Prisons and Slavery are Also Ways to Combat Hunger and Food Insecurity

Prisons and Slavery are Also Ways to Combat Hunger and Food Insecurity

By Gary De Mar

Liberals (and conservatives) say the dumbest things. The latest comes from White House spokesman Jay Carney. The topic was cuts in SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program:

“These cuts come at a time when many hardworking American families are still struggling to make ends meet in the wake of the worst recession in decades and last year the additional resources provided by the SNAP lifted 7 million people out of poverty. . . . That is why the president acknowledged this need when he proposed an extension of the Recovery Act adjustment through 2014 or until March 2014 in his 2014 budget request and why the strategy currently under way in the House to reduce SNAP by removing millions of low income families from the program does not make sense.” He went on to say that “SNAP is the most effective way of to combat hunger and food insecurity.”

Actually, a growing economy is the best way to combat hunger.

Who is it that’s making “the worst recession in decades” even longer? It’s the Obama Administration through its bankrupt economic (socialistic) policies. Literally trillions of dollars have been artificially pumped into the economy with little trickle-down effect. People make billions of economic decisions every day. Economies can't be managed; they can only be protected from government interference. The people who are benefiting from the surge in fiat money are large corporations that are hording their cash because of fears that Obama and Co. will wreck the economy even more.

There are other things to consider. Food subsidies contribute to food subsidies. The more you pay for something the more of it you get.  It also doesn’t help that we subsidize children born out of wedlock, an increasing trend among the poor. Consider this report from CBS Money Watch:

“It is late October, so Adrianne Flowers is out of money to buy food for her family. That is no surprise. Feeding five kids is expensive, and the roughly $600 in food stamps she gets from the federal government never lasts the whole month. ‘I'm barely making it,’ said the 31-year-old Washington, D.C., resident and single mother.”

“Five kids . . . and single mother” at 31 years old. I don’t know all her circumstances, but I’m almost certain that government subsidies like SNAP contributed to her situation.

I have a friend who had to pay more than $50,000 in taxes in 2012. I have other friends who pay more. That’s money they could not spend to hire someone or purchase items that contribute to the economy and end up growing jobs. Now we’re hearing Harry Reid say we need to tax people even more; for what? So the government can turn more families into slaves of the State. You can insure food security through slavery and prison if food security is the goal. Slaves were fed, but they were still slaves. Prisoners get three meals a day, but they’re still prisoners.

The same can be true of government subsides without walls or dogs to track down runaway slaves. It's the subsidies that keep them imprisoned. Morgan Freedman's character "Red" in "The Shawshank Redemption" sums it up:

"These prison walls are funny. First you hate 'em, and then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. They send you here for life, that's exactly what they take. The part that counts anyways."

The best way to combat hunger is jobs and a free economy that leads to super abundance and lower food costs. Jesus said that we will always have the poor with us (Matt. 26:11), but He certainly didn't mean that we should make it a permanent and growing condition. It wouldn’t hurt to explain to people like Adrianne Flowers that decisions – good and bad – have good and bad consequences.