According to a document produced by the Agriculture Departmentexplaining the changes, the new rules will save the federal government almost $9.4-billion between now and 2023
This points out a problem underlying all economic issues in America and will prevent any economic justice until we fix it.
As long as there are real unused resources available to accomplish a goal Congress deems important enough to create money for there is no “cost” to doing so. In fact, not spending the money will “cost” the private sector by whatever amount the government “saves” and will not impact the necessity to impose taxation on anyone. Republicans (and neoliberal Democrats) have been extremely successful at preventing a general realization among voters that taxpayers have never directly funded any government spending since ’34 when the dollar was delinked from the gold standard domestically ( and internationally in ‘71)
Without a commodity or fixed exchange rate pinning our currency its value is entirely dependent upon the availability of goods and services it is deployed to purchase, even in the absence of any “tax revenue”. Given that we produce as much as 40% more food than we consume, the government is the price setter for our entire supply chain for food products. Cutting funding for that supply chain by limiting access to it for that many people will have serious ripple effects in the economy, especially at a time when food producers are already suffering from Trump’s illogical tariffs and extreme weather conditions.
The mistaken concept of the monopoly issuer of the nation’s currency either needing or using taxpayer money for anything except inflation control is at the root of our nation’s steady decline in the basic underpinnings of a healthy economy and the widening gap between the wealthy and everyone else. A nation that is economically distressed and with little awareness of the actual economics behind that distress will be easy prey for those who would divide us into “makers and takers” and encourage us to punch down instead of looking up the economic chain for the root of our problems.
Anyone who believes making the poor more food insecure is any way beneficial to our nation or overall economy is just acting out of ignorance and misdirected class envy. The primary purpose of all welfare, but especially food subsidies, is preserving supply chains with automatic injections of federal money when it is needed as the business cycle downturns. The benefit to the recipients, assumed already disadvantaged, is secondary. Once the support of those supply chains is no longer sufficient we can expect the next recession to degrade into full-blown depression as cascading job losses become unstoppable. With the anger and division being fomented by Trump and Republicans we can expect that to get real ugly real quick.
