Let's talk about SNAP and claims of 186,000 dead people on the rolls.... - Belle of the Ranch

[TexasTowelie]

Well, howdy there internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about SNAP and claims of 186,000 dead people on the rolls.

There's a claim that's been floating around for a while and it was recently oddly repeated by Vance and it prompted a question from a Republican.

"Belle, I actually really appreciate you answering the guy who made the sandwich joke. I assume he's a Republican like me, and we just can't get straight answers from our side of the aisle. Nobody wants to contradict Trump. So, I've got a question for you that's been driving me nuts. Vance just said 186,000 dead people were still on SNAP. I totally believe there's fraud in a government program, but I don't believe that it's the exact same number as last year. Them using the same number for 2 years makes me doubt the whole claim. So then I looked and they won't release the report. So do your thing. Are there dead people on SNAP or not? Is it BS? Why does the number match?”

Okay, last question first. Why do the numbers match? Both Vance and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins were probably both citing the same report. Vance is just repeating a claim from last year. Why he seems to be implying that the administration knows about this giant problem and didn't fix it in all this time is beyond me.

The other two questions. Are there dead people on the SNAP rolls? Almost certainly. In fact, I'd say there are probably about twice as many as claimed. Is it BS? Also, almost certainly.

Okay, we're going to break out some math. There are roughly 42 million people on SNAP. That's a huge number. I'm going to say that so many people needing food assistance is commentary on how much the working class get trampled on in this country.

But beyond that, 42 million is a huge number and a huge sample size. A lot of things that you find in the general population will be true among SNAP recipients. Do you know the percentage of people who die in the US every year? 0.9%. What's 0.9% of 42 million? 378,000. Wow, that's bigger than the number they keep repeating. In fact, it's about double. Remember that number, 378,000.

The report they're citing, you want to know something weird about it? While they won't release the raw data, they will say it comes from an analysis of information from 29 states, a little more than half, but they include some of the lowest population states. So, the number of people on SNAP you'd expect to have die in a year is about 378,000.

But you've only got information for a little more than half of the states and some of those states are incredibly low population. So let's just say half to keep it simple. What's half of 378,000? 189,000. That's the number of people on SNAP we can safely estimate died in half the states.

They claim 186,000 dead people on the rolls in 29 states. My guess is they're giving accurate numbers for dead people they found on the SNAP rolls, but they're implying fraud when it wasn't because the number they're giving is the number you'd expect to find.

But I'll go a step further. Let's say it's all fraud. That's 0.4%. 0.4%. That's absolutely amazing. Double it, triple it, quadruple it. It's still incredibly low. Take a look at how many Americans were hit by credit card fraud last year. It's about 17% of the entire US population.

This isn't a major issue in this country. It's just something to make people mad and keep them kicking down instead of watching the ruling class who is raking in cash while you groan every time you pull into a gas station. Poor people will never be the source of your problem. The people with power who are lying to you are.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.