This past week marked a milestone in still life photography as "Potato #345" (pictured above) a portrait of an organic Irish spud, taken by Kevin Abosch, sold for 1 million pounds (1.08 million dollars). If verified, "Potato #345" will be the 15th most expensive photograph ever sold. The current record holder is "Rhein II" by Andreas Gursky with a sale price of $4.3 million. Peter Lik has claimed his "Phantom" exceeded that record "Officially making art history" by selling for 6.5 million. That figure, however, has never been verified and the buyer was never named.
Abosch, known for taking portraits of celebrities, claims that it is the most he's been compensated for a portrait he wasn't commissioned to take. When asked why he decided to take a portrait of a potato, Abosch explained that this particular potato arrived at his house with a batch of other organic vegetables. It seemed that this escapee from the Oreda factory spoke to him as he found "commonalities between humans and potatoes" in "our relationship as individuals within a collective species." Noting that "The life of a harvested potato is violent and taken for granted." and he used "the potato as a proxy for the ontological study of the human experience.". Pffftttt! Artists... go figure. Whatever his philosophical, societal, alcohol or drug induced reasons were for his artistic decision to take a picture of a country fair, fresh cut, deep fried favorite wannabe is neither here nor there. The fact is that he made over a twice baked million with one click of the shutter. Not bad work if you can get it.... no matter what violent end the potato may have suffered.
It just goes to show you, my fellow Observers, when it comes to finances, reality is both relative and contingent. Relative in the way we each individually perceive wealth and contingent upon whether or not you individually have enough cash to pay your bills. Maybe it's a cosmic form of tuber irony that this sale took place a mere week before an estimated 500,000 people will be facing being denied food stamps by losing their benefits due to over 40 states reinstating a strict three month limitation on SNAP benefits for people 18 to 49 that are not disabled or raising minor children. At the high side of this estimate, as many as 1 million of our country's most impoverished citizens could lose food assistance this year due to this action.
Many of you will remember the 1996 bipartisan welfare reform laws deemed "work for welfare" as our government making an effort to show participants of low or no income families that they wanted them to make genuine effort to find work or get job training in order to qualify for any type of assistance. As a sign of the times, this was a logical and necessary step for our government to take due to the manipulation and fraud that marred and overwhelmed the welfare programs of the day. It proved successful and we were well on our way to productive welfare reform. Twelve years later, without any additional landmark modifications to the welfare laws and unemployment rising steadily, most states obtained federal waivers from having to enforce the 90 day limit on SNAP or simply ignored the law.
With the unemployment rate dropping recently to around 5%, states have been reinstating the food stamp limitation in an effort to curb budget deficits. They do this even though economic recovery has been unbalanced and has no certain longevity according to economists. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has reported that most states who are implementing their prerogative to enforce these denials of food assistance have few or no employment programs, offer recipients no opportunities for work training (claiming that there is no money in their budget to fund them) and plan to deny benefits regardless if the recipients have shown a legitimate effort in searching for work or not.
Now I will be the first one to concede the point that our country has become too much of a welfare state that's nearly bankrupt. I'll also agree that we have to stop the steady flow of unnecessary and excessive welfare payouts and we have to cut them somewhere, but we may want to reconsider the philosophy of taking funds away from food stamp programs as well as denying citizens access to them. There are plenty of other places to trim the budget. Especially since most food stamp recipients fall into the 84% of the population that has an annual income at, below or only 50% above the federal poverty level. For example, a family of four is considered to be living at the poverty level with an income of $24,250.00. For the lucky few making 50% above that, they are still only bringing in $36,375.00 per year. A single person (the ones that pay the most tax) is considered at the poverty level with an income of $11,770.00. At 50% above that, it only grows to $17,655.00. If you take those numbers and deduct the $769.00 (or higher) national average cost per month for a roof over your head, it doesn't take a potato surgeon to realize that these people are already in financial trouble by just cutting a check for their rent. Let alone utilities, insurance, a car, transportation, taxes, medical care, food, etc.,etc.,etc.
Another sign of the times is the number of food stamp recipients themselves. In 1996 it was around 18 million. In 2007, when the recession started, it jumped to 26.3 million. Present day has seen that number skyrocket to 46.5 million. Critics claim that it is because people are manipulating and cheating the system to get benefits they don't deserve. The truth is that the national average annual income numbers are showing that most individuals need the assistance. Even if the recipients are working, the statistics show they still don't make enough to stay afloat. And it's not just the food stamp programs that are strained. Along with most government welfare program budgets being as much underwater as a lot of millennium mortgages are, local food banks are being cleaned out faster than they can be restocked. Churches and organizations, such as The Salvation Army, have reported that monetary donations that fund their charities are at an all time low. All this despite the fact that food stamp recipients are at an all time high. In other words, it's still not enough. The disturbing part of these facts is that these organizations are the sources that people will be looking to when they lose their benefits.
The welfare system isn't perfect and, as I conceded, there is too much of it, but I believe there are other courses of action our government can take to reduce misuse of the system without denying it's citizens food assistance. For instance... Why does the government still hand out welfare checks? In this day and electronic age, wouldn't it be easier and more effective to issue rent or utility vouchers for those who qualify? Recipients could use them as payments to their landlords and utility companies and would be considered the same as cash for those purposes. This would ensure that welfare funds were being used properly, at least in those instances. They pass out school vouchers, don't they? I don't think it's that far fetched. So why do they continue to give recipients cash? Isn't that easier to misuse than food stamps? Can't you buy alcohol or drugs easier with cash than an EBT card? And what about anti-welfare supporters citing that people are doing just that with food stamps? Even though the government has made it harder to do so by not issuing "stamps", but rather loading funds on an EBT card, misuse is still discovered and exploited by those who wish to do away with these programs. What these "Stop the SNAP" advocates are not telling you is that food stamp fraud has the lowest welfare fraud percentage at around 1%. This is negligible when put up against Medicare and Medicaid fraud that is reported at 10% or higher. The reason for the low fraud numbers when it comes to food stamps is that the consumer can not commit it alone, which is exactly why the government has to look at limiting where recipients can use their EBT card. That's where the corruption is, not with the consumer, but with the retailer. Small shopkeepers that accept EBT transactions have been known to trade cash for EBT transfers. Keeping a small percentage on the dollar for their trouble, of course. It also would seem to be a lot easier to use an EBT card to buy beer and cigarettes at a local convenience store than at a national grocery chain, wouldn't you think? You also have to ask why would someone with limited means pay small store prices for groceries anyway? It just doesn't make sense. Even if it is food stamps and not actual cash, I would want to get the most out of what little benefits I have...wouldn't you?
The truth is, my loyal reader, that along with the dregs of our society that drag down the system, there are hard working, tax paying people, with or without children, that still need help in making ends meet. For every naysayer that finds it easy to say that single people can go without, claim that they are living beyond their means and couples with children should not have had them if they couldn't afford them, I offer that what they seem to forget is that life's situations change without warning. More than a few working singles, couples and parents have had the monetary rug pulled out from under their feet when their companies downsized, relocated or went out of business, leaving them with no recourse but to work at a menial job or not be able to find work at all and have to resort to welfare assistance. I know, I was there... and with the assistance that my family and I received, no matter how much it wounded my pride, helped us to maintain our finances, kept us getting to the jobs we could find and allowed us to work ourselves to a position where we didn't need assistance anymore. We were lucky and we also learned a hard lesson in the process. It showed us that our desire to want a better life for ourselves and are children was not enough and even though we personally were able to rise above welfare we are not above the possibility that we may very well need it again. No matter what side of the welfare debate your on, the fact remains that there are still many that qualify for it, rely on it, shouldn't be judged for using it or denied receiving it. Strictly an Observation. If you'll excuse me, I have to make a donation to the Woodbury food bank.
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