US lawmakers vote to cut food stamp benefits from 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24170617

by frank_boyd • 13 years ago

15 35 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

frank_boyd• 13 years ago

Signs of times getting really insane.

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.

yhckrfan6• 13 years ago

Note: The US is a good country overall so the following may sound like anti US rhetoric but it isn't meant that way. Even in my country I am seeing similar things.

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.

user9756• 13 years ago

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.

Government isn't an isolated entity in society it represents segments of a society. And usually that is the rich and or powerful.

saraid2165• 13 years ago

Do you have a solution that is more practical than waving a magic wand?

r00fus• 13 years ago

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.

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.

BgSpnnrs2• 13 years ago

This sounds, with all due respect, like libertarian mantra. How on earth do you propose to enable the poor to bring themselves above the poverty line without a centralised system to manage it?

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!

madaxe• 13 years ago

Note: The US is a good country overall

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.

beedogs• 13 years ago

Incredible that the US can feed other countries, and bomb other countries into the Stone Age, but can't care for its own poor. Pathetic.

nazgulnarsil• 13 years ago

Simplistic moral narratives without the need for economic analysis of the costs, benefits and incentives of those who interact with the program! Surely this will result in good outcomes for the needy!

auctiontheory• 13 years ago

Even as a poor country like India increases food aid to its poor, we cut food. Incredible.

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.

Osiris2• 13 years ago

In the immigration debate, an amendment to the bill was proposed to double the number of border patrol agents at a cost of $40 billion. Maybe they are just cutting food stamps in order to pay for border patrol agents.

apsec112• 13 years ago

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sbierwagen• 13 years ago

The House, not the Senate. This won't get past the Senate, and even if it did, it wouldn't survive a veto, so there's no chance of it actually becoming law.

Shish2k• 13 years ago

I wonder if the US is anything like the UK - we have something along the lines of Benefit fraud: £10 million. Unclaimed benefits: £100 million. Business scale tax fraud: £10 billion. And then we demonise the poor because one person out of a few million ripped off the system and bought a big TV...

maratd3• 13 years ago

Really? Not a single comment supporting this? Talk about a mono-culture.

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?

ugk• 13 years ago

Thank you. (I agree)

gte910h2• 13 years ago

Unless they get a handle on things, after enough borrowing, the dollar will simply collapse. The poor will be hardest hit by this.

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.

maratd3• 13 years ago

Yeah, we have historically low tax rates for the modern era.

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.

Osiris2• 13 years ago

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

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.

dragonwriter2• 13 years ago

Dispensing charity on the local level, rather than the federal, reduces fraud and gets the funds directly in the hands that need it most.

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.)

maratd3• 13 years ago

explain why this justifies throwing the baby (legitimate beneficiaries) out with the bathwater (fraudsters).

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.

US lawmakers vote to cut food stamp benefits from 2014

Related Stories