profiling families<\/a> who will face hardship \u2014 or, should I say, \u201chardship.\u201d<\/p>\nThe first family receives $800 a month.\u00a0 The head of the household is 55, and disabled on account of emphysema (due, the story says, to a lifetime of bartending in smoke-filled rooms, not smoking herself), though she\u2019s only just now beginning to collect disability benefits.\u00a0 She has two daughters, one pregnant, one with an infant, neither of whom can work, and had to pawn her wedding ring, just barely able to retrieve it before it would have been sold.\u00a0 They eat a lot of rice-based meals, and rarely have meat, and, even so, the benefits don\u2019t last the whole month, sending her to food pantries.<\/p>\n
Is this the best CNN could come up with?\u00a0 The story says there are four adults in the household, but the fourth is left unmentioned \u2014 her husband?\u00a0 The boyfriend or even spouse of one of her daughters?\u00a0 One suspects that CNN ignored this person because his story is less sympathetic in some way \u2014 a drug user or alcoholic or just not even trying to find a job?\u00a0 Of course, the story also doesn\u2019t mention the age of the grandson, just identifying the daughter as a \u201cnew mom\u201d \u2014 but it seems improbable that the child is truly so young that the mom simply can\u2019t be looking for a job (especially since the family\u2019s portrayed as having been on food stamps for a long time).\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Actually, it says that the family consists of \u201d four adults and a grandson who live with [her]\u201d so we may even be talking about two extra, unidentified adults.<\/p>\n
The second family consists of a family of three where the 54-year-old father, who formerly earned $25 an hour, was unemployed for a long period, and recently returned to work with a job paying $12 an hour.\u00a0 In order to avoid losing benefits, including Medicaid, he asked his employer to reduce his pay to $9 an hour.\u00a0 Now, granted, this certainly exposes a major flaw in how our welfare system works, for it to be to this family\u2019s advantage to earn less and get more benefits (and, incidentally, as I\u2019ve said before, the basic concept of the graduated subsidies that Obamacare provides is perfectly reasonable, just implemented very poorly).\u00a0 But there\u2019s clearly more to the story here, too, given that there are two other people in the family, and, though neither of the others are described, it seems unlikely that they\u2019re both children.\u00a0 At the same time, they sacrificed $3\/hour because the cost of a health insurance policy would have been $900 per month; did one or more of the family members have a health condition that meant that going to free clinics and taking their chances wasn\u2019t an acceptable alternative to Medicaid?\u00a0 Inquiring minds want to know.<\/p>\n
What it comes down to is this:\u00a0 I\u2019m sure there are plenty of truly hard cases out there, and I would genuinely be interested in an article reporting on the finances for a typical food stamp family \u2014 how much they spend on food, and how diligently they economize, how much, in the food stamp calculations, they\u2019re, in principle, supposed to be paying out of their own pocket, etc.\u00a0 But so often, when you read about these stories, it\u2019s very sloppy, unconvincing\u00a0reporting.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beginning today, the temporary increase in food stamp benefits ends, causing recipients to see \u201ccuts\u201d in their benefits.\u00a0 (\u201cCuts\u201d in quotes because of this game that politicians play about what\u2019s temporary vs. permanent.)\u00a0 And CNN is profiling families who will face hardship \u2014 or, should I say, \u201chardship.\u201d The first family receives $800 a month.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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