Nearly 850,000 struggling households around the country are going to find it much harder to put food on the table, on account of a new farm bill signed into law by President Obama on Feb. 7. Cutting food stamps by $8 billion over the next decade, poor and working-class families will see immediate cuts of $90 per month, on average. For many, this amount to eliminating nearly a third of their food budget.
The last few months in New York City food pantries and soup kitchens have shown how disastrous these cuts will be.
When food stamp cuts went into effect this Fall, as part of the federal sequester, city pantries registered a 50 percent increase in demand while 140 pantries and soup kitchens ran out of the supplies necessary to provide a full meal, according to a Food Bank for New York City survey. The notion that private charities and churches can make up for the loss in government support is simply a lie.
Who relies on food stamps?
Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-WI) says the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is “growing at unsustainable rates,” as if the dependence on food stamps were anything other than a measure of the overall impoverishment and poverty within society. Ryan and the other multi-millionaires in Congress, both Republican and Democrat, will not be feeling the effects of the cuts they just enacted.
Who will? Of the 1.9 million people who rely on the program, about 45 percent are children. Another 9 percent are 60 years or older, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Contrary to right-wing stereotypes, 40 percent of the households who receive food stamps have another form of income — but it is too little to survive.
The cuts are also likely to damage many businesses in low-income areas and could lead to layoffs.
Desperation as feature of capitalism
The problem here is deeper than the politicians who voted on the cuts. Under capitalism, the working class is held in a state of economic insecurity, constantly worrying about their next meal and other basic necessities. This desperation drives down wages and drives up profits.
Moreover, the farm bill rewards billion-dollar insurance and agribusiness corporations with government-backed crop insurance policies that guarantee them profits regardless if food prices drop.
In this system, food is just like another commodity, only attainable to those who can afford it. In addition, the food that is cheapest and most widely available to poor and working people is the least healthy.
As a society, there is no food shortage to speak of, no natural disaster causing people to starve. The labor of the working class, in combination with huge leaps in technology and machinery, have created conditions where it is possible to eradicate hunger completely. Those who make the system run are the workers in the fields, the processing plants, the shipping industry, and in the stores and restaurants.
There is in fact excess food, but it is controlled by corporations that give orders to throw it away rather than redistribute it to those who need it. Doing so would lower prices, impact their profits, and lead to their investors immediately pulling the plug on their operation.
A planned economy
These cuts are ocurring in the context of continued crisis for the vast majority of the country that is not living off of stock investments. Recent data shows that half the country is either in or near poverty.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation believes that every person should be guaranteed a living income and that programs need to be immediately expanded to eliminate hunger and homelessness. Now is the time to intensify the fight against the politicians who claim to speak for “the people” but have no plan to guarantee the people’s most basic survival.
Under socialism, the fruits of the labor of the working class will benefit the lives of all. Proper organization of the resources under a planned economy would eliminate hunger and ensure the survival of the planet. The rich politicians who govern both parties would be driven from power, and no longer be able rule on behalf of a select few.
The food stamps cuts reveal to all that the priorities of the country’s capitalist class are completely against the hungry and the oppressed. The PSL invites all people to take part in the struggle necessary to liberate the country’s resources and power from their hands, and build a new system in the interests of the vast majority: socialism.
