Every $1 spent on food stamps resulted in $1.73 in GDP growth

I sometimes wonder what policy would look like if the dominant economic priority was the increase total wealth, rather than economic activity.

Living in Michigan, almost all of my family became unemployed as a result of the factories closing down. Some took the assistance to get retraining and find another job, and some took maintaining the assistance as their new job or as a retirement package. Some just weren't able to get back into the job market no matter how they tried. I got out of my state's "No Worker Left Behind" retraining assistance just before the new governor shut down the incredibly successful program.

It's a combination of willingness to work and ability to work. Welfare programs can do no more than take basic survival off your "worries" list.

You want to spend $50 billion a year on food stamps? Ok, slash it out of the military, social security, medicare, the NSA / FBI / CIA / HSA / TSA / whatever. You want universal healthcare, ok, disband the US military, or slash social security in half. Something will have to go, one way or another, sooner rather than later; the piper will get paid.

With a $1.3 trillion deficit, it's irrelevant if you argue that the food stamps are paid for by taxes, or if you argue the military is paid for by taxes, or if you argue social security is paid for with taxes. Because bottom line: $1.3 trillion per year is not paid for with taxes. Something is not getting paid for with taxes, it might as well be food stamps as any other program currently.

As another simple example of the inflation spread - if the Fed holds interest rates down, which is part of what the QE programs do, it generates inflation. When you get a mortgage adjustment at 4% courtesy of that Fed program, it is generating inflation by the difference in money you now have versus what you otherwise would have.

If the Fed props up property values with the QE and trillion dollar mortgage purchase programs, that causes inflation as home owners acquire value they otherwise wouldn't have.

Any artificial value, created by the Fed, and shot into the system, must inherently become inflation. Your dollar loses value accordingly. And since 1967 or so, the dollar has lost about 86% of its value.

Which is why America is collapsing into a hovel of debt, extreme spending, deficits, and poverty: modern economic policy is completely wrong. Such has been the case since 'modern' economics began ruling America in the late 1960s. The US standard of living hasn't improved since the early 1960s, when America was the dominant manufacturing power; it has been downhill since then in real terms, with brief respites courtesy of technology. 10 year mortgages became 30; a high savings rate became a negative real savings rate; the middle class became the impoverished class.

When you run inflation far beyond the rate of real wage increases, the working class has no incentive to save junk dollars that lose value 24/7. So instead of saving, they spend, knowing full well their dollar will buy more today than tomorrow.