Timeline for Why is the cost of the food stamp program 8 times higher per person than in 1938 in real dollars?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 5 at 20:54 | answer | added | ohwilleke♦ | timeline score: 1 | |
| Apr 5 at 14:26 | answer | added | haxor789 | timeline score: 0 | |
| Apr 5 at 11:39 | history | edited | Rick Smith | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Clarified that "8 times" is "per person". Made table column head closer to source. Added column footnote.
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| Apr 5 at 6:04 | comment | added | ohwilleke♦ | The table of modern values is confusing. The average benefit per person is monthly, but the last three columns appear to be annual. The 1938 figures seem to be a total program cost over 4 years, so it would be $37.50 year 2006 dollars per person per year, if 20 million is really correct. I suspect that there is a lot of double counting in the 20 million figure which might really be 20 million monthly disbursements or 20 million annual disbursements rather than 20 million actual beneficiaries. OTOH, the Great Depression was characterized by massive non-monetarily driven deflation. | |
| Apr 5 at 5:28 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | Population changed? Quality and quantity of food changed? Overall inflation is different from inflation on agricultural products? Higher percentage is people needing food support then than now? There are many possibilities. | |
| Apr 4 at 23:11 | history | edited | Rick Smith | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Edited tags and body. Updated links. Replaced pre-formatted code with a markdown table.
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| Sep 7, 2013 at 16:23 | vote | accept | user1873 | ||
| Aug 19, 2013 at 4:54 | comment | added | Samuel Russell | While @DVK has already mentioned this, it is worth explicitly restating: any inflation measure is normative. CPI measures what the States' bureau of statistics is told to measure as "consumption," and what they believe they ought to measure. These "consumption bundles," represent normative accounts of what is believed "fit" for workers, sometimes broken down segmentally, to eat, wear, (sometimes) rent, drink, smoke, gamble. Sometimes with categories set at zero. CPI may not meaningfully reflect SNAP recipients living costs over time as they're below CPI bundle consumption levels. | |
| Aug 16, 2013 at 3:00 | review | Community Evaluations | |||
| Aug 23, 2013 at 3:00 | |||||
| Jul 16, 2013 at 23:17 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackPolitics/status/357277716279603201 | ||
| Jul 9, 2013 at 5:26 | comment | added | xuinkrbin. | Another part of the answer may simply be the fact $150 doesn't get a whole heck of a lot of food for the year also. | |
| Jul 8, 2013 at 17:17 | answer | added | Affable Geek | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jul 7, 2013 at 15:29 | comment | added | user4012 | Part of the answer may be the fact that modern food as eaten by typical SNAP recepients (junk food and ready-made food from food joints vs. groceries and home cooking of nutritional meals) has a significantly lower nutritional content than in 1938. | |
| Jul 7, 2013 at 15:26 | comment | added | user4012 | Question is, what was the relative cost of a food basket then and now? Inflation-adjusted isn't necessarily food-basket adjusted. | |
| Jul 7, 2013 at 2:17 | history | asked | user1873 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |