Friday, March 4, 2011

Food Stamps For Thought, Part 5

Tyler Durden and the Zero Hedge crew note the final 2010 numbers for SNAP/Food Stamp usage in the country are pretty grim:  44.1 million Americans now on food assistance programs as we pass the 1 in 7 Americans mark at 14.3% of the country now getting help on affording basic food.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/von%20havenstein/SNAP%20January.png

You're looking at those numbers correctly. In three years, over 16 million people have been added to the SNAP rolls, from 9% of Americans to over 14%. With oil and gas prices rising, expect these number to only get worse in 2011 as we head for the 50 million mark and one in six Americans on SNAP assistance.

I fully expect the final 2012 numbers to be well above the 52 million mark, meaning that the number of Americans on SNAP will have more than doubled from January 2007 to January 2013.

All bets are off on the social health of the country if one in seven of us can't afford food. But the answer is clearly more cuts in social programs, our Washington betters assure us.

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