50% of American Children will receive Food Stamps

Before I tackle the recent AP report and study on children in need of food assistance I wanted to say how appalled and horrified I am at the cold blooded murder of innocent, hard working, honest men and women at Fort Hood. I have no insights into this particular tragedy other than that the violation of the sanctity of human life in this incident is beyond my abilities to properly place in its terrible perspective.

Sometimes I despair for my fellow man. This is one of those times.

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I use the "food stamp metric" as part of my analysis of the economy and markets.


How are we to take that? Clearly, it is a positive that children in the U.S. do not go hungry for the most part. What does it say about the parents? Does society, and certain special interest groups in particular, bear responsibility for its contribution to the disintegration of the family unit - or the lack of its formation in the first place?

Children living in poverty tend to have one circumstance in common - their father is missing in action, if you will. That the percentage of children living with both parents receiving food assistance is a fraction of all children receiving food assistance is beyond debate. It would seem that the critical input in this data set to work on would be how to encourage/force/cajole/shame/beg/ the children's fathers TO BE FATHERS.

This is a very complicated issue. For instance, the vast majority of "dead beat dads" are in prison, parole, or probation. Its very tough to provide for your children when you are wearing grey pajamas and eating off paper plates. Guess what happens latter in lives of the children of convicts? This is the "gift that keeps on giving" if you are a lawyer, cop, judge, corrections officer, etc... but the rest of us will not be able to support it for much longer.

This is quite the conundrum.

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