I know that some people believe we should do this, but c’mon. What could possibly go wrong with this? In short, there’s a proposal that most food stamp/SNAP recipients would have half or more of their benefit replaced by a commodities package consisting of powdered milk, dry pasta, and some other things they may see fit to put into the packages.
Gee whiz, what could go wrong with this? Let’s potentially give people in need things they may not be able to store, cook, transport, or eat, and how are the recipients going to get their packages? Will they be delivered to their door, or will they have to pick them up - and is the pickup site accessible both in location and times open?
I thought the purpose of this program was so people in need could have food their households would otherwise not be able to afford.
It’s a terrible idea (at least if it’s mandatory), but it’s in the “budget request”, which is a document that has little to no impact on what actually happens.
They used to give out commodities decades ago. It was not part of the food stamp program but they did away with it. Not enough government money. The products were, we were told, were surplus government stuff. I dont remember for sure. Wouldn’t bother me to start getting that stuff again. Comes in handy. Cant feed a family on it but have you seen the price of powdered milk these days?
Their idea of low income is far from what truly is low income. Husband has been off work since September because of headaches, dizzyness and passing out. The county saw fit that 15 dollars is enough for our food budget for the month
It’d be great to get vegetables and fruit because that stuff is way too expensive otherwise…
The former commodities program, that everyone is using as a reference here, was never focused on getting food to those in need. That was always secondary to subsidizing farmers for crops they couldn’t sell. The only poverty it was ever looking to address was that of the producer.
Actually, during the Great Depression there was a commodities program that was intended to go to people in need, it was called “being on relief”.
The Great Government Cheese Giveaway came about because there was literal tons of cheese warehoused by the government that was going to shortly be just thrown away due to age and someone said “hey, we might as well give it to the poor as toss it in a landfill”. So, yeah, it was from government subsidies of things like the dairy industry, but it was a beneficial side effect.
THIS proposes taking a system already utilizing our established food distribution network (a.k.a. “grocery stores”) and setting up a parallel distribution. WHY? So poor people don’t get the occasional steak or deep deep deep discount lobster tail (on clearance because if it isn’t sold by that day it has to be tossed).
And, hey, screw you if you can’t digest lactose or have a peanut allergy, right? Poor people don’t have a right to have medical conditions.
What, you gonna mail these boxes to poor people? Oh, the porch pirates are going to have fun with that! Sucks to be you if your box of food for the month gets taken when you’re at work (80% of food stamp recipients work - a lot of the rest are disabled or retired)
The current food stamp program isn’t perfect but it actually works pretty well.
I do wonder if this is a response of some type to the former… I don’t recall the exact name of the program… Angel Food?
It was a program where low income and SNAP recipients could buy a box of food, shelf stable milk, dried pasta, beans, frozen meats, veggies, (i.e. not ready-made food, but things that require preparation) for a set, low price point.
It was years ago now, but the price that I remember was $30 for a box that would feed a family of four for a week.
They would distribute these boxes at… churches, charity organizations, etc, by volunteers.
At some point this outfit closed shop, but it was pretty popular and maybe this is some effort to bring that program back, administered by the government?
That being said, this sounds like a really bad idea if it’s not 100% opt-in for SNAP recipients.
I mean, as an opt-in for people who aren’t getting enough SNAP dollars to feed everyone, a “feed 4 people for a week” box might be just the ticket, but it just can’t be mandatory.
What the OP describes is a excellent idea for emergency disaster relief, like for places devastated by a hurricane, where supermarket shelves have been bare for weeks. Just giving out snap card here do no good as there is nothing to buy.
But in the case where their is so much food, actually a bounty, and to deny people from having it and insisting they get jsut some dried staples is jsut cruelty to the degree that couple news who had locked their children up and would buy tasty food and wouldn’t like them have any. There just is no justification in this land of plenty to deny people a normal standard of food, and actually go out of our way and develop a additional distribution network to deny them access to ‘our’ food supplies and to provide them this subsistence level. Now if things changed and food becomes scarce it may be practical.
Also jsut to add, for a short time I was on SNAP benefits. I was amazed with the amount they gave, much more then I spent on food. I was overwhelmend with the careing for my well being that I was actually eating better then when I was far from needed it. That care showed me how to care for myself and shortly was able to get off it. Treating people like they have value actually makes a difference in people’s lives, treat poeple like subhuman shit and that’s what you get.
What bugs me is the fundamental disdain for the poor necessary to think this is a good idea. It’s like their poverty is proof that they’re too foolish or dumb to run their own lives like “normal” people.
At one point in my military career, we were on food stamps. Enlisted pay for a junior NCO was that bad.
I was in charge of a team of airmen maintaining a multimillion-dollar computer complex that handled gigabytes daily (in the early 1980s) of mission-critical data in a world-wide communications network. I was neither foolish nor stupid, but under the current thinking I must be, because I was poor. So if I needed help to feed my family, I also must need help to decide how to feed them, because only dumb people are poor and poor people are dumb. Q.E.D.
It would reduce the number of times people shop at Wal-mart, and if Wal-mart doesn’t like it I doubt it will make it to the final budget.
If the gov’t would like to send the commodities to folks on top of the SNAP that’d be great for the economy as it could result in healthier people overall.
What the heck is going on with the reporting of this story??? Why the heck are multiple news outlets talking about “replacing cash payments”??? SNAP has never been cash–it’s a debit card. Before that it was stamps. Which is why it was called food effing’ stamps. And no, NPR, recipients can’t buy ANYTHING with it, as you explicitly state.
Do you remember that photograph of a “meal” sent to Puerto Rico after the hurricane? Packages of cheese-and-crackers and candy bars, with fruit gummies standing in for fruit? This is a horrible idea under any circumstances but under this administration it is freaking criminal.
I don’t know if the Reservations still get govt. commodities but I do know they caused rampant diabetes back in the 70s and 80s. Flour, lard, sugar, corn syrup, dried potatoes, powdered and canned milk and delicious surplus cheese are all bad for people pre-disposed to diabetes and lactose intolerance.
The canned meats weren’t too bad. The dried beans were awesome. The canned fruit was good even if it was packed in heavy syrup.
We were visiting family (grandmother’s funeral) and they loaded us up with all the stuff from several families that were getting close to being outdated. I still recall how sharp and tasty the cheese was.
Thankfully, nowadays, the Band has pulled together and does stuff like distributing allotments of wild rice, fish and communal garden produce.
The second part is 100% right. This goes back several admins now, Dem and GOP. Budget proposals used to have limited meaning. Now they mean virtually nothing in practical terms. They just give something for each side to hyperventilate about (oh wouldn’t that be great or ‘criminal’)
Otherwise I wouldn’t call it a categorically terrible idea, but likely not that good an idea the way it might actually be implemented. Stuff like this has all kinds of details interest groups care about a lot more than average voters do.
Also in terms of classic left/right the latter if Milton Friedman style free market want to make aid for the poor simpler and more transparent, for example just money not even limited use debit cards. But have that replace at least part of the govt aid bureaucracy and thicket of complicated subsidies (of housing etc). This goes in the other direction toward a less transparent form of aid (as in what’s the real cost of the ‘surplus’ food being given away). It’s more of a populist right type idea, naturally I guess since that’s sweet spot of Trump’s appeal, not to traditional conservatives so much except as ‘the enemy of my enemy’. Anyway is this going to happen? I’d bet not.
An alternative would be the WIC model for nutrition of low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and children under the age of five. They get foods mostly via supermarkets, but it is a very restricted set of foods:
Thus one would have a program with a much less restrictive set of foods than WIC, but deleting large categories of foods found in grocery stores such as junk food…
I stop at two convenience stores on a regular basis. One by my house and one by work. Both are in areas that have low income housing near by.
Just about every time I go in I see people buying stuff on Snap cards. From my observations, something like 80 to 90% of the purchases made on Snap cards are for items that should not be allowed. Like Monster energy drinks, booze, cigarettes, junk food etc. The way it works is that the register does not process the transaction. The cashier rings up the items then inputs the total into a different machine and then the SNAP user enters a pin. I suspect that this works because no one is really auditing the SNAP purchases for the convenience stores. The register records the sale, SNAP records a purchase for a certain amount but there doesn’t seem to be a way to correlate the two. (Note, my step daughter who is on SNAP and currently on our shit list regularly bought all kinds of crap on her SNAP card. Smokes, RedBull, candy, etc)
At the Wal-Mart by my house, which also serves the low income housing, a regular sight is someone buying steaks on a SNAP card in one transaction and then buying liquor and beer with cash in the next. In fact, I stopped shopping at that store on the first two days of the month because the place is a nightmare when the benefits reload. Same with the Smiths (which is wayyyyy more expensive) up the road. Note, the SNAP benefits are run through the same registers as regular transactions which leads me to believe that Wal-Mart audits the SNAP transactions.
I sympathize with folks who really need SNAP. At the same time, I am convinced that the number of people who are using SNAP to subsidize bad behavior is quite large and don’t think we ought to be doing that.
So I think that this, assuming it is well thought out, is a fine thing to do.
So the Trump regime wants to mandate what people eat. Remember how angry they were when Michelle Obama wanted to encourage schools to serve healthier food to the kids?
On the other hand, what’s wrong with a high-kilocalorie, high-fat, high-sugar, low-protein diet? Sure, kids may grow up with learning deficits, but who wants them to think anyway?
QFT. The main ongoing defining characteristic of this administration is that if it’s a really, really, REALLY stupid idea, they’ll do it. And any good ideas get thrown out with the trash. But the ideas they adopt have to be really and truly monumentally stupid, just like the folks who think them up and the orange moron who hired them.
Depending what’s in the box, it might be a good idea. I mean, I liked the government cheese we got from a neighbour back in the '80s. And I like SPAM. Peanut butter? Canned fruit? Shelf-stable milk? Sounds good to me. Just figure out how much the contents of the box would cost at a grocery store, and offer the recipient half or a third of that amount in exchange for the goods. You get cheap food, and the poor person gets cash he or she can spend anywhere! <eg>
I understand your point on the first, but isn’t the second how things are supposed to work? Unless your point is that poor people shouldn’t be able to buy booze even with their own money, or steak at any time at any price. :dubious:
<eg>
Unless your point is that poor people shouldn’t be able to buy booze even with their own money, or steak at any time at any price. :dubious: