Thread: USA 2008: The Great Depression

USA 2008: The Great Depression

Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive – a sure sign the world's richest country faces economic crisis



Disadvantaged Americans queue for aid in New York


By David Usborne in New York
Tuesday, 1 April 2008

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.

Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.

The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs losses and fast-rising prices all add to the squeeze.

Emblematic of the downturn until now has been the parades of houses seized in foreclosure all across the country, and myriad families separated from their homes. But now the crisis is starting to hit the country in its gut. Getting food on the table is a challenge many Americans are finding harder to meet. As a barometer of the country's economic health, food stamp usage may not be perfect, but can certainly tell a story.

Michigan has been in its own mini-recession for years as its collapsing industrial base, particularly in the car industry, has cast more and more out of work. Now, one in eight residents of the state is on food stamps, double the level in 2000. "We have seen a dramatic increase in recent years, but we have also seen it climbing more in recent months," Maureen Sorbet, a spokeswoman for Michigan's programme, said. "It's been increasing steadily. Without the programme, some families and kids would be going without."

But the trend is not restricted to the rust-belt regions. Forty states are reporting increases in applications for the stamps, actually electronic cards that are filled automatically once a month by the government and are swiped by shoppers at the till, in the 12 months from December 2006. At least six states, including Florida, Arizona and Maryland, have had a 10 per cent increase in the past year.

In Rhode Island, the segment of the population on food stamps has risen by 18 per cent in two years. The food programme started 40 years ago when hunger was still a daily fact of life for many Americans. The recent switch from paper coupons to the plastic card system has helped remove some of the stigma associated with the food stamp programme. The card can be swiped as easily as a bank debit card. To qualify for the cards, Americans do not have to be exactly on the breadline. The programme is available to people whose earnings are just above the official poverty line. For Hubert Liepnieks, the card is a lifeline he could never afford to lose. Just out of prison, he sleeps in overnight shelters in Manhattan and uses the card at a Morgan Williams supermarket on East 23rd Street. Yesterday, he and his fiancée, Christine Schultz, who is in a wheelchair, shared one banana and a cup of coffee bought with the 82 cents left on it.

"They should be refilling it in the next three or four days," Liepnieks says. At times, he admits, he and friends bargain with owners of the smaller grocery shops to trade the value of their cards for cash, although it is illegal. "It can be done. I get $7 back on $10."

Richard Enright, the manager at this Morgan Williams, says the numbers of customers on food stamps has been steady but he expects that to rise soon. "In this location, it's still mostly old people and people who have retired from city jobs on stamps," he says. Food stamp money was designed to supplement what people could buy rather than covering all the costs of a family's groceries. But the problem now, Mr Enright says, is that soaring prices are squeezing the value of the benefits.

"Last St Patrick's Day, we were selling Irish soda bread for $1.99. This year it was $2.99. Prices are just spiralling up, because of the cost of gas trucking the food into the city and because of commodity prices. People complain, but I tell them it's not my fault everything is more expensive."

The US Department of Agriculture says the cost of feeding a low-income family of four has risen 6 per cent in 12 months. "The amount of food stamps per household hasn't gone up with the food costs," says Dayna Ballantyne, who runs a food bank in Des Moines, Iowa. "Our clients are finding they aren't able to purchase food like they used to."

And the next monthly job numbers, to be released this Friday, are likely to show 50,000 more jobs were lost nationwide in March, and the unemployment rate is up to perhaps 5 per cent.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 03095.html

If anyone thinks that what is happening is by accident, you have not been doing your research! If you have, you would have seen the dots connecting a long time ago. We have been in a recession for over a year. The more people the elites get on welfare, the more they control and the more the destroy the rest of us poor smucks that are paying the taxes! They HATE the hard working middle class because we do not want to be on welfare and therefore beholden to them. The middle class has always been the backbone of this Country. Why do you think we are being destroyed? DUH!

And yet, there still are millions of illegal aliens working in our country.

Any decent President with common sense and loyalty would put a temp moratorium on outsourcing and immigration..But no..our President is out to not only break our currency, but to destroy this nation. He should have been put in jail years ago.

American citizens struggle--Meanwhile the 3 presidential candidates are managing to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for their campaigns to be elected to a position that pays $400,000 a year.

(Obama and Clinton raised $87 million in Feb. to McCain's $12 million. A person on Larry King just said individual citizens are donating on the internet and so forth so they are raising record amounts of money. I beg to differ--these massive amounts are not coming from John Q. Public,)

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

For all you Bush and McCain Supporters .... when the Depression hits, please identify who you supported ... the same Politicians that caused this mess .... I don't wish too accidentally give you my food to subsist on

I am not saying this to be mean.... I am telling you "You are a lemming Following Bush off of a very steep cliff yelling USA, USA, USA all the way to the bottom

It is what it is... others have been warning you ... you decided to not listen

I suggest you start reading a bible and collecting seeds to plant crops that you can subsist on and hope and pray that Darwin's Law "Survival of the Fittest" doesn't come into play

Obama and Clinton are CFR as well... the ONLY ONE that IS NOT RON PAUL

I also think this whole mortgage debacle was planned in order to set up the Federal Government taking over the banking system making it easier for the eventual takeover by NAU and SPP.

Maybe people will start to see how illegals are really effecting the lives of americans and with jobs getting scarce, the attrition of illegals will begin in mass amounts. Americans need to toughen up we can survive this, we did in 1929, and we can today!

Originally Posted by Skippy

I also think this whole mortgage debacle was planned in order to set up the Federal Government taking over the banking system making it easier for the eventual takeover by NAU and SPP.

And as well, the whole 911 debacle was planned by the powers that be to inplement a tighter control of the American public through a series of losses of individual freedom. Do you see a pattern developing? 911 internet conspiracy theorists may not be so far off the mark.

Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.

They could cut the losses in half by getting rid of all of the illegal aliens on food stamps.