CR Reading List: Oh SNAP! In Defense of Food Stamps...

We're debuting a new format here at Conflict Revolution: the CR Reading List. Each week, Stephen and I will post an article we've read recently, and then write a brief statement placing that article in context. Responses will follow - and it could get ugly. I lead off this week by defending the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - also known as food stamps.

From Newt Gingrich's recent exhortation for African-Americans to "demand jobs, not food stamps" to Rick Santorum's pledge to scale back the program significantly if elected President (keep dreaming, buddy), it seems that food assistance has become the latest front in the long-running conservative war against the American social safety net.

Read the LA Times Op-Ed that inspired this post

You would think that the self-avowed party of economic growth would want the citizens of its country to be as productive as possible – it’s awfully hard to work when you’re hungry. And before Stephen makes the Darwinian argument that people will be more motivated to work if they don’t know where their next meal is going to come from (as if this is a good thing), I’ll pre-empt that by noting that 40 percent of food stamp recipients are already employed but don’t make enough money to cover their expenses. For many who have seen their wages decline or disappear altogether – including an increasing amount of formerly middle-class households – food stamps are essential to keeping individuals and families from falling into economic disarray.

I personally believe that any government has a moral obligation to feed its people, but there's also a strong economic rationale for food stamps: along with other social assistance programs, they support the economy by propping up demand. If it weren't for food stamps, unemployment insurance, and other staples of the social safety net that Republicans would like to shred, there would be even fewer jobs out there right now because consumer demand for products and services would be even lower (hard to buy things when you don't have any money, hard to employ people to help sell things when no one wants to buy them). This idea is borne out in the facts: every $1 in food stamp spending generates almost double that amount of local economic activity.

When they were first created at the height of the Great Depression, food stamps replaced government bread lines by providing recipients with a voucher to go spend at a private retailer. Considering this mirrors the education policy Republicans advocate (private school vouchers), I'm not sure where their inconsistency comes from on this issue.

Unfortunately, my worthy debating opponent and those who share his views have come to proudly view ANY domestic government expenditure as a worthless giveaway to the undeserving, even when their ideologically-driven views have no basis in reality. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story, right?