Being on food stamps used to be considered an embarrassment. People used to hide it. I remember my grandmother speculating about the ne’er do wells living down the street, “I hear they’re on food stamps,” she said derisively. It was the ultimate indignity to have the government pay for your groceries. People on food stamps were either lazy or slimeballs gaming the system, stealing from everyone else.
Now over 44 million people in America swipe what looks to be a debit card with Uncle Sam picking up the tab. Everyone pays with a card so no one is the wiser other than the checkout person. Back in the old days, food stamps stuck out like a sore thumb. While everyone else was paying with cash or writing checks, those getting their grub courtesy of the government had funny-looking scrip of various colors to exchange with.
Now food stamps has gone mainstream. More than 13 percent of the population avails themselves of the Supplemental Nutrition (SNAP). SNAP is part of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and they have a nice website with pictures of smiling well-fed kids on the home page. There’s a section of links for applicants and recipients, and a section for retail merchants as well.
SNAP recipients can’t buy booze or soap with the benefits. Live animals are off the list as well. Forget about buying hot foods with food stamps, or vitamins, or medicines.
But, “Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items,” says SNAP. So those that qualify aren’t restricted to bread and water and government cheese.
The first food-stamp program began back in 1939 and every few years new programs have been piled on top of the old ones. There’s a quaint story on Wikipedia of Mr. and Mrs. Alderson Muncy of Paynesville, West Virginia, being the first recipients under the 1961 version of the food-stamp program and “In the first food stamp transaction, they bought a can of pork and beans at Henderson’s Supermarket,” for their 15-person household with part of their $95 in food stamps. Today, the Muncy family would be eligible for $2,252 a month in SNAP benefits.
Since 1969, participation in SNAP has increased 15-fold and has more than doubled in just the last decade. In Utah, the number on food stamps increased 34 percent from last year. Other western states, Nevada and Idaho, are right behind with 25 and 24 percent annual increases, respectively.
“Officials attributed the rise in western food-stamp usage to a push by states for increased access, such as by expediting the process of determining if an applicant is eligible, as well as the recession’s impact,” the Wall Street Journal‘s Jim Carlton writes.
Carlton writes about an Idaho couple who don’t yet qualify for SNAP. Right now, they bring in $2,200 a month from unemployment benefits and disability compensation. But Michael Bruesch’s unemployment checks are about to stop. Then, “we will qualify for food stamps,” says Mr. Bruesch who hasn’t worked in 15 months.
Right now the couple lines up for food handouts at the Oasis Worship Center. They want to pay as little as possible for food; after all, they want to “keep making mortgage payments.”
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I see people standing in line at grocery stores all the time, food stamps in hand. People are no longer ashamed, they feel it is their right. I can’t understand why we encourage this parasitic view by appeasing it.
And yet if I took money from the pockets of those in line with me in order to pay for my food, I’d be arrested for theft.
its not theft in any possible way, social welfare programs and exactly what any educated person could see from the name. Their programs for…..social…….welfare, programs like the food stamp programs are to make sure the impoverished minority of this country isnt starving, programs similar to this would be social security, medicare/medicade, tenure and retirement benefits. If your going to complain about misuse of “your” taxpayer dollars check out Afghanistan, Iraq, N. Korea, the hundreds of other weapons research,military bases, and the nuclear testing facilities in Nevada, not this “great” countries under privileged.
hear hear; The TeaParty is scripted and funded by billionaires trying to get bigger corporate tax cuts and you shmoes making less than $250k a year are goosestepping with them; sick, sad world…I’m also Un Like ing Mises from my Facebook as it seems to have a disproportionate number of knee-jerk conservative 912-ers.
Equating “Mises” contributors to conservatives or “The TeaParty” embarrasses yourself.
Indeed. Theft is theft regardless of use. The state has no more right to my money than I have to yours.
ok heres the plan you move to a non state controlled area see how you fare and if alive after the fact you can continue to whine
OK here’s the plan, Devin, you move into a 100% state controlled area, e.g. jail, and see how you fare and if alive after the fact you can continue to whine
Hey look, I can make non-sequiteurs too! yay!
You’re blind to the paradigm and to logic itself if you don’t understand Tony’s nor Shay’s comment.
It’s all misuse of dollars. Stolen. All of it. Every penny.
Grow up and wake up.
Franklin is 100% correct! There was a time in this country when people who weren’t sure if they could afford food raised their own BEFORE they got hungry. Poorer people who actually have self-respect still do so! My father was one of those people. In the 1980s, he always had at least 2 part-time jobs (in addition to a full-time) & we raised our own chickens in a large pen in the backyard. There was also a 3ac garden on our property, managed by my aunt (a very young widow w/2 small children). None of us ever took a penny in food stamps or an ounce of government cheese. I never thought of our family as poor until I was much older because we always had sack lunches & other kids had to eat the free lunches the school gave out! Even now, I’m planting fruit trees on my 1/3ac urban lot & looking into buying some chickens. What can I say, it’s in my blood.
Do you have anything more than rhetoric to back that up? Looking back in history, the last time there was any sort of major food shortages was during a massive economic depression caused by government wanting to give out welfare.
Welfare payments cause poverty, not the other way around.
Devin,
This site regularly denounces military spending and illegitimate wars. The government should not be able to steal money from our pockets to fund its pointless and destructive wars, but nor should it be able to steal our money to hand out to others in the form of welfare.
Any educated person should clearly see that taxation IS theft. It is money taken from our pockets by force. If you believe in all these programs, then you are welcome to voluntarily fund them. That is called charity. However, I do not believe in these programs, so I should not be forced to contribute to them.
So… first the government impoverishes the “poor” via inflation of the money supply, it’s war on the poor, its unsustainable ponzi schemes, its rampant taxation, its regulation of industry (making it harder for them to be employed)… but praise be to the Lord for doling out food stamps?
Some math: Assuming you take GDP as a valid measure of economic growth (and understand that the 55 year average for profits – i.e. net returns resulting from production – as a proportion of this is around 6%), know that the US GDP is around $14 trillion, understand it tends to grow at a rate of 3%… how do you propose to fund the $100 trillion (let alone the $1.6 trillion deficit) or so unfunded liabilities the US faces? Taxation? 6% of 3% will never, ever suffice (and will bleed the country of much needed funds for reinvestment in production.) Inflation (and thus rising prices and distortions in the structure of production, thus another boom/bust cycle)? Debt spending (and thus higher interest repayments on debt)?
That is why your plans, no matter how “noble” (they’re not since they involve coercion), how fanciful, how “caring”, amount to moonshine and wishful thinking.
Dumbass, I pay for my own retirement. It isn’t welfare. Tenure is something completely different. You also infer that the impoverished should starve. Remember, I am against the feds using my dough to pay for someone else’s agenda including food stamps, public education, PBS, and NPR. I give my own money to those things I actually use.
According to Walter Block, libertarians should take as much government welfare as possible. Professor Block does not feel there is any stigma associated with that decision.
Walter Block
May a Libertarian Take Money From the Government?
So what’s the big deal Mr. French? Applying Professor Block’s logic, LvMI should be applying for USG grants. Why are you guys behaving like libertarian martyrs around here, taking only private donations?
i firmly agree with Block on that, go out and grab some before the well’s dried up, hell, that well’s ruining the country — it’s your moral obligation to dry it up.
watch out though, handouts are more addictive than heroin…
The following assumes you were being sarcastic. If you weren’t, please disregard.
If Mises Academy were to receive accreditation, would it be unlibertarian of them to accept tuition which has been loaned and/or granted to students by the government?
LvMI is a registered non-profit organization. I assume that is so for tax purposes. Is it unlibertarian of LvMI to apply for exemptions?
Dr. Block’s logic is sound. Libertarians have an obligation to fleece the fleecers as much as possible. If LvMI were awarded a government grant for one dollar or $10,000,000.00, it should take the money with laughter and grins. Every dollar libertarians can get from the state is a dollar’s worth of compensation for our involuntary participation in the system. While reading Mr. French’s article, I thought about applying for food stamps myself.
Randall,
I was being sarcastic. Your ends justify the means arguments aren’t compatible with libertarianism. You may well be right, that it would be better for LvMI if it went on the government dole. It would probably help them reach more people like Rush Limbaugh or Fox News.
But then who would take seriously the argument that welfare is bad and that the state is illegitimate?
Dr. Block’s position is one where at one part of his article he mentions principle and by the end of the article he is preaching pragmatism. Pragmatism has little use for principles.
As far as the money you get from the state, some of it was taken from me. Do you really think you are entitled to it? If someone robbed you, does that mean you can’t get your goods returned later? Does that mean that thieves can play Robin Hood and handout whatever they can confiscate, and the recipients should cheer them on to take and give more?
“As far as the money you get from the state, some of it was taken from me.”
Actually, half of it was from QE2 and the other half was principle that I paid on a government bond. On the other hand, you’re stealing my money by driving on roads funded by a completely different province and benefiting from some government subsidized good or service. I would appreciate it if you would stop waving that gun in my face.
No one is waving a gun in your face if you’re buying government bonds, but I appreciated the tu quoque.
As someone who doesn’t own a car, it’s the “what about the road welfare?” reasoning of some libertarians that really cracks me up.
No, that is theft.
Hell i used my handouts aka Foodstamps to get heroin. everyone wants to rant and rave about welfare DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT
I’m amazed that people who own a house are eligible for welfare, and that Western states, supposedly bastions of capitalism, are burgeoning their lists of welfare recipients, and that the government can’t even cut $100b from a budget with a deficit of $1500b.
I see no possibility that this will change, even with a crisis. The USA will descend, just as the first welfare state, Argentina, has declined from a First to a Second World nation. Boycotting elections changes nothing, and voting is fruitless, too. The only solution is to vote with your feet.
Imagine living with a responsible government like Hong Kong, in a Mediterranean climate like California. Chile offers a combination of pleasant climate and fewer government burdens than many others. If you’re ready to shed the debt your government has imposed upon you, it is a good destination to consider:
http://brophyworld.com/move-to-santiago-chile/
http://brophyworld.com/chilean-miner-rescue-and-the-demise-of-usa-capitalism/
I was there a couple of weeks ago on holidays. Beautiful place. Would definitely consider moving to Santiago or any other Chilean city, if offered a job. Then again, I would move pretty much anywhere in the world for a job…
I have not seen it myself, but I read that people have been seen buying beer and cigarettes with foodstamp cards, and when they complained the store owner said that if he didn’t do it then they would shop at his competitors across the street.
If this is true then I suppose that it happens at mom ‘n’ pop stores which are too small to have a bar code scanner (which would leave an electronic trail of ineligible purchases) but large enough to have sufficient receipts from other transactions for food so that they can get the SNAP money with no questions asked.
The ancient Roman equivalent of foodstamps was the free bread handouts whose eligible recipients grew so numerous that it became a major financial and organizational problem to keep the city supplied with wheat. Egypt had to be governed directly by the emperor as a special colony which produced nothing but wheat for the Romans’ free bread and I suppose that in effect the city of Rome itself became a kind of colony whose rabble was just a political tool in the hands of the senate and military. Just another illustration that the welfare/warfare problem is as old as government.
I have been in a small store where this happened. The clerk rang up unacceptable items as produce or some other food item. I watched as the customer spent $100, about 1/2 food and 1/2 non-food. There is usually a way around the system.
I had an accident 16 years ago and almost ended up on the street. I have never taken welfare, but one of the reasons I had my stroke like accident is the stress I had from being a Christian and being discriminated against in a Northern workplace because of my religious beliefs, in particular another thing our grandmothers used to be ashamed of – people cohabiting outside of marriage. You want to end food stamps, bring back marriage. I come from a family of Yale educated upper middle class people, and am and was hard-working yet discriminated against because I am still a virgin. I am tired of pigs complaining about taxes then doing something else they should be ashamed of – cohabiting. Your kids appreciate that lifestyle too – NOT. I worked the whole time I was stricken and could have died not realizing how sick I was and I am an extremely bright and hardworking woman who got tired of being rooked by higher class bums. I am certain a lot of foodstamp people do not marry their chidlren’s father.
Here’s a better question – if you weren’t being taxed at roughly 43% of your salary to fund welfare and retirement, would you have ended up in that situation in the first place?
once again, the lambs of “good intentions” are slaughtered by the blade of rational actors. econ ftw.
When I was born, my father was in the Marine Corps, stationed in Beaufort, SC. He tells me the story of scrounging together some change to go to the store to get baby food. In front of him in line was a woman who tried to purchase dog food with her food stamps. When told by the cashier that dog food was an unallowable purchase, she said, “Hold on one second.” She then proceeded to put the dog food back and grab some beef (a steak, ground beef, I’m not exactly sure) and told the cashier, “That’s ok. He prefers this anyway.”
So the US Marine was looking for change in the couch cushions to feed his new son, and the dog was eating a steak, bought with money that was taken from the Marine. Something is wrong with this.
for some reason, I don’t think this story will fall on sympathetic ears on this site…
You’re right, it won’t. It’s because people working for private companies were being taxed (sic for robbed) to pay the Marine’s salary.
Reminds me of how I often see a homeless man by the road asking for money, with one or two dogs to feed as well.
“Everyone pays with a card so no one is the wiser other than the checkout person.”
Ummm… yes, everyone is well aware because users of these “EBT cards” flaunt them around, get indignant when they run out of money on the card or something they bought isn’t covered (God Forbid they have to pay for one item themselves), and almost always cause some sort of scene. Not to mention that they then immediately have a “second order” with cigarettes and other crap they can’t put on the card.
Wow! That’s hilarious. Back in the USSA!
Sione
When somebody uses their EBT card they are NOT just another customer using a credit card. They are getting fed with money that somebody else had to expend a part of their life earning. It is a means tested program and that is welfare, pure and simple, no matter what pretty sounding name they put on it. Just one more of society’s burdens getting a free ride on the back of a taxpayer who had to earn the money. And it is money that the taxpayer cannot spend on their own family.
I am amazed at the depth of rational hubris demonstrated by so many seemingly intelligent people inhabiting this board. Equating Mises contributors to Tea Partiers does not embarass me in the least: it should be embarrassing to those spouting the same rhetoric but wanting to be known as something else. If it looks like a duck…. and btw, I am a self-employed tradesman, my wife a self-employed realtor, who have not received a dime in entitlements (no medical coverage, no unemployment, no food-stamps, etc.) even though we’ve been hammered by the economy. I am basically a serf, owing thousands to the IRS with no real means to pay them and I, like Devin, would much rather see the theft of taxation applied to human needs (hunger/medical care) rather than feeding the M.I.C. and it’s Bilderberger owners. The Tea partiers are overwhelmingly mean-spirited, class-unconscious reactionaries who produce no viable alternatives for suffering Americans; they just lambast ‘big government’ as the source of all evil (but only include social programs as the evils to be rooted out, never targeting the massive percentage of debt being created to sustain foreign wars/reliance on oil/war on drugs and prison-building). That was my point and I do not retract it.
JP Morgan makes money from food stamps ! http://bit.ly/hEGeEc
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