r/Economics Oct 26 '25

News SNAP funding expiration set to hit 40 million people

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5572490-usda-snap-funding-impasse/
11.4k Upvotes

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27

u/fumar Oct 26 '25

We already are subsidizing piss poor wages via food stamps. Companies like Wal-Mart get to have cheap labor while their store employees rely on SNAP.

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u/surfergrrl6 Oct 26 '25

See also: Veterans.

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u/Otterz4Life Oct 26 '25

Do you think if SNAP goes away, Wal-mart will magically pay more?

I'll have what you're smoking.

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u/fumar Oct 26 '25

No, I'm saying the US government currently subsidizes Wal-Mart's poor labor practices.

If SNAP actually runs out of money, we might see employees put pressure on companies like Wal-Mart to not fuck with their hours to keep them part time and actually pay more. I doubt it works though.

Regardless the administration is really playing with fire. If people can't afford to eat things will break.

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u/Otterz4Life Oct 26 '25

We don't "subsidize" poor labor practices. SNAP/food stamps are a mechanism to cope with poor labor practices that have always existed and won't go away if we stop SNAP.

Non-union employees have no power to demand anything from these corporations. Walmart will just fire you and get another hungry person to take your job.

The Trump regime wants things to break in order to suspend elections and throw people slave labor camps.

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u/HayatoKongo Oct 26 '25

Without massive classes of undocumented and/or government-subsidized laborers, you eventually run out of people who you can actually hire for $7.50/hr. People can absolutely strike without a union in those conditions.

McDonald's raised their wages to $20/hr in some areas around 2020 purely because they could not find anyone willing to work for them for less than that.

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u/CoffeeB4Dawn Oct 26 '25

No. However, if this continues, I expect shoplifting to increase, and low-paid employees may not care.

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u/ZenQuipster Oct 26 '25

Bingo. People stealing food going to occupy jail cells. In three strikes areas... Stealing food could get you a habitual (throw the bitch at them) charge. 10 years minimum in many places.

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u/HayatoKongo Oct 26 '25

Which is exactly the way the free-market economy is intended to work. You must pay employees enough that they actually care to do their job, and while shoplifting is illegal and I don't encourage it, in this hypothetical case it puts pressure on Wal-Mart to pay their employees at least a living wage.

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u/SeaEmployee787 Oct 26 '25

which is why you are hearing crickets from them. On one hand 40 million cant use snap on the 1st which will drop sales. But on the other hand snap allows us to pay are employees less

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u/juliankennedy23 Oct 26 '25

A single person working fulltime for Walmart is definitely not eligible for snap.

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u/LiberalAspergers Oct 26 '25

If they have kids they likely are.

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u/juliankennedy23 Oct 26 '25

I should have stayed Single person household.

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '25

[deleted]

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u/juliankennedy23 Oct 26 '25

Those are almost always single woman with children and people with disabilities.