2. They bemoan $70M/yr lost to food stamp fraud, and suggest canceling the whole program. This sounds bad until you do the math and see that this corresponds to 0.1% of total program expenditures. FOX is calling to depriving 999 hungry people of a meal in order to dissuade one petty crook.

That can be a persuasive argument for innumerates. Thanks for pointing out the BS.

I'm far more concerned about the people who should be receiving benefits but aren't for whatever reason. I remember that Matthew Desmond wrote about it in "Poverty, by America", but I forget the numbers. (Should = eligible under current law, not in a more humane world)

3. One possible solution is to keep the existing system of rewards and to implement a more rigorous and robust system of punishments to deal with all of the perverse incentives that they create. I think that’s a mistake for reasons I've written about at length in the past.

Also food stamp fraud is, by and large, identity theft of food stamp recipients by the organized criminals that generally trade in identity theft, not people fraudulently applying for benefits.

The statistical ratio noted here on the 'Food Stamp fraud' seems to be similar to the 'Illegal Voter fraud': both are much discussed as abuse of the programs, and both account for about the same 0.1% of program expenditures.

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