This is the type of program abuse, which upsets people. If you can afford gin and tonics, you don’t need food stamps.
Please tell me that you accidentally omitted the sarcasm icon from Post #300.
So what are the things low income people are just not allowed to have if they’re getting food stamps? Soda, we know, from the title. Lobster, truffle oil, and whiskey were mentioned upthread. “Junk food,” although neither we nor the FDA have clearly defined what that is. Tonic water if they might make a gin & tonic, even if they’re buying the gin with cash. Cell phones – are all cell phones on the list or just smart ones? Tattoos.
Some of the things posters want to ban are problematic. You can’t buy cell phones with food stamps, so how do you determine who gets to keep their phone and who doesn’t? Some people receive phones as gifts from family members. Those people aren’t on public assistance, so what rule are you going to invoke to limit their spending? How do you handle displaced workers who bought their own phone while they were working? Do they have to turn them in at the door if they want to receive food stamps? It might be difficult to find a job without a phone. The tattoos present their own challenge. Maybe people got them while they were working or someone gifted them with one. It costs much more to have one removed than it does to get it.
There’s a lot of judgment on this thread about poor people. The lazy, unintelligent, disorganized welfare queen lives on. I find it very sad.
Worth the 10 minute watch or read. This is the type of person you will find on SNAP. Not lazy, just a woman in tough circumstances trying to do her best to get by and provide for her children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl3v-0XV4Rk
http://www.dpcc.senate.gov/files/documents/PuzderForumGuzman1.10.17.pdf
“I am 47 year old, single mother of six. I’ve worked at Carl’s Jr. in Las Vegas for the last seven years. I am a shift leader on the graveyard shift for five days a week. After seven years, and more than three decades working in the food service industry, I am paid just $8.75 an hour.”
“I work almost every day and am still considered poor. I live on housing assistance, food stamps, and Medicaid just to survive. There is no way we can make rent, bills, and transportation without public assistance.”
Or these veterans who’ve served our country:
http://www.cbpp.org/research/snap-helps-roughly-17-million-struggling-veterans-including-thousands-in-every-state
Fifty years after initiation of the Great Society, I think we can safely say the answer isn’t simply a transfer of funds. The initial drop you’d expect, much as covering your in-law’s house payment would move them to credit-worthy status, then… no change in the curve.
After 5 decades or so, and one or two of my kids saying “everything you and mom tried to tell me was right”, I’d suggest it might be time to go back and look at old aphorisms. The old kind that kind of worked.
“early to bed, early to rise.”
“eat your vegetables.”
“a penny saved is a penny earned.”
“lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas.”
It often is just a matter of choices. Not for all, but for most.
"So what are the things low income people are just not allowed to have if they’re getting food stamps? Soda, we know, from the title. Lobster, truffle oil, and whiskey were mentioned upthread. "
According to USDA website live lobster is explicitly allowed. Caviar is probably allowed too because I knew people who were buying it with food stamps.
SNAP didn’t pay for the gin. Nor did it pay ALL of our food expenses. It supplemented them. I think that you can hardly say that because I chose to spend perhaps $17 per month of our private funds on a monthly bottle of gin that we didn’t need any help.
Anyway, look at all the money I was saving buying dried instead of canned beans and making all of our bread from scratch. Does YOUR family do those things? Do you buy large cuts of cheap meat and butcher it yourself, and make your own sausage? Do you save meat trimmings in the freezer to make your own stock?These are things I still do, actually, and always did, because I know how to cook and I’m frugal that way. And there was the vegetable garden.
BTW, we didn’t have cable–never have–we didn’t have cell phones, our only TV was a small portable with rabbit ears, we didn’t take vacations, not even camping, we didn’t drive to visit our families…I could go on.
At least you are upfront about your ignorance.
@Tanbiko – according to the USDA website, yes you may purchase Lobster with SNAP. You can also purchase holiday gift baskets so long as 50% of it is food and you can purchase pumpkins too.
For most, one or two crappy choices dismantle everything–they have no cushion at all. I don’t know about you, but for me–raised petit bourgois lower-middle-class–I’ve had the luxury of making lots of bad choices without serious repercussions. I wish we didn’t expect so many people to live on the brink (and react so vengefully when they make the mistake that sends them over it).
Lobster is often $5.99 per lb. in my neck of the woods. Not cheap, but definitely not the most expensive thing out there by any means. Two summers ago, it was even cheaper.
The bringing up of lobster in relation to this topic is ironic considering in some periods in US history lobster was actually disdained by upper and middle classes and had the stigma of being food associated with the poor both in the early colonial period and right ~the depression till the '50s:
http://gizmodo.com/lobsters-were-once-only-fed-to-poor-people-and-prisoner-1612356919
http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/11/05/lobster-was-once-a-poor-mans-food/
Lobster was at one point used as fertilizer.
YUP. It was fed to slaves and prisoners. That was back when the Atlantic was teeming with it. Not so much anymore, and likely to get worse.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160926115343.htm
Similarly, several decades ago, white bread/Wonder Bread was considered highly nutritious whereas whole grain/dark bread was heavily disdained as “poor people’s/peasant food” by Upper/middle class Americans and their aspirants.
My parents and many in their generation are shocked at how currently whole grain/dark breads are now not in vogue and considered more nutritious, but also how consumption of White bread/Wonder Bread is considered synonymous with dietary ignorance/stigmatization of the poor.
“It often is just a matter of choices. Not for all, but for most.”
Yep 8.75 an hour leaves a lot of $$$ for the IRA! Of course early to bed early to rise might be difficult when working the late night shift.
OP here. Lots of different POVs are mistaken for each other on this thread. To clarify for @Consolation and others who did not read beyond the first pages. I did not judge or blame the SNAP recipients, and, as I already wrote, their choices were not any different from those in other income groups. The reason why this article made me very sad (albeit not judgmental or angry) is because, unlike the others, SNAP recipients cannot afford to make poor choices. I know this well because, as mentioned upthread, I received food stamps for a short time period, and had even lower groceries budget for several more years. If we spent money on soda, we would probably go hungry on some days. In addition, I really despise soda, which probably affected my judgement.
@mycupoftea - did you check out the Jacobin article that dismantles the “data” used in the NYTimes piece you linked? I posted it in the thread. Curious what you think about it.
@marvin100 No I did not. But data analysis is part of my job, so I am well aware that many newspapers (including NYT) practice tabloid journalism. Don’t get me started…
post 303 does show some bad choices causing problems, in one of the quotes. Unmarried with 6 kids? Working fast food and never earned over $8.75? Is fast food entry level job her chosen career? Is having children? Careful not to generalize about all recipients of taxpayer help. but that particular woman has accepted the privilege of having children w/o accepting the responsibility of them. “Trying to do her best”? No. Having child after child she cannot pay for is NOT doing her best.
In that example, it isn’t really true that she is just “a woman in tough circumstances”. She is a woman that has chosen to put herself in tough circumstances and wants taxpayers subsidize her choices.
I hope that isn’t commonly the type of person on Snap and other programs, as Doschicos says. A person making those choices has a tough time garnering sympathy from many.
So let me get this straight. Folks who make bad choices shouldn’t garner any of our sympathy? Got it.
The level of hard heartedness on this thread is amazing.
The “prodigal son” would have a tough time with this crowd.