Entitlement Programs and Social Welfare
In addition to the social welfare of Medicaid, there is another social welfare program that reflects the degree of dependency the American people have on the government. In fact, this other social welfare program reflects and even deeper degree of dependency, because of its importance in human life.
If you are depending on this social welfare program, your degree of dependence on the nearly bankrupt and indebted US government and your painful lack of self-sufficiency is at a pulsatingly dangerous level.
The illustration we are going to look into as a measure of American dependence on the government and an answer to the question – Are we relying on the government? – is, food stamps.
Origin of the Food Stamp Program
Food stamps, technically known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), was created in 1939. Food stamps are a form of government financial assistance for low-income earners to use for purchasing food. The stamps started out as actual paper squares worth various increments of money. Now, in this age of electronics and light speed transfers of information, the stamps exist in the form of a card named an Electronic Benefits Card (EBT).
Utter Dependence?
The stamps are representative of great dependence because they are the money people use to buy food – ie. the stuff you and I eat to survive. Yet, this basic need for survival is not being provided by oneself, it is being provided by an external force – a fiscally irresponsible US government.
The risk involved in relying on the government to provide your sustenance for physical survival is immeasurable. The most unsettling part about the Food Program is that the number of people on it would absolutely shock you. These people, these people are basically dependent on the government in a way similar to a child being dependent on the parent, for food.
Can you imagine – being entirely dependent on an external source for your food and having that source spending your food money wildly and gambling with your survival?
Again, the number of people on food stamps is shocking. Recently I was speaking with a elderly man about the unfunded liabilities and the US debt crisis. We continued to converse and to my surprise, he was on food stamps! While we were speaking he said to me, “What happens when the government can’t pay Social Security anymore? What happens if they can’t pay food stamps? If they do that, I’m done. I live off that stuff.”
These are dangerous times, and I feel for this man. He is one of the tens of millions of Americans who, for numerous reasons, did not have proper financial cushions prepared for his later years and are now planning to live off of the financial support from an insolvent gambler.
Massive Food Stamp Participation
Once again, the number of people on the stamps is shocking. Consider these figures:
1. At least 44 million Americans are receiving food stamps, according to the US Department of Agriculture. This is the highest number since the program’s creation and the 37th monthly increase in a row.
2. In Mississippi and Washington, D.C, more than 1 out of 5 people are on food stamps, according to the Democracy Now! radio news service.
3. As of 2009, 1 out of 8 Americans and 1 out of 4 children were on the stamps and the program is growing at least at 20,000 more Americans every single day, according to Reuters news service.
4. As of 2011, more than 1 out of 7 Americans are on food stamps and the percentage of Americans on food stamps nearly doubled from early 2007 to early 201, according to SNAP itself.
Considering what we have just learned about food stamps, it should be plain to see that a dangerous percentage of Americans are depending on the Stamp Program and the decrease in financial self-sufficiency – even physical self-sufficiency – is rapidly diving towards a critical point of destruction.
