Posted on 12/04/2012 5:02:27 AM PST by from occupied ga
This morning, I will begin living on a food budget of $30 a week / $4.32 per day. This is the financial equivalent of the budget provided to people participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, in the State of New Jersey. I will live only on a SNAP equivalent food budget for the next seven days.
Undertaking what is referred to as the #SNAPChallenge began with a social media-based conversation on Twitter. A Twitter user tweeted me her opinion that "nutrition is not the responsibility of the government". This comment caused me to reflect on the families and children in my community who benefit from SNAP assistance and deserve deeper consideration. In my own quest to better understand the outcomes of SNAP assistance, I suggested to this specific Twitter user that we both live on a SNAP equivalent food budget for a week and document our experience.
A simple conversation on Twitter drew me into the #SNAPChallenge I am beginning today. My goals for the #SNAPChallenge are to raise awareness and understanding of food insecurity; reduce the stigma of SNAP participation; elevate innovative local and national food justice initiatives and food policy; and, amplify compassion for individuals and communities in need of assistance. Over the next seven days, I plan to highlight the voices of people involved in local food policy, the SNAP program, and other related initiatives.
As I begin this journey, I am doubling down on my commitment to the Food Justice Movement that is gaining awareness and participation in this country. We have much work to do at the local level to address a legacy of structural inequities in the American food system. As more and more working people and families - many holding down more than one job - face greater and greater challenges to juggle housing, medical, and transportation costs, meeting nutritional needs becomes a serious problem and a social justice issue. The struggle of children, seniors, and families to have access to essential nutrition is a struggle we are all invested in and we all benefit when families succeed. Now more than ever we are all in this together.
Throughout this week, I will document my #SNAPChallenge experiences and reflections on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and through video on #waywire. If you are interested in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, I encourage you to click the reference links below.
If you could go back to preparing foods from basic staple ingredients as our great-grandparents did, you could actually eat rather well on $4.32 a day.
I bet I have beat the $30 a week figure many, many times without even trying, just by being frugal. Most of the world considers that $30 a week for food is living high on the hog!
It is crazy to complain that what most of the world looks at as luxury, is somehow unjust.
“You really can’t have a serious country and let children go hungry”
Then I despair of there ever being a serious country. Because as children are more fed the bar will constantly be raised, until the definition of starvation includes people who did eat but were at one point uncertain whether they would. Oh, wait, we’ve already defined it that way.
Advance of welfare I’ve heard described as like a starving man who eats the crumbs left on his plate at the end of a long awaited meal more ravenously than he did the steak in the main course. The better things are the more we complain, to an extent. Also, as Malthus taught us and no one listened long ago, “poor laws” create more poor people. Because there will always be a margin where you could get free stuff or work for yourself, and there is an undeniable economic incentive for people to drop independence and go poor. Hence charity always results in more need.
“the key to it is that money should not be involved at all”
Two terms for you:
1. TANSTAAFL
2. Opportunity cost
“If you don’t work, You don’t eat”
I think it was Trotsky who proposed a new way whereby “if you don’t obey you don’t eat.”
I can buy a dozen eggs for a few bucks. They will last two weeks and are an excellent source of protein.
Eating like this would get easier as time went on and you built up stocks of foods.
A more realistic test would be to eat this way for a month. By the end of the month, it would actually not be that bad, especially if you bought in bulk and prepared your own food.
There is a gigantic pile of wrong in this.
To start with, the US has a perpetual overabundance in food, that viciously whipsaws farmers for the simple reason that too much food hurts their bottom line worse than a scant harvest.
For this reason, since FDR, food production in the US has been essentially nationalized, or really the fascist economics equivalent to nationalization, the “public-private partnership.”
As such, the idea of food stamps is not a bad one, if the emphasis is on two things:
1) Food stamps should focus on reducing overabundant foods, and second, on nutritional value for children.
2) Food stamps should be solely by block grants to the states. Leave it up to the states to figure out how much of what types of foods are too much, and how to distribute this extra food to the poor.
3) Recognition that despite what Michelle Obama wants people to eat, many people are more willing to starve than eat what she wants them to eat. So an overabundance of kumquats and bean sprouts will rot, but an overabundance of corn, wheat flour, beans and peanuts will generally be popular.
4) People who can buy their food prefer processed food, so food stamp food should be processed just minimally, so there is only limited competition. Sorry, Kellogg’s, your overpriced, sugar coated boxed junk should not be part of the food stamps program.
That's pretty easy to do. He won't be eating steak, but basic staples, at least around here...
Gal of milk - $4, sometimes less
Loaf of bread - $1.50, usually less
Jar of PB - $3
Bag of rice - $1
Bag of Beans - $1
Box of house-brand cereal - $2
Canned vegetables - $1/can, usually less...and fresh veggies are pretty cheap too, depending.
Throw in store specials and coupons, and eating on $30 a week is bland, but easily do-able.
The use of the word “Justice” outside a legal context is usually used by leftists to promote some radical program.
The left has a distorted idea of justice. “Justice” is not coercing money from the producers to give to able-bodied lazy morons. Real justice is getting what you earn, not what you think you are entitled to.
If 0 bummer had a brother, he’d look like cory. Nuff said.
What part of “Supplemental” doesn’t he understand?
The original point was not to provide all the food a person needs.
That's just it. While there might be a few families in every locality who have a little trouble putting adequate food on the table, the media has tried to make the public believe millions of Americans are hungry and/or starving. It's all bunk. Even here in Wisconsin they have The Hunger Task Force, and we're seeing countless ads to help all those "hungry and starving" people many of whom I gather live around me.
My question to the various orgs. devoted to feeding the "hungry and starving is: Where the heck are they? All I see every time I go out are very well-fed Americans. And my wife and I and travel around. We've been to every state west of the Mississippi in the last ten years, and we've yet to see those hungry and starving people. Like here in the Midwest, tons of very well-fed Americans.
Sounds good.
Can I come to your house? I’ll bring $4.32.
And maybe a bottle of cheap wine.
There is no justice in making people comfortable in their poverty. That is a recipe to keep them poor. Someone who has their fridge filled and their heat paid for by the state has less incentive to get a job than someone whose stomach is empty and an apt at 40 degrees.
We should call the kibble "Soylent Green." Because it's made of soy (wink wink, nudge nudge) and it's green, which we all know from our media teachings is a good thing.
Anything tagged with the word "Justice" means taking from those who've worked for and earned it in order to give to those that haven't.
It sounds nice to those on the receiving end, though: "Get the food/money/house/car/phone/job/etc. YOU DESERVE!"
It don't see how we combat this. I'm losing faith. I think that the parasites have finally killed the host.
eliminate food stamps and everyone pay full price for what they eat!!!
Make your own way in this world or lie down and die!!!
Some $4.32-Buck Chuck?
I'ss ee you and raise you one. I was behind one who went out of the store and got into a nice new blue Mercedes 2 seater sports car
This writer is the Next Great Hope, the liberal mayor of Newark, NJ, Cory Booker.
And yes, he has degrees from three top universities.
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