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Les Bez: "Doctor"/HUD Secretary Ben Capybarason Is Concerned About How Much Government Spends on Food Stamps

Cartoon of Ben Capybarason concern trolling the food stamp program

References
From cartoon parody to fact-checking!
Sources, verbatim quotes, and commentary below:

For your listening pleasure (not really, but for those who only believe their own ears and eyes): "Doctor" Ben Carson addresses CPAC, published by the "American Conservative Union," February 26, 2015, on YouTube:


I transcribed from 2:10 to 8:20 to provide full context of his remarks, bolding my least favorite and most relevant parts. Your cringeage may vary.

What we do have to pay attention to is, how do we use the incredible brains that God gave us to recognize when things don't work and to recognize when things do work and to fix problems? For instance, when you think about, there's a large number of people in our country who are the downtrodden, and how do we treat them? Well, you know, starting in the 60s with the Great Society programs, we figured if we just threw money at the problems, when we had all these welfare programs, that we could solve the problems. What has happened since then? In 1969, 1.4% of our population was on food stamps. Today more than 14% are on food stamps, a tenfold increase. We have more broken families, out of wedlock births, incarceration, crime, everything that these programs were supposed to fix has gotten worse. So what do people do about that? Intelligent people would look at that and they would say, "We need to change course". People who, people who perhaps fail to utilize their intellectual capability would look at that and say, "We need to do it more, we didn't do enough". And you know, that's the difference. But we need to move in a very different direction, we need to understand what true compassion is, in order to reach out to individuals who think that maybe being dependent is reasonable as long as they feel safe; and it isn't. It really is not compassionate to pat people on the head and say, "There, there, you poor little thing, I'm going to take care of all your needs, your healthcare and your food and your housing; don't you worry about anything, because it's all those bad people who's causing your problems, and I'm going to fix it". That's not compassion, that is the opposite of compassion, that is making people dependent. What real compassion is, is using our intellect to find ways to allow those people to climb out of dependency and realize the American Dream; and that's what we need to be thinking about. It's about investing in our fellow human beings, just like Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006 with his program of microlending, lifted millions of people out of poverty in Bangladesh and that area of the world; and you know, we are a very smart people and we're a very compassionate people, and we need to find out how do we strengthen the fabric of this country; and it is our responsibility to take care of the indigent, it is not the government's responsibility. Now some people say, "You know, that doesn't sound very compassionate". It is compassionate.

I was in the airport a couple of months ago, and a lady came and sat down next to me, an African American lady, and she said, "I really like what you have to say, it makes so much sense, but why don't you want poor people to have healthcare?" Now, I say, you've been listening to the propaganda, that's all it is, propaganda. I want everybody to have good healthcare. We spend twice as much per capita as the next closest nation, and we still have terrible access problems, inefficiencies, expense, and we can do so much better, and that is why I have advocated a system, and I hope Congress will listen very carefully to what I am about to say, because they need to grasp a healthcare alternative before they try to remove Obamacare, if they really want to get some traction; and what I'm talking about is Health Savings Account systems, they work extremely well, available for everybody. We don't force people into them, but I tell you when people see how these work, you won't have to force them into it; and there are a variety of different ways to pay for it; but even the indigent, and that is what I want to talk about because she said I don't care about poor people, we can fund the indigent, how? We spend $400 billion a year, according to the Heritage Foundation, on Medicaid, 400 billion a year. A quarter of our people are involved with Medicaid, that's 80 million people. Divide 80 million into 400 billion, 5000, $5000 each. Now boutique practices, concierge practices on average cost $2-3000 a year. So you could put everybody into a boutique practice and have thousands of dollars left over for catastrophic healthcare. That's how wasteful we are, that's how wasteful we are. Now we don't have to use that much money, but I'm just giving you an example of what we're doing and even asking for more. It really isn't that affordable healthcare. It's not affordable, and it is actually about redistribution and control; and if we really want to use our intellect, we will come up with something that really works for everybody, it makes a big difference. But what are the things that are going to destroy us as a nation? Our debt, $18.1 trillion and rising. We need to get out of the mindset that says because the debt didn't go up as fast in this quarter, it's a victory. The debt needs to be going down, the size of government needs to be going down, we need to be able to deal with that in a logical way.


Of course these "facts" are cherry picked and misleading. Truth: According to the U.S. Census of 1970, there were 24.3 million Americans living in poverty in 1969, a decrease of 1.1 million since 1968 and a decrease of 15.2 million since 1959. According to the U.S. Census today, there were 38.1 million Americans living in poverty in 2018, down from 2017 and a continual improvement in the poverty rate since 2007 (when the recession hit). Overall, in 1969 we had about 202,677,000 Americans; we currently have about 330,245,000 Americans. That's a poverty rate of about 12% then and about 11.5% now. Obviously the tenfold increase in food stamps reflects the increased use of food stamps by the government to provide for the poor, rather than the direct cash payments that were more commonly used in the 1960s. In fact, the food stamp program was just getting started in the 1960s; it was not a nationwide program until 1974.

Furthermore, in 1969, in poor families with two parents, 61% had at least one adult who worked; in poor families with a single head of household, 43% worked. In 2016, according to Child Trends Databank, in poor families with two parents, 84% had at least one adult who worked; in poor families with a single head of household, 62% worked.

So as more people have entered the workforce, the poverty level has increased. Hmm, what could be responsible for this phenomenon? Could it be that wages are too low? If you don't want welfare and food stamp "dependence," substantially raise the minimum wage and families' purchasing power! Taking away the social safety net before raising wages will result not in motivation, but starvation!

And finally: In case you wondered what a capybara is (I did until I researched them for Cartoon Ben), below is a photo of a capybara with a cat! Capybaras are the world's largest rodent. But don't think of them as giant rats; think of them as giant hamsters. Capybaras are capable of love for all kinds of other critters!

Capybara and Cat friends

Original version published at Daily Kos. New poverty statistics here, updated for the latest information available in 2020.

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© Copyright Elena Carlena. Created May 20, 2015. Last updated February 9, 2020. All rights reserved.