I shall call my Congresswoman tomorrow and demand that she not use My Money to buy fancy meals for her family.
You are correct. And I believe that the people in this thread who have a problem with them spending their allotment on more expensive food think that if they can afford to get the more expensive food with x a month, then they should only be getting (x-y) a month so that they can only buy cheap food.
-lv
Basic simple logic. The maximum foodstamp allotment is 4 dollars and ninety-seven cents per day per person, for a single individual receiving foodstamps. This is reduced by 30 cents for every net dollar earned by the recipient, and goes down for each additional dependent.
If you are asserting that this benevolence helps people to live comfortably on food stamps and discourages productivity, you are more full of shit than a Christmas goose.
Now, if you want to say that some people who have under the table jobs collect food stamps illegally, and that they use the fraudulantly obtained benefits to purchase luxury items, that might have some merit, but then we’re not discussing food stamps, we’re discussing the criminal behaviour of a few individuals.
You can’t make the criminals behave the way you want by passing laws that regulate those who are receiving benefits lawfully. If you don’t want the thieves to buy lobster with food stamps there are easier solutions than making it illegal to buy lobster with food stamps. I read that or something much like it in the American Rifleman magazine.
Well, the president has to pay for the food he, his family, and his guests eat. I think there is an exception for official functions of the US government, like state dinners, but otherwise, he has to cough up the money.
And to Scylla,
I don’t want a service member and his or her family to suffer. We have many lower ranking service members with families who receive food stamps. We have many national guard members whose families receives food stamps now that they have been called up and don’t have their civilian paychecks. I received food stamps the last year I was in college because we could not make ends meet. I worked every hour I could convince them to schedule me for. My husband worked every hour he could convince his work to schedule him. I was finishing up two degrees, and managed to graduate magna cum laude. I could not spend the time I did before college minimizing our grocery bill. I still made good healthy meals, but I did not spend the hours I did before getting every last bit of calories and flavor out of a chicken carcass. No, not everyone who uses public assistance is lazy or deserves to suffer.
Also it has been repeatedly mentioned that many on food stamps don’t have the facilities or the faculties to cook from scratch. Some do need more than others to get by. I am not for anyone suffering. I don’t think it will motivate hard work in those who would otherwise be lazy. I think it will motivate more crime, and also increase the number of very bad employees in the workplace, not just in those too lazy, but also those who cannot concentrate because they are suffering and full of worry for their family. I’d rather our safety net be a net and not a spike filled pit.
I’m quite certain that isn’t what I said.
Rather, I suggested that if our abiding concern is to ensure nutrition for the impoverished, and the foodstamp system isn’t cutting it, why not subsidize the healthy food, make it readily available to those below the poverty line or homeless.
No, you can’t have a pony. :wally
If I have a pony, the food situation is solved, at least for a time.
It. Doesn’t. Matter.
It doesn’t matter if she’s a widow. It doesn’t matter if her husband of 15 years up and left and isn’t paying child support. It doesn’t matter if she’s a drug addict. It doesn’t matter if she’s a former drug addict.
It. Doesn’t. Matter.
The babies are there and need to be fed.
What programs do you think are the first to be cut? The first things our fine cough governor cut when he got into office was the only program to help people with bad/no credit get into an apartment. How long do you think it took him to cut “fluff” like cooking classes? Hmm?
How nice of you to think of the poor one week a year. What do you do the other 51?
Poverty DOES suck. Poor people DO suffer. I can’t believe you don’t already know that. I don’t think you’ve ever seen how bad poverty can really be.
Not to mention cheaper. Not the lobster and steak of course. But the junk food.
Ah, good ol’ Scylla! Whenever I feel my radical lefty ardor begin to dim, he’s there to remind me who my political enemies are, and why. Still dodging Marley’s ghost are you, lad?
But why so stingy with the curative properties of suffering? If this moral lesson is so valuable, why restrain it needlessly? Why not turn a few of their children loose in the woods, to be hunted for sport by the booted and horsed, so that they may instruct by example? How better to instill the vigorous spirit of entrepreneurship and hearty self-reliance than a jolly round of tyke-hunting. After all, its not like they have much to lose anyway, might as well supply some needed diversion and morally instructive entertainment for their social betters, no?
Of course, this might run afoul of PETA and the half-dozen or so sincere Christians in our midst, but they can soon be set right with a whiff of grapeshot applied with a firm hand.
Suffering is good for other people.
Speaking as someone who is just getting by on $565 in disability a month, poverty DOES suck. I don’t get foodstamps, just medical insurance, and a payment each month. I need dental care desperately, and can’t afford it. It isn’t covered by my medical card. I need new glasses, which my medical card no longer covers. The only reason I have internet access is because we are boarders, we pay rent to the person that owns this house and they happen to have cable internet which they allow us to share, and have given us a seperate place to store our food etc. The only apartments in this town are in BAD neighborhoods, friends of ours got mugged at gunpoint while going through one of them in daylight. The cost of natural gas is also INSANE here. There is only one company that supplies natural gas/gasoline to this town. The winter of 2002/2003 it wasn’t unusual for a newer 2 bedroom house to rack up over $500 in gas bills for one month of winter heating with the thermostat set low enough to require sweaters. It’s not quite that bad now, (because it hasn’t been such a sustained cold snap here the past 2 winters, S. Kansas winters are milder) but still too costly for me to pay and still be able to eat. I pay a portion of the bills, half the internet etc. I can manage that.
The cost of living is cheaper here than other places, but we still barely scrape by most months. Some of the only “concessions” I make are things like name brand shampoo and conditioner bought in bulk every other month, (because I’m not allergic to them, and they actually work on my long tangly hair) a matinee movie maybe once or twice a year, Everquest subscription which is $35 dollars every 3 months, (which is cheaper than a movie every other week by far) 2 pet cats, (have to factor in vet bills if they gets sick, not to mention rabies, one is completely an indoor cat, the other is mostly indoors, he goes into the yard, but doesn’t wander) and rarely a meal at a restaurant for a birthday or anniversary (which doesn’t go over $25, usually it’s under $20 for both of us, we go for Chinese buffet or Mexican and get the inexpensive meals). I do this by buying in bulk, and making “basic” meals that might not be fancy, but are still filling and reasonably nutritious. Fresh fruits and vegetables are a rare treat, I usually have to go with canned stuff. I was recently lucky enough to also discover Anarchy Online, which is offering it’s core game for free for a year. The core game is big enough (has enough zones and things to do) that I haven’t missed the expansions yet, unlike Everquest.
My husband is going through welding school, paid for by an education fund set up by his grandparents. (Yes, SSI knows and is ok with this, it’s in his widowed grandmother’s name, and she pays the money directly to the college.) He’s getting fully certified in welding, learning all the marketable methods AFAIK, which will make him VERY employable. He’s learned quite a few already, (He passed his “stick rod” or SMAW bend test flawlessly a while back. Yeah, I’m happy for him, this is what he wants to do, he loves it.) and is currently mastering TIG, after that he’ll be taught MIG. The only methods he isn’t learning are the ones used for deep sea welding.
The point is, for now we are scraping by on my disability but when he gets certified and graduates this will change when he gets a job. The first things we have to purchase (as well as making payments towards what we owe his parents) are a second hand vehicle, dental care, and glasses. Then we can look at getting our own place.
Anyway, back on topic. How dare you tell me I can’t get name brand stuff? How dare you presume to say “I’m not good enough” to eat lobster if by some fluke I manage to pull off a budgeting miracle and can afford to get one on tremendous markdown the day after Valentine’s day when the store just wants to get rid of the ones they didn’t sell? I’m suffering, I have to go get antibiotics for my tooth every other month, I can’t see as well as I should be able to, and my husband has no medical insurance so we owe his parents for medical bills that they kindly paid for (as a loan) because we couldn’t. I’m lucky because I have a roof over my head, and am out of the apartment complex for the elderly and disabled I was living in, which was a nightmare in more ways than one. It’s caught fire twice since I moved out.
For those who say, “She seems smart enough, she can concentrate enough to play those games, she can get a job.” I say, I can concentrate as long as I don’t have stress, as long as I don’t have to physically be around “strange” people. I’m dealing with being bi-polar, and PTSD from my previous abusive marriage. I nearly had a nervous breakdown when my husband’s relative was dying last year, I was helping them out, at the expense of myself. I don’t know if I’ll ever be well enough to hold down a job, I’d like to be, but I have to learn how to handle stress without shutting down, going into “autopilot” and just subsisting while ignoring myself or my responsibilities alternately. I’ve also got to learn how to handle being around people who aren’t friends or family. I’d face the same problems whether I had a “stay at home” job, or a job outside the home. I say this, because people of this community have questioned me about this recently elsewhere. I also say this, in the interest of furthering understanding. You’d observe this for yourself if you met me in person and were around me much anyway.
This makes me wonder if you read my post at all, or simply hit the reply button out of reflex.
Be that as it may…
People on food stamps shouldn’t buy lobster. I agree. That is sage advice, and people on public assistance would do well to heed it. We’re agreed on this, right? So moving on – how are you going to enforce this? A general “no shellfish” law? An “All pincers left behind” act? We’ve already discussed to death how impractical it would be to enforce any such laws.
But what if a person does buy a lobster? Who have they hurt? You? No, your taxes remain the same either way. Themselves? Since you seem to delight in the suffering of the poor, then it’s a good thing that they’ve hurt themselves, right? Plus, it feeds your righteous indignation. Win/win!
Which leads us to the topic of whose business it is how they’ve spent their money. Please justify to me how it’s your business.
What if someone on foodstamps lives in Maine and buys scrap lobster from a local dealer who sells lobsters that aren’t deemed good enough to sell on the regular market? I haven’t been in Maine, but most food producers have lower-quality product that they dump. A rule forbidding the purchase of such products seems to me to be counterproductive, in that it requires someone to refrain from making good economic choices.
Our welfare system is already designed to encourage poor economic choices (for example, should you come into money, spend it quickly). Let’s not add more incentives to be stupid, ok?
But they are. There are people living in cardboard boxes, people begging for loose change so they can buy some food.
Ever ask yourself during that time why you were having so much trouble? If you worked that many hours a week for so many years, I have to ask, what were you doing - what job, what pay etc. Sounds like you were being taken advantage of, or maybe you are not telling us the whole story.
What about people who will never be able to work? The mental patients that were dumped on the street by Reagan, the war veterans who are maimed or crippled or have slipped gears due to stress, the teen whose parents dropped dead, the plant worker who got “outsourced” in a company town and can’t afford to leave town, etc etc etc etc etc.
Yeah. Damn lazy good for nothing orphans, cripples, veterans and nutcases. Are there no workhouses?
If someone is working 80 hours a week and still makes less than enough to live on, he is doing something wrong. He needs to re-examing things and make some drastic career changes. I refer you to Jonathan Swift. Round up all the poor people, and send them to the slaughterhouse. Use them to feed their betters.
If you really did have such a rough time for so many years, I would think you might have a less jaundiced view of people who are down on their luck.
Thanks for bringing this up. It seems that those who would restrict choices don’t want to recognize regional differences in food pricing. If some idiot in Iowa sees lobster at $14.99/lb, he’ll want to restrict its sale to New Englanders who may occasionally be able to get it at $3.99. This is just one example of why taking choice away from consumers is a piss-poor idea.
You know, I was with you right up until your last line. It’s “my” business because it’s “my” money they’re spending. (me and my meaning society as a whole of course) How hard is that to understand? If someone is taking my charity because they are broke I don’t feel that expecting them not to use that charity for luxuries to be out of line at all.
As to the rest of your post, all I have proposed is that people on food stamps should not be allowed to buy any meat that costs more than $5.99/lb. Everything is bar coded, certain products are already excluded, the additional line of programing to check the price of the meat would be a trivial thing to implement. If lobster goes on sale for 5.99, they can knock themselves out for all I care. You act like it would be so hard to implement this when in reality it would be child’s play.
You’re the second or third person to mention this. Would you care to give me any examples of my “righteous indignation”? I don’t have any. I am simply smart enough to realize that if you give away unlimited benefits, you breed dependent people. Why is advocating a few minor limits on food stamps, all of them perfectly consistent with the program’s stated purpose, such a threat to you Oh-my-God-won’t-somebody-please-think-of-the-children!-give-'em-whatever-they-want types?
You realize Weirddave, that you’d be restricting welfare recipients in some areas to crappy quality, near inedible, and certainly not the most nutritious meat with your price right? Meat in some areas of the country is EXPENSIVE, even “cheap” meats cost more than $5.99 a pound in some parts of this country.
As for this:
Fuck you! You don’t write my disability check, you don’t foot the bills for my medicine, government programs do, which we will gladly pay for when I go off disability. Until I see YOUR signature authorizing my disability payment, I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of my business.
I do think I’ll go to the local store after Valentine’s day, to see if they have any lobsters left that are marked down, and I’ll buy one, and relish every single bite. Or, I might just get some frozen shrimp and make some good pasta, because my husband likes shrimp more than lobster. I might also look into a nice steak or two. Whatever strikes his fancy, that is decently priced. (And sure as HELL not by your $5.99 a pound rule, we don’t eat that much so we won’t get a huge amount.) I have a little bit extra this month anyway, wht not spend it on a nicer meal than usual?
But that’s the thing – it is not your money. It is theirs. That is why the benefits have their names on them, not yours. Let’s try an analogy: I assume you work, and I assume you draw a paycheck. Is that your money? Or is it your bosses’? (Boss’s? Bosse’s? Boss’?) Does he have a right to tell you how to spend it?
“Yes”, you say, “that’s a good point, I stand corrected, and you a god to me.” Which would be the correct thing to say. But you continue, “But I worked for that money. Charity is different.” Sure. It’s public funds. So are the funds used to pay for public roads. I have no car, yet I am forced to subsidize your driving habits. Does this mean that they’re my roads, and I can restrict where you drive? My taxes fund the war in Iraq. Can I order soldiers around?
In that particular instance, you are correct. Of course, not all stores have that technology, so how would you enforce it in those establishments? Or would you restrict me from such places? Or suppose some random stranger gave me a $5 bill and said “Hey, go get yourself a lobster!” Could I use my foodstamps to supplement that $5? Or am I restricted from lobster in any case?
First off, I take that back. You are not righteously indignant. You just have a really ignorant and short-sighted method to save the world. It may look good on paper, but in the real world it’s a really bad idea.
Second, as has been demonstrated, food stamps are hardly “unlimited.”
Third, it seems you are the one threatened, but OK – when I hear people discussing taking away the rights of the poor “for their own good”, alarm bells go off. God forbid one day I need public assistance and you are there to “help” me.
Well, the scales have certainly fallen from my eyes.
Here all along I was under the impression that, as a taxpayer, I had some right to input on how the government spent its money. Now I find I have no such right, and I had better shut up.
Hear that, all you liberals? It isn’t your money anymore. So if the government chooses to spend it on corporate welfare, or wars in Iraq, or food stamps, you better just keep your yaps shut.
It’s no longer your money. You need to understand that and get the fuck over it.
Regards,
Shodan
If you’re going to play the partisan card, then perhaps you can explain this sudden conservative hard-on for increased goverment intrusion, fewer personal freedoms, and restriction of the free market system.
I give up. It’s OK to start bullshit wars and kill furriners for no good reason. It is OK to subsidize incompetent and corrupt corporate fatcats and prop up their companies on the public dole. It is OK to piss money away changing things that don’t need fixing. It is OK to plop money into projects that nobody wants (except the politicians and their contractor cronies). All with “our” taxes"
But, it is not OK for the richest country on earth to ensure that our most helpless citizens, “the least of your brethren” have any food or shelter. All with “our” taxes.
It’s OK to kill people, but not OK to feed them.
You have the same choice we have in deciding where our money goes - it’s called elections.
Meanwhile, have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up, you smug, self centered, myopic, self satisfied, self righteous, arrogant paragon of ultimate assholery.