Is the End of Food Stamps and Other Government Programs Imminent, or Should it Be?

Saw an interesting video on the InflationUS channel where george4title talks about how so many Americans are living off of food stamps and nothing else. An interesting link on the sidebar references a New York Times article that suggests that this is happening in areas that many felt were solvent and were not experiencing a lot of problems. Nothing could be further from the truth; it would appear that the largest increase in Americans living off of nothing but food stamps is in Nevada, Florida, and New York while states like New Jersey, Oklahoma and Louisiana are experiencing the smallest increase.

However when your state does not see a huge increase in the amount of individuals receiving food stamps it can only mean one of a few things. The first is that things have been bad in your state for quite a while, and it is experiencing little, if any, change because things are probably already as bad as they can get. This would explain why there has been little increase across the Midwest where individuals have already been living underneath the poverty line for quite some time and unemployment has been high since the seventies. Now Michigan has seen a 60% increase, which is interesting because that state has had issues since before I was but Illinois has only seen a 20% increase; they say there aren't any jobs in Illinois, but I beg to differ. For one the state was always more diverse economically than Ohio, though arguably, a lot of the urbanization is concentrated in one place.

However other states in the region are no different, in fact Ohio and Indiana are probably the two states where you see cities throughout the state, as opposed to one monolithic, menacing urban existence dead in the center. As you know my friend george4title has been on the front line of this thing in Southern California for quite some time, I think at least 3 years on his core channel and since June on the channel I've listed. But I think the commentary, much of which in this video is about his own condition, as opposed to that of the nation, shows just how tired a lot of us are. First off, how many Americans typically have food stamps as their only income, just over the 3 decades I've been around? Food stamps date back to 1939, and at that time the program was taken out of existence four years later because it was no longer necessary for the American government to continue to offer this service. We had a huge boom in employment because we were needed manpower in order to help us defeat the axis of evil in World War II; whether or not that was a good thing I'm not sure because that obviously did not last as food stamps returned with a pilot in the sixties.

In its first inception, a woman from Rochester, New York was the first to receiver food stamps, this time around the first recipient was from Paynesville, West Virginia. Lyndon Johnson brought about legislation to make the food stamp program permanent, and things began to go downhill from there. Making the program permanent, which inevitably led to desperate and ill-conceived attempts at reform in the eighties and nineties, is perhaps the worst thing the government could have done. The real questions are this; if the American government is bailing out Wall Street, who continues to hoard money and redistribute it back to itself in the form of bonuses, then forcing the consumers to pay more in interest rates and denying credit to others and those same consumers are on food stamps and cannot get a job, or worse yet keep the one they have, what will happen to the system? Clearly, this is not a system that everyone can be on; the individuals I knew that were on food stamps back in the day had other income, we won't talk about where that income came from but it was there. They found a part time job somewhere to keep the government off of their back as Ohio continues to harass you about finding some type of employment to get you out of the system, out of the housing projects, and off of welfare altogether. However the same individuals would always refuse to work a full time job, or one that paid too much, because they didn't want their food stamps reduced to $30.

Are these same states keeping up that end of the bargain in the light of this recession? Is Ohio requiring individuals to work somewhere knowing that the jobs do not exist, are they providing and paying for the training to get people back to work, are they providing the public transportation to get them where they need to go? One thing about the Midwest, is that you will buy a 1972 Nova just to get yourself off of public transportation that sucks because that is all you can afford, unlike the either coast where people drive newer cars because they can squeeze in those payments. They allow cars on the road that would be considered dangerous to drive, or unfit, in other states (in particular the Commonwealth states like Virginia). I know that millions are on food stamps, sure they will claim that is their only source of income but we will never know, but the fact that they are on food stamps is more than enough of an indicator of their condition. But is it serious this time, do they have no other choice, or do they just want to continue to exist on the system.

The system was never serious about getting individuals off of food stamps because it keeps them where they want them; after all you were the individuals paying for them to be in such bondage to begin with. In this position of not working and having to panhandle the government for a blank check to buy food they then rely on the American government, and when they finally do work, are the perfect consumers. A lot of them already take money they could be using for rent to do other things. However now that the system is flooded, what are they going to do about it? Are they going to begin to squeeze welfare recipients out or put unrealistic caps in the benefits, like giving people $50 a month, or will they slowly chip away at the system until it no longer exists, as is what is occurring today with social security? Will welfare and food stamps, and Section 8, and all of these other cool programs exist for your grandchildren in 2050? Do not be surprised if they aren't ...