During a colonoscopy, they inflate you like a pool toy. They didn’t tell me this beforehand. The little snake-camera needs space to look around. Later in the recovery room, you deflate and feel better. It is just air; not self-generated. That fact made it difficult for me to respect the very long and satisfying deflation just after my procedure recently. Sure, I felt better and it sounded real, but it was all air someone else provided. I made no agreements or contracts with beans or lentils, no mastication or digestion, produced no methane or hydrogen sulfide. Nonburnable, unscented and UNEARNED.
Thus I was in no mood afterward to read a poorly reported article in The Hill that this month (March) many Food Stamp (Electronic Benefit Transfer card) recipients will lose their extra benefits. These are the people who were added because it was an emergency or had their benefits increased beyond the pre-2020 limits. See the projected cuts here: CBO SNAP.
I will start with the article’s headline picture of Ms. Benitez’s shopping cart (below)… on the soft drink aisle, of course. Sugary drinks are the #1 item purchased by EBT card beneficiaries. Being once a poor fellow myself, I can say anything pre-packaged is a poor value; fresh, pre-cut broccoli florets are particularly unwise, as is the Prego. My point is this: a poor person (who isn’t a dumb-ass) would NOT shop like this with their own money.
The article dives into the woes of a 35 year-old part-time Pilates instructor and her “partner” in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
“We have access to local food pantries and aren’t afraid or ashamed to use them — but getting over the hump of us both being largely unemployed during COVID will be tougher without the extra $95,” Sharp said.
While a slashed food budget will be a burden for Sharp, out of the country’s 42 million SNAP recipients, she considers herself to be one of the lucky ones. She is partnered, has stable housing and has no children to support.
Two young Americans, fit, able-bodied, and childless are unashamed to take from food banks and from the American taxpayer. Shameless is truly the right word for them.
The reporter laments that times are harder now because inflation has “caused” food prices to increase 10 percent. The cause might be the SNAP itself, at least in part.
Sunt in cura Annonae…they are in the care of Annona, the contrived goddess of the grain supply. The Roman emperors considered the grain (later bread) dole essential to the state. Essential to the emperors, that is, for if the mob was not sated with bread and entertainment, well, it could get bad.
But how much of what is called “essential” is really essential? I surmise, the SNAP is actually keeping many of our citizens comfortable in their poverty or, as in the case of the young Pilates instructor (part-time), merely subsidizing conspicuous consumption, indolence and lassitude.
Moreover, the SNAP itself is likely responsible for some (if not much) of the food inflation. Below is a chart showing the U.S. inflation rate from 2019-2023. The first SNAP “stimulus” in April 2020 added 5 million people and cost $5.1 billion. The second SNAP increase in April 2021 occurred just as inflation rocketed and added $55 billion by the end of 2022. The correlation does not necessarily mean cause, but the SNAP was a contributor to food inflation.
Monstrous demand-side stimuli gushed into the economy in 2020-2021. Near-zero interest rates, Covid checks, pork to companies, states and cities, direct cash payments, loan interest deferments, extra money to the already unemployed, you name it (for a nauseating look at just how our profligate government spent our money, see this Investopedia article). All that free money, sent directly to citizens, was high-velocity money, that is money that would enter the economy fast; really fast. So fast, it wasn’t even funny (as Count Floyd would say).
But we are talking about FOOD inflation specifically. Yes, indeed, and with all the other cash subsidies, one’s own money could be left safely in the wallet (no rent or mortgage, either). All that pandemic related cash was largely unfettered and one could spend it anywhere on anything. Not so with Food Stamps.
Food Stamps are for food only and by the time the April 2021 stimulus number 2 plopped in the thunder mug, the SNAP had already injected over $100 billion from a 2019 low of $60 billion. That is built-in, hauling-ass money velocity. SNAP beneficiaries cannot save food stamps, invest them or spend it at the vape shop. They have to spend it, ALL of it, on food.
The chart below shows how fast the SNAP increased during and after the financial crisis of 2008-2010 but then declined as the economy improved. What is striking is that the number of beneficiaries increased only a little since 2019, while total costs rose. So 42 million Americans are now spending twice the amount they spent in 2019 with Food Stamps. Did your salary double in the last two years? Mine didn’t.
The extra $60 billion of unearned food money, that we provided (or printed), was injected into the food economy to compete with our earned dollars for supply. But, how is that inflationary? Well, that extra $60 billion, if left in the taxpayer pocket (or never printed) would likely never have been spent on retail items at all. More likely it would have been invested, saved, or to pay debts but probably NOT spent on food.
Are some of our citizens eating off the system and remain intentionally unemployed? The chart below shows both labor participation and unemployment rate (as percent). Only before 1977 have fewer Americans been employed. Also note unemployment is at a 50-year low. We measure unemployment by those filing unemployment claims (those looking for work). Therefore, if labor participation is low AND unemployment is low (plenty of jobs available) there are a lot of people somehow living without jobs. How are they eating?
Before anyone calls me Scrooge, I will state I have lived, at times, as cash poor as just about anyone born in these free states, certainly not all citizens, but many and not for long. My wife as well. We both had our hard times, ate beans and corn bread, cheap meat, or no meat, made our own bread, and went without. Again: we went without. And neither of us took taxpayer’s money. We didn’t like it. But it did motivate us. If the SNAP had smoothed out those bumps for us, would we be as cautious or as self-reliant?
I disagree with the presupposition that buying food is financially onerous to our citizens. We have had it cheap for so long we have become the obese, spoiled brats of the world. Below is a chart of what Americans spend as portion of the disposable income. Food at home has become CHEAPER over time and we spend, as of 2021, about 10 percent of disposable income on food: the lowest percentage in the world.
By lowest in the world, I mean the lowest per calorie as well. The next figure is based on percent of household income, but it gets the point across that we are NOT a hungry nation.
The SNAP is about the only entitlement program I agree with. I think it is an important and compassionate program that once had fairly stringent means testing. However, it was never meant to be permanent, not meant for the able bodied and not meant to subsidize conspicuous consumption and unhealthy habits. Surely it was never meant to generate inflation. Sometimes we must endure hard times. Sometimes we have to go without.
The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) since 2020 is much like that air from my colonoscopy: inflation without any work, but it does stink.
Please click on the Harry McClintock’s Hallelujuh, I am a bum
I'm going to guess that yours will be an unpopular opinion with anyone too young to have heard about the Depression directly from someone who was there. As a child of parents who went through it (albeit as children themselves at the time), I've also gone without on many occasions, and would likely do just about anything I had to/could do to avoid taking something like SNAP (which doesn't exist where I live). But these are different times, and people today have different ideas (about many things).
And wow, had no idea that food spending in the US was such a low percentage of the total income. Of course, it all depends on what *kind* of food people are buying with that money. . . .