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Which Is Greater: Full Time Jobs Or Americans On Food Assistance And Disability?
Over the past week there has been some speculation whether the number of Americans who receive food assistance and/or are on disability, outnumber full-time employed workers in the US.
Here is the answer:
- There are 116 million Americans with full-time jobs according to the BLS (source), which includes 21.9 million government workers (source).
So far so good. Now the flip side showing how many Americans are reliant on the USDA's Food and Nutrition Services program or on Disability payments, i.e., food assistance in some form:
- There are 47.5 million Americans on Foodstamps
- There are 30.4 million Americans participating in the National School Lunch Program
- There are 13.2 million Americans participating in the School Breakfast Program
- There are 8.6 million Americans participating in the Special Supplemental Nutrition - Women, Infants and Children program Participants
- There are 3.4 million Americans participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Food Donation Program
- There are 0.6 million Americans participating in the Commodity Supplemental Food Program
- There are 0.1 million Americans participating in the Food Donation Program
- There are 8.6 million Americans on Disability
For a grand total of 112.5 million Americans on Food assistance (sources here and here).
End result: there are 3.5 million more Americans with full-time jobs than there are Americans who are reliant on the government for their daily bread: a tiny 3% delta.
What this means for the country, we will let readers decide.
The above is notable because Congress just passed a Farm Bill without consideration for Foodstamps funding. From Reuters:
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives defied a White House veto threat and passed a farm bill on Thursday that expands the taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance system but omitted food stamps for the poor.
Lawmakers passed the 608-page bill, unveiled by Republican leaders late on Wednesday night, on a 216-208, party-line vote after two hours of debate in which no amendments were allowed.
Republican leaders said food stamps, traditionally part of the farm bill, would be handled later and that, for now, they needed a way to start negotiations with the Senate over a compromise bill.
Democrats said the real intent of the action was to isolate food stamps for large cuts in funding.
House Speaker John Boehner declined to say if leaders would allow a vote on a farm bill with larger food stamp spending than his party liked. "We'll get to that later," he told reporters.
Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern said he believed conservatives were promised a chance to strive for deeper cuts to food stamps in upcoming legislation. The defeated earlier version of the farm bill would have ended benefits for 2 million people, or about 4 percent of recipients.
"A vote for this bill is a vote to end nutrition programs in America," said Rose DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat.
Surely not even Congress is stupid enough to not realize that if the free meals of 47.5 million Americans are taken away, the consequences would be severe.
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Is there any double counting between programs?
Those are separate programs with distinct eligibility requirements, and since a meal is being prepared it means someone eligible has applied for it. Of course, if someone is abusing the system and/or eating numerous meals to the detriment of someone else, that is certainly possible.
Either way, the bottom line remains: the US government provides for the free daily food for over 110 million Americans. How that food is distributed is a separate issue.
How could anybody, POSSIBLY, think of doing such a thing?
~~~
I mean ~ That would be like telling a "lie" [about Libor], or the '9/11 Commission' report being false...
Should the 21.5m govt jobs be counted as employment or handout? Im torn.
Government worker is an oxymoron.
Tyler... you lost me at "Surely not even Congress is stupid enough to not realize that..."...
Why mess with food stamps?
Zero out section 8 housing. That will take all the fun out of welfare foreveh.
take away section 8.....so they can't breed at home.
take away food stamps....so they won't have energy to breed.
take away obama phones....so they can't set up breeding appointments.
take away obama computers (yep, they are out there)....so they can't social media each other about breeding.
take away the implied loan guarantees on autos....so they can't travel to breed.
that would just about do it.....
Ah, but this was the democrat plan all along. Endless voter base.
Most I see are regular morons.
Let's not forget the contractors used to make the number of govt jobs look lower.
.
Good point. Also included should be history's biggest welfare queens: those corporations whose sole or primary revenue source is the teat of "defense" spending and those corporations whose core business model consists of skimming as much as possible from the financial transactions of others.
Being a gov't contractor myself, I can say that contractors are the ones doing all the work. The contractors are hired to do the jobs of the gov't employees. The gov't employees tell the contractors what to do and the contractors treat them like royalty. Otherwise the contract will be awarded to someone else. I'm not being sarcastic. I'm dead serious as to how things work in Washington.
Should contractors working for the government be considered private or government workers?
This is a slippery slope - should employees of private ethanol companies (or employees of any other subsidized business) be treated as government workers? Government contractors provide a service - yet there is an oversupply of services provided because government is inordinately large. At the end of the day, I don't think it really makes much difference which of two arbitrary categories you put them in. The reality is still the same - government has warped all aspects of the economy.
Government "workers" subtract from the revenue trough, they do not add money to it.
Walks like a parasite, quacks like a parasite, means it is a parasite.
It's unfair to call them all parasites. It is hard to argue that some small level of government is required (after all, the enforcement of private property rights is an essential requirement of a market-based economy), and that those who perform that work are actually contributing something to society.
Bingo!
Most of them are more pernicious than either. If all they did was take a handout and sit on their arses all day, then they would simply by worthless parasites. A great many of them, however, actually busy themselves with their 8 hours a day to make life worse for the rest of us. The worst part about it is that they are convinced they are somehow helping people. Cognitive dissonance, I guess.
Worse than welfare/handouts! Yes, I said worse.
All government loot is stolen from the producers, and that is a drain on their production. A welfare/handout recipient is just eating off of your production as is the government "worker."
Now a government "worker" is worse because most government "jobs" are involved, one way or another, in impeding production. A pol or crat that comes up with new "rules" as to how long your mop handles need to be, and how many forms to fill out and permits to have, etc. is impeding production. Basically loot stolen from you is being used to support a cadre of parasitic pols, crats and gun and badge thugs whose only "job" is to impede your production ability further, beyond "taxes," with regulations, etc.
So in summary: government "jobs"/"workers" are WORSE than welfare/handout recipients.
1/5 of the full time workers are sucking on the other 4/5 of the full time workers like a giant, bloated tick.
The military included in 1/5?
Yes. Been there.
It is more than that. How many private sector workers rely on the Government for their jobs? That is, if the Government cancelled their contract, no job. Not technically Government employees, but just as reliant on tax revenue. I would guess about 33:67 [Gov:Non-Gov] is a more accurate ratio.
And all the subsidies (virtually every major industry has subsidies of some form). We have entire industries (i.e. "tax accountant") that wouldn't exist but for government.
They count gov jobs as "full time"?
edit: sorry, i just noticed all th epost above re: this issue.
Hey Tyler,
Why am I getting bombarded with ARM loan ads on this website?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BO6n4UzCYAA7HQG.jpg
...because thats probably what you have been looking at via your search engine...
Nah... not searching for any loans anywhere and wouldn't even touch ARMs with a ten-foot pole.
Bernanke knows better... stare into the spiral hypnotic wheel... you are getting sleepy... you will wake up in 3 . 2 . 1... hey where do I sign up for an ARM??? [problem solved] Hahahahaha
They've mistaken you for a sheeple, who wants to monetize your real estate bubble equity.
Don't feel bad. I'm pre-approved for all sorts of shit;)
Does pre-approval also account for all the little voices I hear in my head telling me that I love Dear Leader?
No, the ads account for it.
The ads are just reinforcement. We already wuv him vewy much.
Getting lots of cold calls for financing for our construction company, which closed the end of 2010. Haven't asked for loans, don't want loans, but there are lots of feelers going out to lend.
Are Ben bucks getting in the way at the big banks?
Banks want to lend. Bernanke wants credit to expand. That's the only way to keep our ponzi monetary system going. The problem is that our economy is already supersaturated with debt.
Because you are pre-approved?
So you really think the kids getting school lunch/breakfast are not the same families also getting foodstamps?
Same families, different people. The parents are getting food stamps so they can buy lobster and steak knowing that their kids will get free breakfast and lunch at school. Feed the kids Sugar Smacks and keep the steak and lobster for themselves. Sweet deal.
Poor people don't eat steak and lobster. They require at least some minimal cullinary skills to prepare. Poor people want junk food that they can shovel in their pie hole while watching TV or texting on their Obama phone.
You have never been to a Red Lobster?
They definitly are, at least around here. My wife teaches kindergarten. Parents need show only thier EBT card and the children get free breakfast and lunch, automatically, no questions asked.
Additionally, the school cannot, by law, inquire as to the immigration status of the parent or children; they are "entitled" to a taxpayer funded edumacation simply by showing up.
Pisses me off.
Did you vote for Obammy or his clones?
That will soon end. Everything has a price, and war, in my opinion, will be the great cleansing... time to cull the herd...
http://youtu.be/c-2f29X5Hlg
Wow, you negative rating shills must think everything will continue as peaches and cream? Sure...
Whatever. If we take only Foodstamps and disability, thats 56MM, or about half of those working--more for private sector. Still too f*ckin much.
This is why we are screwed: people are voting themselves money. THAT is greed.
Most of the ones on disability are also on foodstamps. When you go on the dole they encourage you to go "full dependency".
"When the people find they can vote themselves money,
that will herald the end of the republic."
--Benjamin Franklin
"Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses"
-Juvenal
present.
"Change we can believe in!"
-Juvenile
I appreciate the sentiment but I'm still a little confused by the idea that people can vote themselves more money. In this country, amongst other things, we voted for "no GST" and "no carbon tax" but we still got them. Is it really possible for voters to vote themselves anything?
Disclosure: To be fair, the Prime Minister who promised "no GST", after changing his mind, did make it an election issue. But I don't interpret this as a vote for GST, more likely a vote that our opposition was so bad that voters still preferred the incumbents, even with GST.
May be a few double counts for sure. But curious why you leave out social security recipients from the group that counts on our government for daily bread, but include disability recipients.
I wouldn't consider a SS recipient dependent on the government until they have exhausted their contributions inflated by the same growth they have experienced from their own provisions for their retirement. It's going to take me a very long time to get back from SS the "opportunity cost" given up by being in the government's social security program.
I would agree with you SS opportunity cost evaluation, but are Medicare recipients willing to do the same math? Take a look at avg. lifetime Medicare contributions with interest, compared to the avg. Medicare expenses per person. That is the program that will sink the Federal Government. Major reform will be coming to Medicare, think of it as forced austerity, and there will be Medicare "death" panels.
Not counting SS recipients as leeches makes sense morally, but financially they're just as dependent on the government as Sha'aaniqua and her 16 illiterate, unemployable kids. Sure you paid SS taxes during your entire working life, but that money is gone, wasted on political patronage, and no moral argument can ever bring it back.
I think the question is if there are double counts between categories i.e. a person on both foodstamps and the school lunch program. I suspect there are, so the total of americans may be somewhat less, but still your point survives--everybody with a full time job is helping shoulder almost one person who can't afford to eat.
So 134 million Americans (including govt workers) rely on govt money for either subsidized food or a pay check. Only 116 million Americans pay into a system and actually produce something in the form of taxation to the treasury. You can assume that the 112 million million american make less than taxable amounts as they qualify for assistance - so they add nothing to the federal tax base (outside of local and state taxes). The 21 million americans working for the govt receive a paycheck from the treasury and pay back taxes to the treasury at the end of the year (assuming most do). Seems the minority (full time workers) has a massive monkey on their back...
It would have been interesting to see the Tylers on CNBC, like how many seats they'd need is anybody's guess and what would they wear, suits, or zh t-shirts or jim rogers style dickie-bows? Again, hard to say...
Maybe Reggie Middleton could appear with an earpiece and relay answers from the Tylers...
I suspect they'd look like this...
https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyyrt4qDql...
Be careful not to forget people who are working part time, and in some cases, two or three part time jobs - they're still providing tax income to the Treasury as well.
.
You've only done half of the math. If you're adding the 22 million full time government employees to the 112 million people receiving food assistance and/or disability, then you need to subtract the same 22 million from the 116 million full time workers, which leaves 94 million full time workers.
Just tryin' to help.
It's worse than that because many amongst the group that are working full time have incomes so low that they either (1) do not pay net income taxes; (2) pay negative federal tax amounts because they receive money at tax time due to refundable "credits" such as the "earned income credit."
It's not 110 million Americans (implied individuals) it would be 110 million instances, the difference being the first may include a lot of participants in multiple programs the second is the total number of handouts for all programs. My rough guess is the figure is still North of 70 million American individuals. Which is still appalling.
One the cable Tv is free, then we are just like Rome.
Many full time workers get food stamps. I know some that even get food stamps legitimately. Their pay is at or near minimum wage and they have too many mouths to feed.
Yes, and that is, in effect, a subsidy to their employer because but for the food stamps, those people would not be able to accept employment at such low wages.
That's not the issue. It's more than likely that an individual person counted is found in more than one of those categories. Thus, when totalling up, you need to do an "or" to find out how many actual separate individuals are involved. I think the more revolting statistic is that 1 in 5 full time employees works for the government. What's worse, of those remaining 80% I'm sure you will find that they are in one way or another contracting to the government (i.e. working for a company that is contracting to the government).
Tyler,
Your following statement is NOT CORRECT.
"...the US government provides for the free daily food for over 110 million Americans"
Because the same individual (American) can receive benefits from more than one program,
and because some of the programs do NOT provide food daily ( 7 days/week)(e.g. school lunch).
There is duplicate counting of individuals receiving benefits from more than one program..
Correct is to say that duplicative and sometimes overlapping government programs provide food benefits, as well as tax directly or indirectly the acquisition of healthy food by virtually everyone.
Not only is purchasing food sometimes taxed directly, the processing, transportation, and marketing of food is taxed. Select food industries are also subsidized, protected by monopolistic legalities, and allowed the use of unsafe chemicals etc. which harm both humans and environment. Furthermore, cheap labor is indirectly provided by laws keeping migrant labor illegal.
The "free food" is often of poor quality and nutrition, surplus from subsidies to large food industries.
"Either way, the bottom line remains: the US government provides for the free daily food for over 110 million Americans. How that food is distributed is a separate issue."
So, if a child eats both a breakfast AND a lunch, they are gaming the system and count as two people on subsidies? Or does each meal contain a full days minimum nutrition?
There are quite a few single mothers who receive WIC and Foodstamps. A venn diagram of this would be invaluable to understand the true number.
How come I don't get no free food....wait,,, I am the food
Don't be selfish.
Would you rather he was beef or poultry? I like seafood okay..
That's quite an entre into the conversation you made there.
You didn't eat that.
I could flounder around and carp about him being a crab, but maybe I should just clam up and not go fishing for insults on porpoise.
You win the crown of Pun King. I like the seeds.
Just eat your gold and shut up
I was thinking also of double accounting. It more than likely that certain people are involved in all programs.
Plus school lunch and breakfast touch only kids.
However, number of government employees is pretty high. They do not pay taxes in a sense that they get paid out of tax revenue and return some money back as tax. Private sector only pays taxes out of productivity.
The guy is triple counting the children. Probably goes around at Christmas time saying bah humbug in the unlikely event that he even celebrates the holiday.
Yes there is.
The same family can receive: Food Stamps, School Lunch, School Breakfast, Special Supplemental Women Infant and Children (WIC), and Disability.
A Family may NOT receive Food Stamps and either the Child and Adult Care Food Program, or Commodity Supplemental Food Program, or the Food Donation Program (Operated by the FDA, if the food is donated to say a local church or community food bank, then they can still get Food Stamps).
And it is likely that a family on one of the above programs (Especially Disability) will be on ALL of the non-mutually exclusive programs
I am a welfare worker in California, this is what I do with your tax money all day long =(
Oh, and most of these programs take client statement as verification of income and property requirements (Just like NINJA Loans) and an Eligibility Worker can get into BIG trouble for asking for actual verification...
This is why we have nick-named them Fraud Stamps...
So what is to stop rich people from going in and getting EBT also?
Multi-dippers
Feed & breed.
That's the democrat party mantra.
Point Taken, but Double Count much.
It means half the people are paying the ride for the other half.
Would you prefer to step over bodies on the way to the office. Govt have a responsibility to maintaining an infrastructure which provides for the needs of it's citizens. You can see, "start your own business, I did!" but a worker bee is exactly that, and if there are no companies hiring the blue collar workers, the safety net is all they have. The attack on the middle and lower class family has been going on for decades. Weakening the backbone of America from the family to the housing industry, to deindustrializing a nation, outsourcing tech jobs, insourcing/encouraging influx of migrant workers willing to work for unlivable wages, allowing drugs and alcohol to be easaily accessible and reasonably affordable are ALL TACTICS. The reliance on govt subsidies to survive is no badge. There was a time when orphans were referred to as "inmates."
Why? Less tax revenue would require the govt to turn to the banks for lending. Low information voters are the most any politician can hope for, they will vote for the person who can assure them their needs will be considered.
#1 The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low. Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people.
#2 Today, an all-time low 44.2 percent of Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are married.
#3 According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all adults in the United States are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married.
#4 Back in 1950, 78 percent of all households in the United States contained a married couple. Today, that number has declined to 48 percent.
#5 100 years ago, 4.52 were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people.
#6 The United States has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.
#7 In the United States today, more than half of all couples “move in together” before they get married.
#8 The divorce rate for couples that live together first is significantly higher than for those that do not.
#9 For women under the age of 30 in the United States, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.
#10 In 1970, the average woman had her first child when she was 21.4 years old. Now the average woman has her first child when she is 25.6 years old.
#11 According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 69.3 births per 1,000 women in the 15 to 44 year old age bracket in 2007. Now the rate has fallen to 63.2 births per 1,000 women.
#12 The birth rate for American women in the 20 to 24 year old age bracket has fallen to 85.3 births per 1,000 women. That is a new all-time record low.
#13 The United States has the highest divorce rate in the entire world.
#14 At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.
#15 Without a father around, many single mothers in this country are really struggling to survive. Sadly, approximately 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States are on food stamps.
#16 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point before they reach the age of 18.
#17 Today, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.
#18 The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the entire world. In fact, the United States has a teen pregnancy rate that is more than twice as high as Canada, more than three times as high as France and more than seven times as high as Japan.
#19 In the United States today, approximately 47 percent of all high school students have had sex.
#20 Approximately one out of every four teen girls in the United States has at least one sexually transmitted disease.
#21 According to one survey, 24 percent of all U.S. teens that have at least one sexually transmitted disease say that they still have unprotected sex.
#22 Instead of being raised by parents, an increasing number of children in America are being raised by movies, television and video games. For example, the average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21.
#23 Americans are tied with the British for the highest average number of hours spent watching television each week.
#24 There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.
#25 The United States actually has the highest child abuse death rate in the developed world.
#26 Approximately 20 percent of all child sexual abuse victims in the United States are under the age of 8.
#27 It is estimated that one out of every four girls will be sexually abused before they become adults.
www.beforeitsnews.com
Poverty is a weapon.
They should pass a law that only lets people that have jobs fuck.
It should be a law that ghettos, low income housing developments and "the bad side of town" receive govt subsidies to introduce programs that detour young children from the only life they are faced with (surviving in crime and drug infested neighborhoods). Playgrounds, arts and crafts, gyms, mentors, perhaps the DHS's presence as the illegal weapons can be found in the homes of most of the drug sells here, and they say that is the purpose (security) of the DHS.
People like you would never survive the unfortunate circumstances of being born to carry the burden of the sins of your fathers.
I'd bet my mtg payment that you made it to where you are with the help of another and not by sweat and determination. Dad pay for college? Car you drove? Insurance, food, rent? Gifted with sums of money that amount of a year's wages from the minimum wage worker? You people have a lot to say about the "useless eaters." Somewhere you got help. If you had not, you'd feel nothing but empathy for the struggle required to come out of poverty unscathed.
U Asshole, I hope you lose everything by the time this wraps up. People like you deserve to look out of a high story building and realize you are nothing without the trimmings money can buy.
Put down the Gerber's and grow up son.
Nothing whatsoever should be gov't subsidized. The ghettos are war zones because of drug prohibition. If drugs were legal, they wouldn't be nearly so profitable. Government creates far more problems than they ever solve.
You can take your idea of having DHS searching people's home for anything and shove it up your ass.
That is the point. The govt wants the poor to remain so, with a record of crime, placing them on parole, keeping them from voting, working, owning a legal gun among ofther things. Lack of sleep is the bane of a child who grows up in the ghettos. The inability to sleep will make him miss school. You think that is a small matter but we need our sleep. Parties and fights, people moving around.
It's all by design. I am saying to you people that if the govt law enforcement agencies cared about the welfare of the people, they'd have cleaned up drug infested neighborhoods. They have not.
Your last remark was uncalled for. The success stories out of the ghetto is what made Motown and now rap the success it is. Many people get out, many do not. I do not mind spending my money making sure they are not suffering. It's only money, asshole.
God I hate people who pull this shit, the people left in the ghettos are the ones who didn't bother to get out. All the smart hardworking people left back in the 60's 70's. The people who live there now have been ingrained that they are victims. The more you give someone the more they take advantage. By giving for nothing you take the dignity away from the recipient. People have to earn what they receive. If people can earn a hand up and not a hand out it might be possible to break the cycle but the gov. does not allow that.
The point is that if you dont have the resources to properly raise and educate children, you should not be having children and making society pay for them. You seem to think that people have some sort of right to raise their progeny on the backs of others. All you need to do is look to nature to see that the world doesn't work that way. The world is no different for us, since we are just a bunch of primates.
I don't care who fucks.
I'm just tired of paying for the fucking.
Interesting implication for the world's oldest profession!
Holy shit
bunnyswanson forgot to mention:
#28 The United States has both the highest incarceration rate in the world and has more people imprisoned than any other country on the planet.
#29 A significant portion of those imprisoned in the United States are there because of the embarrassing failure known as The War on Drugs or absurd "tough on crime" policies like Three Strikes and You're Out which result in many non-violent offenders facing life sentences.
It's kind of hard to keep a marriage or family together when dad's in prison for weed.
I guess that pretty much balances out this one:
Lastly,
...it's nice to see at least one thing which has remained pretty consistent over the last several decades.
Apparently I went to the wrong high school.
Greetings, fellow 53 percenter.
Me too. Oh, hang on. I'm not in the US either.
So get offline and get busy, we workers have lots of mouths to feed....
Yeah, but everyone on "assistance" is still doing what they can to work and be productive in whatever capacity they still can. It's not like they're just dead weight. That's why it's called "assistance" and not an "entitlement". Oh, wait.
Can't you be on some of those assistance programs concurrently? I'm not sure you can just add up the totals and say that's how many folks are taking advantage of them. Also, what about breaking out families w/kids vs. recipiants.
Need mroe detailed numbers here. . .
Bullshit* Labor Statistics the disease is much worse, as always. also 25+% real unemployment in entire western world - ppl dont notice, huxley et al. NWO c3pos programmed quite a matrix eh folks?
time out here tyler.
You are making a classic problem with statistics.
You are counting folks more than once. For example
There is a fair amount of overlap there
See reply above
Some very muddy analysis here
The # of people in these programs is sad, but there is definitely overlap in these numbers beyond what you are implying.
The Foodstamp program provide something like $3 a day for each person, so families on foodstamps are most definitely participating in school lunch programs as well to supplment feeding their children lunch and sometimes breakfast at school.
Disability payments/program is not a competing program with Foodstamps, two different things, and people on disability are almost certainly getting foodstamps as well, and if they have children, those children are on school lunch program assistance.
None of this takes away from how pathetic our system has become, but playing the foodstamp boogeyman tune is beneath you Tyler.
you are correct. But don't let math undermine the inherent "truthiness" of the story...
also known as "Don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument"
What about this?
Does that number indicate the number of adults who have put their name on an application form and been approved or does it represent the number of dependents actually eating the food provided? Is it possible that 47.5 million people get food stamps but something like three times as many are eating the food?
the chart presented is fairly worthless in determining the actual number of americans receiving assistance. many on disability are receiving snap benefits. if a child has to receive school lunch, they most likely are benefitting from other programs. not one of tylers better charts.
Here's today's Wapo graph on the % of each state's residents on SNAPS. SNAPS recipients are up 13% avg. each year the past 5 years ( 2008-2012 )
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/food-stamps/?hpid=z1
Yes, but is recipients defined as heads of households or as the actual number of eaters? Is the number of people being fed equal to or greater than the number of recipients? For example, if Jane gets food stamps to feed herself and her two children is Jane counted as one recipient or are Jane and her children counted as three recipients? If only Jane, being the person who applied for benefits, is being counted as one while in reality three people are eating the benefits Jane receives then the number skyrockets.
I honestly don't know the answer and would like someone else to do the research and tell me the answer. I want my freebies too.
I don't see why Tyler is arguing here. There no doubt is substantial double counting - but, there are currently around 24 million American families receiving food stamps and good Lord, local intersections are jammed with beggers. So, his point - that the lower middle class is rapidly sliding into depression level poverty and even if the 1% are enjoying the best times eva', the rest of America is sliding toward the ghetto. And the idiot Republicans want to cut the food stamp program - brilliant. Give them jobs or give them food, but starve them and they would rebel.
Not even issue of double counting, but of adding percentages of things that are not within the same framework, doing that with two sets of data that are unrelated and putting the 100% bar charts next to each other.
Example A: 20% of people can't read. 40% of people did not graduate from HighSchool, 15% of people eat Sushi, 25% of people cheat on their taxes = 100% bar
Example B: 15% of people are temp workers, 85% of people chew bubble gum = 100%
Display these two 100% bars side by side
I feel icky now ...
"Waitress? Two orders of customer-segregated accounts. And fries."
- John Corzine
You want that supersized?
Vaporized please.
(Jon)
Fine, but there is assumption for no intersection between the different food programs sets of people, that with certainly is not true. On a contrary, most likely, those in need of food stamps are also participants in the other free food programs. So clearly there is an underlying logic here, that is highly unlikely to be true.
phew. ive been looking for the justification of an all time high in the mkt.
A nation of government dependents, many of whom would fervently deny it. So what happens when we can no longer afford the illusion of independence?
http://thebestlies.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/113/
Threaten q99z2 with work and he'll choose disability and food stamps every time.
18 years of vacation and partying on.
Teacher! Teacher! I have a question.
Can we go on a field trip to the Getty next week.
Are we really at the point where 19% of the full time workforce is government employees? That's disgusting.
This is how gubmint rolls..... one bureaucrat to rack and stack 5 working citizens into neat groups of tax generators.
...a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object...
Wrong ... one bureaucrat to rack and stack *four* working citizens into neat groups of tax generators.
You should probably be happy it's not even higher. After all, total government spending as a percent of GDP of all of the governments in the US is about 40%:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1890_2012USp_13s2li11...
Oh, it's most certainly higher.
Think of all of the private businesses absolutely dependent upon government contracts.
This is why we can't have nice things.
It does often seem like almost the only way to earn a decent living anymore is to work for the government, either directly or indirectly. What did I read, the only 5 counties in the US which had no substantial reductions in real estate prices during the biggest reduction in real estate prices in history were all . . . located right on top of DC. Why am I not surprised.
I was just about **cough**BOEING**cough** to say something about the government handouts known as contracts. Which often works out nicely **cough**L-3 COMM**cough** to be stealth foreign aid....
LOL almost 22 mil gov workers out of 116 million
no wonder
40,000 in the NSA to help keep tabs on the rest of us
Average Federal employee salary: $124,000 with imputed benes
Even if there were 100 million on food stamps the Federal Reserve would be buying US debt with printed money.
As long as the rest of the world is stupid enough to accept the US dollar as the world's eserve currency keep the Ponzi going.
Each month the Fed devalues rhe US dollar further.
"What's in your wallet?"
Create a sense of dependency and you have the ignorant, incapable masses firmly in your grasp.
And add to that a constant news stream of wars, crime, and hypocrisy and you create a populace that can't think for themselves and you have 1984 ... Beware the Rats
Then blame it all on a puppet named Bernanke.
What you'll find most concerning is the amount of full time earners that still need assistance to live a reasonable existence.
I think the figures that agencies have are often totally out of sync. Eg, the recent article on ZH on the percentage of income used on fuel, country by country. It ranged from around 1% to 3.5% of income on fuel.
Seriously, I wish fuel was only 3.5% of my income.
School children cannot hold full time jobs.
The doublecounting is made up for by the fact that the full-time .gov workers are some of the biggest welfare queens around, excluding corporate welfare.
Move them into the other column, thank you.
Some very muddy analysis here
The # of people in these programs is sad, but there is definitely overlap in these numbers beyond what you are implying.
The Foodstamp program provide something like $3 a day for each person, so families on foodstamps are most definitely participating in school lunch programs as well to supplment feeding their children lunch and sometimes breakfast at school.
Disability payments/program is not a competing program with Foodstamps, two different things, and people on disability are almost certainly getting foodstamps as well, and if they have children, those children are on school lunch program assistance.
None of this takes away from how pathetic our system has become, but playing the foodstamp boogeyman tune is beneath you Tyler.
I know a guy on foodstamps (and TANF, Section 8, etc.), who's grilling NY Strips every weekend. It's a pretty good deal.
Oh wow, you mean there are people scamming these programs? Wow, brilliant insight, keep em coming...
Actually, he doesn't scam the programs; he is following the letter of the law concerning participation in them. The fact that you can buy NY Strip steak on these programs is disheartening, which was the point of the post.
A New York strip for the unknowing is basically a deboned T-bone steak.
Thanks for the tip. I think I like deboned T-bone better. It's rolls off the tongue nicely. Might go grill myself on right about now.
It's a sad day when a man can't afford a bone.