SNAP

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The US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program released their most recent data yesterday. At the moment, a record 23,116,441 American households are receiving food stamps. To put that in perspective, let’s assume that the average frontage of a household is 25 feet (houses would be bigger, apartments would be smaller). If you lined them up side-by-side, the total frontage would equal 577,911,025 feet or 109,452 miles. If you got in your car and drove 60 mph for 10 hours a day, every day, it would take a full six months to drive by all those households. And, yet, the DOW is trading at all time highs. Something is seriously amiss here. It looks like the dual policies of zero interest rates and sustained Quantitative Easing by the Fed are creating a Potemkin Village economy, where the facade is represented by the apparently robust stock market and the enrichment of a few while, behind the scenes, the bitter reality is that millions of people are descending into poverty and despair. This will not end well.

8 thoughts on “SNAP”

  1. Could be, but hard to say for sure how this economic experiment we’re going through will turn out in the end. Lots of factors playing into the divisions being seen across America – stock market and money policies as mentioned, loss of factory jobs to automation and competition, further deterioration of marriage with more single households, and many poor immigrants into the country, etc.. (We might soon be adding more often poor immigrants to the US, equal to the population of Canada seen today.)

    I think from a food perspective a challenge my country faces is simply depression. It seems there are a good deal of unhappy people in the US, doing what they can to improve their state of mind, often with medication, sometimes with exercise, or further down the list improved diet. As is often mentioned in diet writing circles, the foods commonly being bought, whether with government assistance or without, can effect moods. One can be poor in the pocket and yet wealthy in spirit when in good health and having full stomachs. (At least that has been the case with my family over the years.)

  2. This is more of a political opinion than a post on nutrition.

    For the record, I agree with this post.

    However, it’s a bit like me (as a professional violinist) expressing opinions on violins. For example, if I were to say (about a violin) that “this instrument is comparatively easy to play and quick-speaking,” that would be a credible statement based on my personal expertise. However, if I went on to say, “…that’s because the wood [was treated in a special way, or whatever]…” you could safely ignore whatever I had to say about that — although I might even be correct.

  3. There is no poverty in America except where drugs and alcohol and gambling addicts spend and trade their food and everything else they can get their hands on to feed their addictions.

    Our dependent population chooses to be that way just like the homeless.

    It’s a way of life.

    Native populations are a prime example.

    They don’t want to be white Europeans.

    I don’t blame them.

    I don’t want it myself and I am European.

    Ancestry.

    We are so rich it is nauseating.

    Just like Canada and Europe.

  4. As far as the economic “bubble” or “facade” as you say, bursting, it’s anybody’s guess.

    There are twenty million people in Mexico City, alone.

    A global economic stall or collapse would have devastating global implications immediately.

    The “flow” of goods and services.

    “Biblical” proportions.

    Blood in the streets like rivers.

    Immediately.

    Days.

    Except with no “worlds coming to an end” and the sky opening up, at the end.

    No fantasy or imagination occurring.

    Nothing except the trying of the people who survive to continue on amongst the devastation.

    Unimaginable.

    Look at Africa.

    Disrupt this food and energy chain and there is hell to pay.

    Unbelievable.

    Beyond description.

    Seven billion mouths to feed and seven billions of peoples waste to dispose of everyday.

    Our food and energy chain is that critical and that fragile.

    That’s why they can’t let it happen.

    That’s why they can’t let it happen and thats why they won’t let it happen.

    They will start “World War Three” if that’s what it takes to keep this thing going.

    There is no other choice.

    Global collapse is not a choice.

    That’s the “hole” big business and banking and wall street have dug us into.

    With armies and weapons by the trillions to back it up.

    They in control and they will use them.

    They being the “Dictators” and the “Dictatorship’ that they accuse the “Commie” “Socialist” “Marxists” “left” of being and any who oppose them.

    “Godless” “Atheist”, “Democrats” “Liberal”, “Activists”.

    “To be destroyed” and put aside.

    They the “Patriotic”, “Loyal”, God fearing Americans.

    “Drill, baby drill”.

    Look at Dubai and United Arab Immigrates.

    Wealth beyond description and compare.

    Big oil, George Bush and Dick Cheney, British Petroleum, Shell, Exon and the others are pulling in about forty cents of every dollar spent on everything the world spends every day.

    Trillions of dollars everyday.

    Forty cents on the dollar of everything you see being spent, globally.

    Every minute of everyday.

    It’s unimaginable.

    One of the many problems being the contamination of the earth and the using of all of the earths natural resources in the process.

    Creating a lifestyle geared for consumption so that they can profit from the transactions.

    So that the “marketers” can make more and more money and live in more and more luxury and acquire more and more wealth and power.

    Stimulated out of their minds by sugar and hybrid carbohydrates and alcohol and caffeine and nicotine.

    All the kings men…

    All the kings horses and all the kings men…

    The Egyptians and the Maya, before them.

    Say anything and you are “demonized”.

    They of “god”.

    TB

    “This, we try to rein in”.

    The world is never coming to an end.

    “For the little ones we will try to the end”.

  5. Dr. Jay

    I didn’t set out to make this discovery.

    It just fell in my lap.

    “I don’t know what else to do with it but try to bring it forward.

    “It’s so easy to see that a blind man could see it once looked at”.

    It does take a look though.

    Thanks

    Tom

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