Yes, inequality does indeed mean that the shortfall is not fully evenly distributed, and the rich and well-off would be fine for quite while.
But I'm not talking about collapses in the range of economics, but more of a collapse of a food chain, with no real replacements. This would behave much more like populations of, for example, deer, when they overbreed substantially past the carrying capacity of their range, and the range is constrained by geographic barriers (so migration is not an option). In that situation, populations often collapse 80%, even with only a technically 10% shortfall, because every individual gets too little to survive for too long, so expires.
Your point about inequality and stored capacity in human economies is well taken and certainly applies in the case of 1-2 year crop failures or events like the Russian assault on Ukraine and its grain production & export capabilities.
If we lose key components of the food web such as pollinators, phytoplankton, forests, etc., economics will play a role, but I doubt we'd get to the point of 'we're 10% short so you 10% starve in the next 50 days and the rest of us are fine'. Sure only about 9% of the world lives in extreme poverty of less than the equivalent of $1.90/day [1], but I'd be astonished if the losses would be constrained to that class. I'd expect it to immediately affect everyone in the 'ordinary poverty' category of $5.50/day, which was 43.5% in 2017 [2]. And frankly, it's probably be a lot more. Sustained famine over 50-80% of the population will kill a lot more than 10-20% of the population, even if the actual shortfall is only 10-20%
But I'm not talking about collapses in the range of economics, but more of a collapse of a food chain, with no real replacements. This would behave much more like populations of, for example, deer, when they overbreed substantially past the carrying capacity of their range, and the range is constrained by geographic barriers (so migration is not an option). In that situation, populations often collapse 80%, even with only a technically 10% shortfall, because every individual gets too little to survive for too long, so expires.
Your point about inequality and stored capacity in human economies is well taken and certainly applies in the case of 1-2 year crop failures or events like the Russian assault on Ukraine and its grain production & export capabilities.
If we lose key components of the food web such as pollinators, phytoplankton, forests, etc., economics will play a role, but I doubt we'd get to the point of 'we're 10% short so you 10% starve in the next 50 days and the rest of us are fine'. Sure only about 9% of the world lives in extreme poverty of less than the equivalent of $1.90/day [1], but I'd be astonished if the losses would be constrained to that class. I'd expect it to immediately affect everyone in the 'ordinary poverty' category of $5.50/day, which was 43.5% in 2017 [2]. And frankly, it's probably be a lot more. Sustained famine over 50-80% of the population will kill a lot more than 10-20% of the population, even if the actual shortfall is only 10-20%
[1] https://www.worldvision.org/sponsorship-news-stories/global-... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/poverty-rate