water, the Basic Needs for Survival, Available To Every American Equally?

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Are Food and Water, the Basic Needs for Survival, Available To Every American Equally?
Food and water are basic needs that every human being needs to survive and thrive. In the United States, despite food and water being basic human needs, the constitution does not declare that one is entitled or has a right to them. In this case, every person has to work to produce a good or service in exchange for these items because of the value associated with them. In America food and water are still not equally availed to every American because of the inherent social and economic problems that exist (Fargo 345). For this reason, it is important to understand that food and water remains a challenge for many Americans to attain because of issues of minimum wage, prolonged unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and emergency food assistance that is evident in many cases.
Unemployment is a reality in American and this has contributed to disparities in food and water problems. Given that unemployment rate in America is below 5% to about 4.9% in 2016, many feel that for America unemployment is low. However, these statistics indicate more than 7.9 million Americans do not have full time employment (Goldstein). Unemployment is one of the causes of food and water problems to many people in the American society. This is because when one endures prolonged unemployment, it also creates a shortage of economic and social resource that one can have access to in order to thrive. Thus, unemployment can cause a person to have financial problems that other Americans are not experiencing. Such financial problems would means that a person may not be able to afford decent meals such as other individuals like home cooked meals that are healthier (Goldstein). This person could be forced to take fast foods especially junk foods that would endanger the person’s health and so this means that the resources are not distributed equally. Further, if a person has limited reach for economic resources, it means that one can have problems such as water rationing or shortages after being unable to pay the bills. In this way, when there is unemployment, it means that resources are not distributed equally which also indicates that food and water are not availed equally to all Americans. “At a time when rising poverty, widespread unemployment and other effects of the recession have been well documented, the report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides the government's first detailed portrait of the toll that the faltering economy has taken on Americans' access to food” (Goldstein), which means that water and food are still farfetched for many people in America.
Moreover, many Americans are low-wage earners or live on minimum wages. In the past, it was assumed that teenagers were the majority low-wage workers but research shows that adults and not the teens, contribute a large portions of households with low-incomes (Eighner 140). With the cost of living so high, low-wage workers do not have the same benefits to access to food and water like the middle and high-income earners. It becomes apparent that low-wage workers have to struggle to put a meal on the ta...