Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz

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Suggested Answers To The Second Short Quiz
School-Lunches - Food-Stamps - Medicaid


A. Cash vs. In-Kind

Question 1

Are our authors clear that “$2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America” means only $2.00 CASH per person per day?

Answer 1

Yes and no!!!

They included in “cash” Food Stamps because they were a “cash equivalent” even though they could not (and cannot) be used legally to purchase anything except food.

Question 2

And (ref. Q&A-8 of the First Short Quiz), were they clear that 20% of the households in “extreme poverty” ($2.00/person/day or less) did have some sort of housing subsidy -- while the remaining 80% were “couch surfing” with friends/relatives, in a homeless shelter, or out on the street?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

Are there at least 3 “in kind” (“non-cash”) federal assistance programs benefitting Americans living in “extreme poverty” ($2.00/person/day or less)?

Answer 3

Yes.

[Section E below invites everyone to try to think of others that are significant in terms of the scope of the “extreme poverty” problem.]


B. The National School-Lunch Program

Question 1

Was the National School-Lunch Program (“NSLP”) enacted in 1946 during the Truman Administration?

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

Does NSLP provide free or low-cost lunches for economically-disadvantaged children?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

In the case of children living in “extreme poverty,” would the lunches be free?

Answer 3

Yes.

Question 4

Did/does NSLP have TWO objectives -- propping up farm-commodity prices while providing lunches for economically-disadvantaged children?

Answer 4

Yes.

Question 5

Accordingly, in addition to most of the federal assistance taking the form of a cash reimbursement to the schools (or school districts) for each meal served, does some of it take the form of surplus agricultural stocks?

Answer 5

Yes.

Question 6

Since the federal assistance comprises a reimbursement for each meal served, is it then the responsibility of the school (or school district) to provide lunches within that budget that meet federal nutritional standards, with any cost over-run being borne by the school districts?

Answer 6

Yes.

But there is no indication in the literature that this is a problem.

Question 7

According to the Congressional Budget Office, did NSLP serve 30 million children each school day in 2014 at a cost of $12.7 billion?

Answer 7

Yes.


C. The Federal Food-Stamp Program (aka “SNAP”)

Question 1

Was the original Federal Food-Stamp Program enacted in 1939 as part of FDR’s “New Deal”?

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

Did the original Federal Food-Stamp program last only 4 years?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

Was the Federal Food-Stamp Program revived (after a few pilot programs 1961-1964) on a permanent basis under President Lyndon Johnson by the Food Stamp Act of 1964?

Answer 3

Yes.

Question 4

Like the Federal School-Lunch Program, did the Food-Stamp Programs (original, pilot and final) have TWO objectives -- propping up farm-commodity prices while providing food for people living in poverty?

Answer 4

Yes.

Question 5

Were food stamps, for most of the program’s history, effectively “special purpose currency” and, as such, printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing with the same care that it prints America’s paper money?

Answer 5

Yes.

Question 6

In recent years, have the physical food stamps printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing been replaced by the equivalent of Debit Cards?

Answer 6

Yes.

Question 7

Did the 2008 Farm Bill change the official name of the Federal Food-Stamp Program to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”), even though virtually all of the news media continues to refer to the program as the Food-Stamp Program?

Answer 7

Yes.

Question 8

Unlike the Federal School-Lunch Program which provides meals to school children, is there a theoretical possibility that the Debit Cards can (and the Food Stamps before them could) be used to buy food following which the impoverished person barters the food for other things?

Answer 8

Yes, food obtained with Food Stamps can, in theory, be bartered after leaving the grocery store for other things.

However, this would be illegal.

And there is nothing in the media indicating this is a problem.

Presumably because the “extreme poor” are so desperately hungry!!!

Question 9

Did Bill Clinton’s 1996 Welfare Reform place significant restrictions on the Federal Food-Stamp Program causing participation rates to plummet?

Answer 9

Yes.

Question 10

Nonetheless, did the U.S. Census Bureau report that the Federal Food-Stamp Program (aka SNAP) cost $70.9 billion in FY-2016 and supplied approximately 44.2 million Americans with an average of $125.51 per person per month in food assistance?

Answer 10

Yes.

NB: $125.51/month is only $4.18/day. And the “extreme poor” are obviously receiving much less than this.


D. Medicaid and Hospital Emergency Rooms

Question 1

Was Medicaid enacted as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society Program” in 1965?

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

Was Medicaid designed to provide free medical care to Americans living below the “poverty line”?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

Should Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” Medicaid for Americans living below the “poverty line” be confused with Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid (in participating states) to cover the next-lowest economic tier of Americans?

Answer 3

No.

Question 4

Does the promise of free medical care under Medicaid actually mean impoverished Americans are merely ELIGIBLE for free medical care, as distinguished from actually RECEIVING free medical care?

Answer 4

Medicaid merely promises eligibility for completely-free medical care.

HOWEVER, it does NOT compel doctors to accept Medicaid patients.

AND a distressingly-high percentage of Medicaid-eligible patients can NOT obtain medical treatment under the Medicaid Program (but please read on Q&A-5 & Q&A-6).

Question 5

Exclusively of Medicaid, did President Reagan sign The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 to require that all patients arriving at a hospital emergency room must, REGARDLESS OF ABILITY TO PAY, be screened for an emergency condition and, if an emergency condition is found, the patient must be treated and stabilized before being transferred to another facility or released (42 U.S. Code Sec. 1395dd)?

Answer 5

Yes.

Question 6

Is it difficult if not impossible to estimate the cost of providing Medicaid and Emergency-Room care for Americans living in “extreme poverty” ($2.00/person/day or less) because (A) the cost of the Emergency-Room portion is borne by zillions of individual hospitals across the country, and (B) the Medicaid cost of “extreme poverty” Americans is difficult to ascertain from total Medicaid costs?

Answer 6

Unfortunately.


E. Other Significant In-Kind (Non-Cash) Benefits for “Extreme Poverty” Americans?

Although there are zillions of in-kind (non-cash) benefits, both federal and state/local, that are designed to benefit “extreme poverty” Americans either directly or incidentally, Yours Truly’s impression is --

(1) many of them aren’t really aimed at eliminating “extreme poverty” -- at least not principally so aimed (e.g., free K-12 education, public libraries, etc. -- though history buffs will probably point out that the New York Public Library, which is actually a private organization with zillions of branches around the city, was actually viewed AND USED by penniless immigrants coming through Ellis Island as a “non-degree free university”); and

(2) many of them aren’t “significant” in terms of their capability, no matter how wonderful, to address the scope of nation’s “extreme poverty” (e.g., providing a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner for the poor in a particular locality).

**********
However, one “extreme poverty” program that we could discuss BUT THAT WOULD NOT BE “POLITICALLY CORRECT” TO DISCUSS IN THESE TERMS, is the U.S. Military.

The reason why it would not be “politically correct” to discuss it in these terms???

Because, just like “extreme poverty” children from America’s inner-city ghettos who used to dream of being the heavyweight boxing champion of the world for which the modern-day analog is playing in the National Football League, rather than settling for their only realistic career objective -- pusher or pimp (or girl friend of a pusher or pimp, graduating to whore) --

a “middle road” is available to “extreme poverty” children who stay in school long enough to qualify for, and join, the U.S. military.

Questions --

1. Isn’t it a sad commentary on American society that the only realistic alternative for extreme-poverty American children to the pusher/pimp/whore whirlpool facing them is “getting your brains beat out” by boxing or football???

2. And although the odds of avoiding bodily harm are probably better in the U.S. military, isn’t it still a sad commentary on American society that we employ professional gladiators to fight our wars???

3. And although Ancient Rome during its decline into oblivion employed its professional gladiators to entertain the public so it would be distracted from revolting, can it at least be said on behalf of American society that we employ our professional gladiators solely to fight wars???

4. Or is this “splitting hairs” at best because our football players (and boxers during the heyday of boxing) are “beating their brains out” merely to entertain the public so that it is distracted from their everyday humdrum lives???

5. Was Yours Truly the volunteer National Treasurer during the 1990’s of the “I Have A Dream”® Foundation that provided tutoring and mentoring for an entire “extreme poverty” school class (or public housing class cohort) from third-grade as it progressed through high school graduation, with a guarantee of college tuition -- for 178 projects in 51 American cities?

6. And was Yours Truly the founder, principal benefactor and principal workhorse for one of those 178 projects that contained 200 “extreme poverty” children in three public-housing projects?

7. In addition, BTW, to being a co-founder of the first homeless shelter in Fairfield County CT during the 1970’s?

8. Is the reason for Questions 5-7 to establish the credentials of Yours Truly for making an observation about the “extreme poverty” children in his own project and the “extreme poverty” children whom he met in some of the other 177 projects around the country and the “extreme poverty” children in the first homeless shelter in Fairfield County CT -- NAMELY, THAT QUITE A FEW OF THEM HAD OLDER SIBLINGS WHO HAD MANAGED TO QUALIFY FOR THE MILITARY AND THAT ALL OF THE OLDER SIBLINGS WERE BI-LINGUAL -- THEY SPOKE TWO LANGUAGES (BUT TYPICALLY ONLY TWO) -- “MILITARY” AND “GHETTO”??? And that fluency in only one usually still leaves the other incomprehensible???

*****
Hopefully, most readers will recognize Questions 1-4 as rhetorical.

A hint for answering Question 7 --

When Yours Truly was a U.S. Naval Officer for three years in the late 1960’s (during the Vietnam War), “Military” was quite different from “English” not only because of the terminology but also because of the pervasive military concepts and the way they were expressed.

However, anyone fluent in “Military” could understand “English,” though the reverse was often NOT true in many situations.

“Ghetto” (both then and now) already employs so many “in terms” that outsiders don’t understand and so many ways of conveying meaning (similar to Chinese where so many words, at least in terms of the written character, often have a multitude of different meanings depending on such things as inflection) that the uninitiated has little hope of understanding while the “Ghetto” speakers exchange satisfied looks over having excluded the outsider from their conversation.

A further observation???

Though also “politically incorrect” to notice, the Vietnam War was the last that was fought by a wide cross-section of American society because of a military draft.

Which, at least in large part, is why it was so unpopular!!!

[It was also an unnecessary war that was fought because our pols didn’t believe that the “Sino-Soviet Split” of 1959 (over the machinations by both China and The Soviets to unite both Russian Turkestan and Chinese Turkestan under their own aegis, leaving the other a non-nuclear power overnight) was real rather than a “hoax” being perpetrated by “monolithic” worldwide communism -- it took President Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger (who later accepted the additional simultaneous responsibility of being Nixon’s Secretary of State) to demonstrate with their 1972 “Opening to China” that nationalism sometimes trumps economic class -- similarly to the way James Michener chronicles in his book “Poland” that immediately following the Russian revolution, Western-European Capitals including Paris and London despaired that the “Red Army” could be prevented from “rolling to the Atlantic” including occupying the U.K., but the Polish Army whose rank and file were almost solely Polish peasants, defeated the “Red Army” because the Polish peasants decided they would prefer to be ruled by Polish masters rather than Russian masters.]

So has America become much more callous in engaging in war because the life-and-death consequences of the participants are borne disproportionately by those who grew up in “extreme poverty” and in our inner-city ghettos???

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