ben•e•fi•ci•ar•y/noun - a person who derives advantage from something, especially a trust, will, or life insurance policy.
par·a·site/noun - parasite; plural noun: parasites - an organism that lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host's expense/derogatory - a person who habitually relies on or exploits others and gives nothing in return.
The government today has a rather peculiar way of identifying those who have come to depend more and more upon government. These people are not called dependents, as that might be construed in such a as to be perceived as being demeaning in some way, so they are instead referred to as, ‘beneficiaries’. As in, say, those ‘beneficiaries’ who are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, receiving food stamps. The number of these ‘beneficiaries’ has now topped 46,000,000 for 36 straight months, at least according to new data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the agency responsible for administering the program.
In the period of time from September 2011 through August 2014, the latest month for which data is available, the number of persons participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has exceeded 46 Million. In August 2014, again according to USDA, there were 46,484,828 so-called ‘beneficiaries’ of the SNAP program. That number was down slightly, or 2,060 ‘beneficiaries’, from the 46,486,888 who were receiving food stamps in July. However, at the same time, the number of households getting food stamps increased from 22,716,152,000 in July to 22,729,389 in August.
Given that there were 115,048,000 households in the country as of August, at least according to the Census Bureau, 22,729,389 of households on food stamps equaled 19.75 percent of all households in the nation. Households on food stamps in July got an average of $253.69 in August 2014, and in that month alone program benefits cost taxpayers $5,766,107,973. The 46,484,828 people getting food stamps in the United States in August continued to outnumber the entire populations of such countries as Poland, with it’s population of 38,346,279, Argentina with 43,024,374 citizens and Ukraine with 22,291,413. Pretty impressive!
Personally I have my own nomenclature for those who absolutely no problem with living off the rest of us. You see, I have a rather difficult time understanding how it is that someone can be said to benefit from being dependent upon, even in a small way, on the government. I view these people as being little more than parasites. Once upon a time, far from being seen as being a benefit, being dependent upon the government to any degree, was seen as being nothing short of an embarrassment, but not today in the ‘Era of Barry.’ Because being a parasite today has become something akin to being a badge of honor.
No comments:
Post a Comment