Motherboard has the article The Math That Predicted the Revolutions Sweeping the Globe Right Now.

Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we’re seeing them now. The paper’s author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time—and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.

To judge this article, it helps to know the definition of the Food Price Index.

The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) Food Price Index is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities. It is not a measure of the height of food prices, but it is a measure of how quickly the prices change.

I have been wondering what it takes to drive people to start the kind of uprising that can overthrow a government.  This article provides an answer that I had not thought about.  I doubt the Republicans know what fire they are playing with when they cut back on food stamps in this country.  Should we tell them, or should we let them dig themselves a hole they will never get out of?  If it weren’t for the suffering of the people who cannot afford to buy food for their families, the answer to the previous question would be more obvious.