US lawmakers vote to cut food stamp benefits from 2014
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
How can the GOP claim to be so closely allied with Jesus, and yet work so consistently against the poor?
In case you missed is, the proposed annual savings of $3.9B is the cost of three (3) B-2 bombers.
"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."
Reasons this is a good idea:
1. Dispensing charity on the local level, rather than the federal, reduces fraud and gets the funds directly in the hands that need it most. And there is a lot of fraud in the food stamp program.
2. One of the biggest problems the US is facing currently is the inability to pay for entitlement programs. The federal government is borrowing furiously to cover these programs. Unless they get a handle on things, after enough borrowing, the dollar will simply collapse. The poor will be hardest hit by this.
3. Food stamps are essentially cash. Even when spent properly, they're usually spent on processed poor quality food because that's the cheapest stuff around. Take the funds and spend them at soup kitchens that can leverage their purchasing power and buy high quality fresh food at a discount.
4. Any entitlement programs reduces the incentive to work and become self-sufficient. As much as this makes you cringe, it is true nevertheless.
5. Having been on food stamps myself, I can tell you right off the bat, it's absolutely degrading. At the time, they didn't use any kind of cards, you had actual food stamps. There you are, paying with stamps, while everybody else pays with cash. It's like wearing a sign saying "look at me, I'm poor!" and it's humiliating. A more discrete way of distributing help would be far more humane.
How about a discussion, rather than this echo chamber?
Yeah, we have historically low tax rates for the modern era. Raising taxes instead of lowering spending does the same thing to the balance sheet
>4. Any entitlement programs reduces the incentive to work and become self-sufficient. As much as this makes you cringe, it is true nevertheless.
This isn't necessarily true. Having the ability to eat reliably is quite useful when shifts may be irregular. This allows you to take higher paying, but more irregular work, providing a more dynamic labor force. This reason alone makes me suspect basic income instead of SS and SSDI and welfare and wic and foodstamps may be a good model for the 21st century.
This is false. The charts frequently used to support this all conveniently exclude the 19th century.
Yeah, after socialism became a fad, we began to tax the living daylights out of anything that moved and had money. Go back to the 19th century and you'll see a different story.
As they should
Sure, except they are removing the federal support without increasing the local support. In addition, local governments are already quite pinched and where would the funding come from?
2. One of the biggest problems the US is facing currently is the inability to pay for entitlement programs
Food stamps is a drop in the bucket compared to the big two, but politicians refuse to change those programs that take up 2/3s of the federal budget.
Even when spent properly, they're usually spent on processed poor quality food because that's the cheapest stuff around.
For people that are hungry, some poor quality food is still better than no food.
4. Any entitlement programs reduces the incentive to work and become self-sufficient.
Citation?
5. Having been on food stamps myself, I can tell you right off the bat, it's absolutely degrading.
Doesn't this defeat point #4? It's degrading but people want to stay on it.
SNAP is not charity, its a public benefit program (while charities may overlap with public benefit programs in what they do, they aren't the same thing.)
Also, SNAP is distributed at the local level. Its funded at the federal level (IIRC, actually it is funded in part at the federal level, and there is a cost sharing arrangement), which gets resources from where they are to where they are needed.
> And there is a lot of fraud in the food stamp program.
That's actually a separate point, from the one it is included with; please quantify "a lot", and explain why this justifies throwing the baby (legitimate beneficiaries) out with the bathwater (fraudsters).
> One of the biggest problems the US is facing currently is the inability to pay for entitlement programs.
The long term costs of the major entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare) is an issue, true. OTOH, SNAP (in total) is a negligible cost compared to those programs (SNAP has on the order of $80 billion in total costs, Social Security alone has around $1.3 trillion.)
> Food stamps are essentially cash. Even when spent properly, they're usually spent on processed poor quality food because that's the cheapest stuff around. Take the funds and spend them at soup kitchens that can leverage their purchasing power and buy high quality fresh food at a discount.
That would be a relevant point to debate -- not to say that I agree, but it would be at least a legitimate subject of discussion relevant to the desirability of the action -- if the House bill transferred the funds from SNAP to "soup kitchens". As it does not, the idea that the money would be better spent that way is irrelevant to the legislative action actually at issue.
> Any entitlement programs reduces the incentive to work and become self-sufficient.
Entitlement programs also increase the capacity to become self-sufficient, whatever effect they have an incentives.
Incentives without capacity are meaningless.
(And the actual structure of SNAP generally places sharp limits on benefit duration if you aren't actually engaged in work or job training programs.)
> Having been on food stamps myself, I can tell you right off the bat, it's absolutely degrading. At the time, they didn't use any kind of cards, you had actual food stamps. There you are, paying with stamps, while everybody else pays with cash. It's like wearing a sign saying "look at me, I'm poor!" and it's humiliating. A more discrete way of distributing help would be far more humane.
As you note in this very paragraph, a more discrete way of distributing benefits than what you experienced is what SNAP is now, since they no longer use stamps. (Of course, to extent that this point retains any legitimacy, it also contradicts point #4 -- being degrading creates an incentive to get off of it, financial incentives aren't the only kind that exist; money, after all, is just a proxy for utility which, at its most fundamental level, is "having experiences you prefer and not those you do not prefer", and degradation is clearly a form of disutility.)
Perhaps there is a better way? We won't know unless we explore the matter.
If you reduce government spending by the amount being cut and not merely shift resources, the people themselves will provide the support that the poor require and that support will exclude fraudsters to a greater degree. You're far more careful with money when you're spending or giving your own.
> SNAP (in total) is a negligible cost compared to those programs
Correct. However, I think an annual program using up $80 billion warrants discussion, no?
> if the House bill transferred the funds from SNAP to "soup kitchens". As it does not
I disagree. If my tax burden is lowered, then I can give the money to the soup kitchen.
However, if the House is simply playing games and shifting the funds elsewhere instead of giving it back, then yeah, we're on the same page.
> Entitlement programs also increase the capacity to become self-sufficient
Not sure what this means.
> a more discrete way of distributing benefits than what you experienced is what SNAP is now, since they no longer use stamps.
How so? They use specialized debit cards that identify you in the same exact way.
Distributing help discretely, in my opinion, is actually delivering food to the door. Which many charities do.
I assure you, the federal government couldn't care less how people feel or whether they are embarrassed.
Perhaps there is. Perhaps isn't a reason to cut funding to what we have.
> We won't know unless we explore the matter.
This is not "exploring the matter".
> If you reduce government spending by the amount being cut and not merely shift resources, the people themselves will provide the support that the poor require
There is no evidence at all to support this claim, and it doesn't even make a lot of sense. We're now supposed to have faith in the invisible hand of the market for charity?
> However, I think an annual program using up $80 billion warrants discussion, no?
There's a pretty big difference between "discussion" and "cutting half the funding". There may certainly be legitimate things to discuss about it, but I haven't yet seen anything even resembling an argument based on anything but magic fraud-resistant charity pixies for cutting the funding being a good idea.
Last year, the richest 10% got 50% of all income/wealth.
This year, +/- the same people vote to hurt the poor even more.
At the same time, you have Google wanting to extend life. Whose lives do you think will get extended? The lives of those who can pay. It's even more insane considering the fact that we're already using up all resources of our planet and happily continue to overpopulate it.
If these tendencies continue, there will be a very big clusterf#ck pretty soon.
>Last year, the richest 10% got 50% of all income/wealth.
I think it is an easy fall back to make comparisons between the rich and poor, but that isn't the problem here. It is the government.
How much does the US government funnel into programs to feed the war machine, or spy on their own people. This isn't a rich vs poor situation, it is a government vs the people situation, there is money there but it is being diverted into other programs. More tax = more bureaucracy + more waste + same problems, when a government is not effective or efficient.
Government isn't an isolated entity in society it represents segments of a society. And usually that is the rich and or powerful.
I do believe the rich and powerful do have a leash around many governments, and so do the average person as that is how the government is often voted in by appeasing by populist policy.
However I doubt the rich and powerful have a requirement to cut food stamps. Again this isn't a rich man driving policy it is a government deciding where funding is going.
Big Agriculture actually seems to be pushing against food stamps. There's been a fair amount of talk how the funding is going from food stamps to corporations in the food business.
I'm not really on top of this particular strain of politics, but I turned up stuff quickly when I googled "Big Ag" and "food stamps" in various permutations, so you can find your own credible sources without my bias.
Neither is doing nothing.
Which is that you're doing nothing.
And saying nothing.
Actually I do do things, I do write and air my grievances with my local representative(s). I do expect them to be accountable.
You need to dig a little deeper. Who funds these government officials? Who hires them into lucrative private companies? Who effectively owns government?
If you say "the people" you are technically correct - most of the US Debt is owed to social security trust fund - which has been consistently drained over the past few decades to pay for wars and spying as you say. Social Security is owed to private individuals.
However, the funding of political campaigns through lobbying is an above board bribery that effectively debt the government official to their sposors... which are increasingly large corporations with wealthy owners.
The anti-tax drown-the-government firebreathers in Congress are often the most corrupt of the lot.
Agreed there are problems with the political environment in regards to funding and lobbying. However if we continue to fail over to the concept that this is all about rich people being the boogeyman in these situations then we will always continue to deflect responsibility from the government.
Blame or focus on the rich, diverts responsibility from the government to fulfil it's duties. In fact it continues to allow a government to do such, because people are looking the other way.
What I am suggesting is the money is probably there to allow such programs to continue, if you divert funding from other non-critical areas.
You're completely correct that US government is wasteful, spends mindlessly on military, war aid and the appeasement of dubious lobbyists - that is not a problem with governance in general though! Furthermore, unless a redistribution of wealth and a welfare state is mandated through taxation and social programs there seems little hope of helping those at the very bottom who have been failed (or failed themselves) thanks to the incredibly tough odds they face compared to healthy, well-off, decently educated folk from stable backgrounds.
Sure, the rich aren't some distinct subspecies with little regard to humanity and philanthropy is not a forgotten art, but when stuff like this gets voted through you can see how broken the entire system is. A media which programs the poor to turn on itself, a rule of law which actively discriminates against the poor, a wage barrier that condemns those in low-level work to a life of constant stress and fear.
They are things that the people need to fix through their government. 'Shutting down everything' only really serves to help those who already are without the need of it.
->Potentially meandering off-topic and probably not that much of a direct reply to yhckrfan - apologies. I've not had coffee yet!
Using a decentralized system? Food banks, shelters. Get the grubby Fed paws off of it. Maybe the states should run them, even better if the cities did, or even better if good-minded citizens came together and pitched in without the state. Come on, you don't seriously think that the US Federal Government's social safety net is working, do you? We keep plowing more and more money into it and yet the divide between the rich and the poor is getting wider.
"unless a redistribution of wealth and a welfare state is mandated through taxation and social programs..."
Bastiat comes to mind: "[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; ...that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth. Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? ... But is it possible? ... Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary? ...Finally...we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: "Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs." Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success."
he was too generous. The suffering classes will ALMOST NEVER have success.
tl;dr: You think you're helping the poor, but if you're using the state to fix a problem, you're usually just lining the pockets of some wealthy or politically connected jerk who subcontracts the work, claiming to do the good works.
>The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success.
Certainly, but the same lament is surely magnified when the invisible, broken section of society is reliant on charitable acts...I'm not saying we are all terrible, greedy people but as you quote, we often assume the role of victim and feel hard done by whilst forgetting people who are far worse off than us:
>"Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs"
Being cynical about - particularly current - government is not an unfair judgement to make, but the problem is in the machine's details - tearing the whole thing down is like (to use an old cliche) throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
That is not what the bastiat quote means. The bastiat quote says that people will line up at the government trough and claim that what they are doing is for the "common good". The benefit of doing things privately is much like linus' law: that you have a million eyes reviewing and making the choice to contribute or not; versus a bureaucrat, who is of limited accountability to a narcissistic executive (or legislator) who doesn't give a rats butt about taking care of the people and is only held accountable by polarizing issues like abortion rights or gun control (in the US; but in every country you make compromises when you pick whom you elect).
Why do you suppose that government is any better at allocating money for charity? Do you really think that politicians are our betters? Why? In a democracy, politics is always a popularity contest - would you look back at the kids who were popular in high school, and say, "gee, these are the kids I'd trust to take care of the poor?". What about the kids that did stuff like class government or model UN? Or, in a country that's a lawyerocracy (like the US), the kids that did mock trial or debate club?
The effects of authority also should be examined. Consider that in any government you will disproporionately wind up attracting authoritarians to positions all over the chain of authority; and at the lower levels, the people who are directly dealing with the poor - are going to be the least accountable and have the lowest skill set. Is that really who you want taking care of the poor? Making low-level decisions that are affecting people's lives in very serious ways with few if any consequences for messing up? At least a private charity runs the risk of losing their donations if there's a publicized flub up.
I happen to think that to support the worst off you don't need the full cooperation of the entire society. You maybe need 1-5% or so fully committed, and 20% willing to give more than a modest amount, and 30 or so % willing to give small amounts.
I'm not so sure that that's correct. You're talking about the world's largest sponsor of terrorism and war.
The American people may be good, if uninformed and controlled by propaganda, but the American government has been an overall global negative for at least the last 65 years.