A Nation of Moochers (11 page)
Read A Nation of Moochers Online
Authors: Charles J. Sykes
Stigma? What Stigma?
School lunches are, however, only part of the shift toward free meals.
As the programs have grown, free or subsidized meals are no longer rationally related to feeding the hungry or those unable to provide for themselves; instead they are driven by an impulse to universalize the benefits, removing any lingering stigma, while spreading dependency as a virtue as widely as possible. In other words: Everybody should buy everybody’s lunch! And breakfast too! (And did I mention dinner also would be nice?)
No program has grown more explosively than the program formerly known as food stamps.
In just two years, the number of people on food stamps rose by more than 10 million, while spending nearly doubled. On election day in 2008, 31 million people were on the rolls, at a cost to taxpayers of $39 billion in fiscal year 2008. Within two years, the number of recipients rose to 42.4 million and the federal 2011 budget projected spending of $75 billion.
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The 2009 stimulus bill helped open the floodgates by loosening restrictions on eligibility, even as its raised benefits increased spending. The legislation, for example, dropped requirements that able-bodied recipients without children had to work at least half-time to be eligible—a particular boon to failure-to-launch hipsters (about whom we’ll talk more later). As significant as the cost and numbers are, the shift in public attitude has been equally dramatic, accompanied by media cheerleading for the loss of stigma once associated with food stamp usage.
The New York Times
chronicled the dawning age of dependency when it reported that food stamp dependence “has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys.”
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There were, of course, some minor, awkward glitches, including the story of a woman who “drove to the food stamp office in a Mercedes-Benz and word spread that she owned a $300,000 home loan-free. Since Ohio ignores the value of houses and cars, she qualified.”
But, the
Times
reported, attitudes toward the program continued to improve as “across the small towns and rolling farmland outside Cincinnati, old disdain for the program has collided with new needs.” Americans were learning to love the dole. Like other forms of dependency, food stamp usage is addictive. Despite claims that food stamps are a temporary, stopgap measure, according to the Heritage Foundation, “the majority of food stamp recipients at any given time are or will become long-term dependents. In fact, half of food stamp aid goes to individuals who have received aid for 8.5 years or more.”
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Nevertheless, the program continues to expand under new management and with a new moniker, Food Share, that theoretically lessens the sting of the dole. The
Times
found that at least one quarter of the population in 239 counties across the country was dependent on the stamps. Among children, dependency was even more widespread. The story cited a recent study by Mark R. Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who found that half of Americans—and a startling 90 percent of black children—received food stamps before they turned 20.
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Still it was not enough; the push to expand dependency continued apace.
“Although the program is growing at a record rate, the federal official who oversees it would like it to grow even faster,” the
Times
reported, quoting Kevin Concannon, the undersecretary of Agriculture, who said, “I think the response to the program has been tremendous.” (Of course this is “tremendous” only if you regard a massive increase in dependency as a cause for jubilation.)
But, he added, the federal government is “mindful that there are another 15, 16 million who could benefit.” In other words, despite a nearly 33 percent increase in food stamp usage, he would not be satisfied unless it rose by yet another 39 percent—envisioning a country where as many as 57 million Americans rely on the taxpayers to buy their Doritos for them.
At least some institutions of higher learning have taken up the cause of spreading food stamp dependency. An investigation by the Web site the Daily Caller found that colleges around the country were actively steering students—many of them middle class—toward food stamps as a form of financial aid. Both Portland State and Pacific University in Oregon encouraged students to sign up for the stamps. Explained Portland State’s Web site: “Being a college student is hard work! Not just academically, but financially too.”
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The school made the case for students jumping on the food stamp bandwagon: “As tuition increases, many students struggle to make ends meet. Sometimes grants and loans don’t stretch far enough and students are forced to work low-paying jobs. For some, this still is not enough to get by. Having to choose between buying groceries or a $125 textbook is a tough decision that many students have been forced to make at some point in their college careers. As if taking a full class load wasn’t stressful enough!”
The push on campuses appears to be paying off as food stamp use is rising among college students. Cato Institute budget analyst Tad DeHaven told the Daily Caller that he expects the food stamp program to continue to grow dramatically. “[It’s] the mentality that, ‘well, so and so is getting their share, so I should get my share as well,’” DeHaven said. “It’s a quintessential example of people endeavoring to live at the expense of other people.”
Hungry Hipsters
The success in breaking down old stigmas associated with mooching off the taxpayers was documented by the online magazine
Salon.com
.
Salon created a minisensation when it published a story titled “Hipsters on Food Stamps,” which reported on the ease with which middle- and upper-middle-class creative types shrugged off “old taboos” about combining freeloading with living large.
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Reported Salon: “Think of it as the effect of a grinding recession crossed with the epicurean tastes of young people as obsessed with food as previous generations were with music and sex. Faced with lingering unemployment, 20- and 30-somethings with college degrees and foodie standards are shaking off old taboos about who should get government assistance and discovering that government benefits can indeed be used for just about anything edible, including wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese.”
By eliminating work requirements for able-bodied no-kids singles, the massive 2009 stimulus bill opened the door for yuppies to indulge their culinary passions courtesy of the taxpayer. The free federal cash, reported Salon, had instant appeal for “20- and 30-something creatives and young professionals” and, as a result, “the kinds of food markets that specialize in delectables like artisanal bread, heirloom tomatoes and grass-fed beef have seen significant upticks in food stamp payments among their typical shoppers.”
This included a 30-year-old art grad student named Sarah Magida and her partner Gerry Mak, a graduate of the University of Chicago, who said that about half of her friends are now on food stamps and told Salon of her delight when she discovered that “you can get anything” on the government stamps. Magida used food stamps to purchase “fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away.”
“I’m eating better than I ever have before,” she told Salon. “Even with food stamps, it’s not like I’m living large, but it helps.”
Magida then provided what could be the moocher mantra: “At first, I thought, ‘Why should I be on food stamps?’ Here I am, this educated person who went to art school, and there are a lot of people who need them more. But then I realized, I need them, too.”
Part Three
AT THE TROUGH
I, Piggy Bank
My 401(k) is down 30 percent, my employer just cut the match, and it looks like I may have to work until I’m seventy years old. I also pay for pensions to public employees who retired in their fifties.
I don’t have enough money to go on vacation this year, but I paid my share of the federal government’s $2.6 million grant to teach Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly. I pay for bridges to nowhere.
I drive a 1997 Honda Accord, but I had to pay for my neighbor’s $41,000 electric car. I also bailed out the United Auto Workers.
I contribute to my children’s 529 college savings plan, but since I don’t qualify for financial aid, I pay for other people’s kids to go to school as well. I also pay for the sociology classes where I am sneered at for my lack of social conscience and denounced as the very essence of greed, racism, and environmental insensitivity.
I exercise regularly, watch my cholesterol, and pay for my own health insurance as well as copays and deductibles. I also pay for Other People’s tonsillectomies, appendectomies, and occasional rhinoplasties. I pay taxes for Medicare, Medicaid, and various medical programs for poor children, and now I will get to subsidize the health care of several million more nonelderly, nonimpoverished Americans.
My small business just lost its line of credit, but I paid to bail out Citigroup, AIG, and Goldman Sachs, whose executives get bonuses bigger than my entire net worth.
I pay my mortgage, but I also pay to bail out banks that made risky loans and yuppies who have trouble paying $700,000 mortgages on their McMansions they bought with no down payments and adjustable-rate deals.
I pay for groceries for my family, but I also pay millionaire farmers not to grow stuff like rice. I buy dinner for more than 42 million food stamp recipients (although they now call it Food Shares). I also pay for school lunches. And breakfasts, since other parents apparently can’t be expected to feed their kids. I get red meat once a week, but I pay for urban hipsters to buy organic salmon at Whole Foods.
I pay my electricity and gas bills, but I also pay for other people’s air conditioning, cell phones, digital televisions, new windows, subsidized rent, and remodeling.
I pay for my daughter’s ballet lessons, but I also pay for universities to develop computerized choreography programs that will help create “interactive dance performances with real-time audience interactions.” I probably won’t be able to make the show, since I’ll be working.
I’m trying to save enough money in case I lose my job, but I pay for more than seventy different means-tested poverty programs.
Because I work hard and am successful, I am in the 10 percent of Americans who now pay more than 71 percent of the total federal income tax burden. The top 50 percent of earners pay 97.11 percent. In other words, the bottom half of American earners—theoretically 50 percent of the electorate—pay less than 3 percent of federal income taxes. I pay for them.
I pay property taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, taxes on my phone, my cable, my water, state income taxes, Social Security, and Medicare taxes. I also help pay the bills for the nearly half of households who no longer pay any federal income tax. I also pay the bills for the 60 to 70 percent of households who receive more from the government than they pay in.
I expect no gratitude for any of this; it has been years since the term “provider” was a matter of societal respect and personal pride. I understand that the transfer of wealth from makers to takers is seen as morally purer than the efforts of those who created wealth in the first place.
I know my role.
I am the piggy bank.
Chapter 7
HARVESTING OPM
If transfer payments and subsidies were limited to low-income individuals, this would be a book merely about the welfare state. But the reliance on OPM extends far beyond the poor into corporate America, upper-income owners of beach homes, affluent farmers, public employees, and entitled yuppies who have developed the habit and expectation of mooching off others.
Even Hollywood has gotten in on the cash grab, convincing states to give moviemakers special tax breaks that are generally not extended to more mundane businesses whose employees do not have personal cosmetologists on speed dial.
The Glitziest Mooch
In Massachusetts, for example, taxpayers provide moviemakers millions of dollars in tax credits every year. Supporters justify the handouts by claiming that the productions create local jobs. The state, however, estimates that only 222 jobs were created by the program in 2009, at a cost to taxpayers of $325,000 apiece.
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But the tax credits ultimately weren’t about the lighting technicians, security guards, and makeup artists who got temporary jobs catering to the celebrity elite. According to an analysis by the Associated Press, a quarter of the tax breaks handed over to the filmmakers in 2009 went to “cover the paychecks of millionaire Hollywood stars.”
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Under the Hollywood subsidy, producers are eligible for a Massachusetts tax credit equal to 25 percent of the production’s costs. As it turned out, fully $82 million of the spending eligible for the film credits was used to pay out-of-state actors pulling down more than $1 million.
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