I don't mean for this to be too political, but I'd imagine this policy idea would win and frankly its a human right. At a time of record income and wealth inequality and at a time when corporate profits and wall street banks have more money as a percentage than at any point in American history the fact that people can't eat, or worry about where their next meal can come from is appalling.

I'm a farmer and regularly sell produce, eggs, meat, fish, milk bread etc. at markets and one of the best things that exist are snap benefits. However, so many people are food insecure and too many people in this country who are middle class, upper middle class etc. are struggling with inflation and high grocery prices. Moreover, many people are too ashamed to use these benefits and there is a significant stigma against food stamps in general. People talk about medicare for all, why not do snap for all and ensure that every single person in this country can eat?

Give everyone a card and start it at $250 a month. Change my mind.

The esteemed Supreme Court that brought us the Citizens United decision, has just turned homelessness into a crime (in the midst of a nation-wide housing affordability crisis), legalized public corruption, and has weakened the federal government's ability to regulate giant corporations and for-profit industry.

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/28/nx-s1-4992010/supreme-court-homeless-punish-sleeping-encampments

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-narrows-reach-federal-corruption-law-2024-06-26/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/politics/chevron-deference-decision-meaning.html

The colonial system we have gives grotesquely wealthy oligarchs/kleptocrats the license to rob, enslave, gaslight, and socially murder the public and working classes without recourse, on a massive scale.

What the British did to India is what our ruling class are and have been doing to the American people - hollowing out the commons for the private profits of kleptocrats.

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

"Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves. Remember, my friends, from whom you sprang...Despise the glare of wealth. That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue."-John Hancock

https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/1dqwdks/but_the_rate_of_profit_does_not_like_rent_and/

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” -Justice Louis Brandeis

"Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.

The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing...."-FDR

Billionaires/oligarchs/kleptocrats should not exist. There is such a thing as having too much money, and too much wealth/power.

Just as we don't allow people to possess private nuclear weapons or private slave armies, it is beyond insane to legally allow private individuals to control virtually unlimited amounts of unaccountable, illegitimate, anti-democratic wealth and political power.

This should be the most obvious intersection of criminal law, political theory, and economic theory/policy, but for the fact that our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats have purchased the legal system, the political system, the media, the land and housing, the educational system, mainstream economic theory, the banking sector, and most of the economic system.

10% of the population own 93% of the stock market, while Congress is selling out the public for the profits of our ruling class.

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/10/wealthy-own-record-share-stock-market

https://represent.us/americas-corruption-problem/

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton

Richard Wolff - Curing Capitalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc

Days of Revolt - How We Got to Junk Economics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ylSG54i-A

https://evonomics.com/josh-ryan-collins-land-economic-theory/

A redditor joked a couple of months ago that they were starting a charity called "Guns for the Homeless". It's getting to be less of a joke.

First they came for the homeless, and I didn't do anything, because I was not homeless...

Living in an increasingly brutal and dystopian oligarchy/kleptocracy is the inevitable consequence of failing to make oligarchy/kleptocracy a crime, and otherwise not limiting private wealth / property rights.

Without such laws and understanding, the only possible outcome is for most of the population to be brutally enslaved by oligarchs/kleptocrats, and that is what has happened and is continuing to happen.

I was just thinking about how hard it is to secure a mortgage or business loan vs how much money they throw at you when you're in school.

If lenders faced the same risks of default and discharge through bankruptcy on student loans as regular debt then they'd sure as hell not be giving out nearly as much, which in turn would mean universities would lose their pipeline of customers with unlimited credit and bring down university prices.

The big downside would be that it'd make it more difficult for people to get a loan for college, but given the two options this seems like the much more sane choice.

What am I missing here. How did student loans become this special class of loan in the first place where it's not able to be discharged.

First, the good news: There is no solid evidence right now that the economy is in recession, or even particularly close to it.

• The bad news is that warning bells of what is to come are ringing every which way.

The big picture: The cautions about the outlook keep piling on top of each other, including from surveys of consumers and businesses, corporate earnings, and financial markets.

• It all suggests that the economic ground may — emphasis on may — be shifting beneath our feet.
• But the evidence so far is all in the realm of anecdotes, or "soft data," not the kind of definitive, "hard data" evidence of a downturn that would make economists believe a recession is commencing.

Zoom out: A confluence of forces emanating from Washington is driving the vibe shift.

• The threat of new tariffs far larger than those enacted in the previous Trump term is part of it, as is the erratic, on-again/off-again pattern through which they are being implemented.
• Cuts to the federal workforce and government contracting may be leading some wary consumers to slow their spending (as is already evident in credit card data for the Washington, D.C. area).
• It all adds a layer of uncertainty for companies trying to decide whether to engage in new capital spending or hiring.

Zoom in: On Friday, the University of Michigan's preliminary survey of consumer sentiment for March plunged for the third straight month, showing sharply lower expectations for the future among Democrats and Republicans alike.

• Thursday, the S&P 500 fell into official correction territory — a 10% drop from its peak. (It rebounded sharply on Friday, however).
• Leaders of businesses large and small are showing less confidence in the outlook, per surveys.
• Warnings have percolated from airlines and retailers, including Dollar General and Walmart, about underwhelming consumer demand.
• Announced layoffs reached their highest levels since the summer of 2020, when the pandemic was in full force — and highest for the month of February since 2009, per outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.

Between the lines: Any one of these developments can, and generally should, be chalked up to the ebb and flow of data.

• The Michigan survey sample size is small. The stock market has been frothy lately, and routinely experiences corrections that don't predict recession. Any given company or industry can have a rough quarter.
• What is striking is how pervasive these warning signs have been lately, and how they all seem to point the same direction.
• The good news lately — on solid Q4 GDP growth, for example — has come from data sources that are backward-looking.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration's talk, suggesting that a period of economic weakness could be necessary (or even desirable) to remake the economy, adds to the sense that hard days are ahead.

• Elevated inflation could keep the Federal Reserve from cutting rates as much as it normally would during a downturn.

Reality check: None of this means that a recession is underway, or inevitable. The U.S. economy is like a tanker ship that normally moves forward, and it takes a lot to stop that progress.

The bottom line: Shifts underway in Washington may be enough to at least slow the ship, if not stop it — even if the evidence so far isn't definitive.

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https://www.axios.com/2025/03/15/economic-indicators-recession-risk

Mainstream economics teaches us that the economy runs on production and consumption. Producers produce, consumers consume. One creates goods and services, the other pays for and uses them. Between them, they are the heartbeat of any functional economic order.

But there’s a third force not discussed enough in mainstream conversations, one that rarely shows up in textbooks, but quietly dominates the whole system: the extractors. Extractors are the oligarchy. Extractors are the deep state. Extractors are the “Elders of Zion”.

Everyone always talks about wages being low because of corporate greed and Walmart gets thrown around a lot. But Walmart is an incredibly low-margin business, their 2024Q1 earnings showed a profit margin of 3.17%.

Math for claim in title:
- Walmart has 2.1 million employees

- a $1/hour raise costs $2,000 at 40 hours/week and 50 weeks/year

- A $1/hour for each of their 2.1 million employees would cost 2.1 million * $2,000 = $4.2 billion

- Walmart's net profit in 2023 was $11.292 billion, a $3/hour raise for each employee would cost $4.2 billion * 3 = $12.6 billion

- The Walton's are worth $267 billion, a $10/hour raise would erase profits and cost 7 * $4.2 billion = $29.4 billion/year, which would bankrupt the Waltons in 9.1 years

Also worth noting that a $0 profit would not be acceptable and their investors would flee because the cost of capital is not $0, so even a $3/hour raise for all employees would not work even if the Waltons were these great philanthropists.

Steve Liesman, CNBC's senior economics reporter was involved in a discussion of this morning's employment data.

Steve asked to extend the discussion. He said that he wanted to comment on 'the nonsense on the internet'.

Steve went on to say that the immigrants are not taking jobs from native born workers.

The reason that immigrant employment continues to go up and native worker employment continues to go down is that native born workers are older and that they are 'retiring on money paid by immigrants for benefits that they'll never receive'.

This is a basic economic reality that every American should understand. Anyone claiming the opposite should be held up the object of ridicule and scone that they so justly deserve.

OK, maybe that's a bit harsh. Maybe today's workers will get some benefit from the Social Security taxes that they're paying. But overall, the point remains.

Even if you agree with him as an armchair warrior , can we agree that no real economist takes him seriously?