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Profits from Poverty: How Food Stamps Benefit Corporations
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Originally conceived as a means to prop up sagging crop prices to support American farmers, the Food Stamp Program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has exploded into a welfare program that costs tax payers a record $75.67 billion in 2011.1 Almost everyone has heard this story, but few realize that only three corporations have cornered the market for providing SNAP services to the needy and destitute. According to JP Morgan, the largest food stamp industry player, the business of food stamps “is a very important business to JP Morgan. It’s an important business in terms of its size and scale.... Right now volumes have gone through the roof in the past couple of years or so. The good news from JP Morgan’s perspective is the infrastructure that we built has been able to cope with that increase in volume.”2 And JP Morgan has good reason to be pleased, since the bank profits from programs designed to help the poor.
An investigation by the Government Accountability Institute has found that:
• Three companies – J.P. Morgan EFS, Affiliated Computer Services, and eFunds – provide EBT services for 49 states and 3 US territories.
• Since 2004, 18 of 24 states who contract with J.P. Morgan to provide welfare benefits have contracted to pay $560,492,596.02. New York alone has a seven-year contract worth $126,394,917.
• Projected average food stamp spending post-recession will be 175% greater than pre- recession average spending, from $28 billion to $77 billion.3
• Since 2009, 32 states have followed the USDA’s suggestion to use Broad Based Categorical Eligibility “as a way to increase SNAP participation and reduce State workloads.”4 Changing the rules for eligibility, along with state-level changes in application methods, has contributed to a 70 % increase in food stamp participation from 2007 to 2011.56
• Lax security by EBT processors and states invites food stamp fraud, often through social media.
• There are understaffed fraud investigation units at both the federal and state level. For example, Florida has just 63 staff positions to police approximately 3 million EBT users state-wide. These investigators not only handle TANF and SNAP eligibility fraud, but also EBT trafficking, Social Security Disability and Medicaid eligibility fraud, Emergency Financial Assistance for Housing, and Low Income Energy assistance, among many others.7
I think taxes are not just public taxes but also private ones because one cannot not use gas, electricity, water...
when a private company rise the bills that is a rise in a hidden tax even if the revenue goes to a private actor.
The RNC wants to make student loans competitive again. They never were.
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... This plank of the platform has its roots in the recent history of student loans. In 2010, federal legislation scaled back the role of private banks in the federal loan program. Banks now act only as contractors (“servicers”) for the Department of Education, collecting payments, keeping records, and communicating with borrowers.
Some would like to return to the old system, which they portray as a capitalist Garden of Eden, where banks freely competed for students’ business and offered a range of loans tailored to the tastes of borrowers. The old, competitive market, goes the story, helped to hold down tuition costs, which have since soared out of control as the federal grip on the loan market has tightened.
The only hitch to this story is that it has zero connection to reality.* There has never been a large-scale, competitive, private market for student loans in the U.S. Further, economic theory predicts there will never be a large-scale, competitive, private market for student loans. Milton Friedman pointed this out in 1955. Some of his latter-day acolytes seemed to have missed that lecture. ...
sure you could. my first semester I worked 45 hours a week and took 13 credits. it was actually pretty easy. that was one of my best semesters too.
It would not work in the last 2 years where I had classes during the day and classes at night.
There were also labs you had to complete on your own time.
There were also homework assignments that I needed to connect with others on the net to complete as part of a team effort.
Our instructors made it very clear that you are not going to be able work and attend classes in the field I was studying in. Everyone that tried it washed out.
You have to love the libertarian fantasy that a private Corporation will tax you less than a democratically-elected government
A democratically-elected government has to be rehired every few years by the people's vote
Once a corporation gets in charge of your critical Human Services they no longer have to worry about democracy of any kind since they have a complete Monopoly on the service
Even though you will still elect a representative that person will be at the complete and total behest and control of the corporation who is now running the critical Human Service
Your democratically-elected representative will be nothing more than a Fall Guy for the corporation
The fact is the fat cat at the top and his primary circles will not change even though the name on the logo will under the "rebranding" Hustle
This will give the electorate the false sense that they are actually having some semblance of control over their critical Human Services as they did back before privatization reared its ugly head in the United States under dirty Ronnie in 1984
True about the politicians, but were are finding out about institutionalism built into the "culture of big government".
Think of it like this... the government is like a football team. Teams fire and hire coaches a lot, but rarely if ever get rid of the players. That's what we have now and we change only the coaches. Lot's of government employees are prima donnas and we've seen quite of few of late. However, every now and then we get a coach (president) like Bill Belichick. He just keeps winning and the rest of the league hates him for winning. Do like the coaches rules ... you're cut. Next.
.... just sayin'
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