The impetus to cut food stamps is ideological not fiscal,
and low-wages mean work provides no guarantee against hunger
by Gary Younge Guardian/UK November 4, 2013
by Gary Younge Guardian/UK November 4, 2013
During a discussion
at the University of Michigan in 2010, the billionaire vice-chairman ofWarren Buffett's
Berkshire Hathaway firm, Charles Munger, was asked whether the government
should have bailed out homeowners rather than banks. "There's danger in just shovelling out
money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.' At a
certain place you've got to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy.”
It turns out that moral hazard – the notion
that those who know the costs of their failure will be borne by others will
become increasingly reckless – only applies to the working poor. "You should thank God" for bank
bailouts, Munger told his audience. "Now, if you talk about bailouts for
everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the
individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies." In the
five years since the financial crisis took hold, people have been sucking it in
by the lungful and discovering how pitiful a coping strategy that is. In Michigan,
where Munger spoke, black male life expectancy is lower than male life
expectancy in Uzbekistan;
in Detroit, the closest big city, black
infant mortality is on a par with Syria
(before the war).
As such, the crisis
accelerated an already heinous trend of growing inequalities. Over a period of
18 years, America's white working class – particularly women – have started
dying younger. This particular crisis, however, has also accentuated
the contradictions between the claims long made for neoliberalism and the
system's ability to deliver on them. The "culture" of capitalism, to
which Munger referred, did not die but thrived precisely because it was not
forced to adapt, while working people – who kept it afloat through their taxes
and now through cuts in public spending – struggle to survive. This reality is
neither new nor specific to the US. "Over the past 30 years the workers'
take from the pie has shrunk across the globe," explains an
editorial in the latest Economist. "The scale and breadth of
this squeeze are striking … When growth is sluggish … workers are getting a
smaller morsel of a smaller slice of a slow-growing pie."
A few days before the
bailout was passed,
quoted Lenin in these pages. He once argued: "The capitalists
can always buy themselves out of any crises, as long as they make the workers pay."
What has been striking, particularly recently, has been the brazen and callous
nature in which these payments have been extorted.
Last Friday, 47
million Americans had their food
stamp benefits cut. These provide assistance to those who lack
sufficient money to feed themselves and their families. Individuals lose $11
(£7) a month while a family of four will lose $36. That will save the public
purse precious little – bombing Syria would have been far more costly – but
will mean a great deal to those affected.
The impetus behind these
cuts are not fiscal but ideological. Republicans, in particular, claim the
poor have it too easy. The
notion that food "drains the will" while hunger motivates the
ambitious would have more currency – not much, but more – if the right wasn't
simultaneously doing its utmost to drive down wages to a level where work
provides no guarantee against hunger. Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at
the University of Oregon, revealed the degree to which conservatives have been
driving down wages, benefits and protections at a local level after their
victory at the 2010 midterms. He writes: "Four states passed laws
restricting the minimum wage, four lifted restrictions on child labour,
and 16 imposed new limits on benefits for the unemployed. With the support of
the corporate lobbies, states also passed laws stripping workers of overtime
rights, repealing or restricting rights to sick leave, and making it harder to
sue one's employer for race or sex discrimination."
That's why 40% of
households on food stamps have at least one
person working. And the states most aggressive in pursuing these
policies, Lafer points out, had some of the smallest budget deficits in the
country. Immediately after Obama's election in 2008, his chief of staff to be,
Rahm Emmanuel, said: "You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what
I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do
before." The crisis didn't go to waste. But it is the right that has
seized the opportunity. Balancing
the budget on the bellies of the hungry, it is also fattening the
coffers of the wealthy on the backs of the poor.
© Guardian News and
Media Limited 2013 [Abridged]
Gary Younge is a Guardian
columnist and feature writer based in the US
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