[Phantom Lord]

I thought food stamps were just supposed to cover milk, cheese, eggs, beans, tuna, juice, peanut butter...stuff like that? Granted, I have to admit, I’ve never seen a food stamp...are they stamps?

Not any more. Not they have EBT cards. Stands for Electronic Benefits Transfer. You see, having actual food stamps was stigmatizing and damaging to their self esteem. So now they have a card just like a debit card that has their "stamps" on them.

Or as Neal Boortz calls it, Push Button Plunder.

[Cailleach]

Yeah, I see that now...I got curious and looked it up. They can buy whatever they wish, as long as it is not pet food, non-food items or hot pre-cooked food. WIC is apparently the thing I was thinking about, where there were restrictions to what could be bought.

I must wonder...why the difference? Does it suddenly not matter what the kids eat after they hit age 5???

[oh8eleven]

Electronic Benefits Transfer
For sure. The benefits are transfered from the makers of society to the takers.

[justanotherfreeper]

You see, having actual food stamps was stigmatizing and damaging to their self esteem.

Another reason they switched to the card is that folks were trading their food stamps for booze and drugs. The EBT creates a record, kinda like your credit card statement, that makes fraud easier to detect. I remember when I went to college in the late 70s, some of the less scrupulous students would go hang out in front of grocery stores in seedier neighborhoods with beer and score $75 worth of food stamps for maybe $5 worth of beer.