Feed Americans, Not Trillionaires

Feed Americans, Not Trillionaires

Why we “find” buckets of cash for oligarchs—but nickel-and-dime hungry families

We keep pretending this is complicated. It isn’t. America is the wealthiest country in the world that makes poor choices—on purpose. We’ll write giant checks to billionaires with a straight face, then look a single mom in the eye and say, “Sorry, the grocery money is too expensive.”

SNAP—the program that keeps about 42 million people eating—costs roughly $8.3 billion per month. Average benefit: about six bucks a day. That’s survival, not luxury.

Meanwhile, the billionaire pipeline flows. Public money, contracts, tax credits, and incentives—hundreds of millions of dollars a month can flow toward the already wealthy, wrapped in words like “innovation,” “efficiency,” and “growth.” Heads, they win, tails, we pay.

We call food for kids “welfare.”
We call cash for oligarchs “investment.”
That’s the con. And surprise, surprise, it has been branded by billionaires.

Sidebar: A Century of “Richest on Earth” — and the New Goalpost

Twelve people have worn the crown since 1900. The successive crown they’re chasing isn’t “richest billionaire.” It’s “first trillionaire.”

• • Bernard Arnault — 2023

• • Elon Musk — 2022

• • Jeff Bezos — 2018–2021

• • Bill Gates — 1997–2007, 2009, 2014–2017

• • Carlos Slim — 2010–2013

• • Warren Buffett — 2008

• • Sam Walton (Walton family) — 1991–1996

• • Yoshiaki Tsutsumi — 1980–1990

• • J. Paul Getty — 1950–1979

• • Henry Ford — 1940–1949

• • John D. Rockefeller — 1910–1939

• • Andrew Carnegie — 1900–1909

From Carnegie to Musk, the crown keeps changing—but the race never stops. The new finish line isn’t a bigger yacht. It’s the first trillionaire.

Why people need help (and who caused it)

People don’t need SNAP because they’re lazy. They need it because work doesn’t pay enough in the bottom half of the economy. Walmart, McDonald’s, and other large employers suppress wages and maintain unstable schedules. Taxpayers then backfill the gap so their workers can eat—and those same employers capture the sales at the register. It’s a neat little circle of greed: low pay → public aid → corporate revenue.

In 2023, the Supplemental Poverty Measure (the one that actually counts noncash help and modern expenses) rose to 12.9%—42.8 million people. That’s after the temporary pandemic supports ended. Poverty up. Rents up. Groceries up. Tell me again how people “need to budget better.”

The fraud myth (spoiler: it’s tiny)

You’ve been fed media stories about SNAP “abuse.” Here are the receipts:

• • Trafficking (selling benefits for cash) runs ~1.6% of benefits in recent USDA studies. That’s it. Not 20%. Not 10%. One point six.
  • Government watchdogs estimate that improper payments (over- or under-payments) account for around 11.7%, with most of that being due to paperwork/error, rather than intentional fraud. Meanwhile, underpayments and denials also happen—meaning eligible families get too little or nothing.
  • USDA’s own anti-fraud work has cut trafficking down over the years and continues to prosecute actual abuse. The system is not wide open; it’s heavily monitored.

If fiscal integrity matters, don’t weaponize a 1–2% error rate to cut food for kids while funneling ten-figure subsidies to private space ventures.

Public cash for private empires

Let’s say the quiet part loud. Public money built private fortunes, especially at the top. Investigations reveal that Musk’s empire was shaped by decades of loans, contracts, grants, tax credits, and regulatory incentives—from Tesla’s DOE loan and EV credits to NASA/DoD contracts, as well as local incentive packages for factories and launch sites. In 2024 alone, about $6.3 billion in support; since inception: $38 billion.

Public-private partnerships aren’t the problem; asymmetric risk is. Failures are socialized as public costs, while successes are privatized as equity gains that translate into political power. That’s how an aspiring trillionaire emerges while the school lunch line grows longer.
Put plainly: low-income families end up subsidizing the ultra-rich.

The billionaire party while America skips dinner

While SNAP is squeezed and food banks see lines, the oligarch class is out here cosplaying The Great Gatsby—Venetian wedding spectacles, ballroom galas, fleets of jets and yachts—exactly when hunger programs twist in the wind.

And that’s just the invitations. The running tab for club fly-ins and golf weekends at private resorts—millions per weekend in public expense, plus government payments flowing into the same properties for security details and staff lodging. We police a $6/day grocery card like it’s grand larceny, but wave through club weeks that burn through millions before the dessert course.

“But judges…” — yeah, let’s talk about the courts

You asked what is wrong with the courts. Here’s a short, sober version:

• • In Citizens United (2010), the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for unlimited independent political spending by corporations and unions, turbocharging outside money and billionaire megaphones in our elections. That wasn’t a small tweak; it tilted the entire field toward people with unlimited cash.

• • In Janus (2018), the Court weakened public-sector unions by banning agency fees from nonmembers—shrinking worker power and making it harder to bargain for wages/benefits that keep families off SNAP. Janus didn’t “ban unions.” It defunded them in public workplaces by creating permanent free riders. That tilts the field toward lower pay and thinner benefits, which is exactly how people with full-time jobs end up in the grocery line needing help.

• • In Loper Bright (2024), the Court overturned Chevron deference, making it easier for judges to second-guess the experts at agencies such as the USDA, OSHA, and NHTSA—the same referees who keep workplaces safe, cars honest, and benefit programs functioning. This results in more litigation and less protective capacity.

Put bluntly: a string of decisions supercharges billionaire influence, weakens unions, and hobbles the regulators who protect the rest of us. So yes, it can feel like robed referees are toasting with $100 wine while workers get means-tested to death.

What do we do? We change the rules: pass real campaign-finance laws that survive scrutiny, push for public financing, demand a binding judicial ethics code, expand lower courts to clear backlogs, and—where states elect or retain judges—organize and vote accordingly. We don’t “unelect” federal judges; we out-organize the billionaires who picked them.

It’s not envy. It’s priorities.

SNAP isn’t “waste.” It’s breakfast that lets a kid learn, a senior choosing food and medicine, a worker making rent and groceries when the schedule roulette wheel comes up short.

$8.3B/month buys dignity in a nation that can easily afford it.

If you still think we can’t fund a basic grocery lifeline, ask why we always “find” endless money for launch pads, stadium tax breaks, lavish security at private clubs, and subsidies that fatten the already-fattened—while means-testing bananas.

The Fix: Feed America, Then Innovate

1. 1. Raise the minimum wage and stabilize working hours.
      Living-wage laws and fair-scheduling rules mean fewer families on SNAP and less taxpayer subsidy for poverty-pay business models.

1. 1. Attach strings to subsidies and contracts.
      Public money = labor, safety, civil-rights, and data standards with automatic claw backs. Blow up a launch site or underpay workers? Public money isn’t a tip jar — it’s an investment. Meet the terms or pay it back. Exceed the terms, and the public shares the gain.

1. 1. Strengthen worker power.
      Make organizing safe and fast. Enforce anti-retaliation with real penalties. When workers can bargain, SNAP rolls shrink and communities stabilize.

1. 1. Fix campaign finance and judicial ethics.
      Pass robust disclosure, cap contributions where permitted by law, and move toward public financing. Demand a federal ethics code for the Supreme Court and strengthen state-level judicial accountability.

1. 1. Restore regulatory capacity after Loper Bright.
      Congress should write clearer statutes and fund agencies so they can win in Court. If judges were to take away deference, then they should give agencies explicit authority to protect people and the power to enforce it.

1. 1. Tell the truth about SNAP.
      Trafficking is ~1–2%. Improper payments include underpayments and paperwork errors, as well as fraud. Stop using edge cases to starve millions.

1. 1. Fund the basics first.

1. 1. Feed America—then fund rockets. We can do both in a wealthy nation—but human beings come first.

The line in the sand

“We can’t afford $8.3B a month for food”? Stop it.

Here’s what $8.3 billion/month buys America:

• • Kids eating breakfast and paying attention in school.

• • Seniors choosing food and medicine, not one or the other.

• • Workers are making rent and buying groceries while their employer plays a game of schedule roulette.

Average SNAP benefits were about $187–$188 per person per month in 2024—around $6 a day. That’s not luxury; it’s survival.

If we can find approximately $500 million a month for a man who’s already the richest on Earth, we can find $8.3 billion a month to ensure that kids and seniors have access to food. One of those investments builds a decent country. The other builds a bigger yacht.

So I’ll say it plain:

Feed Americans, Not Billionaires.

People first. Groceries first. Dignity first. Trillionaires can wait.
Feed Americans, Not Trillionaires.