Josh Hawley, a senator who calls himself a “Republican”, in the New York Times:
Millions of Americans rely on food assistance just to get by. The program often known as food stamps — officially it’s now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — is a lifeline that permits the needy to purchase basic food items at the grocery store. Last year, SNAP enrollees hit about 42 million. That’s over 12 percent of the American population.
We’re informed that low-skill migrants make America rich. America has never been richer in migrants (CIS):
We’re informed that government spending on poverty relief reduces the number of poor people. The federal government spends more than $100 billion per year of workers’ (chumps’) tax dollars on SNAP. How much larger was the group of helpless government-dependent Americans 25 years ago before the most recent $trillions had been spent on SNAP? According to the USDA, the number of food stamp-dependent Americans in 2000 was… 17 million:
In other words, in the past 25 years the number of Americans who’ve become dependent on food welfare exceeds the population of Taiwan (23 million), where all of the world’s highest-tech integrated circuits and bicycles are made. The Google says that while we managed to grow our food-welfare-dependent population by more than 2X, TSMC grew its market value from $40 billion to over $1 trillion.
(Note that the 42 million Americans who are enrolled in SNAP/EBT shouldn’t be taken as an estimate of the number of Americans receiving what used to be called “welfare”. There are about 78 million Americans currently on Medicaid, for example. Maybe the discrepancy is that a multi-member welfare household shows up just once for SNAP and multiple times for Medicaid.)
I have no doubt there is a lot of fraud in Medicaid. I got put on it just for visiting a Virginia Medicaid site when I was searching for Medicare information. It was very hard to get off of it. I spent hours on the phone, for months, and everyone I talked to was incompetent and gave different answers. And most basically said don’t worry about it, just don’t use it. (Wrong answer!) Finally I had to go downtown and talk to people, and I won’t have to tell you how slow and terrible the service was in that building. Many were shocked that I was trying to get off. They had never before heard this request. They told me it was far better than Medicare so just keep it. This year they are trying to put me back on again. So I am sure there are many wealthy people on Medicaid.
They look at income only. I make little income because I am retired and spending no money and so selling no investments and therefore taking no profits. Banks are like this as well. My friend’s super rich retired father could not get a credit card because he has little actual income.
Thanks, Mike, for a beautiful story! A friend who lived in a $2 million house (back in the pre-Biden period when $2 million was real money) and had substantial tech and venture capital investments ended up on Medicaid for himself and his family because the Maskachusetts Obamacare portal didn’t ask about assets (he answered every question truthfully). He paid $3/month for Medicaid for himself, his wife, and two kids. He said that it was far more usable than Blue Cross, for which he’d been paying close to $30,000/year. Every provider accepted Medicaid (“MassHealth”). There were no deductibles or copays. It was awesome! Sadly, however, eventually the wife wanted to move out of Maskachusetts so they had to give this up.
I’m happy for you personally Mike: you lead a charmed life and apparently are a miracle worker:
> I am retired and spending no money
My financial advisor keeps telling me I’m going to need 2X my current salary in retirement just to keep up with hyper-inflated property tax, eggs, and adult diapers–property tax burden is becoming a key weight for where to retire for me. And Obamacare, what a heap of expensive, poorly thought-out, compromised, passive-aggressive, and partially-socialized medicine–all to pay for a doctor who can’t or won’t help me. I’ll take free crappy Medicare, thank you, when I’m 65. I guess I’m misinformed, but I thought you had to drain your assets before getting on Medicaid, maybe that is just for a nursing home.
> My friend’s super rich retired father could not get a credit card because he has little actual income.
He probably is super rich because he didn’t have a credit card, circularly. Maybe it will stop raining this week, and I can go back to working outside instead of reading horror-stories like this on the Internet. 🕸️🕷️🎃👻
Phil (he asked completely innocently and scratching his head) I keep hearing Democratic messaging that immigrants aren’t receiving food stamps (nearly impossible to defraud that way) and most of the citizens who are on Oh SNAP! are employed–surely they wouldn’t mislead us middle-class chumps? I heard that very message on The Formerly Government Subsidized NPR just today. Eagerly awaiting insight.
But, nah, I’m really wondering why the neo-liberals were in such a hurry to offshore my highly paid tech job in the mid-90s. Nobody was interested in my innovative on-shore chip ideas during the Biden administration which promised an onshore chip renaissance (ditto Obama/manufacturing). Don’t my taxes from higher income pay for their Machiavellian schemes, and don’t they want me (chump #1) to succeed? Curiouser and curiouser. We do seem to be living in a live production of “Alice in Wonderland”. 🕳️🐇 It could be worse, though, I could have been stuck in Jamaica today.
Phil, I’m often a bit slow on the uptake, but your post here has me really baffled as to why this situation has developed (17 to 42!). Hoping you could apply your advanced degrees and learnings from MIT to explain it to me in a way my simple mind can grasp?