Food is expensive. Anyone who’s been to the grocery store lately knows the pinch this puts on the pocketbooks; even the most basic items for survival can run the bill over $50. The USDA pegs the monthly price of groceries at about $1,300, and I can easily see that. A huge trip to the store runs a family of four well over $200 easily, and you end up making several of those trips a month.
Because of this, as of September 2014, there were 46.5 million recipients of the SNAP program, more commonly known as “food stamps,” in the United States. This figures as 22.7 million households, which receive, on average, about $257 per household. In order to be eligible for the program, the family has to be scraping by at less than 130% the poverty level, or with a net income less than 100% the poverty level for a family of their size.
Sounds like a deal, right? Totally affording that caviar, lobster, and venison on an income of about $1,265 a month, or little over $15,000 gross a year for a single person or little over $31,000 gross for a family of four (slightly over $2,000 a month). That sort of government handout lends itself to the high life: vacations to Las Vegas, Bermuda, the Bahamas; big, fancy restaurants with waiting lists that serve those tiny, dolled-up steaks where you get more garnish than meat.
Or, rather, that’s the Republican myth, anyway. When they’re not screaming something or other about bootstraps, or something about how liberals and Democrats like to spend other people’s money — namely, “their” money, because no Democrat or liberal ever paid taxes in their life.
Speaking of Republicans and “their” tax money, this lead up is an explanation of just how bad things are for a large percentage of the population — a population that, according to KHOU, mostly lives in Republican states.
“Their” money indeed.
According to KHOU, the biggest recipient for the SNAP program are, in order:.....
http://aattp.org/its-official-the-states-with-the-highest-num...
Posted by: Josh Kilburn in Economic Issues, Most Popular on AATTP, TEApublican Smack Downs January 18, 2015 ...