moksha wrote:Why are you posting stuff like this Moksha? No one cares. This is a forum to discuss weighty matters which other posters are interested in.
I kind of care, but it's hard to point to a single drop in a torrential downpour of federal debt and claim that it's the problem. Between massive federal spending, quantitative easing, and the fed pumping hundreds of billions into the economy I'm not sure $68B or so really makes a difference.
https://4thworldmovement.org/food-stamps-waste-money/To put this in perspective – 141,204,625 Americans paid income taxes in 2015[6]. Because of our progressive tax rate, the top 5% of taxpayers (the 7 million wealthiest Americans, those earning over $350,000 a year) cover 60% of the program’s cost. This means that SNAP cost the remaining 95% of taxpayers just $200 a year.
But, fraud?
Critics of the SNAP program put a lot of effort into the idea that fraud is rampant. Usually they claim that benefits are being sold, or that, in the words of one Missouri state senator, people are “purchasing filet mignons and crab legs.”
An analysis done by Forbes Magazine, however, showed that this kind of fraud is highly uncommon, putting the rate of fraud in SNAP, based on government figures, at 0.9%.
For a government program, that is as close to nothing as you’re going to get, and compared to other government programs it is an exemplary level of integrity. Take defense for instance: An internal Pentagon report identified $25 billion a year that could be saved by the Department of Defense simply by eliminating waste.
Part of the reason that fraud is so low is that the government has been extremely thorough in prosecuting both stores and individuals who even attempt fraud. But the way SNAP works is part of it too – benefits come on electronic EBT cards with individual pin numbers, which are a real disincentive to even trying to sell benefits.
I find it incredibly difficult to get worked up about this program when our federal government decided to pump $4T into an Iraq war that has resulted in few, if any, tangible benefits for the American taxpayer. What does this mean for the Conservative posters on this forum that won't read this post because their brains are too dim and distracted once they see it exceeded a few lines? Well, maybe I can put it into context.
The ultra-rich have as much as $32 trillion hidden away in offshore accounts to avoid taxes.
As a way to understand the magnitude of the number 32 trillion (32,000,000,000,000), let's use time as an example:
One million seconds is only 12 days.
One billion seconds is 31 years.
One trillion is over 31,250 years.
So, sure we're spending a lot of seconds on SNAP, but we're also running hundreds of thousands of trillions of seconds in federal debt a year.
Where I do agree with ajax is that we need to find a balance between genuine charity, pragmatism, and not killing a man's spirit through kindness. People who receive money become enslaved to it. People who earn money generally grow in spirit. That said, I don't know what the numbers are vis a vis people who use assistance on a temporary basis versus those who finagle their way into permanent subsistence via social security, medicaid, EBT, section 8 and the like. Whatever the case may be, I'd rather help our own out versus throwing trillions are BS wars. That's for sure.
- Doc