I’ve read that ~25% of Walmart and Target’s food sales are SNAP. It’s a gigantic crony capitalism redistribution scheme courtesy of the US taxpayer.
Yup. They’ve solved the problem of “how do I sell my good or service to people who have no money?”
Obamacare has the same roots. Don’t doubt me.
"Let 'em starve in the streets" proponents cannot be found outside the world of Democrat strawman polemics. There are some people -- and in a country as big as ours, quite a few people -- who need assistance to maintain a passable level (however defined) of food and shelter. Some of these are sympathetic cases, suffering from conditions beyond their control. Others are thoroughly unsympathetic. But either way, they are there. The question is, how best can we render assistance?
I am all in favor of work requirements for able bodied unemployed recipients.
I am all in favor of a phased withdrawal of means-tested benefits as low-income people get jobs and begin to work their way up. Phasing benefits out gradually as income rises, of course, means that substantial benefits flow to low-income working people. We can debate the phaseout schedule separately.
But again, given that some people will require assistance, what is the best way to provide it? I generally like vouchers, whether for public schools, Medicare and Medicaid, housing subsidies and nutritional assistance. Vouchers encourage integration with the private economy, which is the direction in which we want poor people to be headed, as opposed to carving out the poor as members of a special, highly visible government supported caste. Vouchers also are much easier to adjust downward as incomes rise. You can gradually reduce someone's SNAP/Food Stamp benefit as his income rises. It's a much more difficult proposition to throw a single mother of three out of her public housing apartment because she took a part-time job and is now making $575 a year too much to keep her apartment. With a housing assistance voucher, we would reduce her benefit check as her income rises, and expect her to make up the difference with earned income. She will find incentives to move out of the government housing project as she approaches market rate in terms of out of pocket rent payments. And getting her out of the projects yields many ancillary benefits.
The best "voucher", of course, is cash, ideally earned in return for work. The problem with simply giving cash grants to welfare recipients, however, is that the cash gets misspent. They are penniless before the end of the month, and often after the first week of the month if the underlying problems include drugs, gambling or other expensive vices. Food stamps are simply a categorical voucher which can be used only for the designated purpose, which increases the odds of making it to the end of the month. An educational voucher would work the same way: the mother of a public school student would get a rather substantial credit -- in DC, almost $30,000 a year, which is what the DC public schools are spending per student -- to be used only for tuition and expenses at a qualifying school. The amounts are lower in other cities, but here, an educational voucher using currently available revenues could substantially exceed the tuition at all but the most expensive private schools. Health insurance should work the same way: here's your voucher, now buy your own insurance. (There would still need to be direct assistance for the completely uninsurable.) In general, give the poor agency and an incentive to use the money wisely.
If you don't like vouchers for nutritional assistance, what would you propose instead? Government run soup kitchens in every neighborhood? Government checks for social services vendors (the Charity-Industrial Complex)? Direct commodity distribution like the old government cheese program, with distribution centers in every neighborhood?
I prefer a voucher, and letting them go to the grocery store.
I was employed as a front end cashier in El Mirage, AZ for about a year.
What I resented was when a customer’s benefit card ran out, they expected the cashier to make up the difference on that transaction. I was making $9 an hour working 33 hours a week, which was considered full time at Walmart.
A lot of cashiers helped their customers out, it was a well known secret.
I’ve never been on food stamps.
Walmart really doesn’t care about their employees.