One in Eight Americans Now Receives Food Stamps

The Safety Net - Living on Nothing but Food Stamps - Series - NYTimes.com

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CAPE CORAL, Fla. — After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust — the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.

Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.

With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.

About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.

Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.

“It’s the one thing I can count on every month — I know the children are going to have food,” Ms. Bermudez, 42, said with the forced good cheer she mastered selling rows of new stucco homes.

Members of this straitened group range from displaced strivers like Ms. Bermudez to weathered men who sleep in shelters and barter cigarettes. Some draw on savings or sporadic under-the-table jobs. Some move in with relatives. Some get noncash help, like subsidized apartments. While some go without cash incomes only briefly before securing jobs or aid, others rely on food stamps alone for many months.

The surge in this precarious way of life has been so swift that few policy makers have noticed. But it attests to the growing role of food stamps within the safety net. One in eight Americans now receives food stamps, including one in four children...
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“It’s the one thing I can count on every month — I know the children are going to have food,” Ms. Bermudez, 42, said with the forced good cheer she mastered selling rows of new stucco homes.

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“It’s the one thing I can count on every month — I know the children are going to have food,” Ms. Bermudez, 42, said with the forced good cheer she mastered selling rows of new stucco homes.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/us/03foodstamps.html
“This is craziness,” said Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican who is the ranking minority member of a House panel on welfare policy. “We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government.”

Mr. Linder added: “You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes” so small businesses will create more jobs.

John Linder wants your children to literally starve to death, and he is on a House panel on welfare policy.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Congressional panels basically determine government policy.

John Linder, a member of a panel on welfare policy, wants to do away with welfare.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Bolton fulfilled his obligations as a liaison, though, which was the weird thing.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

It's just strange to think that the Bush administration chose an appointment that symbolized their opinion of the UN, yet who was at the same time an effective bureaucrat.

It's one of the few things they did competently, and I refuse to believe it was on purpose.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Either that or the proles rise up to murder us in our sleep, which is the risk you take, I suppose.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'm a single 20-something and I deserve more money than children!

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Grail

I'm not too sure if you and Brady mis-read my post or what the deal was, but no, my salary that I earn isn't enough to support one child, let alone 5. I just know for the last 5 years of my life I, myself, have been denied aid from the government as far as loans and grants for college go because my single mother makes about 25k a year and that's 'rich' according to the letter of rejection they sent me.

But then again I'm not going out and trying to have 5 kids before I reach the legal drinking age here in america.

But, and I could be getting this wrong, are you and Brady saying that it is a better life decision, as a young woman, to go out and get knocked up as much as you can so you can live off the state?

I could just be reading it wrong but that's how it sounds to me.

Before I say anything else, holy Christ are you dumb. It's time to seriously start thinking about how you think, because you're not doing it.

Being a single mother living off of welfare is never a good life decision, unless you want to think that raising five kids on next-to-nothing sounds like a fun time. The idea that somebody chooses to raise children while unemployed is indicative of our privileged lifestyles. People don't always have inputs when it comes to life-altering change, especially when biological differences mean that a night of passion becomes a lifelong-burden from a father who might just as well skip town as pay child support or raise a single goddamn finger to help raise his kids.

Raising children requires a lot of work and dedication, and when the job markets are already so limited for someone who can only work so much while juggling their children, they need help! Not everybody has the support structures we have (friends, family, sometimes corporate daycare), and children shouldn't be punished for the irresponsibility of their parents. Hell, families didn't even have to be destitute for the Right to want their children to become crippling medical burdens when they attacked S-Chip.

And furthermore, what right do you have to question the lifestyle choices of people living in poverty, as if they have much of a fucking choice when it comes to doing anything that helps them forget about the fact that they have no future?

We got into this mess because society placed more value on capital than people, yet you still question policies that are the literal difference between life and death for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

You couldn't even figure out how to get student aid when your guardian makes 25,000 a year. Get new friends, do drugs, move to another state, do anything that will allow you to consider things outside of your perspective, for the love of God.

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Personally I aspire to more than just getting by on benefits but when one sees so many chav families decked out in labelled clothing, with full Sky subscriptions, a brand new DS for each kid and five dogs, one can't help but feel a bit resentful. I'm not advocating forcing people to live in hardship but having more kids to increase your benefits payouts shouldn't really be allowed to be such an attractive lifestyle choice. It's that more than our drinking culture that's fucking up Britain at the moment, although I suspect our benefits are far more generous than in the US so I may not be comparing like with like.

Hmm, a people that care more about consumerism than bettering themselves, almost like every other First World nation on the planet!

FELIPE NO

Ideally everyone in the country should receive foodstamps, if not because they have no income, but because it will round out their available groceries with foods that aren't shit.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

Who's being rewarded for this irresponsibility? The parents. Sure, the kids get to eat and have clothes and roof, but it's the parents that get the money. it's the parents we send to higher education, not the children. Do you see the flaw?

Of course! We should just let those parents stay ignorant, low-income earners so their kids can be too when they grow up. Somebody's got to flip my burgers.

Additional Spam:
I understand the injustice that you had to join the military to get an education, but the solution to that problem is to make education free, not make it harder for single parents to get an education.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

Well, from my viewpoint, people aren't that likely to change once they start fucking up. And I know you can't politically apply this stereotype, but I honestly think that if you want help these families out of poverty, you would start with the generation that hasn't muggled it up yet.

Getting knocked up might be a fuckup, but that's not the only indicator of the future. One of my professors used to instruct in Alternative Education for High Schoolers and had a student called Five Ash. The kid had a brutal reputation and had to raise a son with his baby momma, but he went to the University of Arkansas and taught the exact same subject my prof did at his old high school.

That kid would have likely been on the way to prison if it weren't for his experience in Alternative Education.

How ya doing, buddy?

not to be a semantic shit, but there's a difference between the costs of instruction, and the costs of receiving an education

instructors and institutions will always cost money, but getting an education should not

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Any education is better than nothing. A society that puts more value on the exclusivity of post-secondary than an educated populace is headed in the wrong direction.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Denicalis

The system isn't perfect, but if you think education can be free and held to high standards, you're living in a dream world.

When has anybody ever said this?

I was speaking idiomatically.

Well I'm glad you're not a total monster. Good job on not being human filth.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?