Wrong cuts / LJWorld.com

Letters to the Editor

Wrong cuts

By David Childers, Lawrence

May 22, 2012

To the editor:

The U.S. House of Representatives recently voted on a package that guts social programs supporting low-income Americans. Specifically, they cut $36 billion from the SNAP program, or food stamps.

I realize we need to balance the budget, but is this the best way to do it? Cutting programs that put food on the table for people in our community that are going hungry every day is not just shortsighted, but it is also just plain morally wrong.

We talk a lot about values in this country, but our elected officials’ votes don’t always seem to back up their words. We need to strengthen our nation’s hunger safety net, not cut the strings to it. If that cut is made law:

l Every SNAP recipient will see a reduction in monthly benefits.

l 2 million people currently on SNAP will lose SNAP benefits entirely.

l 280,000 children will lose free school breakfast and lunch.

And this while military spending and oil production subsidies in the billions (billions!) continue unabated.

Let your representatives know that this is unacceptable.

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xclusive85 1 year ago

David, I am curious where the numbers in your letter come from. I would like to read what you did for myself. I hope that it was some unbiased organization.

KansasConscience 1 year ago

Here's a link to an article on Bloomberg. It supports what David wrote. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-10/house-votes-to-cut-food-stamps-to-avoid-defense-reduction.html

From the article (citing the numbers from the congressional Budget Office): "The Republicans’ plan would reduce spending by about $310 billion over a decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It would cut off food stamps to 1.8 million Americans, according to CBO, while reducing aid to millions more. About 280,000 children who receive food stamps would no longer be automatically eligible for free school lunches, CBO said"

Fossick 1 year ago

How about we cut the military and all business subsidies as well? As it is the case that for the first time, SNAP has risen to account for more than 10% of all grocery sales, it's obvious that it is just another government giveaway program that has grown out of control. http://www.trcommons.org/2012/05/snap-benefits-surpass-10-of-all-grocery-spending/

ljwhirled 1 year ago

Either -

The program is out of control and is a free give away for the masses.

-or-

Their are more poor people due to the largest economic recession in modern history and the longest period of massive unemployment since the great depression.

Hmmmm. Wonder which it is?

Fossick 1 year ago

Given that the program increased by 50% in the 4 years before the recession, I'm going to go with #1.

just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 1 year ago

Real wages, adjusted for inflation, for the lower 80% have been dropping steadily for more than thirty years.

Fossick 1 year ago

Yes, they have. Expect that to continue. Now that the rest of the world has a) recovered from the unimaginable destruction that was WWII, or b) grasped a 20th century technology where anyone can run a machine with 2 weeks of training, there remains no reason to pay an American $20 an hour to do what someone else will do for $10/hr.

Competition is a cast iron biatch. She's also the queen of the 21st century.

just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 1 year ago

" there remains no reason to pay an American $20 an hour to do what someone else will do for $10/hr."

And yet the .1%, who aren't doing anything better or differently than they did 30 years ago, are seeing their income and wealth increase dramatically. Is that because that's how god intended it?

Fossick 1 year ago

It's because that's how technology intended it. Don't bother with the god games - reality isn't simple and neither am I.

Income and wealth are increasing dramatically where they are because that's where value (or perceived value) is being added. Where are the Mark Zuckerbergs of 30 years ago? They do not exist. Whether or not Facebook adds real value to the world (and I don't doubt it though I discount the market's perception immensely) there is little doubt his squillions of dollars are of such a nature that a) their equivalent did not exist 30 years ago, and b) no amount of marxist labor-theory-of-value can account for them. He created them from nothing. Information Age, FTW.

How has the work of the average GM line rat changed? It hasn't, except that any Chinaman can now do the same work, produce the same output, and is willing to for a small percentage of the Union rate.

One is irreplaceable, one is being replaced. Care to guess which witch is which ?

DougCounty 1 year ago

Fossick, Your explanations have an element of truth to them, however it is as we like to say, more complex than that. For instance, while Germany has struggled with its own economic displacements, the workforce there has managed to retain high wages, high benefits, high productivity and stayed very competitive with emerging markets. I don't believe that pensioners have been robbed there as well.

At the same time, the high collateral environmental damages, low wages and cultural sacrifices in China have not gone unnoticed, and further adjustments are having to be made there in their command and control economy in order to avoid the worst of the fruits of these policies.

Many countries are facing large scale unrest not only because of governmental austerity programs, but also because of the destructiveness of globalist policies and their impacts upon traditional social structures. You might even say that this is one of the main driving forces behind fundamentalism movements in Islamic and other countries.

And yes, the information age has provided a wealth concentrator that does not correlate with wigit production and is much more in line with the service sector dynamics. The lessons of agriculture commodities markets impacts on the farmer producers are rippling out across the world through the complexities of the financial markets as well, distorting wealth distributions in ways that are pretty unrecognizable to classical Keynsian or Marxist economic models.

And when it comes right down to it, nobody is really in charge of all of this. Technology has outstripped our ability to plan and control its consequences,

just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 12 months ago

"It's because that's how technology intended it. "

Technology has no intent whatsoever. But those who control the increased profits and capital flow from increased efficiency indeed do have intentions, and that intention doesn't include the health and well-being of the vast majority of the human race.

That may be satisfying to them, and those who are ideologically motived towards laissez faire capitalism, but for the vast majority, it's a pretty ugly picture, and getting uglier. And raw capitalism has no answer for that.

just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 12 months ago

"except that any Chinaman can now do the same work, produce the same output, and is willing to for a small percentage of the Union rate."

Willing? Hardly. If "free trade" applied to union-organizing the same way that it applies to capital, the wage and benefit differential would be dramatically different.

Liberty275 12 months ago

"And yet the .1%, who aren't doing anything better or differently than they did 30 years ago"

Yes they are. They are shipping jobs overseas because they were paying 10, you wouldn't work less than 20 and now the Chinese will do it for 3. Add another 3 for the ride over on a container ship.

China makes 3, shipper makes 3, .1% pockets the extra 4.

jhawkinsf 1 year ago

The $310 billion cut over the next ten years, does this represent a 10% cut? 1% cut? 0.1% cut? I've seen slowing of growth represented as "cuts". Without additional information, I'll withhold judgement.

Fossick 1 year ago

"The number of people receiving SNAP benefits increased by almost 50 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2005 and even more rapidly (by 70 percent) between fiscal years 2007 and 2011. During that latter period, spending on SNAP benefits grew by about 135 percent." (from a source) http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/04-19-SNAP.pdf

SNAP cost the feds $78b in FY11, doubled and more in 4 years. With 0% growth going forward, a $310b cut ($31b/yr) would not even reduce SNAP to what it spent in 2007. But one can expect far more than 0% growth going forward.

Fortunately, SNAP cannot maintain its current growth for much longer. As one in 7 Americans is now on SNAP, that number can only double two or three more times until we are all on food stamps.

Fossick 1 year ago

Actually, it's even less than that, by an order of magnitude. This is $36b over 10 years, not per year, so it's $3.6b per year in a program that spent $78b last year. It's a 5% cut in a program that has grown 135% in the past 5 years.

Catastrophic.

just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 1 year ago

Interesting that your focus on the increase in the number of beneficiaries, not on whether these new beneficiaries were added because they needed the aid.

Fossick 1 year ago

Because there is no objective measurement for whether they need the aid. Since house value (among other things, including certain savings accounts) is excluded from asset requirements and pensions mostly excluded from income requirements, a debt-free person living on a fat pension in a million dollar home qualifies for SNAP.

The idea that we have 47 million people in America who 'need' SNAP is preposterous. We have the richest poor people the world has ever seen.

just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 1 year ago

So, asserting that there are no objective measures means that the rest of your bald assertions are somehow validated?

Fossick 1 year ago

All my assertions are provided with a full head of hair, I assure you. While pattern baldness may be a concern for average middle-aged corporate executives,*it has never been a problem for my maths.

just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 12 months ago

Regardless of you follicle tendencies, you can just cover your head with that white flag.

weiser 1 year ago

Do what I did. Wash dishes in a restaurant and they pay you and give you food. They are always looking for people for that job.

verity 1 year ago

But who would pay for the stools for the little children to stand on so they can reach the sink?

deec 1 year ago

Restaurants don't let people who aren't on the payroll work for food. It would be a violation of wage laws, immigration laws, and worker's compensation laws. Also, letting non-employees into the kitchen area opens up the business to a potential claim should the free worker be injured. Cute story, though.

verity 1 year ago

deec, I thought it was apparent that I was being sarcastic.

ljwhirled 1 year ago

That is what happens when the divide between the haves and the have-nots widens.

skinny 1 year ago

I am a republican! I do not believe in handouts’!

vertigo 1 year ago

You sound an awful lot like Colton from this seasons Survivor.

Crazy_Larry 1 year ago

Unless it's a handout to a corporation. (fixed that for you)

Alyosha 1 year ago

Your comment might be worth adult consideration except for the fact that the majority of food stamps go to rural families in overwhelmingly Republican districts in the US.

So that means it's mostly Republicans, not Democrats, whose constituents are making use of the program.

Do try to let the light of God's truth (also known as facts) wash over you before typing a comment, and then perhaps you'll not embarrass yourself by being so meanly wrong.

Fossick 1 year ago

"The majority of food stamps go to rural families in overwhelmingly Republican districts in the US. "

While as the New York Times has recently pointed out, food stamp usage is equal among urban and rural populations (about 15% of families), rural areas make up barely 20% of the US population. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census_issues/archives/metropolitan_planning/cps2k.cfm

The likelihood that the majority of food stamps goes to this 1/5 of the population - a group that uses them as the same rate as others - is statistically unlikely, to say the least.