Cascade Failure, Aircraft Pilots, And the New Homeless
I like to read "incident reports" from the NTSB. In almost every airline crash the blame ultimately falls on the pilot, but the cause is almost always a cascade failure where the pilot made a mistake and then a chain of multiple problems, all proceeding from the first lead three, four, or five steps down the line to charred wreckage and multiple deaths. No one problem could have caused the disaster, but piled together the end was inevitable.
Today there was a post on Rep. Peter DeFazio trying to eat for a week on food stamps and I think it would be great if every member of congress tried it. He had just over $30 dollars to spend and when he went to the checkout and hit $32 and change he removed items from the cart to hit his mark. Then he removed more items to represent the proposed 20% cut in food stamps. Kudos to him.
But now let's look at what normal hardships he missed.He was somehow transported at no cost to a full service food supermarket and for those without cars and living in "food deserts" it may be more normal to shop in "convenience stores". He had an experienced food stamp shopper to advise him-which certainly ain't a normal perk. He had time to comparison shop and no apparent child care responsibilities. He had a computer and printer and internet access to print out the internet coupons he was using.
Let's take something more normally approaching a food stamp family- I won't go deep or check statistics here but I'll bet mine are closer to normal then him: My family is a man and women and two children living in an apartment that approaches 60% of their income.I'll put one out of work and the other working two minimum wage jobs, one full time and one part time. They have an older working car AND a computer, printer, and internet. Their savings are depleted and after real basics like rent, food, utilities, and gas they have a "disposable income" of about $50 bucks a week for every thing else.
Let's cascade them-it's April-the month of the husbands birthday and the car needs to be registered-$30-not too bad, but it won't pass the $10 dollar inspection without 2 new tires. And that's at least $150 leaving only $10 dollars or about 33 cents a day for everything else for the rest of the month. But there's new places where you can rent to own tires and he can get them for only $25 a month for 18 months. That's only $65 in April and leaves $75 a month for the next 17 months.
In June his computer printer cartridge goes dry. No more coupons from the internet because $29 dollars from their $75 a month is too much for a single week and saving up with just $75 isn't working.And they were only saving about $5 a week on coupons. Make that $55 a month.
The last day in June the car shits the bed, not too bad, $60 for the tow and about $150 for the repair.They know the garage guy and he'll take $50 a month. They drop their $39 basic internet access and they're down to $45 a month, and pie-in-the-sky, in November they go back up to $85 disposable a month.
August is the month the husband's full time job cuts him back 11 hours a week and drops his insurance. That's a net loss exceeding their disposable income and they sell their car for $600.
I could write the rest but why bother, take your pick-the wife gets pregnant, a child breaks his arm, the husband gets pneumonia from walking to his job and missing work and gaining medical bills-maybe he dies too...
All I can tell you is by next spring that family ARE the new homeless.
Every disaster proceeds from an initial mistake and a cascade failure. And the cascade could start with almost anything-but cutting food stamps could certainly be the initial mistake.
= new reply since forum marked as read
This is the reality for far too many people. 
and there is always an "incident". The cumulative effect eventually catches them all
