Letters | Donald Trump’s food stamp cuts are not the way to make jobless Americans find work

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A woman waits in line at an emergency food bank in Richmond, California. The Trump administration has finalised a rule that will end food stamp benefits for roughly 700,000 Americans. Photo: Getty Images / TNS

Published: 1:15am, 21 Dec 2019Updated: 3:07am, 21 Dec 2019

I do not personally agree with the Trump administration’s latest decision to finalise rules that will cut off food stamps to roughly 688,000 American adults by requiring states to enforce work requirements. Yet, as a social worker trained in conflict resolution, I must make an effort to understand why the president would endorse such a policy. What are its potential benefits?

To start with, the US Agriculture Department said the move will save about US$5.5 billion over five years. Although nearly 700,000 people would lose benefits entirely, The New York Times, reporting in October, said the number of families losing benefits would be “a tiny percentage of the nearly 40 million people who receive benefits”, and even US$5.5 billion over five years is “a trim for a programme that cost US$68 billion in 2018 alone”.

Moreover, there is nothing wrong with incentivising people to work. The president can make the argument that he is promoting an ideology that he believes is good for the country. Fair enough. But what is not being talked about is the living wage.

A study at MIT demonstrated that the living wage in the United States was US$16.07 per hour in 2017, before taxes for a family of four (two working adults, two children), compared to US$15.84 in 2016.

It is one thing to take someone off food stamps to encourage them to work (self-sufficiency is expected of citizens) but it is counterproductive, cruel and detrimental to society to merely strip people of food without making work a sustainable option. Just telling people that they need to work because jobs are available is not good enough.