That may vary from state to state. I’m pretty sure it does roll over in WV.
Even if it doesn’t, what’s to prevent them from spending whatever they have left on canned or other non-perishable goods? Soup doesn’t rot. Dried rice doesn’t spoil.
I can just hear KellyM respond immediately that poor people don’t have any fresh water available to boil rice. And nobody on minimum wage can afford a pot to piss in, let alone boil soup.
But it’s a partial answer to tdn’s nonsense about how half a lobster is just as good as ten cartons of oatmeal. You buy the stuff that goes farther, if you have any common sense. You are going to get more meals out of a dozen eggs than a pound of lobster, even if they cost exactly the same.
Although they don’t.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, sure. But if they’re stupid enough to buy a lobster rather than say, a bunch of canned goods, some pasta and oatmeal, then they’re the ones who have to suffer after the lobster’s eaten and they have no more food or allotment.
So their own stupidity will punish them.
I never said “Just as good.” I said “Costs the same.” Huge difference.
No, unfortunately it won’t, because we will immediately hear about how they do not have enough to eat, how we are not giving them enough money to eat, blah blah blah.
The bit about not having the right to care how money is spent is also ridiculous. People who purchase their own food without resort to government subsidies (in other words, subsidies from other taxpayers) who cannot afford lobster for fairly obvious reasons might be a little upset over having someone who has taken their money (wait for it, “but it’s only $.0000000000000001 cents per year”, well if it’s such a small amount, why don’t you go find it from someone else) eating food that they feel they can’t afford for themselves.
How this concept is shocking to people I don’t know.
That’s a good a segue as any into what I was going to post. I just got back from the grocery store, and just for fun I did a little experiment. I went to the seafood counter and asked them how much one lobster would be. (What’s really funny is that “lobster” has become the default luxury food in this thread, yet 100 years ago it was regarded as garbage and only poor people ate it!) They fished one out of the tank, weighed it and told me $22.34. I thanked them, they put it back, and I went “shopping”. Here’s what I “bought”:
1 box spaghetti $.69
1 jar Prego spaghetti sauce $1.50
1 bag salad mix $2.00
10 lbs potatoes $3.69
1 lb ground beef $2.49
3 lbs boneless chicken breasts 5.87
1 lb bag frozen corn .99
1 lb bag frozen green beans .99
1 lb bag mixed veggies
1 package Lipton rice medley .50
1 package Lipton beef noodles $.50
1 loaf French bread 1.79
1 can beef stock .75
Total: $22.76
What’s my point you ask? My point is that 1 lobster will feed 1 person for 1 meal. With the food listed above, I can feed a family of 4 4 full meals (assuming that they already have spices and condiments and stuff):
Meal 1: Spaghetti w/ garlic bread and salad. (Used: Spaghetti, sauce, French bread, half of the bagged salad)
Meal 2: Baked chicken breasts, rice medley, veggies (Used: 1/2 the chicken, rice, 1/2 each frozen corn + green beans)
Meal 3: Shepherd’s pie, beef noodles (Used: Ground beef, beef stock, the rest of the corn and green beans, a couple of pounds of potatoes, mashed and the beef noodles)
Meal 4: Chicken stir fry, boiled potatoes (Used: Rest of chicken, mixed veggies, potatoes)
There: a simple, varied, balanced menu for a family of 4 for 4 days that costs the same as that one lobster. That’s the kind of good, wholesome food that society owes the poor. Nobody is owed expensive, inefficient, luxury food items. It doesn’t make sense no matter how you slice it. Either someone is living large off of the charity of others, or they’re blowing their food allowance on inappropriate stuff, which means they will run out of money and not be able to eat for a full month, defeating the entire purpose of food stamps in the first place.
You monster! You’re evil! You want poor people to starve!
Etc.
Regards,
Shodan
So since NCLB became “Nickleby”, this would be the Applebee’s Act? 
As far as my tax money going to causes I don’t believe in, the only way I can keep from being startlingly, maniacally angry all the time that the government spends so much money on war, defense, and 41 Christmas trees for the White House is to imagine that all the money I pay in goes toward social programs, and the above atrocities are paid for by others. Perhaps the OP can visualize all “his” money going to something he heartily believes in and be comforted.
The irony of that has not escaped me. Too funny!
Holy shit. How big was it? I can get a 1.25 pounder for $10. More expensive than almost anything except shrimp and top of the line steak, but nothing I can’t afford once in a while.
If someone chooses to do the lobster thing on special occasions, it’s no skin off my back. I’ve lost nothing. If someone is doing it all the time and then ends up with nothing for the rest of the month, then they’ll learn a lesson in financial responsibility that they can learn in no other way, wouldn’t you agree?
And if a person figures out a way to save a nickel here and a dime there, and ends up with enough loose change at the end of the month to indulge in one of our crustacious friends, then I’d say that person has well earned the right to draw a little butter. A law that would prevent that is just draconian for the sake of it.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I can honestly say that I don’t have the skills to feed myself for $5 a day. And while Dave’s meal plan looks ok for dinner, it ignores breakfast, lunch, and any sort of snack. Essentially, his meal plan allows for about 500 calories a day/ per person. Assuming that one person was eating all the meals 4 times a day for about 2000 calories (the average requirement), they would wind up with a shortfall of $3.
Now, $3 doesn’t sound like much, but if your living off foodstamps, I’m guessing you don’t have $3 to throw around.
So even economical “healthy” food (that menu didn’t actually appear very healthy at all), is beyond a person with food-stamps.
My hat goes off to people who manage to do it - I know I couldn’t, I don’t have the skills.
I wasn’t really trying to plan a full menu, just demonstrating that it was possible to plan 4 full meals for 4 people for the cost of 1 lobster.
Tdn, the lobster weighed 1.72 lb at $12.99/lb. It was a good sized lobster, no doubt, and $12.99 is a little more than the usual $8.99-10.99, but I just walked up to the counter and asked that’s what it was. A few weeks ago they were on sale for $7.99/lb. If I’d done this then I might only have gotten 3 meals out of it! 
Ok, but you can see even from your “cheap” meal plan, a single person winds up with a $25 deficit each month. I just don’t think that many people are splurging on lobster.
That’s a bigboy, alright. And $12.99? Forgive my ignorance, but Maryland is not a landlocked state, is it? There are local waters, right? Sheesh. $12.99.
The other prices you posted look a little low for around here. So for a more reasonable sized lobster, you could have gotten maybe 1.5 meals instead of 4.
I also have to wonder about the OP’s claim. In some stores, lobsters are put in clear plastic bags, but in most, they’re put in opaque paper bags. And sometimes other things are put in those bags. Cheaper things. So I’m wondering if the OP has x-ray vision or something.
(I’ve been subscribed to this thread for a few days. Not counting posts made while I’m composing this one, I have read the whole thing).
I get food stamps.
Back in college, things were going great. My teachers loved me. My first semester GPA was 3.85 . Then the pills stopped working. It became harder and harder to think. I had to put in three times the hours and effort it had taken me to get an A, just to get a C. My fourth semester GPA was 2.0 . I went from having a bright future to no future at all.
As somebody already said, the application process is designed to be difficult and humiliating. The forms ask you to prove that you have nothing, and no way to work. Then, they turn you down. Almost everybody is turned down the first time. Some people won’t bother to reapply, and the government won’t have to pay them. When you go to the county welfare office for the intake interview, they ask you to hand over all your remaining dignity and self-respect. You tell them that you don’t have any left. They make you check your pockets anyway. You find that you do still have some. They take that away. The intake interview is conducted by an employee chosen for their love of red tape and their lack of compasion.
I have obsessive compulsive disorder. I spend (this is not hyperbole, but unadorned fact) more time, use more soap, and work harder cleaning a single dish than a normal person will use on a whole sinkfull of dishes. Chronic depression is not good for your energy level. Between those two, the dishes would really pile up in my sink. 2003 was a particularly bad year. I lost over 90% (again, not exxageration.) of my silverware to rust. You see, I couldn’t put it back in the drawers until it was really clean. I just didn’t have the energy to clean it. So, I almost never buy anything that requires cooking. It may be cheaper. But, there’s a good chance it will result in more pots rusting and putrefying in the sink. Or that the fear of that will cause me to put off cooking the item so long that it goes bad.
I have never bought lobster with food stamps. I have bought tiramisu. It was for a friend’s birthday. I don’t think I have ever bought steak. I did buy some lamb when my 93 year old Uncle Max was visiting. I asked if I could get him anything special. He said lamb. Since every meal was potentially his last meal, I got him some lamb.
I do buy some junk food. I cannot explain the effect that chocolate has on me. I don’t know what chemical they contain. But, going too long without chocolate has a very negative effect on me. For a while, I was afraid that buying junk food with my EBT card would set up some flag in the system and I’d get a call revoking my benefits. I finally couldn’t take any more. One night, I bought a bottle of store brand chocolate syrup. There were no clean glasses, so I started to make myself a bowl of chocolate milk. For some reason, I put the syrup in first. Lost in the smell and sight of the stuff, I overdid it and filled the whole bowl. I put the milk away and ate the syrup like soup. Then, I had another bowl.
I didn’t choose this. I hate it. I want desperately to work, and to live off money I earn.
Maryland is not a lobster state. Ask weirddave about the price of crab. Or maybe bay scallops.
As mentionmed, there really isn’t any such thing as permanent dependance anymore, as all cash benefits for the able-bodied are time-limited. You will either find work or just go poor, eventually, and if you have no children, you aren’t going to get cash benefits in most states no matter what.
And I don’t think that this is a liberal vs. conservative issue – or it shouldn’t be. This is a reality vs. ideal issue. Of course the ideal is that everyone would be born and raised to value their educational opportunities (and of course everyone would have good opportunities available to them) and make the most of them, to think about their futures, to set themselves on an upwardly-mobile path, to make wise choices about substances use and sexual activity/procreation and would grow up and go to college (or trade school or whatever) and get a good job and get married and have 2.2 kids and be happy forevermore without ever needing a hand up or out or help from anyone.
The reality is that we don’t all start from that place. Not everyone has hope. Not everyone has guidance. Not everyone has a school with enough textbooks for every student. So while the difference between being poor and not being poor can often be boiled down to “poor choices” a lot of those choices are borne out of a lack of hope. If you know that your family can’t afford college and even though you’re a godo student you aren’t scholarship material, then it isn’t going to matter much if you get married and/or have a baby at 19 because what are you putting on hold except the same kind of dead-end job that you’ll be able to get when your kid is older anyway? When no one in your life has ever done anything more than graduate from high school (maybe) and then struggle perpetually thereafter, why are you to think that there’s any reason to hope for or want anything more?
So if you want to break the cycle you’ve got to start by making real educational options available to recepients – not just job training, but actual education, which goes beyond mere preparation for quick employment. Just because someone is starting from “poor” doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve a chance to prepare themselves for a career rather than just a job.
There’s no reason why that newly single-and-TANF-dependent mom of two should be limited to learning how to make cardboard boxes or taking secretarial classes. Her benefits should not be contingent upon enrollment in vocational dead ends any more than they should be contingent upon her completion of parenting classes when there’s no evidence that her parenting is negligent, or nutrition classes when there’s no evidence that she doesn’t know how to give her children properly nutritious meals when she is financially capable of doing so. However, this is precisely what welfare-to-work has given us in many states. And the recepients who aren’t cut out for making boxes or assembling electronic doodads or filing or reception work often face benefits cuts because they’re not evidencing a “willingness to work the program” when it could just be that they’re better geared toward being plumbers or bookkeepers or electricians or newscasters or teachers or nurses or lawyers. Why shouldn’t they be able to work within the system while still developing their true potential?
Then we need to consider being realistic about benefits. One of the problems that many women I personally know have had to deal with is that when they do get a job, they start earning “so much” (while making <$10 an hour) that they no longer qualify for benefits that they need to retain for a while even though they now have an independent income, things like WIC, food stamps, Medicaid and childcare and Section 8 rental subsidies.
If you’ve been unemployed for quite some time or have never held a job, there’s a period of ramping up to full independence, there are items which need to be purchased in the process (clothing, household goods like clothes irons and hair dryers, and things which have been put off like eyeglasses. dental care and vehicle repairs which make it easier to work everyday) and independent medical benefits, etc. often do not come with that first job or start right away. The qualifications for continued non-cash and non-education benefits need to reflect those realities.
We also need a more flexible support system for people who moving (back) into the workforce. Many people find that they could get work in the field that they’re qualified for, but not during the hours that traditional daycare centers are open, and childcare is one of the biggest problems for single working-class parents. People need alternative childcare options, places where second and graveyard shift workers can have their children safely and properly cared for, places where workers who are new to their jobs or don’t have time to spare to take off can get care for kids who are too sick for school or normal day care.
Working parents also need to be made aware of non-governmental resources which are available to help them in a thousand little ways that those of us with options take for granted. Just as a for instance, if one millionth of McDonald’s advertising budget made people aware that for $400 a year ($1.10 a day, $7.69 a week) could buy copious supplies of fresh produce every single week from a farm share, how many more kids would have more fruits and vegetables in their diets than they could shake a stick at (and fewer Happy Meals)? That seems so simple and yet it’s something that could make a tremendous difference in the quality of life for countless people.
What it boils down to, we need to get off our collective high horses about “the poor.” There but for the grace of God or fate or whomever. As lee, I believe, mentioned, the difference between being middle-class, homeowning (with a mortgage) and financially okay and being bankrupt and perhaps even jobless can be one severe illness or accident that insurance doesn’t cover. And coming from the root, people who were raised in non-impoverished communities by parents who gave a damn about their education and future and prospects have no clue how much of an advantage in life that has given them over people who were raised in poverty by parents who didn’t have anything to invest in their kids because everything they had was geared toward basic survival. It shouldn’t have to be hard. There shouldn’t have to be suffering. Effort, yes. Sacrifice, yes. But that goes for everyone, the poor shouldn’t have to do more just because they’re starting from a lower point on the continuum.
I picked a store in New Orleans in a part of town that has a moderate mix of both poor and rich (New Orleans has pockets of both, often very close together). I chose New Orleans because I’ve lived there, and am therefore familiar with where things are located, and also because it is a coastal town, where lobster is often at least reasonably priced, and the residents know and love seafood.
I picked the last full month for which I have data, searched until I found the random weight code for lobster, then did a search for it. I pulled up all orders with random weight lobster in them to find out a few things.
On average, the store scanned about 27 lineitems of lobster per day, and this was highest on Fridays and Saturdays. The mean, not including tax, of all of these orders (that is everything they bought, not just the lobster) was just under $60, with ranges from around $20 to $280 (these people apparently ate well, as it wasn’t really staple type items). They following tenders were used the given percentage of the time: Cash - 32%, Check - 24%, Credit/Debit Card (various varieties) - 46%. The fact that they don’t add up is not due to rounding issues. People sometimes pay with multiple tenders for a single purchase, and almost all systems now handle this fine. The one thing I did not see was a single purchase with an EBT card. So, it wasn’t a matter of only a few folks bought it. None did.
Just for fun, I did a search for the first 50 records that were paid with an EBT tender type, and also had a purchase from the seafood department. Due to the way random weight works, I have no idea what the price per pound was, but using my knowledge of relative price points, and with simple spot checking, it looked like the most expensive seafood item I found was “41/50 ct” shrimp. That’s considered small shrimp (although some places like to call it medium, but they are just clueless), and in a place like New Orleans, not very expensive.
So, if you want to make the claim that folks are buying lobster with food stamps in any significant quantity, you’re going to have to provide me with a better cite than some checkout person telling you they saw it once.
Can we please leave hypotheticals out of the equation until someone actually brings them into the realm of reality? It’s a lot easier to be mad at these fictitious abusers of the food stamp program who are popping open the can of Beluga to serve on the side of their boiled lobster tails than the mother of 3, whose husband isn’t getting his nice paycheck from his cushy job, as the National Guard called him up and sent him to Iraq. If you want to be mad at food stamp users, be mad at the latter example, as she’s a lot more likely to be the person getting them.
I should clarify before someone gets a bit nit-picky. New Orleans is not technically a coastal town, but it likes to think that it’s one, and the seafood is just as cheap as if it truly was one. It’s also the only one I’m thoroughly familiar with that has no shortage of poverty, and an abundance of seafood lovers.
DMC, I’d like to mention that your posts have been extremely good. Thank you. A breath of fresh air in this thread.