Posted on 04/02/2015 5:37:09 PM PDT by dynachrome
Anger toward those living below the poverty line seems to only be increasing. Maine and Missouri have proposed bills limiting residents’ food choices if they use SNAP. Missouri House Bill 813 would bar the state’s 930,000 food stamp recipients from using their benefits to buy cookies, chips, soda, energy drinks, steak and seafood. (The legislature also implemented mandatory drug testing for TANF applicants in 2011.) If the bill becomes law, a Missourian can’t buy a can of tuna with an EBT card. Tortilla chips to go with salsa? Nope. Flank steak — tough, stringy and the only cut of beef I can afford — is off-limits, too. Who are these people, and what makes them think that what we eat is their business? And given that the average food stamp allotment in my state in 2013 came out to just $1.41 per person per meal, I wonder if they understand that recipients couldn’t buy lobster if they wanted to.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
If I am paying for it, it IS my business.
I used to be reasonable and compassionate, until I worked among poor people and saw what the majority of them were like. My attitude hardened.
some poor people don’t, others do, and for a certain segment of them, they carry around the frito lay factory on their shoulders
There are no poor in this country, poor is living like the average Haitian.
And in what context.
Rednecks are often not rich in money, but they will give you the shirt off their backs.
Whoa there, I like Spam. Except I buy it with my own money.
The Food Stamp program was created because elected officials were shocked at how many young American men were entering the military with health problems caused by malnutrition. Bad teeth, weak bones, even scurvy. It was a national disgrace in a nation with so much fertile farmland and an over-abundance of food.
It’s not the poor who are sucking up our tax dollars. It’s the massive, bloated bureaucracy that has grown up around the program. For every dollar given to a food stamp recipient, about eighty dollars go to the fat, well-entrenched bureaucrats who run the program.
Everyone knows if you take govt money you take the govt strings that go with it. They always say that to conservatives when they complain about the strings if they accpet highway money and school funding, and are forced to do stuff they don’t like.
Tough sh1t. Don’t take the money. My compassion has run out.
American poor are some level of middle class in most of the world.
“it’s like obamacare at the grocery store.”
No doubt about that, 9thLife! Wish I could “LIKE” your comment.
1. What the welfare rats put in their shopping carts? and...
2. How obese were they?
I was rarely wrong.
By my observation, welfare rats would invariably load their carts with convenience foods, junk food, and alcohol and tobacco (which by some miracle, they had cash for which to pay).
I also noticed that the welfare rats were, more often than not, overweight. Not always, just more frequently than those paying for their food from their own earnings.
Caution: the above is from a limited number of observations and have no statistical support. They are suggestive, but are not a valid study.
It would be interesting to see a fair and thorough study done on this topic. Data would be easy to collect, as most transactions are electronic, and most items could be correlated to the method of payment.
.
I.e. not a statistically unbiased sample.
Good question.
That’s something I’d grudgingly compromise on.
If we’re going to have a welfare system that’s anything other than basic assistance (staple foods, mundane housing, and labor-pool work) for the truly destitute, then I might just settle for a “prebate” aka “guaranteed basic income” of truly basic sustenance just as a matter of eviscerating the insanely constructed bureaucracy which favors systematic abuse and denies the incapable.
That way we don’t have to politicize & argue about “fair share” etc. to the detriment of those who do need aid. I’d rather charity come from individuals and community organizations, but fact is government has institutionalized a takeover thereof.
At some point it all comes down to individual decisions: others might be compelled (not that I agree therewith) to contribute to the welfare of others, but if the recipient blows it then ultimately they must live by their own decisions, lest they be subjugated to the state and compelled to behave as strangers insist.
Actually it exists, and yes it’s called “Soylent” (for obvious historic/literary reasons): http://www.soylent.me
We pay for it, our business.
You pay for it, your business.
Couldn't be simpler.
The people tired of paying your way you SOB.
The problem is that there is so much wanton abuse of the government welfare system that a large & growing segment of the population are clamoring for an end of the confiscation & waste of their hard-earned monies.
If the poor do not break the law, show appreciation to those who help them, pay back what they borrow, and work hard to make do with the basics they are given freely (harvesting leftover grain in the fields, cooking with “WIC” staple foods), then yes we will be supportive of such a system and do what we can to care for them.
But when the all-too-common reality is sloth rewarded with lobster tails & precooked dinners, while those actually paying make do with a-buck-a-plate meals, then yeah there’s going to be an angry outcry.
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