I’ve complained about food stamp abuse on several occasions, including people using them to buy luxury coffee at Starbucks and to buy steaks and lobster. I’ve groused about college kids scamming the program and the Obama Administration rewarding states that sign up more food stamp recipients.
I’ve also been outraged by schemes to make it easier to use food stamps at fast food restaurants, and I’ve criticized New York City for giving food stamps to newly released prisoners and running foreign-language ads encouraging more people to sign up for the program.
But we now have a winner for the strangest story of food stamp abuse. Here are the distasteful details from a Fox News report.
Nadya “Octomom” Suleman is on food stamps. …California offers $2,000 a month food assistance to large families earning less than $119,000 a year. Suleman has 14 children after undergoing repeated in vitro fertilizations. She is famous for having octuplets after she already had six children.
I’m not sure what gets me most agitated about this story.
- Should I be upset that the state of California pays $24,000 per year to help subsidize people who have children they can’t afford?
- Should I be upset that the state of California is giving handouts to families that make more than $100,000 per year and can afford to feed themselves?
- Should I be upset that I probably helped pay for the expensive fertilization procedures this single mother utilized (I’m just guessing, but I would be shocked if taxpayers didn’t pick up the tab)?
I would conclude by saying this woman is in desperate need of counseling, but I’m sure taxpayers would get stuck with the bill for that as well.
This is one of the reasons why I support the federalist approach to welfare reform. If we shift all redistribution programs back to the states, we’ll generally get better policy.
And when leftist states such as California continue to finance bad behavior, at least I’ll know that I’m not being coerced to subsidize foolishness.
With mean fertility well below replacement right now, you could make an argument that having children creates societal benefits because it provides needed future workers. Not a *good* argument, though.
[…] close by augmenting our list of con artists (the Octo-mom, college kids, etc) who mooch off the food stamp program. As reported by the Daily Caller, one of […]
So children are a private good like yachts and only those who can afford them should have them?
How about the benefits that most taxpayers expect in old age? They will need the younger people, those who are now children, to provide the benefits.
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[…] The Octo-Mom mooching off the food stamp program. […]
[…] Octo-Mom mooching off the food stamp […]
[…] Octo-Mom mooching off the food stamp […]
[…] Octo-Mom mooching off the food stamp […]
[…] Octo-Mom mooching off the food stamp […]
[…] Octo-Mom mooching off the food stamp […]
[…] Octo-Mom mooching off the food stamp […]
[…] Octo-Mom mooching off the food stamp […]
[…] and to purchase steaks and lobster. I’ve complained about college kids scamming the program, the “Octo-Mom” mooching off the program, and the Obama Administration rewarding states that sign up more food stamp […]
[…] and to purchase steaks and lobster. I’ve complained about college kids scamming the program, the “Octo-Mom” mooching off the program, and the Obama Administration rewarding states that sign up more food stamp […]
[…] for the genuinely poor to a widespread entitlement for everyone from college students to the Octo-mom, and for products ranging from luxury coffee to […]
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Milo,
I do mind. I would prefer to donate my money to charity, the proper benefactor to those in need. Stealing my money, essentially at the point of a gun, to give to some one else is still theft, even if well intentioned. If private institutions were left to decide, the instance of abusers would be far less, and the efficiency with which the limited resources were distributed would likely be far better. A win-win for all concerend, except the .gov. And they should not be concerend in the first place.
There is really nothing to be upset about. For every family that abuses the use of food stamps there are several thousand families that truly need them. I don’t mind that part of my taxes may be used to provide services to such abusers when I remember being out of work and down to my last five dollars. Food stamps saved my family from starvation, and that is probably the case for many honest people today.
Given the large percentage of those imprisoned for activities that would not be crimes in a libertarian society, I’d be a little less concerned about “newly released prisoners,” some of whom were productive individuals before the State destroyed their lives, being allowed a little assistance in not starving while they try to put their lives back together while jumping through all the mandated hoops to avoid re-imprisonment. (This minimal graciousness, of course, is meant only to those found guilty of “victimless” crimes, but that IS a growing and significant fraction of the current prison population.)
Which of the 17 enumerated powers is this supposed to fall under?
As had been said many times before, incentives matter. If you subsidize any behavior, bad or good, you can expect to get more it.