Get a load of this.
“Riots always begin typically the same way”: Food stamp shutdown looms Friday
Food stamp recipients face a massive benefit cut set to kick in when stimulus funds expire Friday. The nationwide cut “is equivalent to about 16 meals a month for a family of three,” according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis using the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan.” CBPP called the roughly $5 billion annual cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program “unprecedented” in “depth and breadth.”
“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” Margarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, told Salon Monday.
It seems – according to the article, which is so slanted in every other way that I make no claims about accuracy except that it’s probably not present – that the “cuts” in food stamps that will cause the poor to starve in their garrets or burn the rich in their palaces come from the “stimulus” money running out, which would reduce the continuing increase in the amount going to SNAP by a devastating five billion dollars. Given that the SNAP budget has far more than doubled since 2009, and paid out almost $75B last year, my sympathy is limited.
Oh, and there’s nothing at all in the text about a “shutdown,” as promised in the title.
Some of the arithmetic in this example of inspired journalism is breathtaking even to math-impaired ol’ Joel…
Purvis added that cutting food stamps was “not even good business sense,” because each dollar of food stamps infuses over $1.70 of spending into the economy.
I’m gonna need an explanation for how that could work. Unless unicorns are involved, in which case never mind.
But the overall tone does remind me of this blast from the past, which assures us all that nothing has changed except the size of the numbers. Pull the tregros, negros…
NOTE: “I’m not the least bit against charity,” he said, nodding toward the tip jar button. It’s been a bad summer for money and I’m trying to get plugged into the local food bank myself because the chickens aren’t laying and I’m tired of rice and potatoes.
But I do object to the sort of “charity” in which a token portion of money taken at gunpoint from Group A is handed down with great fanfare to Group B – which is then encouraged to clamor for its “right” to more. As a lifelong member of Group A, that sort of “charity” makes me angry and hostile. I’d throw a riot, but there’s nobody out here to notice except the dogs. And that would only confuse them.
I believe a one person riot would be a tantrum. Very ineffective is nobody is around to observe.
Do you get the feeling the left really really wants riots? Anyone familiar with welfare in general and food stamps in particular knows this won’t impact a families meals so much as it might impact their alcohol, drug and cigarette consumption.
Matt:
I might pay to see a youtube video of Joel throwing a tantrum. Does a tantrum become a riot of the smallest possible size if it is observed on-line?
I once (actally, still do) qualified for SNAP. The local SNAP purveyor was quite persistent. I finally agreed so she would stop pestering me over a whopping $16/mo. I somehow managed to not starve when I kinda-on-purpose failed to submit my paperwork on time for the six-month review. Perhaps one reason the program is so bloated is that somebody makes more profit when they sign up more SNAP participants.
“…each dollar of food stamps infuses over $1.70 of spending into the economy.
I’m gonna need an explanation for how that could work.
I can “explain” it. In the sense of “tell you their assumptions”. But it does involve unicorns and other mythical beasties. Or you could do a web search on Keynesian economics and why inflation is “good”.
Basically, they assume that when the government pumps money into anything, that causes private individuals to go into piggy bank busting frenzy to spend with wild abandon on stuff they don’t really want to spend money on. And this is a good thing.
Somehow this also assumes that not stealing and printing (unbacked!) money so that individuals could pump it into whatever they do want is a bad thing.
So yeah, in a sense each guvvie dollar spent sorta does equate to a buck-seventy. As in 70% inflation driving up prices faster than wages and making people even poorer. And that’s a good thing. Because now they’ll turn to dot-gov for more handouts (which drives more inflation… lather-rinse-repeat reductio infinitum…)
You asked. Sort of.
A youtube video of a quality tantrum that goes viral and has thousands of viewers might qualify as a riot. Riot police would have a hard time finding Joel to hit him with the pepper spray and water cannons though.
Yeah, and after they suppressed my riot they’d need my help getting their APCs unstuck.
Maybe the flaw in that thinking is the assumption they’d put forth the energy to riot. In my limited experiences of meeting SNAP people not one of them would be that motivated even if they were cut off/down.
And as you noted, most local food banks are formed because of freely given goodies. So, the difference is not only acceptable but an important point in differentiating between the two. And my few visits to food banks – never once did they tell me I had to become “a regular”, either. Bonus points for the ones that don’t even ask for one’s name.