Soda consumption in low-income households

Parent Cafe
321

I don’t think sympathy is their problem; it’s empathy. They simply see someone like her and say: “wow, how unlike me. If that were me, I’d (something something poof be okay)” as if our lives were completely self-determined and as if all the “okay” they have is solely their doing and not the result of a constellation of other factors far beyond their immediate control. They simply can’t imagine that a few cosmic hiccups and they’d be her, that “there but for the grace of (God/deity of your choice/providence/coincidence) go I.”

Or I hope that’s the case, because at least that cuts them some slack for their complete lack of kindness, charity, and goodwill. The alternative is almost too ghastly to imagine.

322

@younghoss, It isn’t easy for people to work their way out of poverty, and living on the income that a high school education gets you isn’t as easy as some people think.

There are plenty of single moms who are low income. When couples split up, it’s generally the woman’s income that drops significantly. We do a poor job of holding men responsible for supporting their children. Even when they show up for child support court dates, if they claim they can’t afford to pay they can have their back payments reduced by thousands of dollars. The children can’t afford college and the whole cycle starts all over again.

It’s the women, more often than not, whose work schedule is impacted by childcare. The mothers are the ones who usually stay home when the children are little and who take the day off when the children are sick. If there’s a child with a medical condition, it’s generally the mom who carries the lion’s share of the care. It’s hard to advance your career when you aren’t seen as 100% committed to the job.

Low income people don’t have the best healthcare options. Birth control is expensive and isn’t covered. The rhythm method isn’t reliable. Sometimes, people have children when things are going well, then someone becomes disabled, or there’s a divorce, or a job layoff, or someone dies. It only takes one relatively minor issue to tip the financial cart of the working poor. If you toss in a major one it’s a real catastrophe.

Entering a career from a low paying job isn’t an easy task. Fast food jobs don’t pay well. Longevity doesn’t count for anything. People who make too much are replaced by people who companies can pay less. Where do you expect people who can’t afford a college education to go to start a career? Who’s going to pay for the training, and who’s watching the children while that happens?

While we’re on the topic of choices, let’s talk about the choices of middle and upper income people. We’re quick to give them a pass when talking about financial aid. If someone comes on this board and complains they don’t qualify for much need based aid because their income is too high and they don’t understand why colleges don’t realize they can’t pay much because the cost of living is so high where they live, plenty of people commiserate. Why aren’t those families held accountable for their choices? Why is it okay for them to expect free money from colleges?

Living in an expensive area with high taxes is a choice. Buying a nice home in a safe neighborhood with good schools is a choice. Buying new clothes and signing your kids up for ECs that cost money is a choice. Saving for retirement is a choice. Why should colleges subsidize that? Colleges are getting taxpayer dollars too, either directly or through tax breaks. Where’s the analysis about how many kids those families are choosing to have, or the debate about what are appropriate and inappropriate expenditures? Families get grants of $20k/year or more from universities; families on SNAP are getting ~1/5 that. The poor aren’t the only ones getting need based assistance, they’re just an easy target.

323

Here’s another one: You can choose to be kind and charitable to people whose lives are much, much harder than yours, or you can choose to be petty, vindictive, sanctimonious, and cruel.

But if you choose the latter, don’t be surprised when the people whose hard lives you’ve made harder, whose cold nights you’ve made colder become hard people who wish you ill.

324

I’ll take choice A – charitable. But just giving people money is, IMO, not doing the best we can by them. If we know something that might help – some info or advice – by all means, tell the person. You might come off as sanctimonious or prying, but if it’s something that might help turn things around or make life easier for them, you’re doing them a disservice by not telling them.

325

Wonderful! We agree that all people, at all economic levels, should be held accountable for their choices. Actually, that is the sentiment that is overwhelmingly expressed here when anyone complains about not getting as much financial aid as they would like.

Those aren’t the only 2 choices. Some people do not want your condescending charity, they want an opportunity to make their lives less hard through their own effort.

I mentioned those luxury items, but said the opposite of what you imply. The point was that I didn’t consider any particular item off limits for people on SNAP, but that frivolous or luxury items should not constitute a significant percentage of the food budget for low income families.

But OK, I get it. Some posters are so wonderfully charitable and compassionate that they would never expect any poor person to work to improve her condition, but would expect all rich people to hand out money with no strings. Because we have demonstrated so conclusively that throwing money at problems fixes them for good.

326

It is way more difficult to escape poverty than the American myth portend

Inner city and rural schools do not prepare students for college. Drop out rate in my city’s school (one school only for a city of over 70,000 is over 50% largely due to violence and poor educators - many classes do not have professional teachers. Students may get into a school with need based income but fail out.

Fast food places and other low income jobs often do not give their employees a regular or set schedule which makes registering for classes or arranging childcare or working a second job to earn extra income impossible. When I moonlighted in a grocery store for example we would get the next weeks schedule on a Friday. I could coordinate that with my job as a pastor but there was no way to coordinate it with a job at another business.

Our state is talking about replacing property taxes with expanding sales tax on food, clothing and services. It will decrease the tax burden for people with expensive homes but end up costing the poor a lot more since a larger part of their money is spent on such necessities. Advocates say that owners of rental properties could lower rent if they don’t have to pay property taxes. Does anyone really think that slum lords and other owners of city rental homes would do that???

327

I strongly agree the last part of post 320, and all of post 322 referring to their perspectives on charity. Unfortunately, in the example of the woman with 6 kids- we aren’t discussing those who choose to be kind and/or charitable to help her. We are discussing multiple sources of “government” aid to her, which is taken by force from taxpayers. A far cry from choosing to be charitable and please, let’s not conflate the two. I am all for charitable giving! I have read this entire thread, and I don’t remember anyone expressing a view against giving to charity.

Contrary to what post 319 says, the “prodigal son” would have no trouble with me or many in “this crowd”. The story says after he spent his dough, he came back to family for love and support. They gave it to him. The story does not teach the lesson that he is entitled to his support with money forcibly taken from the general public.

And to further answer post 319: Speaking for me of course and not others, those with mental illness, physical disabilities, terrible illnesses, veterans of the military, and others in unforeseeable situations do have my sympathy and I’d be much more willing to contribute money to help them. I see a moral obligation there, though as I have expressed earlier, I’m not certain I have a legal obligation to help support them. The post about the single mom with 6 kids does not mention those troubles or any other similar ones. Her troubles were largely caused by her choices not by mere chance. I think it is foreseeable that someone having never earned more than $8.75 an hour might have difficulty supporting a child, a second child, a third child, a fourth child, a fifth child, and now a sixth child. The thought of being forced to subsidize someone making those choices just doesn’t sit well with me.

And Austinm, let me assure you I have a good understanding of the comment directed at me in post 321. You don’t have to tell me. Hard to work one’s way out of poverty? And choosing to have six kids? I see a connection there. Please also know one parent of mine had a H.S. diploma and the other got a G.E.D. while in the military, neither did any further schooling. I had only a high school degree(until my A.A. at 54). My wife didn’t go beyond high school. I grew up in the lower middle, and now I am happy to be nearer the middle middle. I understand about making a living with only a high school degree. I haven’t the benefit of a higher degree. If you guessed that I’ve had more, it is flattering, but no, only high school. I have so far been fortunate not to have had the unforeseeable events mentioned, and as far as choices- well, I’ve made more right ones than wrong ones. My parents chose one child and a part-time job in addition to a full-time one. I have made much the same choices in my family.
My parents did, and I have done what some call the 3 most important things to stay away from poverty:
finish high school, get a job, and don’t have kids out-of-wedlock. NOT to say those are the only things necessary, but they are a great start.

328

“Wonderful! We agree that all people, at all economic levels, should be held accountable for their choices. Actually, that is the sentiment that is overwhelmingly expressed here when anyone complains about not getting as much financial aid as they would like.”

For all you sanctimonious types who look down on the people on SNAP and their “bad choices” (I see you all neglected to mention the article I linked about all the military veterans and their families on SNAP), I hope you are all full pay for your kids’ college and not taking any aid or subsidized loans. YOU could’ve made better choices - not taken vacations, not bought new cars, not bought that beer or fancy coffee, never let soda touch your lips or that of your children, chosen a better profession, had less kids, delayed your gratification to save more each year. If you are sending your kids to state schools, those are subsidized. Your home purchase is being subsidized through the write down of your mortgage interest. You all get “free stuff”. Ayn Rand would have said a big “screw you” if you hadn’t saved up all the money necessary for college, regardless of income.

I wish you were all bothered as much with billionaires who don’t pay any taxes as you are about a program designed to help provide nutrition to families, the majority of which have children who had ZERO choice, good or bad.

“The post about the single mom with 6 kids does not mention those troubles or any other similar ones.”
Her husband left her after the 2008 recession in which she lost her job. She mentions that. Neither were her choice.

329

I disagree completely. I object to condescending remarks from people regardless of whether they have BT/DT. Not that you were the one making any, @Consolation .

Basic adulting 101 says you look at the results of your efforts and determine whether they are having the desired effects. If not, you change something. Let’s hear more constructive suggestions about what to change. Or maybe everyone thinks everything about the SNAP program is perfect and nothing needs to change.

330

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There are plenty of single moms who are low income. When couples split up, it’s generally the woman’s income that drops significantly. We do a poor job of holding men responsible for supporting their children. Even when they show up for child support court dates, if they claim they can’t afford to pay they can have their back payments reduced by thousands of dollars. The children can’t afford college and the whole cycle starts all over again.


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^^ This…and this is where changes must be made. We do a horrible job holding many men responsible for the children they father. And some of this pressure must come from friends and family of the non-supporting fathers.

A few days ago, saw a story of a 20 year old young man who has already fathered 10 children by several women. At this rate, he could end up fathering 40+ kids by the time he’s 30. Paying for nobodies diapers.

As for paying for college, I realize that when youngish couples divorce, paying for college isn’t often on their minds. Maybe divorce attys could be more agressive about bringing the subject up.

331

This isn’t that thread. But go ahead and start it if you want to, there might be some interesting discussion. If we can keep politics/personalities out of it and stick to the numbers. Which I love to tear apart.

332

This is an all too common misconception that drives me crazy. Few people genuinely “look down” on those who are on government assistance programs like SNAP, unless there is reason to believe those people are abusing the system. That’s really all there is to it… If you listen to the complaints shared by some people regarding welfare, you would know that their complaints are almost always directed at the people who take advantage of programs at the tax payer’s expense.

Is there anyone here who honestly believes that truly needy/poor people should just be left out in the cold? Is there anyone who doesn’t believe the government should, at least at a very basic level, take care of those who are genuinely in need of help and not abusing the system?

333

<<< @ohiopublic So let me get this straight. Folks who make bad choices shouldn’t garner any of our sympathy? Got it.


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I don’t know your situation, but I know mine.

When I’ve been repeatedly “hit up” for money by folks who repeatedly make the same/similar bad choices, then my sympathy runs thin.

When someone I know happily announces that she purchased fab tickets to a pricey concert, goes to the concert, gets the Tshirt, drinks a few while there, and then days later says that her electric has been turned off, so can she borrow $120, how much sympathy am I supposed to have when these things happen month after month (with different luxury purchases and different unpaid bills)? I already pay/provide a cell phone for this person at my expense because she couldn’t keep a phone on. (Yes, it’s a smart phone with data because she insists that she can’t live w/o Facebook.) But I guess I’m just a meanie who’d turn their back on a Prodigal person…uh no, you don’t know me.

There have been other threads here on CC where it’s been questioned as to why kids gets free breakfast/lunch if their parents are getting food stamps for them. The frequent response is that often these kids still aren’t being fed at home because their parents are being irresponsible with their food stamps (selling them, buying wrong things, etc) or that they’re too drunk/drugged-out/absent to make sure that their kids get fed. Don’t get me wrong…feed these kids at school…they’re victims. But…we can’t have it both ways…claiming that they’re mostly all being responsible with SNAP, but we also need to provide 2 meals a day at school.

334

This conversation reminds me of an article about whether people are actually rational decision makers when it comes to economic choices.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/13/opinion/op-schermer13

The study referenced in the link discusses the fact that most people when asked if they would rather make $50K and their neighbor makes $25K OR $100K and their neighbor makes $250K (all prices of good & services remain steady) - most people choose the $50K option over making more money. Literally having more than someone else is more important that objectively having more.

Study after study shows that if SNAP benefits are increased, the amount of healthy food purchased by SNAP recipients increases. This is not a shocking find; healthy food is often more expensive (in terms of time and money) than unhealthy food. And yet, very few people worried about soda purchases are actually suggesting increasing benefits to increase healthy food purchasing. Telling people to find more time in the day to bake bread, use/buy food that takes more preparation time and ingredients to be tasty, and to retroactively make a better decision regarding family size (no matter what personal, medical or financial crisis might have changed your circumstances) is not what I would consider “constructive”.

I haven’t heard anyone who worries about soda purchasing by SNAP recipients to actually have any constructive ideas on how we could increase wages in traditionally low paying work, improve access and reduce the cost of quality child care, strengthen public transportation so that people are more likely to be able to be fully employed without owning their own vehicle, or ensuring education is equally accessible and a quality offering for all children. We, as a society, all benefit when the least of our citizens (and I’m talking about our children here) can be assured that they will have enough food, access to health care and good education. If we want poor people to be able to get out of poverty - we cannot spend out time trying to make sure that they need to show super human willpower and the most unlikely run of luck in order to get ahead.

Study after study shows that the condition of poverty is actually what causes poverty to continue. Dealing with the stress and strain of having no money makes it exponentially harder to escape the crisis of no money. Poor people use up most of their time, energy and money dealing with the problems caused by not having any money. Poverty causes those afflicted by it to actually be very rational in their decisions. But, if there aren’t good solutions to the problems someone has - it seems many would like to blame people in poverty for choosing what might be the “least bad” decision, rather than the unobtainable “good” one.

As this conversation has continued, it has become clearer and clearer than many people would rather spend time & money making sure SNAP recipients are given less autonomy and more oversight over their purchases and life choices than others - even when study after study shows there is no meaningful difference in SNAP recipient purchasing choices. ‘Oversight’ that would be much more expensive and more wasteful than any “abuse” of SNAP benefits currently happening.

Since some have asked, no, I don’t particularly care if SNAP recipients buy soda. I wouldn’t even care if they bought their rice and beans in bulk sizing (for much less money per oz) and sold some of it for cash. Most of the time when someone does that - we called in entrepreneurship and applaud their small business acumen. If they actually cooked it first - we would call it a family owned local restaurant. If the government provides SBA loans, what is the effective difference in that? Oh, yeah - when people say “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” - often times they don’t really mean try to creatively work with the resources you have. They mean - good to know I can feel better about the person who has less.

335

“Few people genuinely “look down” on those who are on government assistance programs like SNAP”

Glad to hear it, @fractalmstr, but if that is true why does the discussion keep circling back to SNAP recipients and their bad choices and perceived abuses instead of other discussion on the issues with poverty. I’m seeing little empathy or sympathy here from certain corners.

336

You misunderstand somewhat, my perspective doschicos. In your post 327 you mention some that neglected to reference the vet’s troubles. For me, it looked like you brought 2 examples of persons in need and deserving of Snap and similar programs. I like and agree with your vet example. Because I had no disagreement with it, I made no mention of it. It wasn’t overlooked. The single mom w/ 6 kids however, imo, did not serve your point well.

337

“I haven’t heard anyone who worries about soda purchasing by SNAP recipients to actually have any constructive ideas on how we could increase wages in traditionally low paying work, improve access and reduce the cost of quality child care, strengthen public transportation so that people are more likely to be able to be fully employed without owning their own vehicle, or ensuring education is equally accessible and a quality offering for all children.”

I’m not sure we have tried these yet or, at least, not recently:

Increase wages: Decrease taxes and/or regulations on businesses. It’s worth a shot. (If you decrease cost, you at least give owners the capacity to pay workers more – you essentially decrease one type of cost and increase another, and still get the same or a similar bottom line. Smart owners know that turnover sucks and should try to hang on to good employees…). Owners could also make smarter business decisions, like making sure that price and supply meet demand, using promotions to increase demand, etc. – things that improve sales, so they organically increase their capacity to pay. Workers can provide better customer service so that customers are more likely to come back, or amp up product quality. There are multiple ways to increase sales or decrease cost, and you need at least one of those to occur to improve the likelihood of a pay increase without negatively affecting profit.

Improve access/decrease cost to child care: No easy answer here – maybe offer incentives to those types of businesses to a) Operate, b) In currently unserviced areas, c) at reasonable price. With more of them, there’s more competition, which drives down price.

Strengthen public transportation: If we have created a better business environment, we (in theory) will have more businesses operating/expanding here, so we’ll have more people working. And if we have more people working, we’ll have more people paying taxes. If we have more people paying taxes – assuming the increased revenue outweighs the amount we’d lose from the tax cuts on businesses – maybe there would be more cash available to fund infrastructure and transpo improvements. If we did not have a net gain in tax revenue, we could perhaps shift funds.

Those are some ideas, anyway.

338

It seems like several people here ignored the rest of the story of the woman with 6 kids. Turns out she wasn’t some floozy hooking up and having kid after kid, but someone whose husband left her floundering. That’s very very common. The organization the church I work at supports as it helps women in transition has found that the majority of homeless/struggling single mothers actually HAD a co-parent at one point, but divorce, domestic violence and the partner’s mental illness led to the women being homeless or in poverty. Sometimes the womens’ own parents reject helping them, for whatever reasons. But apparently just seeing or hearing of a single mother with several kids it’s assumed that they’ve made “bad choices”.

My late MIL was the single mother of 5 kids. Her husband died. What a bad choice she made, having 5 kids while married and working! Shame on her! She did get assistance but she was also working-as a domestic servant. pretty common for a black women back in the day. And please, skip the “I did it so could they,” and the bootstrap talk. Then as still common, people of color don’t get the same options as others in many places, especially if they only finished HS. The stats on that are very clear.

I know a young woman raising her three little brothers. Her parents made poor choices, but they’re both dead, so she is raising the boys. I’m sure the holier-than-thou folks look at her and shake their heads-so many kids so young and no father to speak of. Tsk. Tsk. Heaven help her if she buys ice cream or pop for them once in awhile. She’s also been working her way through college one class at a time.

There are certainly people who do make “bad choices” but you can’t know that unless you know the WHOLE story, and the judgement going on here is about people you don’t even know. It’s disheartening.

339

Just as in the country as a whole, we have people talking past each other here as well.

On one side, you have people discussing anecdotes where poor people who appear to be spending unwisely (on phones, tattoos, whatever) are actually receiving those purchases as gifts, and then making the blanket statement that because people are judging those people incorrectly, that we cannot judge anybody in any instance whatsoever.

On the other side, you have people discussing anecdotes where they have first-hand knowledge of poor people spending money unwisely (e.g. relatives hitting them up for money), and possibly applying that to a larger group than is warranted.

The truth, as often is the case, probably lies in the middle.

340

I see what you mean, sseamom. So many people here have railed against widows and orphans! It’s so unfair!
No, wait a minute, I don’t remember any railing against widows and orphans. Buying a tattoo as some have mentioned while on taxpayer assistance is a bad choice, to re-state one example. No one has said all Snap recipients are undeserving, or particularly widows and orphans.
The young woman you know sure has a heart-wrenching tale, but it is far different than what some are complaining about here.