Forbes Writer to Daily Show: 'Food Stamps Are Cruel'

John Tamny: People don't like being 'reliant' on others
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 18, 2013 12:14 PM CST

On last night's Daily Show, correspondent Jessica Williams looked into food stamps' rapidly shrinking funding. The program is dwindling exactly as it should be, according to Forbes columnist John Tamny, though maybe not for the reasons you'd think. Tamny told Williams that he thinks "food stamps are cruel" because "I don’t think anyone is happy if they're reliant on someone else." He notes that "if people were literally starving, you would see a massive outpouring of charity," prompting Williams to ask what "literally starving" would mean.

"I guess it’s where literally people have distended bellies where they’re getting almost nothing," Tamny replies, noting that his comment was "going to come off the wrong way." Williams asks whether there were any existing programs to prevent such starvation, as Salon's Prachi Gupta writes, "now openly trolling a man who doesn’t even know he’s being trolled." Replies Tamny: "I haven’t heard of any of them; something tells me they don’t exist," who moments before had referenced SNAP. Anyway, were people to starve, the media would let us know, he suggests. To Williams, that sounded a bit like The Hunger Games—so she tries organizing a Games of her own with New York kids. Catch the whole segment in the gallery. (More John Tamny stories.)

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