President Trump said food benefits will only get paid once the shutdown ends, in a post on Truth Social Tuesday morning.
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Zoom in: “SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office,” Trump said on Truth Social, “… will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government.”
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It’s relatively simple to imagine what happens. Starving people will do anything to not starve, if food is in that store over there, they will loot it. This quickly results in a spiral of unrest as the social fabric starts to unravel. The longer it goes on the harder it becomes to correct it. You can’t just turn the food faucet back on, the stores are looted and destroyed and shipments aren’t coming in. The logistics of feeding people becomes increasingly complicated and difficult and local law enforcement become overwhelmed. The military gets called in but unless they bring food with them, it is unlikely to successfully stabilize the situation - again, starving people will do anything to not starve.
It’s a hugely stupid move to withhold food from a significant segment of your population - a key component of bread and circuses is the bread.
There is actually not that much food in a given supermarket. In large part because of logistics and food waste costing a lot of money. Its why “hole up in the grocery store during a zombie apocalypse” actually wouldn’t work out all that well.
And the moment a community lives the dream and burns down a kroger, there will be no more shipments to that or any aldi or whatever in… quite possibly that entire state.
At which point you have a hungry populace, regardless of income, and are back to “who can we shoot to make this go back to normal”.
Isn’t what typically happens in other countries is the shelves empty long before the riots start? Except we might still be a long ways from that.
I think the problem here is that most cities are now full of rich people so stealing from a kroger is unlikely to cause a real problem. In fact what will most likely happen is that richer people will pay higher prices and poorer people will steal more food and grocery profits won’t change much.
Though I would expect rural areas would get hit harder.
Yes, that is the social fabric breaking down. The answer is going to be basically Lord of the Flies. Imagine Hurricane Katrina but all over the country.