America has spent a century investing in food. We invested in food so hard we now have to pay farmers not to grow things, because otherwise the price crash would cause problems. Food in America is very cheap.
There is definitely a type of famine going on in the US right now, 40 million are struggling with food insecurity. There is also a crises of healthy food being unaffordable, so people are essentially eating 2x their daily calories while getting 0.5x their daily nutrients. Then there are multiple political decisions that have already been made this year that will result in various forms of crop loss (migrants scared to show up at work) and disease outbreak (RFKJr's raw milk). The results of which are likely to impact food prices. The people who are hit hardest by this will already have been hit the hardest by greedflation in rent.
Whether or not cheap and inexpensive mean the same thing, is contextually dependent. In some usages they have provide nuanced differences, while in others they are entirely identical.
In the context in which I was using it, they are identical.
the US systematically taxes and forbids new housing in many ways as local voters desire. Setback requirements, 100K+ hookup costs, stairway standards, density limits, parking minimums and regulations, community input, allowing rejection of new housing despite it following all rules, abuse of environmental regulations (which ends up hurting the environment by blocking density), affordable housing requirements (a tax on each new housing block to fund affordable units on the side) all prevent new housing form being built.
Because investing in housing means actually changing things. There's a "Don't just do something, stand there!" strategy of maximizing comfort and minimizing effort, that must be overcome.
