Behind the rhetoric about ‘lazy freeloaders’ lies a stunning truth: America’s largest corporations depend on food stamps to prop up their low-wage empires...
This is exactly why divorcing economic policy from social reality is such a dangerous trap. SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid didn’t become billionaire subsidy programs by accident. They were slowly hollowed out by a politics that treated poverty as apolitical and race-neutral, ignoring how racialized backlash shaped economic policy from Reagan to today.
What Hartmann lays out here is structural proof that Mamdani-style politics, like naming power, marrying economic dignity with lived experience, and refusing to sanitize class struggle from race, gender, or immigration. It isn’t just morally right. It’s strategically necessary.
As I wrote in a recent Substack piece, the most successful Democrats aren’t those who soften their message to appease the center, but those who understand that working-class people are complex, multiracial, and sick of being split down the middle between their checkbook and their identity. Mamdani didn’t dodge that. He built power from it.
Thanks, but that’s not really the point of the assessment. Big tents can be fragile when they’re built on avoidance. What I’m saying is that failing to marry economic and social justice isn’t just a messaging gap. It’s a structural vulnerability. We've seen before how attempts to “universalize” economic policy while ignoring or soft-pedaling social realities can fracture coalitions, especially in a country where identity and material conditions are historically entangled.
MAGA backlash thrives on that disconnect. The more we try to sidestep it, the more we cede moral clarity and strategic ground.
Many Congressional Republicans privately admit Trump is nuts.
I keep posting. According to Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) Trumpepstein may cause an "Epstein bomb" causing over 100 Republican members to "jailbreak" from Trump.
Irrelevant what Republicans admit in private, it is what they do in public.. People say, do and think all kind of things in private but not in public.
Is hanging our hopes on release of the Epstein files, all that we have?
Is Trump allegedly having sex with underage teens, enough to knock him off his MAGA pedestal
Nothing else has so far. MAGA is only 40% of the population, but they are a fired up, fire breathing, dedicated 40% that will show up on election day.
What the Democrats need to do, rather than pray that some Republicans will slip or flip, is built the same burning desire in the other 60%, and that entails dominating the landscape both culturally and economically.
I am watching Frontline (recorded) it is about the rise of the right in Germany, and Europe. One issue:Immigration and also Russian trolling of social media, the AfD has risen on the back of cultural issues, primarily immigration.
The profound insight of the Zohran Mamdani campaign was that people want to be summoned to do more, not less; they want to get together, not lurk on screens alone; they want to belong in hope, not just commiserate in anger; they want to organize, not agonize.
The campaign had 100,000 volunteers. It had about 1 million voters. One out of 10 of its voters were volunteers. Is there any precedent for this in modern political history?
This is not “Don’t boo. Vote.” This is “Don’t boo. Join.”
A lot of other prominent progressive campaigns have been extremely online, even at their best. This was an incredibly physical, meat-space campaign.
I would not be surprised if there are dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of relationships that eventually come out of that volunteer corps. There are going to be Zohran volunteer marriages and children, five, ten, twenty years from now. People want to be part, as Emma Goldberg reported for The New York Times.
Volunteering for Mr. Mamdani’s campaign became a salve for members of a generation diagnosed by psychologists with anxiety and by the surgeon general with loneliness, whose religious affiliation is often “unaffiliated” and who also apparently killed drinking and having sex.
Indeed, the pols know he is demented and psychotic. I would put my dad in assisted living if he babbled like Trump does - if he was still alive. When the WH reversed Trump's post that he was ignoring the courts and would not pay snap, I could not help but surmise that this is his staff covering up their boss's reckless lack of impulse control - just like Biden's staff did now and then.
Examples please of Dems n other states winning by bringing more people under a big tent.
An interesting situation in this election. Passiac County, is the NW Corner of NJ, it is also majority Hispanic Community is the largest demographic, Yet it voted for Ciatrelli, the Republican yestarday, not for Sherril the Democrat.
Union City, New Jersey, is Miami north, more Cuban Americans per square inch than anyplace northg of the Broward County line.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, we need a run off. We are majority Dem that has had nothig but MAGAs in charge for many years.
"Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins and former Miami City Manager Emilio González are headed to a runoff in the Miami mayor’s race after neither candidate managed to secure more than 50% of the vote Tuesday night. With all precincts reporting, Higgins had captured nearly 36% of the vote, with González coming in second at more than 19%. There were 13 candidates in total.
"Higgins, a Democrat, and González, a Republican, will face off in a Dec. 9 runoff for the nonpartisan mayoral seat. At an election night party at a hotel blocks from her downtown condominium, Higgins emerged shortly after 7:30 p.m. to greet cheering supporters. She quickly found the county’s top Democrat — Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava — and they joined their raised hands in a victory pose."
Union City NJ is in Hudson county, not Passiac and Hudson County went for Mikie Sherill the Democrat by 74%, whereas Passsiac County, which is Hispanic majority went for Miki Sherril by 84% (previous results were evidently early returns
Hudson County, NJ, has a diverse population of approximately 736,185 residents as of 2024, with a significant Hispanic/Latino population (40.4% in 2020) and a substantial Asian population (17.0% in 2020). The county is New Jersey's smallest and most densely populated, with a median age of 35.8 in 2023 and a median household income of around $48,890 in 2023. A high percentage of residents are renters, reflected in the 31.2% homeownership rate in 2023, and many have long average commute times of 35.5 minutes.
It’s wild how fast the narrative flips. The same billionaires who rely on taxpayer-funded food stamps to keep wages low are the ones screaming about “personal responsibility.” They’ve built a welfare system for the rich and convinced working people to feel ashamed for needing to eat.
The primary beneficiaries of SNAP are large food retailers and food manufacturers, followed by wholesalers, transportation companies, and ultimately, farmers and agricultural producers.
Thom: Billionaires like the Walton Family, in other words, know that they can cut their employees’ wages by the same amount as the government subsidies that are available to those workers. Every penny of government benefits, under this GOP strategy, becomes a penny less that Walmart, for example, has to pay its people who qualify for benefits.
In June 2014, Mother Jones reported that "Overall, 18 percent of all food benefits money is spent at Walmart", and that Walmart had submitted a statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stating,
"Our business operations are subject to numerous risks, factors, and uncertainties, domestically and internationally, which are outside our control. These factors include... changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, [and] changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans."
Companies that have lobbied on behalf of SNAP include PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company, and the grocery chain Kroger.
Yes, and one thing that stopping SNAP will do is a big hit to grocery store revenues, and the entire supply chain that sustains them. SNAP isn't "free stuff," it's actually money that people spend to buy food. $8 Billion /month (plus multiplier effects) is not chump change in this economy.
The thing that confuses me is that the less disposable income people have the less money they can spend at Walmart. WOuldn't it make sense to raise the price of goods?
It might work to restrict the SNAP program to people who aren't working, but I don't think that will be enough to push employers to pay their workers better. There needs to be union pressure to force employers out of Ricardo's Iron Law. Capitalism confers too much power on the ownership class, to the point where they can assume ownership of their employees as well.
Two serious female Governors. Double digits. Mamdani over 50%. California is frigin' awesome. So is Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia, Maine and New York. Gen Z showed-up, even the young men.
Bonus: Bucks County cleaned-up their school board.
And the jerks as usual kept telling us the races were tightening. NOPE! Keep that word in mind. Stay focused.
Make sure the people you know don't fall for the AI SNAP videos that show computer generated people demanding the government pay for their 7 children. There is another one where the subject says she is going to steal the food she has at the check-out.
Celebrate by helping someone with food, if you can. See you in the streets.
I think the largest charity in the US is Catholic charities, which has a Stamp Out Hunger food drive. Also the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC.)
One year Catholic charities made the mistake of asking my opinion. I had a series of cases involving the need to bring in foreign workers to tend ornamental trees in the US, and I said they should trade in their ornamental trees at churches to make food. The churches here in Baghdad By the Sea could produce enough fruit and vegetables to feed the whole country. We have two (2) growing seasons. We can produce enough stuff like figs and dates to feed most of the northern hemisphere.
Thanks Thom, welfare for the rich goes on and on. Why isn't the DNC producing TV ads to inform the public about what this government shut down is about. I have no idea what my donations are paying for. Would love to see a ad in monosyllables telling Americans that, the GOP OBBBA act stripped $200B from SNAP and $900B over 10 yrs from WIC and that the Democrats in congress are trying to get those dollars put back into the budget. Maybe another ad telling Americans what money was stripped out of the ACA, Medicaid, and Medicare. Scenes from the Gatsby gala while video runs of people standing in food bank lines might be effective in having people understand what's going on.
G2,good post and why are the DEMS not showing this or maybe they are,but since the " Nazis" control the media,how do they show people what the GOP has done.
Thanks Daniel. Two people told me last week that they didn't know the government was shut down. But they sure know whats going on with football. Maybe a ad or two during NFL games would generate some brain cell activity. Some percentage of our population doesn't read, write, or watch the news - but they watch games.
The only question I have in this discussion is the emphasis on employers "cutting wages". That happened during the Depression, but isn't usual today.
So does anyone know if the approach is more subtle, such as letting salaries fall behind inflation, changing positions to be part-time work, or hiring temporary people rather than having permanent ones? The latter has the advantages of not giving unions a base as well as avoiding the payment of health and other benefits. It also makes businesses more flexible in letting people go. (For example, unless you land an endowed chair or are in a field with extremely high student demand your chances of now getting a tenure track position at a college are virtually zero. Schools are now hiring per-semester adjunct people, and at very low wages compared to their permanent faculty.)
DOL had a division that tracks salaries but the government is closed.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Key statistics available include:
-Average Hourly Earnings: For all private-industry employees, the average hourly earnings were $36.53 in August 2025.
-Median Annual Wage: In May 2024, the median annual wage for all workers was $49,500. This means half of all workers earned more than this amount, and half earned less.
-Total Compensation Costs: In September 2023, the average employer cost for civilian employees was $43.93 per hour worked. Of this, $30.35 went to wages and salaries, while $13.58 (about 30.9%) covered benefits.
Key Data Sources and Reports
The BLS provides data through several key programs:
Current Employment Statistics (CES): This program provides detailed national and state-level industry estimates of employment, hours, and earnings of workers on payrolls.
Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS): This survey provides comprehensive wage data for hundreds of occupations across various industries and geographic areas. Data can be filtered by specific job titles (e.g., Production occupations had an annual mean wage of $50,090 in May 2024).
Employment Cost Index (ECI): This measures the change in compensation costs (wages, salaries, and benefits) over time.
Usual Weekly Earnings: Reports the median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers, which was $1,196 in the second quarter of 2025.
U.S. Department of Labor (.gov)
Overview of BLS Statistics on Pay and Benefits
Sep 23, 2025 — BLS has 12 surveys or programs that provide information on pay and benefits.
Many business oranizations track the data and render opinions. I used to subsc5ribe to some of them but don't anymore. I don't have access to them.
It’s good that so much information is (usually) there, Daniel. Digging through it sounds like it would take writing another dissertation, though the 31% that is paid as benefits would be a good place to start. How much of that is for health insurance versus what a national system would cost employers and employees is a question that someone must have asked, and their results should be publicized. But digging in further one could investigate whether there are trends between having more part-time versus (at lower wages) full-time workers.
And perhaps more could down with the ECI to see in how the gap between those doing very well and everybody else is widening—the Gini coefficient over time. After all, in this case a median doesn’t tell us too much. (If there are two very poor people in a room and Musk walks in then the median income is still very low. The mean is now really high, but that’s a different statistic and sure doesn’t raise what the poor people are getting anyway.)
Taking into account changes in tax rates would also be useful, though again we’re talking about an awful lot of data that has to be looked at. But if all this could be boiled down to something simple, like saying, “In real wages the top 10% are making twice what they were a generation ago and paying half as much taxes, while the bottom 50% are making no more and have had no tax breaks”, then people would get what is happening here.
Financial news track this stuff. I spend about an hour daily listening to financial mavens who use the data.
We still have a safety net. Most states have eliminated "public assistance" but if a person meets the income and resource requirements of SSI, they qualify for subsistance.
If a person qualifies for SSI, qualifies for Medicaid and Medicare after a waiting period. Probably also qualifies for HUD and other benefits like SNAP.
As with most things, location, location.
I know it's glib, but most of the people on public assistance in states like NY or CA would benefit by moving. As a rule of thinb, a person in NYC or SF gets 10 X or more in a place like my home town. Still entitled to SSI, HUD, SNAP, which are portable.
All that is well and good and true, but the discussion says nothing about the fact that we are the richest country ever in many respects and the wealth should be shared more equally to raise the quality of life and standards of living for everyone. There is no good reason to keep working people at subsistence levels while unproductive fat cats live like princes and princesses.
Fascinating and illuminating explanation -- even as it adds fuel to the anger we feel as income inequality widens in what is routinely called "the richest country in the world.
I understood this in the narrow confines of the Walmart model of low prices, fueled by low wages that necessitated taxpayer funded support by way Medicaid, and food stamps.
The wide historical view that you have given, explains so much. For example, why a work requirement is not just a "punishment", ostensibly for those lazy welfare queens, or children whose parents are feeding them potato chips, fathers who are guzzling beer using a Medicaid check that doesn't exist. And it was never quite clear to me why, when unemployment goes up, so does the stock market -- I could see that a smaller payroll might lead to greater profit for executives. This seemed counterintuitive for several reasons, but especially for the efficiency and future growth of a business. Your explanation makes it clear that the "low wage business model" has been in place for decades, and more galling that it is a careful calculation of dollars and cents, set for each community and its cost of living. "Just scraping by" as business policy for its workers -- this is what a voracious, greedy ruling class has wrought.
Fron a quick look at the stats. out of 100% of total SNAP recipients, 40% are children, 18% elderly and 11% disabled. Of the remaining 30%, 70% are employed — 21%. That leaves 10% unaccounted for but after factoring in underemployment and those unemployed but seeking employment very little is left unaccounted for. So we are faced with the Party of Family Values, the same one that would put the 10 Commandments in every public classroom, who accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, as either lying to us or lying to themselves. Or both.
But In the mean time 42 million people starve, so don the con can flex his fat stomach and wear the new crown he just got. What was that famous line given to the starving people "Let them eat cake" EXCEPT we can't afford that either.
Jeanine,the "nazis" and the TechnoFascists" don't give a damn about starving people. They are only interested in becoming billionaires and trillionaires. It is time we did something besides rally and protest in the streets.
What I do NOT understand is why so called businessmen object to paying their employees a living wage, or better. If you are running a business, you need customers; i,e, people who are willing to pay you for your product. (Even Henry Ford realized this! He paid his workers enough so that they could afford to buy the cars that they made.)
The whole point of the expanding middle class that Thom and I grew up in was that we had excess money (above the bare essentials) that we could buy things. It was important that we could do this on the income of a single job because that meant that we had the energy to enjoy those things that we bought. Again, it seems obvious that if you don't have any left over energy to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you probably won't buy more things.
So it all comes back to this: The oligarchy is deliberately impoverishing the bulk of their potential customer base at the expense of the taxpayers. At some point there won't be any customer base, and consequently the oligarchy won't have any income either. Shortsighted, or outright STUPID?
WOW! Talk about not seeing the obvious. Once again kudos and thanks to Mr. Hartmann. How many were aware of this? I, who am known for by obliviousness, never heard this explained before. I could pull the old card, I'm 92, but to be honest I've always been like this. For my 91st birthday I did an open mic about it. Re/yesterday. Has the pendulum turned???
The minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. That should be $10.88 adjusted for 2025 dollar inflation. Adjusting the minimum wage for inflation, the minimum wage has continued to shrink since 1968. Worse, many jobs are exempt - waitstaff especially. In 1963, when I started working as a busboy in a restaurant, the minimum wage was $1.25. We were paid 75 cents/hour and got some trickle-down from waitstaff tips that usually got us to about $1.40/hour. That's $14.53/hour adjusted for 2025 inflation. Nothing has changed.
Raising the minimum wage (no occupational exceptions) would be a tax on billionaires without raising the income tax. However, raising both the minimum wage and IRS taxes might just start shrinking America's burgeoning, obscene billionaire monarchy. Nobody needs $1 thousand million dollars (a billion). You can live like royalty on just $3 million in wealth.
Unless you have 10 kids, you do not need a 6,000 sqft mansion. Half of that should be ample. In my neighborhood of luxury homes on the beach, the 4 largest homes are only 3,000 sqft. That is because 3/4 of us are retired couples, and 3 or 4 bedrooms are ample to accommodate visiting friends and family. If I hit the billionaire PowerBall tomorrow, I wouldn't relocate. I would follow in George Soros's footsteps.
This is exactly why divorcing economic policy from social reality is such a dangerous trap. SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid didn’t become billionaire subsidy programs by accident. They were slowly hollowed out by a politics that treated poverty as apolitical and race-neutral, ignoring how racialized backlash shaped economic policy from Reagan to today.
What Hartmann lays out here is structural proof that Mamdani-style politics, like naming power, marrying economic dignity with lived experience, and refusing to sanitize class struggle from race, gender, or immigration. It isn’t just morally right. It’s strategically necessary.
As I wrote in a recent Substack piece, the most successful Democrats aren’t those who soften their message to appease the center, but those who understand that working-class people are complex, multiracial, and sick of being split down the middle between their checkbook and their identity. Mamdani didn’t dodge that. He built power from it.
https://www.stewonthis.com/p/stop-unmarrying-economic-and-social
Thanks, but that’s not really the point of the assessment. Big tents can be fragile when they’re built on avoidance. What I’m saying is that failing to marry economic and social justice isn’t just a messaging gap. It’s a structural vulnerability. We've seen before how attempts to “universalize” economic policy while ignoring or soft-pedaling social realities can fracture coalitions, especially in a country where identity and material conditions are historically entangled.
MAGA backlash thrives on that disconnect. The more we try to sidestep it, the more we cede moral clarity and strategic ground.
Actually, Dems in other states won by bringing more people under a big tent.
The least common denominator is hatred of MAGA.
Many Congressional Republicans privately admit Trump is nuts.
I keep posting. According to Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) Trumpepstein may cause an "Epstein bomb" causing over 100 Republican members to "jailbreak" from Trump.
Massive Congressional visits November 18.
https://www.instagram.com/flare.usa/p/DP_mdOyjdiG/
Visit CongressionalRepublicans.
https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/851451/
I think that if we play our cards right, many can be convinced by the election outcome to come forward.
Irrelevant what Republicans admit in private, it is what they do in public.. People say, do and think all kind of things in private but not in public.
Is hanging our hopes on release of the Epstein files, all that we have?
Is Trump allegedly having sex with underage teens, enough to knock him off his MAGA pedestal
Nothing else has so far. MAGA is only 40% of the population, but they are a fired up, fire breathing, dedicated 40% that will show up on election day.
What the Democrats need to do, rather than pray that some Republicans will slip or flip, is built the same burning desire in the other 60%, and that entails dominating the landscape both culturally and economically.
I am watching Frontline (recorded) it is about the rise of the right in Germany, and Europe. One issue:Immigration and also Russian trolling of social media, the AfD has risen on the back of cultural issues, primarily immigration.
I don't think you know what irrelevant means.
I want a full court press.
I tire of this inane tete a tete
Here is a better response, from The Ink
Mayor Mamdani's bigger We
https://the.ink/p/mayor-mamdanis-bigger-we
The profound insight of the Zohran Mamdani campaign was that people want to be summoned to do more, not less; they want to get together, not lurk on screens alone; they want to belong in hope, not just commiserate in anger; they want to organize, not agonize.
The campaign had 100,000 volunteers. It had about 1 million voters. One out of 10 of its voters were volunteers. Is there any precedent for this in modern political history?
This is not “Don’t boo. Vote.” This is “Don’t boo. Join.”
A lot of other prominent progressive campaigns have been extremely online, even at their best. This was an incredibly physical, meat-space campaign.
I would not be surprised if there are dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of relationships that eventually come out of that volunteer corps. There are going to be Zohran volunteer marriages and children, five, ten, twenty years from now. People want to be part, as Emma Goldberg reported for The New York Times.
Volunteering for Mr. Mamdani’s campaign became a salve for members of a generation diagnosed by psychologists with anxiety and by the surgeon general with loneliness, whose religious affiliation is often “unaffiliated” and who also apparently killed drinking and having sex.
Has nothing to do with the post.
Indeed, the pols know he is demented and psychotic. I would put my dad in assisted living if he babbled like Trump does - if he was still alive. When the WH reversed Trump's post that he was ignoring the courts and would not pay snap, I could not help but surmise that this is his staff covering up their boss's reckless lack of impulse control - just like Biden's staff did now and then.
Democrats Won Big Because They Won Over Trump Supporters
It wasn’t just about superior turnout. Party switchers played a significant role in Virginia and New Jersey.
By Nate Cohn, NYT.
Examples please of Dems n other states winning by bringing more people under a big tent.
An interesting situation in this election. Passiac County, is the NW Corner of NJ, it is also majority Hispanic Community is the largest demographic, Yet it voted for Ciatrelli, the Republican yestarday, not for Sherril the Democrat.
Union City, New Jersey, is Miami north, more Cuban Americans per square inch than anyplace northg of the Broward County line.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, we need a run off. We are majority Dem that has had nothig but MAGAs in charge for many years.
"Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins and former Miami City Manager Emilio González are headed to a runoff in the Miami mayor’s race after neither candidate managed to secure more than 50% of the vote Tuesday night. With all precincts reporting, Higgins had captured nearly 36% of the vote, with González coming in second at more than 19%. There were 13 candidates in total.
"Higgins, a Democrat, and González, a Republican, will face off in a Dec. 9 runoff for the nonpartisan mayoral seat. At an election night party at a hotel blocks from her downtown condominium, Higgins emerged shortly after 7:30 p.m. to greet cheering supporters. She quickly found the county’s top Democrat — Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava — and they joined their raised hands in a victory pose."
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article312711988.html#storylink=cpy
Union City NJ is in Hudson county, not Passiac and Hudson County went for Mikie Sherill the Democrat by 74%, whereas Passsiac County, which is Hispanic majority went for Miki Sherril by 84% (previous results were evidently early returns
Hudson County, NJ, has a diverse population of approximately 736,185 residents as of 2024, with a significant Hispanic/Latino population (40.4% in 2020) and a substantial Asian population (17.0% in 2020). The county is New Jersey's smallest and most densely populated, with a median age of 35.8 in 2023 and a median household income of around $48,890 in 2023. A high percentage of residents are renters, reflected in the 31.2% homeownership rate in 2023, and many have long average commute times of 35.5 minutes.
S
https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NJ/Passaic/124686/web.345435/#/summary
It does look like the Hispanics have awakened,
So maybe there is hope in Babylon by the sea.
It’s wild how fast the narrative flips. The same billionaires who rely on taxpayer-funded food stamps to keep wages low are the ones screaming about “personal responsibility.” They’ve built a welfare system for the rich and convinced working people to feel ashamed for needing to eat.
If I hear "moral hazard" over basic social support programs for the poor from one more GOPer... 🤬 😠 😡
The primary beneficiaries of SNAP are large food retailers and food manufacturers, followed by wholesalers, transportation companies, and ultimately, farmers and agricultural producers.
Thom: Billionaires like the Walton Family, in other words, know that they can cut their employees’ wages by the same amount as the government subsidies that are available to those workers. Every penny of government benefits, under this GOP strategy, becomes a penny less that Walmart, for example, has to pay its people who qualify for benefits.
In June 2014, Mother Jones reported that "Overall, 18 percent of all food benefits money is spent at Walmart", and that Walmart had submitted a statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stating,
"Our business operations are subject to numerous risks, factors, and uncertainties, domestically and internationally, which are outside our control. These factors include... changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, [and] changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans."
Companies that have lobbied on behalf of SNAP include PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company, and the grocery chain Kroger.
Yes, and one thing that stopping SNAP will do is a big hit to grocery store revenues, and the entire supply chain that sustains them. SNAP isn't "free stuff," it's actually money that people spend to buy food. $8 Billion /month (plus multiplier effects) is not chump change in this economy.
The thing that confuses me is that the less disposable income people have the less money they can spend at Walmart. WOuldn't it make sense to raise the price of goods?
It might work to restrict the SNAP program to people who aren't working, but I don't think that will be enough to push employers to pay their workers better. There needs to be union pressure to force employers out of Ricardo's Iron Law. Capitalism confers too much power on the ownership class, to the point where they can assume ownership of their employees as well.
29% of recipients are kids.
I thought it was closer to 40%. Regardless, it is too high regardless of whatever the actual percentage is; I believe 1% is too high.
The BEST damn day of 2025.....
Two serious female Governors. Double digits. Mamdani over 50%. California is frigin' awesome. So is Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia, Maine and New York. Gen Z showed-up, even the young men.
Bonus: Bucks County cleaned-up their school board.
And the jerks as usual kept telling us the races were tightening. NOPE! Keep that word in mind. Stay focused.
Make sure the people you know don't fall for the AI SNAP videos that show computer generated people demanding the government pay for their 7 children. There is another one where the subject says she is going to steal the food she has at the check-out.
Celebrate by helping someone with food, if you can. See you in the streets.
I think the largest charity in the US is Catholic charities, which has a Stamp Out Hunger food drive. Also the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC.)
One year Catholic charities made the mistake of asking my opinion. I had a series of cases involving the need to bring in foreign workers to tend ornamental trees in the US, and I said they should trade in their ornamental trees at churches to make food. The churches here in Baghdad By the Sea could produce enough fruit and vegetables to feed the whole country. We have two (2) growing seasons. We can produce enough stuff like figs and dates to feed most of the northern hemisphere.
I am not a Catholic but in an ecumenical spirit, I offer Pope Bob's position: End world hunger. https://www.crs.org/pope-francis-5-key-messages-end-global-hunger
Thanks Thom, welfare for the rich goes on and on. Why isn't the DNC producing TV ads to inform the public about what this government shut down is about. I have no idea what my donations are paying for. Would love to see a ad in monosyllables telling Americans that, the GOP OBBBA act stripped $200B from SNAP and $900B over 10 yrs from WIC and that the Democrats in congress are trying to get those dollars put back into the budget. Maybe another ad telling Americans what money was stripped out of the ACA, Medicaid, and Medicare. Scenes from the Gatsby gala while video runs of people standing in food bank lines might be effective in having people understand what's going on.
G2,good post and why are the DEMS not showing this or maybe they are,but since the " Nazis" control the media,how do they show people what the GOP has done.
It's on the news 24/7.
Those who are blind cannot see. https://blueprint.democrats.org/
Thanks Daniel. Two people told me last week that they didn't know the government was shut down. But they sure know whats going on with football. Maybe a ad or two during NFL games would generate some brain cell activity. Some percentage of our population doesn't read, write, or watch the news - but they watch games.
The only question I have in this discussion is the emphasis on employers "cutting wages". That happened during the Depression, but isn't usual today.
So does anyone know if the approach is more subtle, such as letting salaries fall behind inflation, changing positions to be part-time work, or hiring temporary people rather than having permanent ones? The latter has the advantages of not giving unions a base as well as avoiding the payment of health and other benefits. It also makes businesses more flexible in letting people go. (For example, unless you land an endowed chair or are in a field with extremely high student demand your chances of now getting a tenure track position at a college are virtually zero. Schools are now hiring per-semester adjunct people, and at very low wages compared to their permanent faculty.)
DOL had a division that tracks salaries but the government is closed.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Key statistics available include:
-Average Hourly Earnings: For all private-industry employees, the average hourly earnings were $36.53 in August 2025.
-Median Annual Wage: In May 2024, the median annual wage for all workers was $49,500. This means half of all workers earned more than this amount, and half earned less.
-Total Compensation Costs: In September 2023, the average employer cost for civilian employees was $43.93 per hour worked. Of this, $30.35 went to wages and salaries, while $13.58 (about 30.9%) covered benefits.
Key Data Sources and Reports
The BLS provides data through several key programs:
Current Employment Statistics (CES): This program provides detailed national and state-level industry estimates of employment, hours, and earnings of workers on payrolls.
Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS): This survey provides comprehensive wage data for hundreds of occupations across various industries and geographic areas. Data can be filtered by specific job titles (e.g., Production occupations had an annual mean wage of $50,090 in May 2024).
Employment Cost Index (ECI): This measures the change in compensation costs (wages, salaries, and benefits) over time.
Usual Weekly Earnings: Reports the median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers, which was $1,196 in the second quarter of 2025.
U.S. Department of Labor (.gov)
Overview of BLS Statistics on Pay and Benefits
Sep 23, 2025 — BLS has 12 surveys or programs that provide information on pay and benefits.
Many business oranizations track the data and render opinions. I used to subsc5ribe to some of them but don't anymore. I don't have access to them.
It’s good that so much information is (usually) there, Daniel. Digging through it sounds like it would take writing another dissertation, though the 31% that is paid as benefits would be a good place to start. How much of that is for health insurance versus what a national system would cost employers and employees is a question that someone must have asked, and their results should be publicized. But digging in further one could investigate whether there are trends between having more part-time versus (at lower wages) full-time workers.
And perhaps more could down with the ECI to see in how the gap between those doing very well and everybody else is widening—the Gini coefficient over time. After all, in this case a median doesn’t tell us too much. (If there are two very poor people in a room and Musk walks in then the median income is still very low. The mean is now really high, but that’s a different statistic and sure doesn’t raise what the poor people are getting anyway.)
Taking into account changes in tax rates would also be useful, though again we’re talking about an awful lot of data that has to be looked at. But if all this could be boiled down to something simple, like saying, “In real wages the top 10% are making twice what they were a generation ago and paying half as much taxes, while the bottom 50% are making no more and have had no tax breaks”, then people would get what is happening here.
Financial news track this stuff. I spend about an hour daily listening to financial mavens who use the data.
We still have a safety net. Most states have eliminated "public assistance" but if a person meets the income and resource requirements of SSI, they qualify for subsistance.
If a person qualifies for SSI, qualifies for Medicaid and Medicare after a waiting period. Probably also qualifies for HUD and other benefits like SNAP.
As with most things, location, location.
I know it's glib, but most of the people on public assistance in states like NY or CA would benefit by moving. As a rule of thinb, a person in NYC or SF gets 10 X or more in a place like my home town. Still entitled to SSI, HUD, SNAP, which are portable.
All that is well and good and true, but the discussion says nothing about the fact that we are the richest country ever in many respects and the wealth should be shared more equally to raise the quality of life and standards of living for everyone. There is no good reason to keep working people at subsistence levels while unproductive fat cats live like princes and princesses.
Fascinating and illuminating explanation -- even as it adds fuel to the anger we feel as income inequality widens in what is routinely called "the richest country in the world.
I understood this in the narrow confines of the Walmart model of low prices, fueled by low wages that necessitated taxpayer funded support by way Medicaid, and food stamps.
The wide historical view that you have given, explains so much. For example, why a work requirement is not just a "punishment", ostensibly for those lazy welfare queens, or children whose parents are feeding them potato chips, fathers who are guzzling beer using a Medicaid check that doesn't exist. And it was never quite clear to me why, when unemployment goes up, so does the stock market -- I could see that a smaller payroll might lead to greater profit for executives. This seemed counterintuitive for several reasons, but especially for the efficiency and future growth of a business. Your explanation makes it clear that the "low wage business model" has been in place for decades, and more galling that it is a careful calculation of dollars and cents, set for each community and its cost of living. "Just scraping by" as business policy for its workers -- this is what a voracious, greedy ruling class has wrought.
Fron a quick look at the stats. out of 100% of total SNAP recipients, 40% are children, 18% elderly and 11% disabled. Of the remaining 30%, 70% are employed — 21%. That leaves 10% unaccounted for but after factoring in underemployment and those unemployed but seeking employment very little is left unaccounted for. So we are faced with the Party of Family Values, the same one that would put the 10 Commandments in every public classroom, who accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, as either lying to us or lying to themselves. Or both.
America is a "Plantation Economy," powered by Wage Slaves.
Fat Donnie's main base is White men without degrees.
Uneducated, locked into dead-end, emasculating jobs.
"New York Fats" is the Molotov cocktail they keep lobbing at America.
Now America is throwing it back at 'em.
VOTE !!!!
But In the mean time 42 million people starve, so don the con can flex his fat stomach and wear the new crown he just got. What was that famous line given to the starving people "Let them eat cake" EXCEPT we can't afford that either.
Jeanine,the "nazis" and the TechnoFascists" don't give a damn about starving people. They are only interested in becoming billionaires and trillionaires. It is time we did something besides rally and protest in the streets.
SNAP is how Big Ag became billionaires.
What I do NOT understand is why so called businessmen object to paying their employees a living wage, or better. If you are running a business, you need customers; i,e, people who are willing to pay you for your product. (Even Henry Ford realized this! He paid his workers enough so that they could afford to buy the cars that they made.)
The whole point of the expanding middle class that Thom and I grew up in was that we had excess money (above the bare essentials) that we could buy things. It was important that we could do this on the income of a single job because that meant that we had the energy to enjoy those things that we bought. Again, it seems obvious that if you don't have any left over energy to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you probably won't buy more things.
So it all comes back to this: The oligarchy is deliberately impoverishing the bulk of their potential customer base at the expense of the taxpayers. At some point there won't be any customer base, and consequently the oligarchy won't have any income either. Shortsighted, or outright STUPID?
WOW! Talk about not seeing the obvious. Once again kudos and thanks to Mr. Hartmann. How many were aware of this? I, who am known for by obliviousness, never heard this explained before. I could pull the old card, I'm 92, but to be honest I've always been like this. For my 91st birthday I did an open mic about it. Re/yesterday. Has the pendulum turned???
Dignity for working people, families and vulnerable poor. Shout out to Unions! Shout out to all government policymakers like Zohran Mamdoni!
The minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. That should be $10.88 adjusted for 2025 dollar inflation. Adjusting the minimum wage for inflation, the minimum wage has continued to shrink since 1968. Worse, many jobs are exempt - waitstaff especially. In 1963, when I started working as a busboy in a restaurant, the minimum wage was $1.25. We were paid 75 cents/hour and got some trickle-down from waitstaff tips that usually got us to about $1.40/hour. That's $14.53/hour adjusted for 2025 inflation. Nothing has changed.
Raising the minimum wage (no occupational exceptions) would be a tax on billionaires without raising the income tax. However, raising both the minimum wage and IRS taxes might just start shrinking America's burgeoning, obscene billionaire monarchy. Nobody needs $1 thousand million dollars (a billion). You can live like royalty on just $3 million in wealth.
Unless you have 10 kids, you do not need a 6,000 sqft mansion. Half of that should be ample. In my neighborhood of luxury homes on the beach, the 4 largest homes are only 3,000 sqft. That is because 3/4 of us are retired couples, and 3 or 4 bedrooms are ample to accommodate visiting friends and family. If I hit the billionaire PowerBall tomorrow, I wouldn't relocate. I would follow in George Soros's footsteps.