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New Orleans One day I write that receiving food stamps is the “new normal,” as we say in New Orleans, and the next day there’s a front page story in the Sunday Times by Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff with a headline that includes the words: “stigma fades.” Wow! Am I ahead of the curve or what?
Probably “or what?”
Looking county-to-county and expounding on the research of Professor Mark Rank of Washington University in St. Louis, there are plenty of “I told you so” points the story makes:
o Almost 1 in 8 people in the USA are on stamps. More than 36 million people.
o Almost 25% of the nation’s children are on stamps.
o Cities like Memphis, New Orleans, and St. Louis have more than half of their children on stamps.
o Racial differences in participation are significant with 28% of African-Americans, 15% Latinos, and 8% whites.
o The head of the federal program is clear that, in the words of Citizen Wealth, we need “maximum eligible participation,” and must enroll the 15-16 million people who are not yet enrolled.
o The key one can find in reaching many of the new enrollees, as I have demanded in Citizen Wealth, is outreach.
I could go on, but it would get boring, and the point of this piece is not crowing. Quite the opposite.
Reading the article, just like being on the streets and out on the trail, I could not find the any real evidence for the proposition that the “stigma” of receiving food stamps is fading, as trumpeted by the headlines. In fact the actual interviews in the story, particularly with recent white participants who have signed up for the program, all seemed to carry the weight of regret, shame, and sense of exceptionalism about their own participation in the program that I have found talking to my Tea Party friends. Where whites are still 1 of 12 compared to blacks now moving to almost 1 in 3, the stigma still seems certain and stunning, and a huge barrier to enrollment.
The barrier seems to only collapse for two reasons from what I can tell on close examination of the story’s argument: (1) desperation pure and simple (which hardly reduces the stigma) and (2) outreach where someone convinces a recalcitrant but eligible family that they need to enroll for the good of their family, particularly the children.
Nothing about this story signaled to me “problem solved.” Instead the only real point seemed to be that in one beautifully written sentence: “Across the country, the food stamp rolls can be read like a scan of a sick economy.”
Where Under Secretary Kevin Concannon is right, and the article (or at least the gratuitous and missleading headline is wrong!) is that now is an opportunity to finally have the federal, state, and city governments put up, so that others will shut up about the fake dependency of receiving some benefits that help working families take care of their families. There is something so fatally wrong about a society that would invest more weight (and the attendant psychic damage) in having people care about what their neighbors think and their potential scorn, than in the first priority of making sure that your family is taken care of fully no matter what.
Changing the name of the program from food stamps to SNAP, and talking about nutrition rather than hunger, are not real changes, nor will they help us get the rest of the job done and done permanently, not just during these desperate times. We need a real effort that puts thousands of staff, volunteers, and others on the street and in the job centers to make and win the case to get all eligible families enrolled.
Stimulate that, Obama Administration!
1 Comment
Ah! Food stamps a wonderful life line to many people.
They ask a question that so many of us won’t ask. Why do so many in this wonderful country need food stamps.
The answer lies in the make up of the Country that would rather give people food stamps than a way to make a living so they wouldn’t need them.
It’s just like unemployment we would rather pay that than see people with jobs so they wouldn’t need them.
The people that run our country, and the real people who run our country the big money interests hate to see people employed because that costs money. So they work to see that as few as possible are employed, and at the cheapest wages so they can make more money. Thus leaving the government to make some attempt to help people.
A great example is years ago men with brooms and trash cans on wheels used to clean the streets, then came the street sweepers which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and needed operators and mechanics to keep running but replaced all those people. Not necessarily cheaper but maybe alittle faster.
Everything works to keep people from having jobs, which in turn means more need the help of food stamps and unemployment. It is an idiocy that is driven by money that actually costs money.
The Country and the people all would be better off if there was more jobs than people to do them. The economy would boom, business would boom, the government would be making more taxes, and even Wall Street would be making more money. Yet everything and everybody is working against what would bebefit us all the most. That is full employment for everybody.
It’s not a pipe dream, but something that could easily be fixed if the will was there to do it. We could for one thing make everything we need here. We could fix all our problems in infrastructure, and clean up the messes we have made of our Country. We need to get off foreign oil and quit burning coal for power. All these things need done and would take money to do, but by not doing the it is costing us way more than doing them would.
What better way to rebuild our economy and future than to address our problems and fix them. What better way to pay off the National debt, and have us all prospering than to hope things will solve themselves.
It would take the people, Government, and yes the big money interests to actually care about the Country and people. This is what has kept us from it, driven us into debt, and is killing the hope for our future.
The inability to see that the whole Country working solving our problems and building for our future is the best way to really take care of our people. What better way to make money, save money, and need for less taxes than everybody working and paying. Instead of so many people needing the help we give them, and costing us all money while doing it.
Is there any hope for this? I doubt it because the people we have sent to Washington can’t seem to grasp the idea of it, and won’t take the actions needed to make it happen. They are so wrapped up in taxes, and supporting the big money interests, that they can’t fathom the obvious answers to the problems.