The Food Stamp Business Is Booming

Becket Adams reports:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/food-stamp-use-at-all-time-high/

Or you can check the source post to which he links, here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-04/food-stamp-use-climbed-to-record-46-7-million-in-june-u-s-says.html

Is it racist to label Obama "The Food-Stamp President"? I don't know about racist, exactly. I see it as a simpler, older fallacy--taking Harry Truman's claim that "The Buck Stops Here" too seriously, and blaming the President for everything that goes wrong during his term. Like blaming Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression.

As usual, there's some truth mixed in with the fallacy. The President of the United States doesn't actually create the economic conditions; the President's decisions do usually contribute to them. Specifically, tax-and-spend policies, to which Republicans have succumbed too, drag down the economy. All twentieth century Presidents have contributed in some way to the alarm and despondency documented during their administration--and, in some way, too, to the general tendency of the U.S. economy during the twentieth century to be as prosperous as any economy ever documented in history, despite the slow steady decline that correlates directly with the proliferation of tax-and-spend policies.

But lots of other people have contributed to our various recessions and depressions. Most Americans don't realize that U.S. economic policy is not actually set by the President so much as by the (unelected, accountable to nobody) chairman of the Federal Reserve. That's a separate rant, and other people do it much better than I do.

So instead I will point to two other groups of people who are contributing to the boom in the food stamp business...uh, the problem here is that the food stamp business drags our economy down rather than lifting it up...

(1) Our current plague of social workers who actually want to keep people dependent on government handouts, rather than encouraging anybody to get off the dole and do something useful. "How sad that there aren't enough corporate jobs to keep able-bodied Americans earning their own living any more. Tsk, tsk. We need more government programs to create more jobs." No we don't, you useless twits, we need more hands-off government policies that allow individuals to create their own jobs in response to their own communities' actual needs.

(2) And those of you, Gentle Readers, who have continued buying products that weren't made in your community while members of your community remained unemployed. (Or "jobless." How did "jobless" become the trendy word?) Or failed to employ people who were qualified to do things that you know you need to have done, but you wailed, "I'm not an 'employer.' I could only afford to pay someone to work one day a week, and I don't understand all the regulations and I'm afraid of some kind of liability, yarrayarrayarr, worry worry worry woe is me, and it's so hard for me to live on a fixed income that's only three times what you and your husband lived and prospered and supported charities and built up savings accounts on." Or whatever variation on that theme may apply.

Here is what you need to know: competent independent contractors take responsibility for our own taxes and our own personal safety, provided that you take responsibility for paying us a fair wage for our day's work. All you have to do is count out the cash or, if you can convince us that disability makes that too hard for you, write a check. If you want your local economy to survive and recover from tax-and-spend presidential administrations, do that.

If you really mean "I have no use for you, personally; I don't care whether you live or die, if anything I might prefer that you die," then continue "helpfully" telling local independent contractors, "You can probably qualify for food stamps!" I've heard that, during my past two years of poverty. I hear your words, and what I hear as the message behind them is "Die! Die! Hurry up and die!"--so you shouldn't be surprised if the emotional tone of whatever I say back conveys a message like "Why don't you die first?" I have religious faith that there may be some reason why the world allows those of you who've "helpfully" told me about the food stamp program to go on breathing, but I do not personally care to imagine what that reason might be.

Actually, one of you did die, this summer. I did not burst into joyful song on reading the notice in the Daily News. I didn't shed a tear, either.

I don't need food stamps. I don't want food stamps. I have no rightful claim on food stamps, and if the food stamp program were competently managed, anyone as able-bodied, talented, employable, and actually productive as I am would be subject to physical ejection from the building if he or she tried to apply for food stamps. This is September. I have knitted enough sweaters that, if people in my neighborhood buy hand-knitted U.S.-made sweaters from me instead of buying foreign-made sweatshop sweaters from Wal-Mart, I can not only buy food and pay my heating expenses but improve the energy efficiency of my house for this winter. Don't tell me about food stamps. Ask me about those sweaters. Or the blankets. Or whatever other object or service you would most prefer to pay a neighbor, instead of a China-based sweatshop, to provide for you.

Yes, I'm aware that most of the food stamp recipients in this country have not been self-employed all their lives, are not accustomed to working directly for customers and living within their own budgets and doing their own taxes and all those other special skills. Maybe Americans should be paying me to teach those skills. (This would be done by sponsoring ads to get more of this kind of content onto the Internet.) Most of the food stamp recipients in this country are able to work, even willing to work, but they have been allowed to believe that "work" means "go outside of your home and wait for someone else to tell you what to do," rather than "find something useful you can do and persuade someone to pay you for doing it." This is their primary problem. Corporations are laying them off, and instead of submarining the corporations--which the corporations need and deserve--they're sitting on their hands and wailing, "Oh poor little me, who's going to give me another job."