The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program does an amazing amount of good for people of all ages, but especially children. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities runs through some of the facts about children and food stamps—useful background for when Republicans are trying to slash the program or are claiming it doesn’t help people:
- SNAP kept about 10.3 million people out of poverty in 2012, including about 4.9 million children. SNAP lifted 2.1 million children out of deep poverty (defined as 50 percent of the poverty line), more than any other government assistance program. [...]
- Children who receive SNAP do better in school. Access to an adequate, healthy diet during early childhood is essential to developing the skills crucial for school success, including memory, emotional stability, and social skills. SNAP participation can lead to improvements in reading and mathematics skills among elementary children, especially young girls, and increase the chances of graduating from high school.
- Early access to SNAP can improve long-term health and economic outcomes. Adults who had access to SNAP as young children reported better health and had lower rates of “metabolic syndrome” (a combined measure of the incidence of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes), and women who had access to food stamps as young children reported improved economic self-sufficiency (as measured by a combination of employment, income, poverty status, high school graduation, and program participation).
And, especially for busting the Republican “logic”:
The overwhelming majority of SNAP recipients in families with children who can work do work. Over half of all families with children where there is a non-elderly, non-disabled adult in the household have at least one working member while they participate in SNAP. Even more striking, almost 90 percent work in the year before or after participating, demonstrating strong labor force participation.[12] (See Figure 6.) Most SNAP households that work have substantial full-time work. The number of SNAP families with children and earnings while participating in SNAP has risen for more than a decade, and tripled from 1.7 million in 2000 to 5.1 million in 2014.
In fact, right there is a strong argument for raising the minimum wage, too ...
● No justice, no Peeps!
● Farmworkers taste the fruits of victory.
● The losers of globalization:
It’s amazing to me that the media and policymakers, not to mention a whole bunch of commenters on this thread, are just waking up to the fact that globalization is not great for everyone, that there are real losers, and that dealing with job loss and long-term unemployment is a real thing that maybe we should deal with before it fuels racial nationalism and extremist political movements. It’s almost like we shouldn’t believe that corporate-generated policies will benefit everyone! And that’s not just in the United States, it’s not just in Mexico, and it’s not just in Bangladesh. It’s everywhere around the world.
● Sen. Elizabeth Warren is voting against Question 2 in Massachusetts. Rep. Stephen Lynch is voting for it … then again, he voted against Obamacare.
● Palantir Technologies, co-founded by Donald Trump supporter and Gawker slayer Peter Thiel, faces a government lawsuit alleging anti-Asian discrimination.
● Workers at Electrolux Memphis factory vote for union. Yes, the Memphis in Tennessee.
● Contract for disaster: How privatization is killing the public sector.