Food stamps helped lift the US economy out of the Great Recession

[DonViejo]

Source: Vox


Especially in rural America.

By Alexia Fernández Campbell@[e-mail] Jun 5, 2019, 7:40am EDT

-snip-

Economists at the US Department of Agriculture found that government spending on food stamps has been pretty effective in stimulating the economy since the start of the Great Recession. And more specifically, it has been most effective in helping rural America, the kinds of places where voters overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2016 election.

Researchers found that every $22,000 in tax dollars spent on food stamps between 2001 to 2014 created about one job. Grocery subsidies, which families usually spend right away, immediately pumped money into rural supermarkets and small businesses (and their employees) at a time when jobs were scarce.

One job for every $22,000 tax dollars may not seem like a lot, but it is when you consider that the federal government spends about $70 billion a year on food subsidies for low-income families.

And here’s another surprising conclusion from the report: Spending on SNAP benefits helped the US economy more than most types of government spending (like infrastructure or defense spending).

Read more: https://www.vox.com/2019/6/5/18650437/usda-snap-food-stamps-economic-impact

[democratisphere]

1. Makes perfect sense to cut food snap programs.

The government wouldn't want to do something with a positive outcome.

[muntrv]

2. But....but...gubmint don't work! Orange Julius says so!

[jayschool2013]

3. Love the subhead

Especially in rural America.

[mopinko]

4. food stamps are for farmers. when farmers are in trouble, dont write checks

print more god damned food stamps.
they support farmers, they support the rural economy, and they feed the people.
a country that is not investing in their human capital deserves what they get.
these people have written a whole new definition of the word stupid.

[Victor_c3]

5. That's the CORRECT type of trickle down

Money trickles down from the working class to the rich, not the other way around. That’s the proven reality.

A poor person spends the breaks they get on items they need to live. Rich people just dump it into a trust fund or commodity futures, raising the prices for everyone else.

[Wounded Bear]

6. Which is one reason Wal-Mart destroyed so many rural economies...

by moving in and displacing so many small stores and local businesses.

Their employees got food stamps because of their low pay, then turned around and spent them at the Wal-Mart that employed them. It was a capitalists wet dream.

[IronLionZion]

9. An appalling number of Republicans support the race to the bottom

with insane arguments like removing the minimum wage would erase all unemployment because everyone would do something for some sort of wage, and low wage people can shop at Wal-Mart because their low prices and screwing of their low-wage workers, and how American workers can compete with low-cost labor overseas if we simply got rid of OSHA safety regulations and unions, and so on.

It's like they want a permanent servant class and a larger gap between the haves and have-nots like in developing countries.

[SergeStorms]

7. Food stamps and public works projects.

Roosevelt put Americans back to work. Public works projects sprang up all over the U.S. The men were paid $30 a month and it was mandatory to send $25 back home to their families.

Of course these days the republicans would give tax breaks to the rich, all the while telling everyone else that it would "trickle down".

[Ramsey Barner]

8. This is classic Keynesian economics - and it still works.

When consumer demand flags because of a recession, increase government spending to people who will spend the money in our economy to increase aggregate demand. Instead of imposing austerity and decreasing aggregate demand, worry about inflation and the debt when the economy rebounds. Historically, it's worked.

[ck4829]

10. K&R