# 40 Million Americans on Food Stamps: When Do WE Start Rioting? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 31, 2011, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677 "2011-01-31T18:40:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/81 "2011-02-01T00:45:46Z")
Well, yeah…I agree. College is certainly more than $700 a month, especially if you go to a good college. Me, I got several grants for being Hispanic, plus I worked my butt off (as a bouncer in one case) to make ends meet. But we weren’t talking about college there. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/82 "2011-02-01T00:47:13Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > Do you always debate by using personal attacks? That’s not a personal attack. Your post was a complete strawman. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/83 "2011-02-01T00:53:30Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Good grief. > > -XT Are you "good grief"ing because you don’t think it can happen? [It does](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR2007030200827.html). ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/84 "2011-02-01T00:54:26Z")
> [@AshenLady](#): > > I meant that college is way more expensive than $700.00 a month…:smack: Uh… What? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/85 "2011-02-01T00:58:28Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] Are you "good grief"ing because you don’t think it can happen? It does. [/QUOTE] No, I’m good griefing at the continuous shifting of the discussion and the (to me) irrelevancy of the comment in the scheme of this, um, debate. I have no doubt it happens. And it probably happens more than, say, death by swallowing tooth picks, or maybe being hit in the chest by a baseball. And, I concede, that it’s something that is generally preventable if the kid in question has access to decent preventative care and acute dental care when and if it becomes a problem anyway. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/86 "2011-02-01T01:24:11Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > That’s not a personal attack. Your post was a complete strawman. meh, whatever. I was simply responding to post #51, not to the entirety of **AshenLady** ’s posts. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/87 "2011-02-01T01:36:43Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > meh, whatever. I was simply responding to post #51, not to the entirety of **AshenLady** ’s posts. So you generalized a quote without considering context, get called on it, then have an issue with getting called on it? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/88 "2011-02-01T01:57:20Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > No, I’m sorry, our lives are not hard. No civilization in history has had it as easy as today’s Americans. Comparing, say, the troubles of Americans on food stamps to the dispossessed poor in Egypt is staggeringly callow. Americans don’t riot because we don’t need to. The turn-around from Bush to Obama shows it. We don’t have it the easiest of any civilization, that is extremely naive considering how several countries like Germany are expeirencing lower unemployment with stronger safety nets. And I don’t recall saying our problems were as bad as the problems in Egypt. Nonetheless if the best the ‘easiest civilization to live in in history’ can push for is 1/8 of the population needing basic food aid then there is a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/89 "2011-02-01T02:00:28Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Plus, having lots of people on food stamps doesn’t mean people are desperate, it means they AREN’T desperate. They have food assistance, so they aren’t starving. If they needed food assistance but didn’t have any, that’s when they’d be rioting. Republicans want to cut welfare. I say let them. Anything to get the poor into the streets protesting. They stayed home this last election and let the Tea Baggers bully them around. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/90 "2011-02-01T02:01:01Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Isn’t that why we have food stamps? > > If someone is getting $700 of food stamps for a family of four, there’s no way that family is going hungry. They may not be able to afford anything else, they may not be able to afford the rent, they may not be able to afford the cable bill, or the phone bill, or to put gas in the car, or clothes, or shoes, or the dentist, or to fix the broken refrigerator. > > But they’re going to have plenty of food. So the nonsense about how she has to beg her kids to eat less is just nonsense. Depends. I know a single mother of four who routinely runs out of her food stamp money. Of course, a big part of that is because she buys a lot of junk, spurns store brands, buys prepared foods, etc. Why cook a chicken yourself, when you can instead get the rotisserie chicken form the deli? And then when the food stamps runs out on the 25th of the month, you can hit up your friends for pizza money… ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/91 "2011-02-01T02:03:01Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Abortion reduces the numbers of hungry kids, making it easier to distribute resources effectively, but this is getting into hijack territory so I’ll drop it. Yeah, don’t make me seance-dial Jonathan Swift… ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/92 "2011-02-01T02:19:06Z")
> [@furt](#): > > Depends. I know a single mother of four who routinely runs out of her food stamp money. Of course, a big part of that is because she buys a lot of junk, spurns store brands, buys prepared foods, etc. Why cook a chicken yourself, when you can instead get the rotisserie chicken form the deli? And then when the food stamps runs out on the 25th of the month, you can hit up your friends for pizza money… I doubt she’s buying rotisserie chicken. Prepared foods, including hot foods from the supermarket deli, aren’t buyable with food stamps. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/93 "2011-02-01T02:24:01Z")
> [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > Yeah, don’t make me seance-dial Jonathan Swift… Saying you shouldn’t have kids if you can’t afford them is a far cry from saying we should eat them. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/94 "2011-02-01T02:29:03Z")
> [@AshenLady](#): > > Not since 1959 have there been so many poor people in the United States. In 2009, 43.6 million people - 14.3 percent of the population - fell below the poverty line. The previous year, the poverty rate was 13.2 percent. > More than one in five American children are living in poverty. In Philadelphia, it’s about one in three. A measure of just how well off Americans areo is that the ‘poverty line’ in the US is more than twice the world average income. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/95 "2011-02-01T02:37:48Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > Saying you shouldn’t have kids if you can’t afford them is a far cry from saying we should eat them. Can’t we do both, like the late Earl Warren? ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/96 "2011-02-01T02:49:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by **Lemure866** : > How large do you think our foreign aid budget is? Just a ballpark figure. About what percentage of the federal budget do you think goes to foreign aid? I believe we dole out about $40-50 billion per year in foreign aid and I believe that is somewhat less than 0.4% of our GNP. As minuscule as the amounts are, the principle, IMHO, is sound: the money would be better spend here than there. If my figures are inaccurate, I hope you will correct me. I doubt I will change my mind about where the money should be spent although you are welcome to try to convince me. I also believe that if we do not eliminate foreign aid completely, we should certainly eliminate it to countries who take our money and vote against us in the UN; if I accepted money for doing a job but recommended my competitors products, what would happen to my income? ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/97 "2011-02-01T02:57:49Z")
> [@AshenLady](#): > > People on unemployment, also have no health insurance, COBRA? Don’t make me laugh; Obama made it affordable and the Republicans took the subsidy for affordable COBRA away. Anyone can get sick; cancer, heart attacks, it happens all the time. > > This IS a matter of life and death. Over half the people declaring bankruptcy ,do it due to health problems that they are not in control of. Most of them had “health insurance” Health insurance disappears when you need it. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/98 "2011-02-01T03:18:44Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > Did the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) really cost 700 billion? The Congressional Budget Office seems to think not. To say nothing of the fact that George W. Bush signed it and not Barry Obama. Knuckle dragging morons think it cost 700 Billion dollars, even though the [CBO](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/29/AR2010112905453.html) says it will cost $25B, And thinking something is true is as good as it actually being true. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/99 "2011-02-01T03:19:58Z")
> [@furt](#): > > Depends. I know a single mother of four who routinely runs out of her food stamp money. Of course, a big part of that is because she buys a lot of junk, spurns store brands, buys prepared foods, etc. Why cook a chicken yourself, when you can instead get the rotisserie chicken form the deli? And then when the food stamps runs out on the 25th of the month, you can hit up your friends for pizza money… While I’m sure there are many ways to screw up your food budget, I’m skeptical that you can buy prepared food, like rotisserie chicken, with food stamps. Do you have a cite that you can? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2011, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677/100 "2011-02-01T03:26:50Z")
I don’t know if you’ll trust one of the infamous [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070607045451AAvYEvy), um, answers, but according to this you can get some prepared hot foods if it’s got an approved tag on it. Take with grain of salt, as things have changed substantially since my family used the things. -XT [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/40-million-americans-on-food-stamps-when-do-we-start-rioting/569677.md?page=6)