Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd at the South by Southwest conference in Texas on March 9, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) stated that

Capitalism is an ideology of capital—the most important thing is the concentration of capital and to seek and maximize profit... we're reckoning with the consequences of putting profit above everything else in society. And what that means is people can't afford to live.

"Capitalism is irredeemable," she concluded.

The Cost of Eating, Then and Now

The cost of living isn't easy to calculate. A declining cost of home appliances, for example, needs to be juxtaposed with the growing cost of health care, etc. In the space of this short op-ed, I want to focus on an expense that is intimately tied up with the very survival of human beings—the price of food. Throughout the history of our species, people lived in a state of undernourishment. In developed countries today, obesity is a growing problem and food is cheaper than ever.

In fact, basic food items in America have become almost eight times cheaper relative to unskilled labor over the last 100 years.