Food stamps: More Americans Keep Signing Up

Christian Science Monitor ^ | January 12, 2011 | By SoldAtTheTop

[Son House]

Food stamps went to an additional 290,000 recipients in October, a federal survey shows.
As a logical consequence of the prolonged economic downturn it appears that participation in the federal food stamp program is continuing to rise.

In fact, household participation has been climbing so steadily that it has far surpassed the last peak set as a result of the immediate fallout following hurricane Katrina.

The latest data released by the Department of Agriculture shows that in October, an additional 289,737 new recipients were added to the food stamps program, an increase of 14.67% on a year-over-year basis, while household participation increased 16.98%.

Individual participation as a ratio of the overall civilian non-institutional population has increased 13.72% over the same period.

These results confirm that participation is continuing it's explosive climb, likely as a result of the jump in total unemployment, driving the nominal benefit costs up an lofty 13.95% on a year-over-year basis to $5,778,387,682 for the month.

[familyop]

"The hateful posters simply have no idea what it is like."

That's because most of them get their income directly or indirectly (service so-called "industry") from various levels of government. They eat and defecate debts and tax revenues. There's very little useful manufacturing happening in this country.

But they will know what it's like, while many of the poorer folks here will continue to struggle on without welfare, having cut costs and found just enough work to sustain themselves. Tomorrow, after the revenue-suckers are down where they belong, hard working techs. and tradesmen will rule.

[kabar]

Kabar, I'm talking to you buddy. Your bleetings about the GOP agreeing to raise the debt ceiling, subject to 'certain reasonable conditions', is why financial traders keep rolling in the dough. Just bet on the sucker (in this case, the US citizen) losing every time.

Reality is a bitch. I said that we have no choice but to raise the debt ceiling but it has to be done with strings attached. There is no way we can balance the budget in a few months. We have a $3.6 trillion budget. About $2.4 trillion is spent on the entitlement programs and debt servicing costs. We only take in $2.2 trillion in total tax revenue. Everything else is borrowed, including the funding of DOD and the rest of the government.

I believe in being realistic and not creating unrealistic expectations.