If 1 out of every 5 households is on foodstamps, what is causing it?

[Meathead]

Almost all people are fat because they eat too much and are sedentary. It's not that complicated Barbie.

 

[Katzndogz]

No one is fat because the government just hasn't regulated what they eat nearly enough to keep them on a diet.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

If 1 out of every 5 households is on foodstamps, what is causing it?

Obamanomics.

 

[Katzndogz]

People are fat because rich people don't make sure that fat people buy low cal healthy food. Then rich people don't make sure that poor people eat low cal healthy food. If rich people weren't so greedy they would pay for cooks in every poor household and food minders to make sure the food was eaten.

They do it in schools and it doesn't work there either.

 

[gallantwarrior]

Hey I know why people get food stamps; they like to eat and feed their families. Kinda like why food pantries have seen an explosion in visits by hungry people. To eat is good.
And when your money runs out before your hunger ends, you will go looking for food. It is a natural thing for people to eat I tell you.

Yes, I've noticed that lean and hungry look on so many poor Americans - the fattest people I've ever seen anywhere. Please, pigs will fly before anybody goes hungry with or without food stamps in the US. That is the lamest thing I've heard in some time, rather like the bleating of sheep.

It's a common enough misconception, endorsed by so much of the empty calorie news you must consume to believe it, but the fat = nutritionally healthy myth was put to rest some time ago. Poor people are fat because fatty foods are cheap. It really is that simple, but there is more, too. Americans as a whole are fat because the FDA is toothless, because our milk is laden with HGH at the embryo of our milk cows, our chickens, our pork, and our cattle. It is going to get worse, as Monsato et al gained so grandly in the law recently passed (as a poison [pun VERY much intended] pill into an economic bill) that allowed them to introduce ANYFUCKINGTHING they pleased into our seed stock without so much as warning label.

When it starts effecting you, in whatever random ways it will, remember that YOU asked for it too, mutherfucker.

Other than the "motherfucker" comment, I agree with what you have said about Monsanto and what has been allowed to happen to our food resources. Permitted by a government claiming to only have the people's best interest in mind while "leveling the playing field" for giant, monopolistic business interests. We do have the best government money can buy. Too bad government doesn't count the taxes we pay.

 

[Barb]

Yes, I've noticed that lean and hungry look on so many poor Americans - the fattest people I've ever seen anywhere. Please, pigs will fly before anybody goes hungry with or without food stamps in the US. That is the lamest thing I've heard in some time, rather like the bleating of sheep.

It's a common enough misconception, endorsed by so much of the empty calorie news you must consume to believe it, but the fat = nutritionally healthy myth was put to rest some time ago. Poor people are fat because fatty foods are cheap. It really is that simple, but there is more, too. Americans as a whole are fat because the FDA is toothless, because our milk is laden with HGH at the embryo of our milk cows, our chickens, our pork, and our cattle. It is going to get worse, as Monsato et al gained so grandly in the law recently passed (as a poison [pun VERY much intended] pill into an economic bill) that allowed them to introduce ANYFUCKINGTHING they pleased into our seed stock without so much as warning label.

When it starts effecting you, in whatever random ways it will, remember that YOU asked for it too, mutherfucker.

Other than the "motherfucker" comment, I agree with what you have said about Monsanto and what has been allowed to happen to our food resources. Permitted by a government claiming to only have the people's best interest in mind while "leveling the playing field" for giant, monopolistic business interests. We do have the best government money can buy. Too bad government doesn't count the taxes we pay.

Thank you I used to be a very nice girl, long, long ago. So much that is despicable is hidden in pretty language though. Those industries also write the policies that decide the taxes smaller businesses must pay too, and that put them at a disadvantage to big corporations, and that, believe it or not, is where a great deal of my outrage lies. My father LOVED what came out of Ronald Reagan's mouth, but his policies did NOTHING for small businessmen like him. He hated the very idea of unions, but everything about him was pro-labor. He said the people who worked for him put the roof over our heads and the food on our table. He took a loan out every winter to cover payroll so he wouldn't have to lay anyone off. He felt he owed his people (his PEOPLE, not his RESOURCES) consistent income and health benefits for what they gave us. Reciprocity has no place in corporations today though, not towards their workers, their customers, or the communities they prosper within. This lack of reciprocity and responsibility is dressed up in platitudinous bull shit, and I have come to believe that confronting it requires the direct opposite.

 

[gallantwarrior]

It's a common enough misconception, endorsed by so much of the empty calorie news you must consume to believe it, but the fat = nutritionally healthy myth was put to rest some time ago. Poor people are fat because fatty foods are cheap. It really is that simple, but there is more, too. Americans as a whole are fat because the FDA is toothless, because our milk is laden with HGH at the embryo of our milk cows, our chickens, our pork, and our cattle. It is going to get worse, as Monsato et al gained so grandly in the law recently passed (as a poison [pun VERY much intended] pill into an economic bill) that allowed them to introduce ANYFUCKINGTHING they pleased into our seed stock without so much as warning label.

When it starts effecting you, in whatever random ways it will, remember that YOU asked for it too, mutherfucker.

Other than the "motherfucker" comment, I agree with what you have said about Monsanto and what has been allowed to happen to our food resources. Permitted by a government claiming to only have the people's best interest in mind while "leveling the playing field" for giant, monopolistic business interests. We do have the best government money can buy. Too bad government doesn't count the taxes we pay.

Thank you I used to be a very nice girl, long, long ago. So much that is despicable is hidden in pretty language though. Those industries also write the policies that decide the taxes smaller businesses must pay too, and that put them at a disadvantage to big corporations, and that, believe it or not, is where a great deal of my outrage lies. My father LOVED what came out of Ronald Reagan's mouth, but his policies did NOTHING for small businessmen like him. He hated the very idea of unions, but everything about him was pro-labor. He said the people who worked for him put the roof over our heads and the food on our table. He took a loan out every winter to cover payroll so he wouldn't have to lay anyone off. He felt he owed his people (his PEOPLE, not his RESOURCES) consistent income and health benefits for what they gave us. Reciprocity has no place in corporations today though, not towards their workers, their customers, or the communities they prosper within. This lack of reciprocity and responsibility is dressed up in platitudinous bull shit, and I have come to believe that confronting it requires the direct opposite.

I think the majority of small businessmen are still like you father. Small business allows a deeper personal connection between the owners and their employees than you can ever establish when the business is a decentralized behemoth. The people who work and make things happen for those giant businesses become nothing more than numbers and assets to be managed. In a small, local business people who work with you and for you have faces, names, families, lives...

 

[Claudette]

Hell. What do you mean more folks are on food stamps??

I thought the economy was up and running and UE was way down? Obama got his second term and the absolute failure of his first term was going to be remedied in his second. He is all about jobs now.

Oh wait. I forgot. Thats a bunch of bullshit. Never mind.

 

[g5000]

I believe it has to do with huge numbers of illegal aliens and the young entitlement generation.

You could not be more wrong. Maybe if you bothered to look up actual statistics you would not have made such an asinine comment about illegal aliens on food stamps.

 

[g5000]

There is a lot of stupidity in this thread, but I will focus on the xenophobic shit.

First, illegals are not eligible for food stamps. And when you consider 46 million people are on food stamps, that is not explained by immigrants. Even the dumbest idiot should be able to do THAT simple math.

And as long as you are slamming immigrants, ponder these facts:

“About 40 percent of our Ph.D. scientists and engineers were born in another country,” Orrenius writes. “People tend to focus on illegal or low-skilled immigration when discussing immigrants and often do not recognize the tremendous contribution of high-skilled immigrants.”

Dallas Federal Reserve

A new study, released last week, throws new information into the debate over foreign workers who arrive in the U.S. on such specialty visas.

The report, based on telephone surveys with 2,054 companies and projections by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and Duke University, says about 25 percent of the technology and engineering companies launched in the U.S. in the past decade had at least one foreign-born founder.

Immigrants Become Founding Fathers

These immigrant founders tended to be highly educated—96 percent held bachelor’s degrees and 74 percent held graduate or postgraduate degrees, with 75 percent of these degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-related fields. The vast majority of these company founders didn’t come to the United States as entrepreneurs 52 percent came to study, 40 percent came to work, and 5.5 percent came for family reasons. Only 1.6 percent came to start companies in America.

Even though these founders immigrated for other purposes initially, they typically started their companies just 13.25 years after arriving in the United States. And, rather than settling in well-established immigrant gateways, such as New York or Los Angeles, they moved to a diverse group of tech centers across the country and helped fuel their growth.

http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/WadhwaTBook09.pdf

While 23 percent of the nation's cooks and 20 percent of its janitors were immigrants in 2000, 27 percent of new computer-software engineers were also immigrants, according to a recent Migration Policy Institute study.

Indeed, the more technically educated the group, the more likely immigrants are to be overrepresented in it. While the foreign born make up 15 percent of the overall workforce, according to the 2000 census, they constitute approximately 17 percent of those with a bachelor's degree in science and engineering occupations, 29 percent of those with a master's degree, and 39 percent of those with a doctoral degree.

As US nears milestone, a rising mix of immigrants - CSMonitor.com



"[T]he more technically educated the group, the more likely immigrants are to be overrepresented in it."

Americans are dumbing themselves down. And the ignorant, bigoted posts in this topic are powerful evidence of that fact.


I would posit that is one of the chief reasons food stamp distribution is rising. American education is cheating whole swaths of our society from the creative, innovative and advanced fields that made us great. We are turning into a nation of moronic, bigoted, lava lamp builders, and lava lamp builders don't deserve more than ten bucks an hour, at best.

 

[WillowTree]

I'll give +rep to the first who can answer this question correctly.

hint: assume the employment rate of all households is 92.3% since national unemployment is at 7.7%.

obamie is givin em to illegals

 

[g5000]

Not even the ultra stupid right wing piss rag called The Daily Caller thinks immigrants are a big part of the food stamp distribution.

Last month, in a letter recently obtained by TheDC, Vilsack revealed that the share of overall Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamp, benefits going to legal non-citizens has accounted for between 3.5–4.0 percent of the total caseload since 2004.

Not even Vilsack challenges that figure.

 

[g5000]

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/04-19-SNAP.pdf

The number of people receiving SNAP benefits increased
by almost 50 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2005
and even more rapidly (by 70 percent) between fiscal
years 2007 and 2011. During that latter period, spending
on SNAP benefits grew by about 135 percent. The
increase in the number of people eligible for and receiving
benefits between 2007 and 2011 has been driven
primarily by the weak economy. That increase was
responsible for about 65 percent of the growth in
spending on benefits between 2007 and 2011. About
20 percent of the growth in spending can be attributed
to temporarily higher benefit amounts enacted in the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
(ARRA). The remainder stemmed from other factors,
such as higher food prices and lower income among beneficiaries,
both of which boost benefits.

So there was a 50 percent increase in Bush's first term. Followed by a 70 percent increase for the period including his second term and the first two years of Obama's first term.

Between 1990 and 2011, the number of SNAP participants
increased during periods of relatively high
unemployment (see Figure 1). Even as the unemployment
rate began to decline from its 1992, 2003, and
2010 peaks, decreases in participation typically lagged
improvement in the economy by several years. For
example, the number of SNAP participants rose steadily
from about 20 million in the fall of 1989 to more than
27 million in April 1994—nearly two years after the
unemployment rate began to fall and a full three years
after the official end of the recession in March 1991. The
number of people receiving SNAP benefits began to
climb again in 2001 and continued to grow until 2006,
more than two years after the unemployment rate began
to decline and well after that recession ended (in November
2001). The number of participants temporarily
leveled off in 2006 and 2007 until the unemployment
rate began to rise sharply in 2008. Participation then
started to grow quickly and has continued to increase
since then.

So we find that is entirely normal for SNAP participation to increase for many years beyond the last recession.

The primary reason
for the increase in the number of participants was the
deep recession from December 2007 to June 2009 and
the subsequent slow recovery; there were no significant
legislative expansions of eligibility for the program during
that time.

Considering the Bush Recession was the greatest crash since the Great Depression, none of these figures being cited for the years following that crash should be the least bit surprising now that we have much more context in which to consider them.