Six million in the US with no income but food stamps

[Bert Bakker]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Leuk bezuinigingsideetje voor het kabinet :-)



2010/1/7 Antid Oto <aorta at home.nl>

> REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl
>
> Six million in the US with no income but food stamps
> 7 January 2010
>
> Some six million Americans—one in 50 people in the US—are living on no
> income other than $100 or $200 a month in food stamps, according to an
> analysis of state data by the New York Times. The number of people who
> reported that they are unemployed and receive no cash aid—neither
> welfare, nor unemployment insurance, pension benefits, child support
> or disability pay—the newspaper reported, has jumped by 50 percent
> over the last two years, as the recession has taken hold.
>
> According to the January 3 article, the number of people reporting no
> income tripled in Nevada over the past two years, doubled in Florida
> and New York, and increased nearly 90 percent in Minnesota and Utah.
> In Wayne County, Michigan—which includes Detroit, where half the
> population is unemployed or underemployed—one out of every 25
> residents reports an income of only food stamps. In Yakima County,
> Washington, the figure is one out of every 17.
>
> The figures reveal the vast scale of human suffering in the US as the
> new decade begins and puts the lie to talk of an economic “recovery.”
> The 6 million people in households reporting no income—which includes
> 1.2 million children—is equivalent to the entire population of Indiana
> or Massachusetts, or the combined populations of Los Angeles,
> Philadelphia and Boston.
>
> Such a social catastrophe underscores the indifference of the Obama
> administration, which has done virtually nothing to provide relief to
> those who have lost their jobs, homes and livelihoods—even as it
> spares no expense to shore up the fortunes of the financial elite and
> fund its ongoing wars.
>
> The number of people without an income has been on the rise since
> 1996, when Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Republican
> Congress ended welfare as a universal entitlement, a status the
> federal relief program had enjoyed since its inception in the 1930s.
> Pledging to “end the cycle of dependency,” the Democrats and
> Republicans imposed lifetime limits on benefits, drastically reduced
> the level of cash assistance, and imposed restrictive “workfare” and
> other requirements on further aid.
>
> Despite the increased need for relief, Obama has opposed any
> additional funding for what remains of the welfare program, called
> Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Since their peak in the
> 1990s, welfare rolls are down nearly 75 percent, the Times reported.
>
> “Many of those who would have received cash assistance in past
> recessions are not getting it now,” Judy Putnam, a spokesperson for
> the Michigan League for Human Services, told the World Socialist Web
> Site. “Only a third of the state’s children living in poverty are
> getting cash assistance compared with two-thirds before ‘welfare
> reform’ in 1996. People in Michigan are heavily dependent on food stamps.”
>
> With jobless benefits covering only half of the unemployed, food
> stamps—which provide an average of $1 per meal per person, or around
> $100 per person each month for individuals or families earning up to
> 130 percent of the official poverty level—have become the safety net
> of last resort. A record 36 million people—one in eight people and one
> in four children—now rely on the food stamp program. The joint
> federal-state Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is
> expanding by 20,000 people per day, but is still estimated to serve
> only two-thirds of those who qualify.
>
> An earlier Times study showed there are more than 200 US counties
> where food stamp usage shot up by at least two-thirds, including
> Riverside County, California, most of greater Phoenix and Las Vegas, a
> ring of Atlanta suburbs, and a 150-mile stretch of southwest Florida
> from Bradenton to the Everglades. The study found there are over 800
> counties where food stamps feed one third of all children.
>
> Late last year, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis
> released a study showing that 50 percent of all children and 90
> percent of African American children will receive food stamps at some
> point before their 20th birthday. “Rather than being a time of
> security and safety,” said Mark Rank, Ph.D., one of the authors of the
> report, “the childhood years for many American children are a time of
> economic turmoil, risk, and hardship.”
>
> The January 3 Times report focused on Florida, where the number of
> people with no income beyond food stamps has doubled in two years and
> more than tripled along the southwest coast, where a housing boom
> turned into a bust of foreclosed and abandoned homes. According to
> state data, those without income were split evenly between families
> with children and individuals. Those affected were also racially
> mixed—about 42 percent white, 32 percent black, and 22 percent
> Latino—with whites making up the fastest growing segment during the
> recession.
>
> This plunge into destitution has affected wide layers of the
> population. The Times article cites a middle-aged mother of two,
> Isabel Bermudez, who moved from a Bronx housing project to sell real
> estate in Florida. Once enjoying a six-figure income, a house with a
> pool and investment property, she lost her job and home and ran out of
> unemployment benefits. Ms. Bermudez’s sole income is now $320 a month
> in food stamps. “I went from making $180,000 to relying on food
> stamps,” she told the newspaper, adding that without the program she
> wouldn’t be able to feed her children.
>
> The increasing reliance on meager food stamp allowances exposes the
> absence of anything that can properly be called a social safety net in
> the US. The situation will only get worse, as both the Democrats and
> Republicans prepare to slash what remains of publicly funded programs
> in order to pay for the multitrillion-dollar Wall Street bailout and
> expansion of US military action around the world.
>
> The theme of Obama’s State of the Union address—expected early next
> month—will be long-term deficit reduction and a further demand that
> the American people reduce their consumption. The White House is
> backing a bipartisan commission to recommend major cuts in basic
> social programs along with regressive taxes on consumption, and
> Obama’s budget director, Peter Orszag, has said the administration
> will take measures to reduce the deficit in its next budget due out in
> February. Such actions will throw millions more into poverty.
>
> The social crisis facing working people—depression levels of
> unemployment, home foreclosures, the growth of hunger, poverty and
> homelessness—is the most graphic expression of the failure of
> capitalism, an economic system that benefits the wealthy few at the
> expense of the vast majority.
>
> In the midst of this worsening situation for the working population,
> it was reported last week that the top three banks—Goldman Sachs,
> JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley—which received tens of billions in
> public funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program—will hand out
> $49.5 billion in end-of-year cash bonuses and stock awards. All told,
> US banks will dispense an estimated $200 billion in total compensation.
>
> The Obama administration is continuing and accelerating the transfer
> of wealth from working people to those who are responsible for
> precipitating the worst economic breakdown since the Great Depression.
>
> Nearly a year after his inauguration, President Obama has demonstrated
> he is nothing but a tool of the financial oligarchy. The very future
> of the working class depends on the development of a mass socialist
> movement against this administration, both big business parties, and
> the profit system which they defend.
>
> Jerry White
>
> http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/pers-j07.shtml
>
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