That was a very irrelevant post. It presumes food stamps will continue. Matt's essay considered what happens when they don't.
Our federal government is spending twice as much money as it takes in. The debt just hit $16,000,000,000,000 - and is rising fast. At some point the spending WILL stop.
Food stamps continue only because federal "debt dollars" are still accepted by retailers; like doctors pulling out of the Medicare/Medicaid system (which they are fast) because they're only getting paid a fraction of the bill, there will come a point when grocery stores will only get a fraction of bills paid by EBT, and given that they run on tiny margins to start with they will soon stop accepting food stamps.
Worse, and the scenario more like what Matt considers, is the financial system is at grave risk of locking up fast & hard. Near the end of his term, Bush called in top financial leaders and told them "you will accept this VERY large loan RIGHT NOW." The unraveling of the "credit default swap" system was about to tear the entire banking industry apart in a matter of hours. No banks = no non-cash transactions = no food stamps.
The Soviet Union collapsed when it was unable to issue paychecks. Not just "food stamps" (or whatever their version) - paychecks. That government ran out of money, couldn't pay any bureaucrats, and the functioning body of that government simply walked off the job and went home - nobody was there to issue "food stamps". There's a "bureaucratic misfire" for you.
Every few months Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling. If, for whatever reason, they don't - spending stops. The government (at best) won't completely shut down, but with workers furloughed and automated payment systems purring unattended, there will come a point where either the money in fact runs out or the auto-payment systems malfunction and crash, stopping payments and lacking maintainers. There's a "political misfire" for you.
Upshot is that the flow of food stamps is not guaranteed. It's a system which can stop for many reasons. Momentum will keep it going for a while, but lacking money or maintenance it will stop, and when it does it will crash.
Indeed, "The ghetto will end overnight when government stops enforcing its existence." It's enforced in great part by the government handing out sustenance checks: be content and be paid. If there is no payment, there is no purpose for contentment. In our debt-driven economy, it is hard for many to conceive of a credit/debit/EBT card being denied; I assure you it will given enough economic hemorrhaging - which our current government is doing as fast as it can.
Debt-based food stamps work only insofar as someone trusts they will be paid. At sixteen trillion dollars in debt and rising fast, won't be long until creditors say "no more" and the entitlement checks stop flowing and swiped cards return "denied". At that point, nationwide, Matt's scenario comes into play - and a lot of people, for good reason, think it's coming soon.
Your facts are not in dispute. What is in dispute is the racist notion that the ghetto will rise up in violence when the gravy train stops. That is outrageously false.
The heart of the black community is love and support. When the government stops its horrid intrusion into the life and culture of the black community it will be possible to turn things around.
The crisis of compassion brought on by government intervention to perpetuate poverty is what must end. Far from riots in the street when welfare stops the black community will pull itself up by its shoe laces and begin the process of healing its community.