They used to be called food stamps.  Now it is referred to as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  It is hard to call it supplemental nutrition when the money is often used to buy unhealthy food.

They are often referred to as SNAP benefits.  The term “benefits” may or may not be accurate.  It is not like getting company benefits for working somewhere.  These are benefits that other people are forced to pay for.

Programs like Medicare and Social Security are referred to as “entitlement” programs, as if every American is somehow entitled to them just for existing.

SNAP is government welfare.  There are an estimated 42 million Americans receiving SNAP benefits, which is about 1 in every 8 Americans.  This is an incredibly high percentage.

Some conservatives and libertarians like to go off on SNAP recipients for collecting government welfare.  Many of these same people never seem to go off on all of the people collecting government welfare in the form of free education (i.e., using the public school system).

For some reason, some forms of government welfare are more respectable than others.

Government Force

It is correct to be against SNAP in principle.  Like most government programs, it is just another form of theft.  The government forcibly takes money from some people and distributes it to others (typically with a bureaucratic instruction manual attached to it).

It is also true that food stamps/ SNAP is a light form of socialism that creates dependence.  That is often the unstated purpose of government programs.  It gets people dependent on the government for their very existence.  When more people get dependent, they have less of a tendency to oppose the system, even when the system as a whole is working against them.

SNAP, like other government programs, also disincentives people.  It can discourage people from working more or harder, and it isn’t just because they are lazy.  At some point, it makes financial sense to not earn a little more money because it would negate the “benefits”.

These are all valid points.  The issue is a topic of conversation because of the government shutdown.  Some recipients are getting smaller amounts, and some people are experiencing delays.

We are not on the verge of getting rid of the SNAP.  There isn’t even much talk about reducing the number of recipients or reducing the amounts.  At this point, it is just about delays from the so-called government shutdown.  Still, there is more debate about SNAP than most other things.

Last year, about $100 billion went towards SNAP spending by the federal government.  That is about 1.5% of total federal spending.

So, while we have an uproar over 1.5% of the total budget, what about the other 98.5%?

Priorities

The government isn’t really shut down.  The debt keeps climbing.  There are still military bases all over the planet.  The U.S. government is still funding Israel and Ukraine.  The government has plenty of money to bomb boats off the coast of Venezuela.

While libertarians should oppose the SNAP “benefits” in principle, there are many things that should be prioritized and brought up in discussion.  Instead of pulling money away for buying food, maybe it would be better to stop bombing and killing innocent people in foreign lands.

This is why I don’t take conservatives seriously for the most part.  They will fuss a little bit about food stamps, but they won’t question the obscene amounts of money spent making war all over the place.

In this sense, food stamps (or what is now called SNAP benefits) should be one of the last things on the chopping block.  Let’s stop all wars, all funding of foreign countries, and bring the troops home.  Let’s cut the Pentagon (Department of War) spending by $500 billion per year, at least.

Let’s actually get rid of the Department of Education.  Government schools are still primarily funded at the state and local level.

Let’s get rid of the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy.

The list can go on and on before we need to get to SNAP benefits.

Once we cut everything to the bone, then we can talk about SNAP benefits.  At that point, most people wouldn’t need them because the government won’t be sucking up our resources and misallocating them.  In addition, without all of these crazy departments and programs, we will be subject to far fewer regulations.  The economy would boom, and it would be an actual boom built on real prosperity that would benefit all Americans.