I’m gonna go out on a HUGE limb here and say..oh I dunno…
Maybe NOT BUY SMOKES? Or cut down? You ARE allowed to work on welfare and still qualify for some benefits depending upon your hours and pay. Get a part time job that will allow you to keep your benefits and buy smokes with that.
That’s what happened in the olden days when money became scarce, people made choices. Usually smarter ones, once forced by necessity. What is wrong with that? Really? As some have informed us, people are only allowed to be on the system for two years anyway, so it’s not as if they’re being asked to
I agree with this, (I think), I mean, people should be able to buy the food products that make the most sense to them to buy, and should be trusted to have enough sense to make it last and so on. I don’t really have a dog in that part of the fight.
And maybe–just MAYBE–that’s what they are doing. Did that thought cross your mind?
Or maybe they have a friend who gives them money for smokes occasionally. Perhaps normally they don’t smoke, but you happened to catch them in the check-out line on a bad day.
Maybe they are doing grocery shopping for someone else. I used to run to the store for my sister when she was pregnant. She’d give me food stamps (back when they were real stamps), and I’d go get Similac or whatever. If I’d been a smoker, I may have killed two birds with one stone and picked up some Newports. Imagine that? Me doing a good deed for someone and then having to suffer under the burning hot glare of the overly-judgmental, no-life-having person standing in line behind me.
Or maybe they were teh evil and they were doing the unthinkable: smoking while poor. So the fuck what?! If it’s so annoying, just look away from the monstrosity and stay away from it. But all your self-righteousness doesn’t fix anything.
But SNAP isn’t enough to cover most household food expenses. And people on SNAP (are supposed to be and usually are) poor. So if you are spending money on cigarettes, you aren’t spending money on your kids.
I still resent my mother for that. A pack a day smoker for years and it drove us kids mad. My brother and I would tally up the money she spent on smokes and beg her to quit.
We only sporadically had assistance (sometimes from the women’s pantry) because her short time on welfare made her feel so horrible she didn’t do it again…iirc she did it a few times before I was born, but after her and my dad’s divorce we had food stamps for awhile and then she never went back…even when we really really needed it. Like health care. How many times did I not get medical attention?
But at the same time, she was OK spending $3 for a pack of smokes when we were returning cans for food. :smack:
Do you seriously give everyone in life the benefit of the doubt? Always? There are people who have witnessed welfare fraud first hand. I feel like everyone knows someone. Provided you actually know poor people.
I described exactly why it bothered me, and the circumstances in which I saw it occur, and in great detail in previous posts. When I saw it happening, it was at a time when I too was on foodstamps. And these were cases where they’d buy a small item, get the change (real money) back from the foodstamps, and then buy their cigarettes with that. Because it was very late at night (I found the whole process beyond humiliating and would only shop in the wee hours of the morning), the cashiers often didn’t have the $1 dollar denominations of foodstamps, so the person could get enough by buying a pack of gum or a candy bar to buy a pack of cigarettes. Back then cigarettes, gum, and candy were a lot less than they are now. So this wasn’t just someone buying actual groceries and then pulling out a five dollar bill for cigarettes.
And this was at a time when, every time I turned around I was getting an “unannounced home inspection” or mandatory job training call-ins. What was it to*** me***? It was, (again, as I clearly stated above) “great! YOU, and jerks like you, are the reason I’m being persecuted by these State Welfare Nazis” Obviously they have to at least try to find the cheats, unfortunately, they’ve glommed onto me as some sort of suspicious possible cheater (which wouldn’t happen at all, if the cheaters didn’t exist in the first place). I’ve been very clear about that part of my feelings on the subject.
Again, there are several different and separate parts to the debate here. The main OPs question was “should one’s purchases/taxes be looked into”. I don’t get what part of that all of the “OMG, you just want kids to STaaaAARVE” protesters find to mean that we all want to cut off ALL food, foodstamps and help of any kind.
No one, not even Apples, is saying that.
Several of you seem to be taking agreement that it should be looked into, there should be some sort of checks and balances to mean that “OMG, everyone hates poor people and wants them to sit in the dark, in rags, and only eat gruel”. Come on! Some of you are getting way out of sorts, really exaggerating, and going overboard on the hyperbole, and you know that’s not true.
“We would like more responsibility and checks and balances in the system” does NOT then equal “we hate all poor people, all their kids should starve”.
What CanvasShoes said. We all know there are criminals in the system. The OP asked if their taxes should be looked into. Why not? Your finances are scrutinized for Pell Grants, bankruptcy courts, and a host of other perks of being a US citizen, eh?
I actually think think that paychecks v. taxes is better, because someone could make $50,000 one year and get laid off, but there are many people in this thread who have seen fraud and are rightfully angered about it. It doesn’t matter if it is 1 per cent or 1/2 of one per cent or whatever. It amounts to a lot of money and these people are breaking the law. The ‘welfare queens’ also give ALL welfare recipients a bad name.
Poor people today have it a lot better than in decades past. No doubt. That’s a good thing. But no one is entitled to a government-sponsored candy bar.
In order to qualify for welfare, you have to meet a very low threshold. It’s also a pain in the ass to get all the supporting documentation. But guess what? It’s not hard to lie and defraud the government.
Indeed. Rather than blame us “judgmental” people, why not blame those who scam and make it more difficult for everyone who IS being honest with their use of the welfare opportunities?
Because they just lost their job, just happened to come into extra cash as a gift this one time, just happened to be buying food for someone else or we just happen to have some serious Big Meanie Blinders on.
You are showing a fundamental lack of understanding of how the system–really ANY system–works. The goal is never to prevent every single case of fraud. Do you think the IRS’s goal is to prevent every single case of tax fraud? Even if it’s just someone claiming a deduction worth a few dollars? Of course not, because that would cost a ton more money than it would ever save. Do you think it’s law enforcement’s goal to prevent every single case of white collar crime, at any cost? Hint: no. And white collar crime costs everyone exponentially more money than food stamp fraud.
Why people get up on this moral high horse about public assistance and only public assistance is beyond me.
Oh? Do white collar criminals give all businesspeople a bad name?
I used to work for COACH, makers of fine handbags and frequently copied ones.
Once a bag came in for repair, this is at the head office, where the designers work,it took us a few hours to figure out it was fake.
OH and as someone who received EBT for a while, yes, they check you out. No you don’t get a lot, and it doesn’t cover a lot of stuff from the grocery store. Like toilet paper or aspirin.
What you seem to fail to realize it that it is mostly a huge boom to the food industry. I wonder how much Mac and Cheese is bought with “food stamps”.
What exactly does looking at one’s taxes tell about a person who has already stooped so low as to commit welfare fraud?
If I’m getting money from my drug-dealing boyfriend, that is not going to show up on a tax audit. Working under the table? By definition that is not going to show up. Will it catch those folks who didn’t file a W2 issued to them? I have no idea…since I don’t know how tax audits work. But how does IRS know if a person has another W2 floating out there? (not a rhetorical question)
If there aren’t a whole lot of SNAP frausters who’d be netted by a tax audit, it isn’t worth doing. Because not only do you have to pay people to run all these audits, but there are the social and financial costs of “false positives”–people who are legit but for whatever reason don’t appear to be so. Maybe they didn’t file taxes at all because they’d only made $1000 last year, and who in the world would get het up about reporting that? Maybe they didn’t file because they are too busy being homeless (good luck tracking them down). Or they made an innocent mistake on the form–which I’ve done a couple of times. Are you willing to sentence such a person to hunger and malnourishment for these infractions? That’s what will happen while pursuing the fraudsters. Innocents get swept up into it. We aren’t talking about a mere headache, but a person having to confront their family with the news that they will be hungry for weeks or longer until the matter can get straightened out.
Any other bright idea comes with similar effects. Even surprise home visits and refrigerator raids:
*The 20-lb turkey. How you can you afford that? Your grandmother gave that to you? Mmm hmm.
I see a box of Twinkies and canned pears in here. This is unhealthy! Did you use your EBT card for this junk?
I see you are a smoker, ma’am. What percentage of your income are you wasting on smokes? 25%? That’s too high, ma’am. Unacceptable.
What are you making for dinner tonight? Hamburger Helper? What kind of parent are you?! You know what’s better? Butter ramen noodles. Lower in fat and sodium and just as tasty. And much more “poor people” food, don’tchathink?
We’ve found a lot of violations here. We’re going to have to take you in for more questioning. Child Protection Services will be here shortly to get the kids. Quit your bubbering. This is the price you pay for taking money from the taxpayer.*
Part of the problem with EBT/SNAP is that the system was designed with a focus on distributing surplus food. For probably the first time in history, the government had the weird situation of having surplus food, yet people were starving. Fundamentally, food stamps were not designed solely as a means of getting food to poor people, but also as a means of supplementing the agricultural industry. Of course, there have been many changes over the years, but the core idea behind food stamps is to move excess calories to poor people while subsidizing the food industry. Actually, it’s quite effective at that. Compare this to WIC. The origins of WIC are nutrition deficits, not a focus on excess food. Therefore, WIC has a history of being linked to nutritious food and is structured very differently than EBT. The programs that we have today is reflection of what was valued when it was created. If our sole goal was to get healthy, cheap food to poor people then you would simply have food pantries with extremely reduced selections (most food in food pantries is extremely crappy from a nutritional perspective). However, that’s not how the program was designed or how it has ever functioned.
Many of the people chiming in on this topic now want EBT to act in a way that it never was designed to (as a nutrition program). So what you are proposing is a huge overhaul of the entire nature of EBT. I think EBT fraud is fairly low but I also have no problem with implementing nutritional guidelines like we have with WIC. Note however, that would not address the “problem” that some people here have identified of shopping at high end stores or purchasing expensive healthy foods. Also, a complete overhaul the way it’s being discussed here would probably be best achieved by dissolving the program, moving it away from the Dept. of Agriculture and starting over.
First, submitting your tax returns doesn’t cost the government any money. Second, are you reading what I’m putting down here?
Here’s a government-sponsored candy bar.
monstro, you and I have already gotten into a row with me criticizing parents with exceptionally large children. We know that there’s a correlation between welfare and obesity. Are you letting your personal feelings get in the way of some common sense?
But wait a minute. No live lobsters? That can’t be right. Everyone knows that’s all they buy.
(Don’t know what your point is about junk food being allowed though. No one is saying otherwise.)
Sweetheart, let’s not get into a discussion about common sense. You will lose, I guaran-damn-tee.
All I’m hearing from you is whining and tales of how noble you were when you were Super Broke. I’m not hearing any workable solutions, though.
I am not defending anyone’s poor decision-making. You will never hear me saying that poor people don’t make a ton of bad decisions. But I know that cracking down on bad choices ALWAYS ends up biting good people in the ass. The fact that it is so damn hard to get on SNAP is proof of this.
You seem to pride yourself on being a compassionate person. Do you think it’s compassionate to make it harder for people to get help?
Instead of punishing both good and bad people by throwing extra hurdles and beauro-crazy at them, we should look towards incentivizing positive behaviors. Like rewarding EBT card users with more credit with every dollar they put towards fresh produce or giving more benefits to people who take nutrition classes. Support ideas like this and maybe I won’t think you’re a bitter, overly judgmental, no-life-having butt-in-ski.
My opinions on such programs (in a nutshell):
[ul]
[li]They should be expanded, but[/li][li]Junk food eliminated[/li][li]I have zero problems with requiring people to prove their income and assets (but actual lying for food food stamp fraud is low - other forms of welfare are easier to defraud, and I suspect people don’t like being on SNAP type programs because of embarrasment)[/li][li]People who defraud the government for benefits are assholes[/li][/ul]
If you don’t want to give your kid real food, then they can go hungry. Same applies to school lunch programs. Fuck this “Well we’d better give people mac & cheese or else kids will starve!” shit.
All I’ve heard is your defending bad decisions…What if…did you ever stop and think…oh sure, let the kids go HUNGRY! you BABY HATER! and etc.
Really, monstro? Because I said no one has the right to a candy bar? And you don’t think your little scenario with child protection workers was a little unrealistic?
Kids shouldn’t be hungry. Ever. But no one has a constitutional right to feed their kids junk by government supported mandate. If the government is going to provide a program aimed at feeding kids so that they aren’t malnourished or under-nourished, then it should do it correctly. If you want to feed your kids shit, do it on your own dollar.
Because I am sorry, telling poor folks that they should be able to feed their kids whatever they want with government support is basically like throwing the towel in. Oh, I don’t care what you feed your brat. Here, buy cookies. It’s cheap. I’d rather underfund the program than see your basic health needs.
Putting your foot down and saying, NO, this it not okay is compassionate. And combating fraud is just good government. Obviously we can’t catch everyone - that’s cost-prohibative - but there is nothing wrong with having people prove income to get welfare.
I’m not being pedantic here. I just came from the grocery store and while walking the aisle, I tried to categorize foods as “not junk” and “junk” based on its nutritional content.
Canned green beans? Junk or not junk? No fiber, no discernable vitamins. But it’s vegetable. Vegetables are good.
A loaf of ciabatta bread. No fiber, no discernable vitamins, though a little iron. But it’s a food group, right? That means it’s good.
Jello and pudding. Nah. Junk food, right? Same with all those little fruit cocktails. Might as well throw the entire juice aisle away too, then.
Boloney. Lots of fat and sodium, but protein too. Mmm, I don’t know.
Peanut butter? Jelly? Both loaded with bad stuff. Well, dayum. If I can’t make PB&J sandwiches or boloney and cheese sandwiches, all on white bread of course, just what are the kids supposed to eat?
My point is that it’s easy to finger one particular aisle and call it “junk”, but junk resides on all the other aisles too.
I’m not against some restrictions, but you invite abuses the harder you make the system. WIC is designed to feed small children and frequently only acts as a supplement. My mother and father would have gotten divorced if my mother had been expected to feed a grown man on the Cheerios and Juicy Juice we received from WIC.
Provided you actually know poor people.