Genna Saucedo supervises cashiers at a Wal-Mart in Pico Rivera, California, but her wages aren’t enough to feed herself and her 12-year-old son.
Saucedo, who earns $9.70 an hour for about 26 hours a week and lives with her mother, is one of the many Americans who survive because of government handouts in what has rapidly become a food stamp nation.
Altogether, there are now almost 46 million people in the United States on food stamps, roughly 15 percent of the population. That’s an increase of 74 percent since 2007, just before the financial crisis and a deep recession led to mass job losses.
Actually, it is standard practice at Wal-Mart, Target Stores, and several other outlets to limit workers’ hours to the same as quoted in this article so as not to have to provide health care benefits to their employees, and to spread the jobs around. While this may work for the companies, it doesn’t benefit their employees, and the companies’ owners know it.
Cennydd13, they could have no job whatsoever.
She states that she can’t feed herself and her son on her current salary? She is making a $1,000 a month (not take home but gross) and living with her mother. We have a family of six (seven as of a few days ago) and our food budget is $600 per month.
When Government supplied entitlements go from “safety net” to life-long programs, they serve as a narcotic to deaden our senses to what we can do for ourselves. She works 26 hr/wk at Walmart. So, if she took another similar job she might be able to double her monthly earnings. But with Food Stamps (and the article doesn’t state what other benefits she is surely receiving), she apparantly doesn’t feel the need to do that.
Where is the father of the child? Why is there no support coming from him (or is there, and she is not reporting it?). She has done well to look for a relative to provide help; this is what families are supposed to do. What about her church? Are they helping in some way? Does she go to church?
If you are looking for government to perpetually fill your basic needs, you are nothing more than a slave. And the slave-owner has no incentive to let you off the plantation.
How many of the +40 million on Food Stamps are going to get off the plantation?
I sometimes wonder if the word “mercy” exists in the vocabulary of some regular T19 commenters. The automatic default response is always, “they’re lazy”, “they’re milking the system”, “the government is facilitating their weakness”, etc., etc. I guess it’s all justifiable under the banner of “tough love”. Sigh.
Last year I was making $230 a week in unemployment and my bills came to 750 a month. This did not leave much for food and I qualified only for 69.00 a month in food stamp benefits. I had filled out the form twice but each time thrown out the form. I believe one take not what one wants but only as a last resort, unemployment is enough. I also was blessed by the Lord via a couple in our church who would give me money time to time. I never asked for it nor shared my need with them or the church. I am too proud. It was always at the right time. It has to be a miracle form the Lord.
One big problem with SNAP is it encourages wasteful spending. For example there is no limit what one can buy; I seen a guy buy thee carton of green teen ice cream with SNAP befits. It bothers me how such programs do not encourage prudent spending habits. Business, political and community leaders encourage reckless spending of OPM (Other People’s Money). For example, local take and bake pizza joint touts they accept ebt but do not point out for the price of a large pepperoni pizza, I can buy food to create four complete dinners (vegetable, starch and meat). Local leaders get on their buy localism bandwagon and encourage food stamp users to shop at farmer markets but do not tell that one pays a premium for produce and food items. Why should I pay $1.99 for green beans at a farmers market stand when I can find fresh local green beans at a grocery super store for $.99? I make a point, to live within my means buy avoiding unnecessary luxuries such as farmers markets.
Hmmm, around here produce is cheaper at the farmer’s market (if you walk the whole market to compare prices first), plus it puts the money into the local economy n a way that buying it from Wal-Mart does not.
Food stamps work on a couple of different levels. First, a fed populace is a more productive and civil populace; no one has to turn to crime to get food, and there is less general unrest.
Second, it props up the food distribution infrastructure; stores can keep selling food so they stay open, farmers keep farming, etc, because food is still being sold. The food bought with food stamps is sold on the open market using the standard distribution points, which are all privately-held companies. The money goes into the general economy, and I think the last number I heard was that $1 of food stamps spent creates $1.60 in economic activity.
Why is this area the one where people are willing to have the government be coercive? Let the government worry about real fraud in the program, not policing legitimate purchases. The benefits are not so generous that one doesn’t have to learn to stretch them, but it’s not a skill everyone has. More education about food shopping is certainly a good thing.
[i]that $1 of food stamps spent creates $1.60 in economic activity[/i]
Really? That is so preposterous I’m actually going to do a little research to see if I can find a source for that.
If $1 pops out of a Federal Government program, how much tax money (read money taken from productive members of society) had to go into that program to make the $1 pop out? Let’s just say $3 and someone else can go research that. So, we take $3 out of the private economy so $1 can show back up in the economy somewhere to create $1.60 of economic activity. Sounds like we are still at least $1.40 in the hole and of course that means about $.60 of that hole is filled with money borrowed (or printed at the Fed).
Just maybe that’s why all this Food Stamp and Unemployment spending hasn’t absolutely supercharged the economy despite all the spin out of Washington.
Google food stamp multiplier or food stamp ripple effect.
#7, indeed that is the first thing I did and got lots of returns from the USDA and Media Matters and others touting the stimulative effects of Food Stamps. It’s all hype, posturing, and political cover for the Obama administration. I did not read all the articles in detail, but I did not see one reference to the fact that money has to be pulled out of the private (productive) economy, recycled through the Federal bureaucracy, in order make $1 of benefits appear.
With that type of model you can prove anything you want; like Food Stamps are a powerful stimulus. Well if that’s the case, let’s really get this economy roaring and put people back to work by having all +300 million of us go on Food Stamps! Certainly the Chinese will lend the money to that and what they won’t give us we can just get the Fed Res to print up. See anything wrong with that approach?
It is like pretending you can pull energy out of a storage battery forever without doing any work to recharge that battery.