From my food stamp days, now some 30-40 somewhere years later, thanks for the gift which was so necc. Once back out on the sidewalk with worries where my next quarter gallon of gas was going to come from, the movie show to have a respite from stern lectures I did not deserve, or deserve three hours rather than two, some nights, being in a very small square footage living area and in the corner on a mattress behind my privacy wall of another mattress, or the equivalent, the taxpayer would be paying for spending more
unhealthy and wasteful than the taxpayer would choose. Surmising from here, half of recipients non-transparency as to the continuation of the program, irrevocably. Like the THING tadpole that would refuse to turn into a frog and thrive on kudzu until the southeast USA would be evacuated due the
symbiotic relationship between the two. OR an
equivalent scenario. But that's just me.
Many many years ago as a new parent recently laid off we went on the 'food stamp program'. They really were little pieces of paper back then. I ate better for those 7 weeks than I had all my adult life to that point. And it was years before I was able to eat that well again.
The system is great for what it tries to do, help people in need. But in my opinion we have gone far too far in trying to remove the 'stigma' of being on aid. Instead of heading in to town to collect our stamps you get an EBT card with money automatically added to your account each month. It's too easy to take the money. When we were on aid we needed it. But having to use those colored pieces of paper in line at the grocery store while everyone else watched was a huge motivator to get out and get a job.
I had a college roommate who was on food stamps as a kid. He related the story that his mom used to buy additional discounted food stamps from drunks in order to extend her family’s food budget. Sometimes you can actually get a righteous result from a bad system.
I once had a man try to sell me his food stamps at a grocery store while his little kid was running up and down the aisle. He was the second person that day who tried to sell me his stamps (both offered roughly $100 worth for $80 cash, iirc).
I'm not against food stamps at all, and at one point came close to being on them myself. I don't judge people for needing assistance. When you see such flagrant abuses of the system, however, it tends to burn a little empathy out of you.
I ate better for those 7 weeks than I had all my adult
life to that point.
I'd suggest that today's "food stamps" don't cover as much as they used to. The article does a good job of showing how little nutritious food the handouts can buy.
Instead of heading in to town to collect our stamps...
Which costs money, particularly if you have to live a fair way outside out of town. Because you're poor.
But having to use those colored pieces of paper in line
at the grocery store while everyone else watched was a
huge motivator to get out and get a job.
People are trying. Pull your head out and look at the economy. You may be fine; plenty aren't, and are stuck in a rut where they can't get out.
I know arguing with you is useless, but it's this "I worked hard, I got mine, so fuck you" attitude that's making everything worse for the poor. Have some empathy.
Used for good and used for bad. I never said food stamps should be taken away and people should starve, I said the program should be modified to handle abuse better. You shouldn't be able to buy candy and soda with food stamps, you should be able to get premade food like those chickens from Costco. Disappoined? Get a job.
> While the value of the balance wasn’t literally cash, it was equivalent because I was spending at least that much on groceries anyway. You can also carry a balance forward from month-to-month so there’s never a need to spend it down wastefully. It’s only about $100/person/month so it’s never too much for just food.
This is kind of the point. In all the cases where the person is spending that amount on eligible food regardless, it's already equivalent to cash so it might as well be cash without the administrative overhead. They'll spend the food stamps on food and the cash they would have spent on food on whatever they want.
The only time it matters is when the person wouldn't be spending that much, i.e. they have an alternative source of food that doesn't take food stamps. In which case it only produces inefficiency. If you're content to eat free stale bagels and ugly produce every day so you can use the money for something else, you can't without breaking the law. Nor does it help you to try to stretch the money past the limit of the benefit amount.
So people go to the grocery store and spend all the money, because a fresh bagel tastes better than a stale one if you have to spend the money on that. And if you have a consistent way to get by on $80/month in groceries, accumulating an extra $20/month in food stamp balance every month still doesn't put gas in your car.
The same dynamic plays out in all the other assistance programs. There is money for low income housing assistance, but the natural thing to do there is to get together with multiple other hard off people, pool your resources and share housing. Which is not allowed. The programs generally prohibit methods of improving efficiency or stretching money.
Even if you're dead set on not letting people spend the money on vices, why is there a whitelist instead of a blacklist? You can't spend assistance money on alcohol or cigarettes, fine. But if there is food assistance and housing assistance then why can't you spend excess food money on housing or excess housing money on food? Why is there a ban on business cards and brake pads?
Yes - it is the successor of food stamps. Every time I’m back home and see someone ahead of me paying with it, I say a prayer of thanks that I’ve never had to make do with it and another prayer that I never will.
The people I've known who were eligible to but refused to use food stamps did not feel it was "beneath them"- I'm pretty sure they felt that they didn't truly need them, and that there was someone worse off who needed them more than they did.
I would have personally starved to death dozens of times over if not for food stamps.
I understand the point you're making, but you're more than hyperbolic about it. You can personally starve to death only once, and that single time would be pretty tragic by itself.
One night I got a passenger who needed a carseat. She was at her kid's state-subsidized daycare, had missed the last bus home, and was too exhausted to walk her infant home.
After the preliminary questions, I thought to ask, "Are you on food stamps?"
Passenger: "No, cash assistance."
Me: "What? Everyone says that food stamps are much easier to get than cash assistance. You should really look into that again."
I only charged her $2, instead of the $9 that was on the meter. As I drove away I got a txt message, "Thanks, I appreciated that." Aww...
Some time later she told me that she originally wasn't eligible for food stamps because the women's shelter who got her set up on public assistance provided meals. After she got her apartment, she was eligible.
In Arizona, cash assistance is barely anything at all. The government's outlay for the apartment is certainly substantial... Probably better that they pay the bill, rather than just give her a bigger pile of cash.
I have lots more to say about this one, when I figure out how to say it gracefully.
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