Tag Archives: Poverty

Us and Them Again

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As noted in an update to the post below, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is having their annual convention, which means leading Republican politicians are getting the chance to express their deepest thoughts. So Senator Rubio of Florida got the opportunity to explain why Franklin Roosevelt had it all wrong — we should be very, very afraid.

Also today, Congressman Paul Ryan highlighted the difference between the right and the left by telling the story of a Wisconsin kid who’d prefer bringing his own lunch to school instead of mooching off the rest of us by getting a lunch at taxpayer expense.

Juliet Lapidos of the New York Times points out Congressman Ryan’s underlying, contradictory assumption:

[Ryan] argued that Americans want to work — every bit as much as the Republican Party wants them to work. “People don’t just want a life of comfort,” he said. “They want a life of dignity. They want a life of self-determination”….

In Mr. Ryan’s view, Americans would rather depend on themselves, or their families, than on the government. And yet, in Mr. Ryan’s view, if these same Americans gain access to government programs, they’ll jump at the chance to abandon their responsibilities, effectively exchanging a “life of dignity” for a “life of comfort.”

That doesn’t make sense. If all or most Americans, like the kid in Wisconsin, want their own lunch rather than a government lunch, then the prospect of a government lunch won’t change their behavior.

Ryan doesn’t notice the contradiction, since he thinks of his fellow citizens as Us and Them. On one hand, there are the honorable, hard-working Americans who hate the idea of getting help from the government (you know who they are). On the other hand, there are the dishonorable, lazy Americans who want nothing more than to live off government handouts (you know who they are too).

This is the same point I tried to make recently in a comment on another blog. There is a strange dichotomy between how Republicans expect poor people and rich people to respond to financial incentives:

— People who are struggling should receive as little financial assistance as possible, because helping them will only discourage them from becoming productive members of society. After all, they’re not really motivated to increase their incomes beyond the bare minimum. In their case, therefore, less income will translate into more work, and more income will translate into less work.

— People who aren’t struggling should receive as much financial assistance as possible, especially in the form of lower taxes, because helping them will encourage them to become even more productive members of society. In their case, more income will translate into more work, while less income will translate into less work!

It isn’t fun at all being poor or unemployed, but Republicans believe that making life as difficult as possible for the economy’s losers will convince them to do better. That’s because they’re not like us. They don’t care about improving their situations and they don’t respond to economic incentives the way normal people do.

Less money for the poor, so they will work harder; more money for the rich, so they will work harder. It makes perfect sense!

(Note: I’m going to try to lay off writing about right-wingers for a while. Maybe I’ll try fashion reporting. Or poetry! “There once was a girl from Nantucket, …”)

Who Would Ever Use Food Stamps?

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Funding for food stamps (the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) was increased a few years ago as part of the federal stimulus package. Unlike temporary tax cuts and business subsidies, which tend to last forever, the temporary increase in SNAP funding ended November 1st. 

The average monthly benefit per household two years ago was $293. Now it will be about $278, down 5%.There is an article here with more information, including an interactive map that allows you to see the numbers for your state. In Arizona, for example, 1.1 million people are covered by SNAP, including 538,000 children. 

It’s easy to demonize people you don’t know. Who are these slackers and scam artists who use food stamps anyway?

Sometimes they’re people you know or even people just like you. One of them writes:

People tend to think of food stamp recipients as poor, unfortunate, lazy, things along those lines. Be aware that recipients are also people trying to better themselves, simply needing some assistance to do so. Case in point: There was a time in the past when I was studying towards a graduate degree on a scholarship. The scholarship wasn’t nearly enough to live on. I did odd jobs for faculty to earn some money to help with my cash flow situation, but I also qualified for food stamps. With my level of income, I was eligible to be subsidized at 50%. That is, I could buy $1 of food stamps for 50 cents, up to a certain total amount of stamps every week, essentially doubling the amount of food I could buy and allowing me to devote more time studying towards a degree.

At the food stamp office, there were some other younger folks like myself, but most people were clearly much more desperate: people weak and elderly, women tending to babies and young children, disabled people. Standing on line waiting your turn, you could hear the transactions at the counter ahead of you, and could hear that many of these people were subsidized at 100%. I can guarantee you it has never occurred to me they should not have received this assistance. Today, to hear people say that citizens in need should be denied this kind of support, which simply enables them to buy enough food, well, I can’t decide if it makes me sad, angry, disgusted, depressed or all of those things.

It’s all of those things.

Meanwhile, You Don’t Want To Be Poor In America

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The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, has issued a report relating to “welfare reform”, the law that Congress passed and President Clinton signed 17 years ago.

Federal funding for the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (what used to be called “Aid to Families with Dependent Children” or “welfare”), hasn’t increased since 1996, so inflation has eaten away at the program’s benefits:

Because TANF benefits have declined substantially in value, they do much less to help families escape deep poverty than they did in 1996.  With the exception of Maryland and Wyoming, a poor family relying solely on TANF to provide the basics for its children (such as during a period of joblessness, illness, or disability) in every state is further below the poverty line today than in 1996.

In fact, the inflation-adjusted value of benefits has decreased by more than 20% in 14 states and by more than 30% in 26 states.

Believe it or not, the monthly cash payment to an unemployed woman with two children in Mississippi is $170. Where I live, in one of the highest income states in the country, it’s $424 for a family of three, exactly what it was in 1996 (that’s a 32% decrease in real value).

Of course, there are other Federal programs for poor people, whether they have jobs or not, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP or “food stamps”). But you can’t pay the rent or buy shoes with food stamps. Next week, by the way, people receiving food stamps will start getting less. A family of four, other things being equal, will receive $36 less per month.

The CPBP report (with charts):

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=4034

The food stamp news:

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/food-stamp-benefits-going-down-holidays-8C11418632

Patience and the Affordable Care Act

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It’s always bothered me that the Obama administration didn’t come up with a catchy name for the health insurance provisions of the Affordable Care Act. We’ve got “Social Security”, “Medicare” and “Medicaid”, so why couldn’t the administration come up with an equally helpful name for this thing, instead of leaving an opening for it to be called “Obamacare”?

I bet if Saint Ronald was still President, one of the first things on his agenda would have been to give his pet program a great name that would help sell it to the American people. But Obama apparently thinks he’s above such things.

Nevertheless, the important thing is that this landmark legislation is going into effect two days from now, regardless of what any misguided, foolish, cowardly and/or evil House Republicans do in the meantime.

I know people (including myself) who will probably be taking advantage of the ACA in the relatively near future, so I’ve been wondering how much it’s going to cost. Unfortunately, there are reports in the media that suggest what “average” premiums will be. There was one such unhelpful article in the New York Times today: “‘Affordable Care’ or a Rip-Off?”.

The problem is that you can’t know what a person’s or a family’s costs will be until you factor in where they live, how old they are and, especially, what their income is. Many or most people in this country, not just the poorest among us, will be eligible for subsidies from the government. In fact, if you’re eligible for a subsidy, you won’t even have to wait for the IRS to send you a check. The subsidy will be applied right up front when you pay your insurance premium (which means that some people won’t have to pay anything at all).

There is good news here. The health insurance premiums being discussed so far are generally cheaper than what people would pay for private health insurance today, and the premiums are going to be lower, often much lower, for many of us after the subsidies are applied.

So maybe everyone who’s interested should wait a couple days and then go to https://www.healthcare.gov/ to see the real numbers (and also see the pretty young woman with a big smile on her face). I’m sure we can all wait a couple more days.

Here’s today’s New York Times editorial on the importance of the ACA and the subsidies:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/opinion/sunday/dawn-of-a-revolution-in-health-care.html?

If you’re in the mood for even more good news, take a look at this column from Nicholas Kristof. Here’s his conclusion, supported by statistics from the World Bank, the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development:

So let’s acknowledge that there’s plenty of work remaining — and that cycles of poverty in America must be a top priority at home — yet also celebrate a triumph for humanity. The world of extreme poverty and disease that characterized life for most people throughout history may now finally be on its way out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-way-of-life-is-ending-thank-goodness.html?