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May 25, 2013
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Struggling Families Feel Sting of Rising Food PricesPosted on May 27, 2008
For the working poor who depend on food stamps to feed their families, it’s hard enough keeping up with inflation, let alone the steep price of food these days. Even in the richest country on Earth, the cost of basic foods has a huge impact on families that count every dollar, and benefits simply aren’t keeping pace.
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By purplewolf, May 27, 2008 at 7:01 pm Link to this comment
Last October the great state of Michigan decided to take it’s toll on the poor of this economically depressed state. By using voodoo economics, they cut the amount of money they figured it would cost to heat your home during the winter of 2007-2008 by $80 a month, even though they estimated at least a 40% increase in actual heating costs. Now by doing this, these same geniuses decided that since it cost less to heat your home, you didn’t need as many food stamps, so they cut them. Even though it actually cost more money for heat and less for food- to pay these bills. At the same time food prices, as well as energy cost have soared. There fore, forcing those who have cut back into a more desperate situation.
Now comes the new year and the great and overly generous increase for those of us who depend on Social Security-needs a name change to something more accurate like Social Insecurity. Again, in the stupidity that is government, the increase you receive is penalized by cutting your food stamp allotment even more than your increase, which by the way, does not even to begin to cover the cost of necessities. As for the increase in food prices, better get used to eating dirt, as they are reduced to doing in some of the poorer countries in the world. That $1.48 I am allotted per day doesn’t cover much. Meat-to expensive and only buy if marked down, you know just before the store throws it out, dairy-no, vegetables-canned mostly, fresh rarely, as to costly, fruit if you are lucky to get it for 99 cents a pound or marked down bananas, but most fruit is $3.98 a pound here. Rice is now off the list as it is over $1.00/lb. here, so that leaves the surplus bread store and pasta, which have gone up due to the wheat cost rising. As for government commodities, the disabled-like myself, are only allowed once every 3 months-Bush has really gutted this- the usually: 1 quart of cooking oil, 2 cans tomato sauce and 1-2 lbs of some type of pasta. If we are lucky maybe a can of some kind of meat, however, Bush has reduced the size of this from about 32 ounces to under 16 ounces. How generous this government is to it’s people.
I just don’t understand how we can spend over 3 BILLION DOLLARS a week in just Iraq, not counting all the other waste this administration seems to think it needs. The United States spends more money on the war than all the other countries in the rest of the world put together. No wonder the country is falling apart. There is nothing left for infrastructure, education, health, and all the other things needed to maintain a healthy, vibrant, growing and improving economy and country.
Report thisBy MackTN, May 27, 2008 at 2:41 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
...everything has gone up, except for salaries of course. And the working class bears the additional burden of competing with undocumented workers for whom $8 an hour is a blessing.
What to expect when Bush is spending billions each months to save face in Iraq, creating a sinkhole that pulls everyone down. You would think that one perk from Iraq would be oil at least—a commodity that was supposed to pay for the war as Bush promised.
Lie upon lie.
Report thisBy PlasticDoor, May 27, 2008 at 12:52 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
It’s really pernicious how we backpedal and talk about this stuff as “sting”; “nick”; “feeling the pinch” and blather like that. The cost of living across the board well into the middle class income range is a screaming, searing pain. Poor artists like myself are literally foregoing food to pay for gasoline—an utter necessity, regardless of best-intentioned bicycling advocacy etc., since some people (such as myself) are physically unable to bicycle. Or live in areas where distances are such that a bike is just not practical.
Anyways: the bottom line is that the drums have to be beat now—-the cost of living, everything remotely hinging on gasoline/diesel for delivery, is past the point of unmanageable. Let the screaming start happening in the streets, people! Enough is enough. No more abuse by the “free” market that doesn’t exist.
PlasticDoor
Report thisBy JojoMojo, May 27, 2008 at 12:24 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Hippy P.
Errr, ummm, as much as I absolutely, pathologically loathe Bush & Co.‘s guts, we have instead to thank Hillary’s husband (what was his name again?) who nailed that slippery-sloped international corporate hog-trough known as NAFTA together.
Kinda makes you want to have a real liberal with integrity like Kucinich back in the race…
Report thisBy steve, May 27, 2008 at 9:30 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Amazing story: I thought it was me they were talking about. I have almost the same story as this family: a solid $15 an hour job with good benefits that I lost four years ago after getting cut. I scrambled to get another job the next day: $8.75 with no benefits. Like this woman and her family I have been cutting everywhere all the while making my present employer mad by taking time off from this job for interviews to find a “decent” job with benefits. My expenses are almost exactly the same as hers although I am living in Phoenix. Nice city and beautiful winters but awful $8-10 an hour economy and simply not enough “good” jobs. I think they all left along with NAFTA. Peace
Report thisBy G.Anderson, May 27, 2008 at 7:15 am Link to this comment
This had been going on for the last almost 8 years under Bush. Actually I’m surprised they even bothered to take a look down at us.
The squeeze has been on for quite some time. People managed to get by, by cutting back for the longest time, but now it’s gotten to the point where there’s no place to cut back.
Those at the top pulled the rug out from under us with Credit Card Reform, and Bankrupcy reform.
They think they can stop the decline of this country with bread and circuses. But it’s too late for that now.
Report thisBy hippy pam, May 27, 2008 at 5:47 am Link to this comment
Thank “shrub and company” for CAFTA and NAFTA and
Report thisalso for allowing good jobs/benefits to leave this country.