Foodstamps

[Pat Mustard]

This could hurt me, as I rely on food stamps. I can do work, if I can find it, but I have poor hearing and eyesight, and a few other mental hang-ups. Politicians get paid off to give the rich tax cuts and subsidies, but they know they need money to run the country, so they have to go after the poor and middle class. Which is pretty much the opposite of how it should be.

And it doesn't deliver the money needed to run a country either.

---

Right, anyway, I'm not sure why we'd need new math.  The regular old math works fine.  We already spend enough on food assistance programs to feed every american..and we're just not building houses even though our population already needs more houses than we have.  Every dollar we spend on assistance programs generates something like 1.70 in economic activity, and construction jobs are highly sought after.

There's simply no reason not to seriously consider this kind of project.  The money is already there, we already spend it for this purpose, and we don't get what we could for it - which is a thing that we strongly believe benefits the overall economy.  Meanwhile, doing things the way we've been doing them costs us at least an additional 160bil USD before we factor in whatever value we want to use for the loss due to renting and homelessness.

We can't be having that kind of talk Gaebo, you plan makes social and economic sense.

[Mister Agenda]

Able-bodied single people who are on SNAP is a complex situation that I don't think this administration understands. For one, this will impact more people in rural areas who are out of work and having trouble finding a job because of the limited opportunities in their region. Moving somewhere with more jobs takes money.

SNAP is keeping some of these folks from being homeless, the friends or family members they are likely living with may turn them out when they no longer have SNAP to contribute.

Some of these unemployed able-bodied people are doubling as unpaid caregivers, like the guy who lives with his elderly mom who has diabetes and drives her everywhere and makes sure she takes her shots when she's supposed to.

Some of them use their SNAP to make sure their kids are fed even if they're not there and can't pay child support.

And that's not even taking into account the economic impact on low-income communities (particularly in the Appalachians). Or the possibility of crime spikes when some of the former recipients become desperate.

The ripple effect from taking away their SNAP is going to be huge, and bad. I suppose it will motivate the small percentage who could get a job anytime they want and just prefer to bask in the luxury of subsistence government support; but I think it will cost more than it saves in the long run, in more ways than one.

[BrokenQuill92]

Able-bodied single people who are on SNAP is a complex situation that I don't think this administration understands. For one, this will impact more people in rural areas who are out of work and having trouble finding a job because of the limited opportunities in their region. Moving somewhere with more jobs takes money.

SNAP is keeping some of these folks from being homeless, the friends or family members they are likely living with may turn them out when they no longer have SNAP to contribute.

Some of these unemployed able-bodied people are doubling as unpaid caregivers, like the guy who lives with his elderly mom who has diabetes and drives her everywhere and makes sure she takes her shots when she's supposed to.

Some of them use their SNAP to make sure their kids are fed even if they're not there and can't pay child support.

And that's not even taking into account the economic impact on low-income communities (particularly in the Appalachians). Or the possibility of crime spikes when some of the former recipients become desperate.

The ripple effect from taking away their SNAP is going to be huge, and bad. I suppose it will motivate the small percentage who could get a job anytime they want and just prefer to bask in the luxury of subsistence government support; but I think it will cost more than it saves in the long run, in more ways than one.

Luxury?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Gae Bolga

We already spend enough on food assistance programs to feed every American

Are you being sarcastic or am I missing something?

Boru

[Jackalope]

Luxury?

Sarcasm?

[The Grand Nudger]

@Gae Bolga

We already spend enough on food assistance programs to feed every American

Are you being sarcastic or am I missing something?

Boru

Missing something.  What alot of people miss, really.  

We deal with our problems like we deal with strippers.  If you throw enough money at them, they'll stop nagging you.  Also like strippers, no matter how much money we throw at it, it doesn't actually go away.  It's still there, hitting up the next john (in this case, to the tune of many, many millions).  From industry subsidy to direct assistance, the dollar amount we spend on the problem of hunger is worth more than all of the food required to solve the problem of hunger.

-and yet.....

Hunger is not due to an inability to produce.  Hunger is not due to an insurmountable cost.  Hunger, is a human problem.  This is especially true in the US, and any developed nation, but broadly true of global hunger as well.  

Ultimately, hunger exists in the US (I'll stick to just this one little piece of rock for now) as an artifact of why we get a $1.70 for every dollar we throw at the problem.  Our programs are designed to create economic value - not feed people.  Food stamps are not actually for the starving poor, but for hungry producers and retailers (and, ofc, for exotic financial instruments ostensibly based on the value of agricultural commodities.).  The programs remain under the farm bill for a reason.  It doesn't actually matter that products sit (and go bad) on the shelves...because the the monetary value of the vouchers that the poor use to acquire them are paid out to distributors regardless of whether or not anyone cashes them in - and the volume that moves assumes metrics that include projections concerning private and public buyers.

A person would have to try, hard, to come up with a sillier system. Which is also why we need the excuses that you hear from the pro-starving camps in the US. That the poor are lazy and don't deserve assistance...that they'd just waste it on water bugs. Our propaganda surrounding hunger is fucking ridiculous...because our hunger problem is fucking ridiculous.

As of today, the main effective use of the totality of our assistance program is as an accounting trick to hide grift, production inefficiency, and (even worse than we acknowledge) poverty. Perhaps even more hilarious, is that while all of this is going on..enough food is already bought, and then rots in landfills...just in the US, to feed every hungry person in the US with plenty to spare for hungry people in any handfull of a number of other countries. We're a country that increased our yields from 10-20 bushels just a few decades ago to 120 plus today - it's worth remembering.

Instead, it sits there dumping methane and carbon into the atmosphere. Doubleplus good!!!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Gae Bolga

Are you being sarcastic or am I missing something?

Boru

Missing something.  What alot of people miss, really.  

We deal with our problems like we deal with strippers.  If you throw enough money at them, they'll stop nagging you.  Also like strippers, no matter how much money we throw at it, it doesn't actually go away.  It's still there, hitting up the next john (in this case, to the tune of many, many millions).  From industry subsidy to direct assistance, the dollar amount we spend on the problem of hunger is worth more than all of the food required to solve the problem of hunger.

-and yet.....

Hunger is not due to an inability to produce.  Hunger is not due to an insurmountable cost.  Hunger, is a human problem.  This is especially true in the US, and any developed nation, but broadly true of global hunger as well.  

Ultimately, hunger exists in the US (I'll stick to just this one little piece of rock for now) as an artifact of why we get a $1.70 for every dollar we throw at the problem.  Our programs are designed to create economic value - not feed people.  Food stamps are not actually for the starving poor, but for hungry producers and retailers (and, ofc, for exotic financial instruments ostensibly based on the value of agricultural commodities.).  The programs remain under the farm bill for a reason.  It doesn't actually matter that products sit (and go bad) on the shelves...because the the monetary value of the vouchers that the poor use to acquire them are paid out to distributors regardless of whether or not anyone cashes them in - and the volume that moves assumes metrics that include projections concerning private and public buyers.

A person would have to try, hard, to come up with a sillier system.  Which is also why we need the excuses that you hear from the pro-starving camps in the US.  That the poor are lazy and don't deserve assistance...that they'd just waste it on water bugs.  Our propaganda surrounding hunger is fucking ridiculous...because our hunger problem is fucking ridiculous.

As of today, the main effective use of the totality of our assistance program is as an accounting trick to hide grift, production inefficiency, and (even worse than we acknowledge) poverty.  Perhaps even more hilarious, is that while all of this is going on..enough food is already bought, and then rots in landfills...just in the US, to feed every hungry person in the US with plenty to spare for hungry people in any handfull of a number of other countries.  We're a country that increased our yields from 10-20 bushels just a few decades ago to 120 plus today - it's worth remembering.  

Instead, it sits there dumping methane and carbon into the atmosphere.  Doubleplus good!!!

Well, that was an education and no mistake.  Puts me in mind of the English moving shiploads of food out of Ireland after the potato crop failed.

Boru

[Pat Mustard]

Able-bodied single people who are on SNAP is a complex situation that I don't think this administration understands. For one, this will impact more people in rural areas who are out of work and having trouble finding a job because of the limited opportunities in their region. Moving somewhere with more jobs takes money.

And it's also going to negatively affect people in those areas who are working their arses off and desperate for a fair go, but cannot get it because the employer has all the power and the government values corporate welfare over the welfare of the people and the nation.

Many of the US's hard workers are on welfare.