Eat the poor
This is what those “unsung heroes” who are secretly trying to keep Trump from smashing all the porcelain are actually doing: giving huge tax cuts to billionaires while seeing to it that poor people are thrown out of the food stamps program. Please tell us more about how noble and courageous they are.
Nearly two million low-income Americans, including 469,000 households with young children, would be stripped of benefits under the House version of the farm bill being considered this week by congressional negotiators, according to an analysis by a nonpartisan research firm.
The bill, a multiyear spending measure that narrowly passed the House in June, includes a proposal to reformulate income and expense criteria for the 42 million recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Under the bill, states could remove about 8 percent of those receiving aid from the rolls, according to the research firm, Mathematica, which used data from the Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service.
Yeah! Stick it to those disgusting losers who don’t have much money, oh and by the way Trump will be needing Air Force One for another golfing/shopping/ranting trip today/tomorrow/over the weekend.
About 34 percent of seniors in the program, or 677,000 households, would lose benefits under the proposal, according to the study. More than one in 10 people with a disability, another 214,000 households, would also lose eligibility.
Good! They should be out digging for coal; it builds character.
Those estimates do not account for another proposal in the measure, which would impose strict new work requirements on beneficiaries. An additional 1.2 million people could be stripped of aid under that plan, according to a separate analysis released in May by the Congressional Budget Office, the study’s authors said.
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President Trump favors imposing stricter requirements on adult recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, and has disparagingly described beneficiaries as “welfare” recipients.
On Wednesday, he called for lawmakers to adopt the House version of the bill, which also includes billions in subsidies for agricultural states in the Midwest.
“The Trump Economy is booming with the help of House and Senate GOP,” he wrote on Twitter. “#FarmBill with SNAP work requirements will bolster farmers and get America back to work. Pass the Farm Bill with SNAP work requirements!”
Then he went back to watching tv.
Actually I think the beneficiaries of SNAP might actually be welfare recipients… one of the aid programs does fit the what is traditionally regarded as welfare (though it may be TANF instead, I don’t recall).
That being said… where the reds are concerned we may soon be at a point where the response to the apocryphal “let them eat cake” is appropriate.
I remember in the 90s, under the Clinton welfare reform bill. I was trying to raise a child on an income of nearly nothing. I was on disability, and had managed to return to school. When I got better and was no longer on disability (a good outcome, but tough to get by), I attempted to qualify for TANF. The work requirements were such that I would have had to quit the master’s degree I had just started and take a minimum wage job (I did take a minimum wage job; I’m not proud) because I could not request any flexibility in my hours to fit my class schedule, and I could not turn down an offered job. And I had to apply for at least 10 jobs a week. For that, I would have received $75 a month.
I said no, let’s just keep it at that. I told my dad I was glad I had a big car, because it looked like my son and I would be sleeping in it (and his dad paying no child support, because I didn’t have any money to take to court, and the situation I was in didn’t entitle me to any assistance from Child Welfare – it’s a long story). I was fortunate that I found a job that would be flexible with my school hours just in time to avoid the worst. It didn’t pay much, but with food stamps, we were able to get by.
With Trump’s plan, even that help would be gone. I have no doubt that Oklahoma (where I was living then) will leap with joy at the idea of being able to strip recipients of food stamps of their lifeline.
Mind you, welfare and benefits programs throughout the west have morphed over time into a form of hidden corporate welfare. Since the late 1970’s and accelerating through the 80’s and 90’s in particular, incomes for workers has been declining relative to the cost of living. Initially those affected were in traditional blue collar jobs. That extended into many lower level white collar office jobs. Eventually the ‘middle management’ tier was largely eliminated (organisations had become so lean that they simply were not required any more). Now professions are finding downward pressure is becoming acute as their status is degraded.
All in all, a significant number of people have become working poor. they have jobs of some sort, but they can never sustain, let alone get ahead on those incomes. governments have found it easier to create welfare and benefit programmes to take up the slack, rather than legislate for a fair living income. Now it has become more expedient for some governments to simply cut people out of these programs, rather than legislate for a fair income.
This will of course ultimately prove to be a problem. They are literally creating a beggar/precariat class, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the great depression, or the early industrial revolution prior to that. When a sufficiently large number of people have been tipped into that class there will be a revolution(s). That may be a largely peaceful revolution – the sort that saw much of the welfare state created in the first place – or it may be a violent overthrow of an oppressive and unjust state. Either way, it will be a waste of the wealth, potential and lives of hundreds of millions of individuals and the power and position of those countries affected.
The short sighted stupidity of it all is just so frustrating.
And/or, as Robert Reich pointed out the other day, the extreme impoverishment of the bulk of the populace will cause another crash, because poor people can’t keep economies ticking along.
Exactly. Because since industrialisation we live in a consumer economy. The bulk of people, spending to stay alive, educate their kids, have the odd luxury and (if they are really lucky) put aside a few dollars for retirement, is what supports the consumer economy. not a handful of uber rich. While those uber rich might spend profligate amounts of money, the gross spend is actually quite small relative to what the other 7-8 billion spend every day.
New Zealand has a legislated minimum wage (https://www.employment.govt.nz/hours-and-wages/pay/minimum-wage/minimum-wage-rates/). It’s not bad by comparison to say the US, but neither is it actually a sustainable wage. More recently the Living Wage has been promoted (https://www.livingwage.org.nz/what_is_the_living_wage). This still isn’t what you would describe as rolling in it. But it enables people to actually, well, live. They can meet all the needs of them and their families. The can afford sports for the their kids. Save for education (which is very low cost here), take modest holidays, even put aside a tiny bit of money for retirement. Most importantly, they can afford stable housing of minimal acceptability.
And yet how many poor vote for just those conditions?
People are not rational. Sadly, we are also far to easily manipulated in many and varied ways.
We’re having similar problems in Britain, where those previously receiving Disability Living Allowance are being moved to the new Personal Independence Payment as DLA is being phased out. The trouble is, before receiving any PIP, the claimamts have to have their health requirements assessed – by non-medically trained* assessment officers. As a result, 30% of those previously receiving DLA have been refused PIP.
For many claimants, this means they lose their only form of income, and are forced to claim Job Seekers Allowance, despite being medically unfit for work.
*The company providing assessment staff say that the assessors are medical professionals, but in reality they are mostly former NHS administrative staff, the secretaries, receptionists, etc, rather than being actual medically trained personnel.
Rob @ 7
There are two myths that I learned in Economics (1) that people are rational and that they make rational choices and (2) that economics is a science, it isn’t and it’s easily subverted by ideologues. The ‘trickle down’ drivel claimed by corporate tax cut advocates is a prime example. Usually what trickles down is amber coloured and at body temperature. There are some encouraging signs however, economists are actually doing experiments in consumer choice attitudes.
The problem with the discipline is that it was developed by people with huge IQs but who never had a real job.
RJW I agree. Economics seems to be of limited use as predictive tool for broad trends, but terrible at picking triggers or timing in advance. It’s therefore got some use as a planning tool, but limited use as a tactical tool. Trickle down has to be one of the most discredited concepts ever, and yet it is still being touted. Mind you, only by those currently at the top of the economic dung heap.
Rob @10
There are two very useful books on the notoriously inaccurate economic forecasting industry.
(1) ‘Future Babble’ and (2) ‘The Drunkard’s Walk’ which is authored by a scientist (a physicist).
Two examples of classic blunders, a hundred years ago Argentina was forecast to leave Australia far behind in economic development and of course, the recent triumph, those predictions that Russia would transform itself into a liberal capitalist democracy.
I forgot to mention the most successful example of economic myth-making. It’s the fantasy that the interests of the middle class coincide with the class interests of the plutocracy. If there’s a recession, members of the aspirational middle class will find themselves in deep financial crap.
I predict the deflation of the real estate bubble here in Oz, if I live long enough, I’ll be correct.
RJW, our entire economy is built around that myth of the rational actor. And it is difficult to dispute, because there is no frame of reference by which we can talk to each other about the irrationality of our economic system.
To wit: in my most recent Economics class, as the instructor was going on and on and on about the “rational actor” and stating (without evidence) that the consumer/businessman would always behave in the most rational manner, I challenged him with an example I had from my days doing wetland restoration. As we talked to the farmers out in the area where we were doing a restoration, trying to explain to them that their practices (chicken farms, mostly) were the problem in the lake (too much phosphorus), the stubborn answer we received from everyone of them was “this is how my father did it. Are you saying my father was wrong?” I tried to point this out to my Econ prof, but his answer? “You may not understand it, but if they’re doing it that way, it is the most rational way”. WTF? Boy, there is no way you can demonstrate their fallacy, because whatever you show them, whatever evidence you collect, they will always turn it around to the statement “it must be rational if they’re doing it that way”. Circular argument much?
Much like Christians who explain away the failure to answer prayers with “God has something else in mind for me” or “he said no”.
Let’s not forget that ‘rational actors’ give us boom and bust cycles. They have all the rationality of toddlers or Labradors gorging themselves on food till they puke. Me, I’m inclined to think that being rational means you learn from the past, recognise destructive patterns and take action to avoid collapse. My reasoning is that a slight trim in profits now is better than a total clusterfuck and throwing myself out a window 10 seconds after I cease to be amazingly wealthy. But, there I go being irrational again.
Iknklast @12
I hadn’t realised that you have studied economics, I’ve been preaching to the choir. I was referring to my undergraduate days many years ago, I’m amazed that the notorious ‘rational actor’ is still in vogue. After graduating I worked as an accountant and discovered how businesses actually function. More than once at conferences, we would hear the economists’ view of corporate costs, mathematically tied up in a bow. Sometimes an accountant or engineer would explain that, in business there are practical limitations that economists ignore.
The discipline is not entirely a lost cause, there’s poltical economy which factors in actual human institutions, in other words, ‘the real world’ and economic history. Of course not all capitalists are mesmerised by Western theory, the East Asians ignored it when it suited them and took a pragmatic view of development.
I’ve always thought that the economics “rational actor” model is much like the physicists “spherical inelastic cow in a vacuum” model – it’s a deliberate simplification that allows one to look at first-order approximations of cause and effect dynamics.
The difference between physicists and economicists is that physicists, once they’ve arrived at their conclusions, go back to their simplifications and consider how they influenced the model they created, and what changes they need to make to eliminate the simplifications and make more accurate real-world predictions next time. Economicists, on the other hand, stick their fingers in their ears, and say “la la la, we have an answer now, no more work required, what’s that I can’t hear you!”.
RJW, the school where I did my doctorate required all Environmental Science majors to take some graduate level Economics (one reason some of the Environmental Science oriented people opted for a straight Biology degree, instead). It was very useful for me. In my Environmental Economics course, I learned that the main thing they are teaching their students is that it is better to cut down resources now because the discounts applied to waiting suggest that they will make less money by leaving them intact.