Why welfare is good for the economy

If you've been on Twitter lately, you might be seeing some rich idiots saying that "food is expensive because 42 million people get it for free".

Let's discuss some basic economics.

Nobody is getting food for free.

Taxes pay for it. It isn't free. In America, 12% of all grocery sales are funded by SNAP, and all of those sales just evaporated from the economy.

Grocers and retailers nationwide are reporting revenue losses ranging from 5% to 60%, and these companies are compensating by cutting their employees hours.

So now grocery store workers are getting paid less, AND they aren't getting their SNAP benefits to buy food. Glorious capitalism!

As soon as Americans get SNAP back, the entire economy will re-stimulate and improve as people spend more on non-food items.

Not only is SNAP good for the economy, but actually it is extremely underfunded. SNAP recipients receive their benefits once a month, and

75-80% run out of food money by the end of the second week. For the final two weeks, they spend their rent money or they go hungry.

I get a little over $200 per month in benefits, and I live alone. I eat twice a day at most and could scrape by on a $60 food budget per week, except I don't get enough for that. I run out of SNAP by the end of second week and run out of food by the third. I rely on pocket money for the final week.

So even though a lot of the right wingers scream and beg to defund SNAP and starve everybody to death, we need to overpower them and increase the budget for SNAP by billions. The people who want people to not be able to afford food surely have enough money for us to tax them more.

The economy will get better the more we increase the budget for SNAP.

If we spent money on food and housing security instead of genocide and weapons, America would finally become a 1st world country.

For context, SNAP gets $122 billion funds, while the military gets $877 billion—reallocating even 10% could transform social programs.

30% of my city is in extreme poverty, which is about the same as the continent of Africa. This rate doesn't reflect the entirety of America, as my city has double the poverty rate that my state has, but there are many other cities like mine.

If we illegalized billionaires and hundred-millionaires, and if we stopped spending tax money on wasteful things and instead spent it on welfare and economic stimulus, we would eliminate poverty.

And with poverty eliminated, consumerism would skyrocket. Our overall economy would be bigger, and we'd all be richer (except for the evil billionaires)