@AnnieLowrey sort of hits the mark on food stamps here http://ht.ly/3o3FF
Annie Lowrey over at Slate had a nice piece up on Friday about food stamps’ rising participation rates and their support among many conservatives, Strangely, Lowrey tosses off a bunch of one-liners about the inefficacy of America’s social programs—all without any backup whatsoever. That wouldn’t be a problem if these were true statements. But they’re not. Check it out:
Welfare is not great at getting people to work
Welfare reform was initially surprisingly successful at moving people into work, at least during the economic boom of the late 90s/early 00s. For one thing, the feds spend very little on job training through welfare. The bigger problem has been that the jobs people get rarely pay enough to live on, as Jason DeParle chronicled beautifully in American Dream. And today, there’s also the lack of jobs to deal with. That’s more a macroeconomic problem than a fatal flaw of welfare, no?
Disability insurance too often goes to people who are not actually disabled.
I’m curious to see actual stats on this. I don’t have numbers on the levels of fraud in disability insurance—and it would take significant digging through federal data anad reports to track it down—but Lowrey should if she’s going to make this point. My recollection is that disability fraud, as in welfare, is not a serious problem; it’s a political flash point that conservatives rely on to undercut support for a social program. If fraud rates are at all similar to those found in welfare, the problem is probably rare enough that the cost of maintaining a bureaucracy to screen more heavily would outweigh any savings in fraud.
But food stamps are great at reducing hunger while also, for instance, helping local businesses, improving student grades, and reducing the likelihood a family will go on a more expensive program, like welfare.
I’m curious as to what measure she’s using to say that welfare is more expensive, since America spent about $4.5 billion in 2009 to support the 4.1 million people getting help from welfare, an average of about $1,100 per person for the year. Spending on food stamps in 2008 (the most recent year I can find stats on), was $35 billion, costing around $1,200 a year for each of the program’s 35.4 million clients.
