Land of the free . . . lunch, and home of the brave . . . new world of perpetual dependency. From Jeffrey Tucker at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:
Americans ought to be deeply embarrassed at the national panic over the future of food stamps. The level of dependency on this program (42 million people and 22 million households) runs contrary to our entire civic culture and history.
It is a betrayal of the founding vision of commerce, independence, and agronomy. It reveals a fundamentally dangerous rot at the core of the functioning of the food system.
We can hope that the widespread meltdown over even the slightest pause in the program provokes a rethinking of the entire scheme.
The term food stamps is of course deprecated in favor of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) delivered via an EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer). This is all technocratic euphemism. They are food stamps. The name was changed to disguise the disgrace and the mode of delivery turned into a card that looks like any other.
It was much better when people had to deliver their stamps in front of other customers. At least that preserved some of the stigma with which it was associated. As for nutrition, not so much. The SNAP program amounts to a huge subsidy for the snack-food industry, which turns out to be the key lobbying force behind the entire thing.
The origin of the program traces to 1933. Its main point was not to save people from starvation but to save industry from a downturn at the onset of the Great Depression. The price of wheat, milk, and meat were falling dramatically. The problem was not a lack of demand but a huge overproduction brought about by market distortions.
