I can't tell you the number of times I've went into the grocery store and as much as I like/want something - no it's best not to spend the extra money. Meanwhile, the person in line in front of me has all manner of luxury foods, whips out their gubmint card loaded with my tax dollars and swipes without a thought. Then I watch as they waddle their morbidly obese carcass out to an Escalade or Expedition.
One instance in particular, I had $8 in my pocket. Granted I had more in my bank account, but money was tight and there was no need to pull out more that I may be tempted to spend. Instead, I would buy baby food with the $8 in my pocket and wait the next few days for my pay to hit my account and I could shop for more. I searched around trying to find the most I could get with my money in my pocket.
Much to my chagrin, when I got to the checkout line, an early 20 something, white, trailer park queen wearing the latest trends, jewelry, and latest smart phone........was berating the cashier because they only had 11 full size cans of baby formula instead of the 13. I mean actually cussing out the cashier for being "stupid" and how it was "b#llsh#t" thhey didn't have what she wanted......and then she pulled out WIC vouchers to pay for the more than $200 worth of formula.
Poor? "Food instability?" Uncle Sam has "vacationed" me in places throughout the Third World. In places like Iraq, we would often save our MRE "trash" (e.g. what we were't going to eat) to hand out to bedouins and other poor we felt compassionate for.....not as any command instituted program, or hearts and mind campaign, but out of true human compassion.....starving children with bloated bellies, parents with hollowed eyes and a haggard look - that's food instability.
Now, I'm not saying there isn't people who've fallen on hard times in this country, but from the overwhelming majority of people I've seen use EBT/SNAP/Sect 8 etc......their plight was due to their own poor decisions. And what's worse, they expect demand ever more taxpayer money to continue making poor decisions while someone else foots the bill for "necessities.".....That would be necessities like my Sect 8 neighbor who needed to go drinking at the hotel bar, who's chilluns had a PS 3 (that I myself couldn't afford), who was always able to go out and have a good time. - Wasting her money that when rent came due (her small share that came out of her pocket), there was always a sob story why she wanted to borrow money from the neighbors.
sorry Charlie.....sometimes the ants need to look after the ants, and the grasshoppers can figure it out for themselves.
/rant
Sometimes the problem is a loss of hope and that cannot be made up for in mere dollars and cents. With loss of hope the only choices in view are poor and poorer.
That is another reason it is a tragedy that Caesar has elbowed out the church charity of old (and it began among other places with Social Security, which FDR shamelessly hawked to church pastors as a supposedly good idea... but it stripped the dollars and cents of the presence of the love of God).