SNAP Benefit Reductions Begin Today

Nobody knows what the reaction to the reduction in SNAP payments will be. I think it’s unlikely there will be running battles in the street, riots and looting will most likely not be the order of the day.

The effects of the entitlement cuts will not show itself for sometime, but when it does it’s not going to be pretty.

Those families who have found themselves on the program through job losses or a reduction in hours will scrimp harder to make ends meet. They will manage to keep food on the table. It may not be decent food, it may not be nutritionally balanced, but they will continue to manage.

There will be more deaths this winter though as families face the choice of eating or heating. The young, the old and the infirm will suffer most. Homelessness will increase.

Those for whom entitlements are a lifestyle choice it’s a different matter altogether. The professionally unemployed will not take kindly to a reduction in the amount of cash they have to spend on the latest electronics, alcohol,drugs and whatever else they put before food. It’s unlikely they will change their lifestyle to accommodate the reduction of dollars.

Child hunger and absolute child poverty will increase as time goes on.

Kids who are not old enough to understand what’s going on will suffer the most. Unable to fend for themselves, cases of neglect and hunger will increase.

Older kids will do what they have to eat. More drugs, more prostitution, more taking from others to feed themselves.

Many will think that I’m over-reacting, it’s just a few dollars after all. To most it is, and as I said, they will adjust, but many will not. Not because they can’t, but because they won’t.

They chose not to.

It’s the children in those families that will suffer the most.

Higher food costs and unemployment have added greatly to the costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the bill is now running at some $80bn a year.

With 47 million Americans now receiving some form of government aid, the only way to reduce these costs effectively in the long term is to create decent jobs that will allow millions of people to remove themselves from the millstone around their necks that government dependence has become to them.