Property Tax Abolition Won’t Fly in Florida: A Pragmatic Call for Property Tax Reform

Across the United States, homeowners are feeling the squeeze not only in terms of housing costs, but also in terms of increasing property taxes. The National Mortgage Association pointed out that since 2019, the median American has experienced a property tax increase of 27.4 percent (Cotality). The state of Florida is not an exception to this trend. Major Florida cities, such as Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville, have experienced above-average property tax rate increases. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seized on the public frustration, leading him to propose abolishing the property tax last month. 

Why Economists Prefer the Property Tax

On some level, I can see why the property tax is preferred over other taxes. A paper from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that property taxes provide a more stable source of revenue relative to most other taxes (Blöchliger et al., 2015). Property tax is less sensitive to economic downturn because people still need property, regardless of the level of economic prosperity. In terms of distortion, the immobile nature of land can have some influence on homebuilding decisions (Arnott and Petrova, 2002), but is less distortive than the income or sales tax. Out of local tax sources, property tax is the least distortive. While property taxes can be moderately regressive, they are not as bad as sales taxes, excise taxes, or capped payroll taxes. 

Why Homeowners Despise It

I can also see why people despise the property tax. It is not only because about two-thirds of taxpayers believe that the property tax is too high (Harris/AP NORC). The property tax is a large, lump-sum payment that is more visible than the sales tax. Because of the opaque assessment system to determine the property tax amount, taxpayers feel like they have little over a system that seems quite arbitrary. For DeSantis, he views property taxes as oppressive and ineffective, which is why he wants to eliminate them. 

The Libertarian Dilemma

From a libertarian lens, property tax can be viewed as a violation of private ownership because property taxes are a partial seizure of the property one owns. Property tax is like perpetually paying rent to the government. I understand a libertarian impulse to want to eliminate it because it would mean less coercion and more freedom. Upon further examination, abolition is not a viable option because property tax is embedded into local government finance. 

Fiscal Reality Check

The Right-leaning, pro-free-market Tax Foundation released a piece called There's No Good Way to Pay for Property Tax Repeal last month. The first point of consideration is that property taxes account for 70 percent of all local tax revenue. One of the reasons why DeSantis' plan is problematic that he does not have an answer to how he would replace that tax revenue. This gets at the heart of the issue: which tax would replace the property tax? It is not as if the idea of abolishing a tax is unprecedented. There were multiple countries that eliminated the wealth tax because it was so ineffective, yet there are no examples of property tax abolition. We can take a look at why. 

Income tax is collected at the state level. Aside from being a more distortive tax than property tax, relying on income tax revenue would make local governments more dependent on state government. Greater reliance on the state government risks having less liberty, not more. Plus, the Florida state constitution prohibits a state income tax.

What about the sales tax? The sales tax is subject to volatility, whether seasonal cycles, economic cycles, or disasters, such as hurricane season in Florida. Texas was considering the idea of abolishing the property tax. To do so, the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association calculated that replacing all the property tax would require a sales tax of 19 percent, which would be an approximate increase of 11 percentage points. Even when Idaho reduced property tax, it was offset by a sales tax increase. For Florida to replace property tax revenue, the Florida Policy Institute estimates that Florida would need $50 billion. 

Local government does not have many other tax levers aside from the property tax. Whether it is sales, income, excise, or corporate tax, that would in most cases come from the state level. Taking away property tax would make local government more dependent on state government. A reason why property tax abolition has not happened at scale is because no feasible replacement maintains fiscal balance and local autonomy. 

If Florida were to abolish the property tax, cities and counties across the state would face a multi-billion dollar gap. It would either require a collapse of local government or local government would lose autonomy to the Florida state government. Would Florida honestly be more free with fiscal collapse or if local governments decide to rely on more regressive forms of taxation? Property tax abolition would likely increase coercion because local choice would disappear, state bureaucracy would grow, and taxation would become less transparent. 

A Libertarian Case for Reform, Not Abolition

Property tax is the structural foundation that keeps local government going. They fund schools, police departments, roads, and local services. A pragmatic libertarian approach is not to fantasize about abolition, but rather reform tax policy. The James Madison Institute (JMI), which is Florida's conservative/free-market think tank, takes this approach. JMI views the property tax as increasingly burdensome, but stops short of abolition. A few suggestions that JMI provides include homestead exemptions, appraisal caps, levy caps, sales tax swaps, and gradual elimination of school-property tax millages. Other structural reforms, including assessment reform, zoning modernization, and spending caps, would help make the property tax reform options more lasting. With firm spending restrictions, property taxes and limited government can co-exist. But the way for that co-existence to occur needs to be with arithmetic and solid reform ideas, not alchemy or wishful thinking. 

Trump’s 50-Year Mortgage Plan: Slow-Walking Americans Into Generational Debt

Housing costs in the United States continue to skyrocket, which makes homeownership an increasingly elusive endeavor. Especially since owning a home is one of the essential staples of the American Dream, politicians are even more gung-ho on finding new ideas to ease the burden of buying a house. One of the proposed ideas that has grabbed headlines is Trump's idea of extending the standard mortgage term from 30 years to 50 years. The Trump administration is pitching this idea as a way to lower monthly mortgage payments and to open the door to homeownership. Before passing such a policy, the Trump administration should ask what sort of economic or policy implications a 50-year mortgage would have for the housing industry. 

Trump's Illusion of Affordability

Lowering monthly mortgage payments sounds like a dream come true. The problem is that it is too good to be true and comes with a steep tradeoff. Although the principal is spread out over a longer period, so are the total interest payments. Because of that longer time horizon, interest payments will be much higher. One estimate from Realtor.com puts the total at approximately double of that of a 30-year mortgage. An estimate from the Associated Press calculates that the average home will cost an extra $389,000 in interest payments in comparison to a 30-year mortgage. Lower monthly payments today come at the cost of decades of additional debt. 

Another Hidden Cost: Slower Equity and Higher Interest

A longer time horizon creates another issue. Since the majority of a mortgage payment goes to interest instead of the principal, it can take decades to reduce the loan balance. This means that the home equity stays minimal while most of the debt remains outstanding. What Trump is selling as "affordability" becomes deferred wealth-building. The tradeoff is lower monthly payments today for higher interest payments over time and a weaker financial position in the future. This does little to build lasting financial security. For decades, the borrower's wealth is trapped under the weight of interest and debt. 

Similar experiments abroad show the limitations of ultra-long mortgages. In Japan, some regional banks have offered 50- to 60-year home loans, yet these loans have not meaningfully improved affordability. Homeowners simply remain in debt longer, often into retirement (Harimaya and Jinushi, 2025). In the United Kingdom, 35- to 40-year mortgages have grown in popularity, but they have not lowered the overall cost of housing. They have only extended the period during which borrowers are highly leveraged (Franklin et al., 2017). 

A study of 17 advanced economies over more than a century shows that expanding mortgage credit does not reliably increase housing construction. Instead, the financialization of housing markets can inflate prices without producing more homes (Kohl, 2020), a dynamic that a 50-year mortgage would most probably amplify. The lesson here is clear: stretching debt over decades does not address home affordability.

Source: Kohl, 2020, Socio-Economic Review

Additional Financial Risks of Ultra-Long Mortgages

There is another tradeoff aside from 21st-century serfdom and paying more in interest payments. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) shows that longer terms increase exposure to interest-rate changes, housing market downturns, and default risk (Larson et al., 2019). In other words, there are additional financial harms due to the longer time horizon that Trump is not thinking about because regardless of his motives, the political appeal does not change its economic flaws. 

Freedom of Contract versus Government Distortion

On the one hand, adults should have freedom of contract and the ability to voluntarily enter a contract, no matter how stupid it might seem. More options could theoretically create a more competitive market. On the other hand, this proposal is not about independent private loans. It is about government-backed loans. The problem with government-backed loans is that the upside is privatized, whereas the downside is subsidized and underwritten by taxpayer dollars. This creates moral hazard while artificially creating demand for housing.

Conclusion: A Policy That Misses The Real Problem

Ultimately, a 50-year mortgage has the illusion of "helping" with a lower monthly payment, but does a fine job of hiding the costs and trade-offs. Like with many government policies, this 50-year mortgage idea treats the symptom instead of the disease. It does nothing to address the main culprit, which is a manufactured housing shortage caused by well-intentioned government meddling. This is a topic I have covered multiple times, whether it is in the context of land-use regulations, rent control, redlining, the mortgage interest deduction, or making single-room occupancy all but illegal. The policy might be different but the outcome is the same: Government steps in to "help" the housing market and somehow manages to make matters worse. Funny how that works. 

Paying Americans to Pay More: The Economic Nonsense of Trump’s Tariff Dividend Plan

Very few things can be more alluring to voters than "free" money. Whether it is COVID-era stimulus checks, student loan forgiveness, or the child tax credit expansion, the idea that the federal government can cut a check and make everything hunky dory is populist hokum. To quote Milton Friedman, "there is no such thing as a free lunch." The latest twist on this handout scheme comes from the White House. This past Sunday, President Trump posted such a proposal on Truth Social: a $2,000 tariff rebate for low- and middle-income households. He frames it as a "dividend" to present it as a reward for his tariff policy. I would frame it as an insincere policy that, much like the rest of his tariff policy, is poorly thought out.

Mismatch Between Dividend Cost and Tariff Revenue

Trump is promising a $2,000 check funded by the tariff revenue. Similar to his proposal to replace the income tax with tariff revenue, the MAGA math does not math. According to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), Trump's tariff dividends will cost $600 billion per year. This far exceeds the projected $300 billion in revenue from Trump's new tariffs. This math refutes Trump's claim that there is so much tariff revenue that he can both pay out these dividends and "substantially pay down national debt." This does not pay down the debt, but rather adds to it. This proposal is also within the context of the federal government racking up a $1.8 trillion deficit this past fiscal year. 

When the Dividend Defeats the Tariff

Even if the numbers somehow balanced, the policy would still fail on principle. This past April, I discussed Trump's tariff rationales. I detailed how none of them made sense on their own, never mind when combined. One of those rationales from the Trump administration was to increase government revenue. Especially since the rebates exceed the revenue by about $300 billion, rebating it directly to citizens defeats the Trump administration's purported fiscal purpose.  

It also undermines his goal to revive domestic manufacturing. Why? The point of the tariff with the manufacturing revival rationale is to make domestic goods or services cheaper relative to foreign ones. With the dividend check, it offsets the increase in import prices, which means that the consumer sees the same effective cost as they did pre-tariff. Some might still opt for the cheaper domestic option, but the dividend blunts the intended goal of boosting domestic manufacturing. 

Even worse, tariffs rarely go unanswered. Trading partners routinely implement retaliatory tariffs in response with tariffs of their own, targeting such industries as machinery, farm goods, and manufactured products, which are some of the industries that Trump purports to champion. Those retaliatory tariffs squeeze American producers, blunt the competitive edge gained from tariffs, and further illustrate how tariffs are an economic example of metaphorically shooting oneself in the foot. 

Trump Inadvertently Admits That Tariffs Harm Americans

This dividend is more perturbing than the dividends subverting his own administration's rationales for the tariffs. Trump claims that the tariffs will "make America rich again." If tariffs were truly enriching, there would be no need for a dividend in the first place. The fact that there is a dividend is a tacit admission that tariffs are harmful to the everyday American. It distracts from the reality that it is the U.S. consumers that pay for Trump's tariff tomfoolery. Last May, I covered how over a dozen studies confirm that Trump's tariffs from the first term increased consumer prices. On top of that, a working paper from the National Bureau Economic Research (NBER) released last month illustrates how domestic consumers paid the price of Trump's tariffs from his first term and that the cost of the tariff exceeded the government revenue collected (Flaaen et al., 2025).

Consumer price increases were not only observed during Trump's this first term. They are showing up in Trump's latest round of tariffs. Estimates from the Tax Foundation suggest that tariffs imposed under the current regime have already pushed retail prices up by about 4.9 percentage points relative to the pre-tariff trend. Part of the price increase comes indirectly when domestic firms raise their own prices after tariffs on imports make foreign goods more expensive and less competitive. 

Despite the increase, the pass-through to consumers is less than the full tariff rate, which points out that firms absorbed some cost and consumers acted cautiously, making the overall price impact more modest than many initial estimates suggested. A more modest price increase does not make this a win. These smaller costs still reflect economic inefficiency (also known as deadweight loss) since resources are diverted toward less competitive domestic production and away from the most efficient global suppliers. 

Tariffs and Inflation

Individual consumer price increases were not only due to the tariffs. These tariffs would have an inflationary effect. Both the St. Louis Federal Reserve (Soyres et al., 2023) and the San Francisco Federal Reserve (Jordà et al., 2022) found that the COVID-era stimulus checks contributed to the 2021-22 inflation. The COVID stimulus checks can be used as a proxy for what would happen. Both inject purchasing power into households, i.e., aggregate demand spikes. Since it is a one-time windfall, it would more likely lead to a burst in consumption (and not saving), much like with the stimulus checks. What makes the tariff dividends worse is that tariffs raise the cost of goods, which limits supply. Given that the tariffs raise prices while the rebates raise consumer demand, this dividend could very well create even more inflationary pressure than the COVID stimulus checks.   

Postscript

When all is said and done, Trump's dividend is more than cognitive dissonance or the mental gymnastics done to be apologetic for protectionism. It is a self-inflicted parody of supposedly sound economic policy. What Trump is doing is taxing the American people, laundering that money through Washington, and giving part of it back as a "dividend" so he can pat himself on the back and pretend that he solved a problem that he himself created. This is akin to setting your house on fire and then congratulating yourself for roasting some marshmallows and creating some s'mores over the ashes of what was once your home. With tariffs, consumers get burned through higher prices, fiscal discipline goes up in flames, and economic logic goes out the window. This is what happens when the U.S. government tries to fix a problem that it created: the everyday citizen pays the price while sacrificing freedom. Sadly, this is what passes for economic "wisdom" in 2025. 

Privatizing Air Traffic Control Can Work, But Only With Smart Execution

If you live in the United States and are looking to travel by airplane domestically anytime soon, you might want to reconsider. Last Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced a proactive measure to reduce flights by 10 percent at 40 high-traffic airports across the country. The reason for this reduction is there are air traffic control (ATC) staff shortages created by the government shutdown that has yet to end. Similar to when I discussed SNAP benefits last week, it astounds me how something as essential as air travel is more vulnerable when there is a government shutdown. Unlike essential services funded independent of annual appropriations, ATC operations under the FAA grind to a halt during political impasses, which shows how dependence on government budgeting makes even critical infrastructure hostage to politics. This latest fiasco, which could have been easily avoided, is one of many reasons why air traffic control needs to be privatized. 

FAA's Failure to Modernize ATC

When it comes to ATC, the FAA has decidedly and woefully dropped the ball. Take a look at this capstone memorandum that the Office of Inspector General released in September 2025. This summary of 50 OIG audits covers the FAA's Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), which was the FAA's modernization program that began in 2003. This two-decade, $36-billion program to modernize achieved only 16 percent of its intended benefits. You can read more criticism based on this OIG memorandum here. I will say that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and its September 2024 report concurs. According to the GAO, 51 of its 138 systems are unsustainable, whether due to lack of parts, outdated functionality, or an inability to fund, the latter of which is rich is given how much money the government has already thrown at ATC modernization. 

FAA's Institutional Challenges

The GAO is correct to point out that the FAA is slow to modernize. That is not a mere glitch or an issue of throwing enough money at the problem. The Cato Institute argues in its Handbook for Policymakers that the FAA, being funded by congressional appropriations and constrained by political oversight (e.g., the FAA is re-authorized every five years), makes it inherently and systematically ill-suited to manage ATC. The reason is because the incentive is to protect such programs as NextGen instead of innovating. Because every budget line is subject o congressional oversight and political trade-offs, FAA managers face incentives to avoid risk and preserve existing programs, even when modernization would yield long-term savings. 

Instead of cost-saving reforms, Congress is incentivized to demand politically motivated programs. This does not address the cost growth, schedule delays, or performance shortfalls that are endemic within the federal procurement regulations. Whether privatization could eliminate every challenge, what is clear is that the chronic delays in NextGen highlight how the FAA's political funding model and risk-averse procurement system hinder innovation. 

Canada as a Model for ATC Privatization

The FAA's performance is a contrast to how Canada has managed ATC, a structure that the Cato Institute has championed. In 1996, Canada privatized its ATC into a self-funded nonprofit corporation called Nav Canada. ATC funding was converted from a ticket tax to a user fee. Nav Canada has won multiple awards for having modern ATC technology and for being one of the safest ATC systems in the world. To support this point, a 2005 GAO report discussed what happened when Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Australia privatized ATC in the 1980s and 1990s. The result was that privatized systems cut costs, invested in new technologies, and either maintained or increased safety. 

Understanding the Natural Monopoly in ATC: Privatization's Limitations

There is a nuance I would like to discuss today that I did not cover in my 2015 piece on ATC privatization. Much like when I analyzed water fluoridation earlier this year, the ATC industry has components of a natural monopoly: high fixed costs, safety and regulatory barriers, and large scale. Competition is possible for the airport towers (terminal services) in terms of contracting those services out to private providers, but the en-route services have the hallmarks of a natural monopoly (Eno Center for Transportation). The en-route, national network, which is the biggest component of ATC, is going to function as a monopoly, whether private or public, due to strong economies of scale and network externalities. Even the NAV CANADA success cited by the Cato Institute is privately owned, yet it remains a monopoly because it is the only ATC provider in Canada. Plus, safety oversight is still provided by the Canadian government through Transport Canada.

This gets to another point: a private monopoly has stronger incentives to innovate and contain costs because its survival depends on performance rather than political appropriations. This allows for increased likelihood to adopt newer technology, lower costs, and improve efficiency, whether those incentives are profit motive, market discipline, customer accountability, or operational autonomy that allows for faster and smarter implementation. 

Challenges of Privatization: Why Execution is Key

At the same time, privatization by itself does not guarantee success. A private monopoly still makes ATC prone to avoiding price capture, access denial, under-investment, or over-charging. The United Kingdom semi-privatized in the early 2000s. However, due to the financial difficulties following 9/11, the UK's National Air Traffic Services (NATS) had to be bailed out by the UK government in 2002. Even the aforementioned 2005 GAO study points out that these improvements were not strictly due to privatization.  It is not privatization itself, but rather governance during a transition to help ensure success.

Principles for Successful ATC Privatization

For privatization to succeed, there needs to be an independent, stakeholder-based board structure. A user-fee system linked to transparent cost-recovery and actual usage helps. So does an independent safety and economic regulator because it ensures safety without micromanagement. Many of these privatization efforts needed contingency funds to make sure that they were solvent (GAO, 2005). As the UK example shows, the transition needs to be gradual, negotiated, and with safeguards. If not, privatization can go off the rails, so to speak. It is the managerial, financial, and regulatory reforms that the governance allows for that determine privatization's success. Privatization does not guarantee success, but it at least establishes the correct incentive structure that the FAA simply does not offer. 

Conclusion

Short of full privatization, converting ATC into a public utility while implementing a user-fee payment system is one of the best courses of action. As the Reason Foundation details, there are 98 countries that have transitioned towards a user-fee payment system. They have more advanced technology and they are independent of the government budget process, the latter of which does not make it prone to rent-seeking, shutdowns, or other shenanigans that come with government budgeting. When done correctly, privatization is a great way to improve ATC. Until the American people can demand serious FAA reform, the United States will continue to suffer from subpar air travel. 

From Furniture to Semi-Trucks: When "National Security" Tariffs Go Wild

When you think about a country beefing up its national security, you might think about missiles, tanks, submarines, or cyber defense. For Trump, it looks a little different. Last month, the Trump administration implemented furniture tariffs, including a 25 percent tariff on upholstered furniture and kitchen cabinets (as of January 1, they will increase to 30 and 50 percent, respectively); as well as a 10 percent tariff on softwood lumber. On top of the furniture tariffs, there are the 25 percent tariffs on medium- and heavy-duty trucks that went into effect last Saturday. 

These tariffs were authorized under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows the president to impose tariffs on imports deemed a threat to national security. In other words, we have to be on the lookout for killer kitchen counters and heat-sinking sofas. Tongue-in-cheek remarks set aside, Trump's manipulation of Section 232 is more than merely about the economic costs of tariffs, as furniture outlet IKEA deciding to hike furniture prices in response to Trump's furniture tariffs illustrates. There are major national security implications for what Trump is doing. 

As the American Trucking Associations pointed out, Trump's truck tariffs will increase costs for carriers, increase operational costs for fleets, reduce freight volumes, and disrupt the integrated North American supply chain. Keep in mind that national security is not solely about militaries. National security depends on robust logistics, well-functioning supply chains, and a healthy economy. When logistical readiness is diminished, supply chain resilience is eroded (see Supply Chain Today chart below), and the weak rationale creates policy uncertainty and subsequent delay in investments. In short, what Trump's tariffs on trucks do is undermine national security. 

While furniture and lumber tariffs do not have the same impact on logistics or the supply chain, they certainly weaken the economy. As the National Association of Home Builders brings up in its analysis, Trump's tariffs will likely raise housing and construction costs (up to an additional $10,000 per home), strain supply chains that already heavily depend on imports, exacerbate a housing shortage, and hamper the domestic building sector when domestic production is unable to meet demand. This is even more nonsensical given that about half of U.S. lumber imports come from Canada, a long-standing ally and trade partner. Similar to the truck tariffs, national security flows from economic strength, resilient supply chains, and robust global ties. What the furniture tariffs do is weaken those essential foundations.  

When all is said and done, Trump is not making the United States safer with tariffs. He is making it weaker. By weaponizing "national security" to justify his blatant protectionism, his administration undermines the very pillars on which true national security rests: a strong economy, reliable supply chains, and trusted alliances. Instead of fortifying our defenses, his tariffs drive up costs, strain critical industries, and alienate long-standing partners. National security is built on openness, cooperation, and resilience, which is similar to what I argued last year about how free trade improves national security. If the actual goal is to keep the United States secure, weakening economic foundations and global partnerships is not strength. It is protectionist stupidity.

The SNAP Dilemma: Addressing Hunger While Perpetuating Poverty and Government Dependency

The United States federal government is heading toward the longest government shutdown. Aside from the COVID-era Obamacare premium tax credits that precipitated the shutdown, another piece of policy was caught in the crossfire of this debacle: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). More colloquially known as food stamps, SNAP is a federal welfare program to provide monthly food benefits to low-income households. The reason why this became a point of contention is that without a budget passed, SNAP benefits would be paused effective November 1. Last Friday, a couple of federal judges ordered the Trump administration to continue SNAP benefits amid the shutdown. There is still a possibility of those benefits being delayed a bit. 

It was not simply that the SNAP program was saved by a federal injunction that made me think more profoundly about SNAP benefits, an injunction that shows how its near-total reliance on federal funding makes the SNAP program fragile. According to the calculations of the Right-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI), if the SNAP benefits had been paused, 2.9 million people would have been pushed into poverty. When I read that, I thought to myself, "Really? That many?" The average monthly SNAP payment is $190.59 per person or $356.41 per household (or $4,276 per annum). After accounting for government transfers, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that average household income for a low-income household was $48,700 (CBO, p. 18). This would mean that slightly less than 10 percent of income post-transfer came from SNAP. 

Although the average enrollment period for SNAP is under a year, the fact that a one-month disruption can cause so much chaos shows how reliant people have become on the government for something as basic as food. It is quite the indictment of the welfare state when nearly 3 million people can end up in poverty due to administrative or political shifts. While it illustrates SNAP's role as short-term relief, it does not contradict the concern that the very existence of SNAP creates structural dependency. This structural dependency is not the only systemic issue with the SNAP program.

• Poverty Relief: SNAP benefits are modest and temporary. They only help against short-term shocks and do not pull a household out of poverty. Furthermore, this program does not address the root causes of poverty in the way that a program such as workforce development would. The fact that SNAP benefits are created to help households survive instead of improving upward mobility shows the limits of the program.
• Administrative Issues: As I pointed out last May, the SNAP program has had a rising overpayment problem in the past decade. SNAP overpayments have increased from 2 percent in 2012 to 10 percent in 2023. How can people rely on such a program for food delivery when it is prone to basic administrative failure? 
• Unintended Health Consequences: In another piece, I wrote about how SNAP exacerbates obesity. SNAP might address immediate hunger, but it doesn't help with long-term health issues or economic mobility, especially since SNAP subsidizes caloric intake without accounting for nutritional value. If a recipient has worse health outcomes as a result of SNAP, it hampers their ability to work or advance economically. In other words, it perpetuates poverty and keeping people on government supports instead of helping alleviate poverty. 
• Disincentive to Earn More: SNAP's eligibility cliffs, which are where benefits phase out sharply as income rises, create a modest disincentive for recipients to increase earnings because small pay raises can lead to a disproportionate loss of support. This can make low-income households more reluctant to move upward financially, thereby staying in a lower income bracket. 
• Disincentive for Self-Sufficiency: Research suggests that children exposed to welfare programs often develop more favorable attitudes toward government dependence and place less emphasis on work (e.g., Hartley et al., 2024; Barón et al., 2008). Although SNAP benefits last less than a year on average, some households participate repeatedly or episodically, which exposes children to government support. This repeated exposure, especially combined with the exposure of other welfare programs, can signal that the government is the primary safety net in life, thereby dampening the incentive for economic self-sufficiency.

Ultimately, SNAP symbolizes the tension between wanting to provide short-term relief for those in need versus long-term economic mobility. It is true that there is evidence that SNAP benefits can help with hunger relief, especially when dealing with such short-term shocks as job loss or sudden illness. It is also true that its modest benefits, the administrative inefficiency, eligibility cliffs, and unintended consequences (e.g., poorer health outcomes) do little to lift SNAP beneficiaries out of poverty. One of the core problems is that a program designed as a temporary safety net becomes a crutch for longer-term dependence a variety of government programs. That is when the focus shifts from self-reliance to dependence. 

By creating a system in which people rely on the government for something as essential as food, it perpetuates economic vulnerability instead of promoting economic self-sufficiency. If the idea is to help low-income Americans thrive, policymakers need to take a harder look at reforms that steer people more toward economic stability rather than temporary sustenance and perpetually being in survival mode.