It’s not always because we’re lazy you know.
Sometimes we’re just stupid.
Nestle nutritious protein mush is people! People! :eek:
Ummm, I read the linked response, and while I don’t agree and think it is a bit on the harsh side, I can’t get behind the hyperbole and misrepresentation you are putting forth.
Because GOD FORBID we poor people become comfortable on our 188 dollars in food stamps every month. I might start running out and buying up all the lobsters in town and have myself a lobster party!
Oh, yeah, because the shame will just make poor people become un-poor. Shaming people because they do/are something you don’t approve of has always worked so well in the past, hasn’t it?
Well that kind of obviates the point of this thread, then, dunnit?
Of course, shame is only for the people you don’t like, and is unjustified when applied to people you do. Gotcha.
Channeling E. Scrooge …
ARE THERE NO WORK HOUSES?!?!?!?
I didn’t start this thread to shame Brian. I started it so I could insult him properly. I believe he feels no shame.
Brian has made a series of idiotic, prejudiced posts. This was a conscious decision on his part. He deserves to be insulted. He would hold the poor up to public derision just for the crime of being poor. I suspect you can see the difference.
Honestly though, I wouldn’t mind if they limited the types of food one could purchase with the EBT food card, but what worries me is what they consider healthy. Take the sweets off, and the sodas. It wouldn’t be that hard. They have a non-food option on the cash register. I’m sure they could come up with a simple way to include junk food. They have made it where you can buy seeds and small food bearing plants even though those are technically non-foods at my store so surely they could find a way if it’s really that important that we not be allowed lobster and steak.
It’s just the condescension I have a problem with. A protein mush? Whatever is cheapest to keep us from enjoying our freebies?
I get the frustration with seeing people buying lobster with food stamps when you’re having beans and rice you paid for. I lived that side for a long time before I gave in and asked for help. It shamed the hell out of me to go to that place and apply. Every time I use the card I’m embarrassed. I know some people are fine with it, and it’s even become a way of life they’re happy with. But not for me. It’s uncomfortable enough to admit on this board and I hate that I can’t work out a way to get a job and take my daughter to therapy and work with her. I am looking. I keep a child care ad up and occasionally get a babysitting gig but not often. I need help right now, just like a lot of other people. I’m not going to be comfortable whether I’m eating a steak, or a bag of 1.99 turkey meatballs and egg noodles like I just had for dinner.
Wal-Mart. Stocking gruel.
For me, it’s not so much his idea, as his attitude. He’s just so fucking insulting.
Since there are so many poor people, we could put them to better use. We can feed them to the rich.
Oh, don’t thank me, Jonathan Swift thought of it first.
Oh, he can be insulting all he wants. He’s wrong. All of us who are poor now and working our way out of it know he’s wrong. I give up evenings with my husband to come down here and babysit this guy’s kids overnight for extra money every week. I’m starting school in October, and will still be babysitting. My kids will see me more when I am out of school and they are older. They will appreciate it more then. So let him insult and stereotype, I’m too busy busting my ass to care. And if he ever hits hard times when I am gainfully employed in a decent paying job, he can have some food on my dime, and I won’t bitch about it. 
No, what’s annoying is the fact that he won’t acknowledge the reasoned arguments against his ‘plan’ because he’s too busy ranting. You can’t do anything with those people, just ignore their unreasonable anger.
Let’s not go the other way and make food stamp and welfare recipients some sort of heroic oppressed underclass, either.
I like the part about condecension – you know the one that follows right after forcing the poor to eat healthy food, for their own good.
If we’re honest, a lot of poor people are poor because they don’t have priorities that fit in with financial success in our society. I can’t count the number of food stampers I’ve seen buying shiny rims or spending hundreds on lottery tickets or simply having 5 or 6 kids in as many years.
Blame it on their environment if you like, or on our education system, or on whatever your personal boogeyman is, but some people aren’t going to succeed.
(And I have grave doubts that anyone on this board is projects poor as opposed to student poor or waitress poor.)
Well, you’re new, so I suppose allowances must be made for learnning curves. We’ve had old-time members here who were SRO-poor. Post from the library-poor.
I’ve been here at least as long as you, thanks. Pay to play was dumb. Regardless, even if there is one or two indigents on here, that doesn’t really touch on my point.
I dunno about that. The only point of yours that I was addressing was your grave doubts that anyone on the board was “projects-poor”.
And for that matter, pay-to-play wasn’t initiated until the board had been going for nearly five years. Were you somebody else before then, or were you just a lurker, but for some other reason than pay-to-play?
Not that I’m particularly excited to be on ivn’s side, but I was a lurker long before Pay-to-Play. Just never had the urge to jump in and talk. Everything I had to say was usually already said before I got to a thread and was usually said many times more eloquently than what I would have said.
Still happens, but I’ve managed to work it out.
EDIT: My point being that it’s not entirely impossible for someone to have been lurking for a period of time that is measured in years.
Can I also throw in his desire to make being poor more uncomfortable? I have a feeling that’s the real point behind his ideas, not making the poor more healthy, or shaving some of the costs out of the program, he just wants to humiliate poor people, since that will motivate them to be not poor anymore.