Food stamps- should there be restrictions on what you can buy?

Great Debates
61

Because you are quoting me out of context and implying that I some how want to deny food stamps to those that truly need them.

How do you get that from:

The working poor often expend a huge portion of their salaries just to pay rent. They are unable to obtain quality health care which means that they may choose to ignore the beginning symptoms of diabetes etc. which in turn exacerbates the original problem.
I was annoyed by nitro’s flippant comment:

When he clarified his position, I apologized.

62

Mmmm. I see. So getting pregnant is like getting a disease. You just never know when it’s going to happen. :rolleyes:

63

Indeed. I’m car free and a chunk of my taxes goes towards hihgways I’m not allowed to use. I once did some brief calculations to find out how much I was contributing to the lifestyles of others. I wish I had that data now.

I am generally pretty moderate politcally and dislike welfare. I also ackknowledge that cutting off welfare is not the way to wean people from the public teat. The recent welfare-to-work programs have doine a good job in just teaching people basic skills needed to work for a living (things like: Show up on time and reliably).

Food Stamps get a bad rap far in excess top their actual levels of abuse. If restrictions were put on these things as some folks proposem then all that would mean is that more illegal “exchange shops” would start up so that people could exchange food stamps for money.

Some of these stories seem to be straight out of Reagan’s old “Welfare Queen” fairy tale.

64

For those that complain about sodas, think about this:

Why do the poor so often drink Mountain Dew? It’s easy- caffeine. Caffeine (an ingredient in many diet pills) keeps you from getting hungry. I know because I’ve been there. Caffeine is cheaper than food. That two liter of soda your complaining about probably represents about five skipped meals. Five meals for a dollar fifty is a good deal. the situation is sad, not outrageous.

65

I’m full disabled. Because of how much I worked, I get SSD, and because of how meager that is, I get food stamps.

It’s on an EBT system here.

In the past I did get some chips and soda when it was on sale.

Since then, I’ve started Weight Watchers and now shop more in the health food aisles(which is not cheap), and have been buying more fat free food(also not cheap).

I still manage to have food throughout the month, and am grateful for the food stamps. If I didn’t have it, I’d starve. Local food programs are very limited, and are only available quarterly.

The judgement posed in this thread from people upon those who have food stamp who buy things that are considered verboten… I think that you are being judgemental and are looking down your nose at people. Because they are poor, the food stamps shouldn’t be able to be spent as they see fit? There should be no little luxuries? No small treats?

I am not hearing compromise here. I am hearing absolutes.

I have more respect for someone who has been in the system who criticizes it, than those outside the system who presume they understand it.

66

Wow. That idea never even occurred to me. I agree that it’s sad that people feel that caffeine is a better alternative than food, or even feel that for $1.50 it’s the most sensible alternative.

However, $1.50 will buy several meals’ worth of rice and beans, if one knows how to grocery shop and cook basic foods. And it’s obviously much better nutritional bang for the buck, and not so hard on the heart and kidneys. I worked at a soup kitchen last Christmas Eve, and the lady who ran the place said they managed to serve over 200 people for well under a buck each. And that meal was a veritable feast, Puerto Rican-style: chicken with onions and green peppers,roast pork, *arroz con gandules *(rice with pigeon peas), bread and butter, *platanos en escabeche * (green plantains in marinade), hot cider, coffee, and peach cobbler for dessert.

Maybe along with life skills training for those people who need it, we should include some home ec training. I’d hate to see kids living on caffeine and sugar if it costs the same to give them protein, vitamins, and complex carbohydrates.

67

A dollar fifty’s worth of rice and beans won’t take you very far without a kitchen, though. A huge amount of poor people live in motels, cars, couch surf, rent rooms without kitchen access, sleep at work, and (most often) squat at friend’s or relative’s house where they try their best to be unobtrusive- which makes elaborate cooking projects pretty uncomfortable. Getting in the way could mean losing the roof over your kids’ heads.
Add to that the fact that making pot of beans requires soaking them over night (requires the oppertunity to plan ahead) and then cooking them in a large pot (expensive) and hopefully spicing them to some degree (building a pantry is expensive) and still takes several hours to cook (with kids asking why they have to wait four hours for supper and why they have to eat icky beans again and tupperware if you plan on eating it away from home (expensive, and old margerine containers just don’t cut it for packing in a backpack). In the long run it is more economical, but in the short run it’s prohibitively expensive to aquire all the kitchen and pantry supplies needed to cook on an everyday basis, and the time element for the cheapest meals (beans and tough meats) makes it hard to keep up.
The poor don’t just sit on their asses. They often work at least part time. Sometimes they go to school. They run errands. They fill out lots and lots of paperwork. They have to go to the doctor’s and pay bills and buy new shoes for the kids. Without a car, a house in a decent location and the ability to hire a babysitter, doing even the most mundane errands can take all day. Just like you or I, they often end up hungry, on the run, and with picking up something from the gas station as their only chance to eat. And sometimes it works out that a Mountain Dew (coffee will keep you from getting hungry, but won’t make you feel full like soda) is the only thing in the store that they can afford.
For what it’s worth, the people I know who have used caffeine as a substitute for food did it so that they could continue to afford feeding their kids real food, and did not feed their kids soda instead of food.

68

Don’t roll your eyes at me, bub. We all know pregnancy doesn’t “just happen” and you are deliberately ignoring the other parts of my post.

But if you have sex, there is always, always a chance that a pregnancy will result (barring lack of fertility in one or both partners). Even if you use birth control reliably, there is still a chance. Ask anyone. Ask a doctor. Ask a population expert. Ask the people at Trojan, at Lifestyle, at Pfizer.

So even careful poor people can get pregnant. That’s what I said, and that is what I unfortunately find the need to repeat.

The only way for poor people to make sure they never have an unwanted or unaffordable pregnancy is to never have sex. I think that’s ludicrous.

69

I really don’t get why people are upset at the idea of buying lobster or a good cut of meat with food stamps.

You get a set ammount of food stamps a month. If the person who gets them feels they have the budget to buy a lobster or a good cut of meat then let them. I’m willing to bet that when they do this it is for a special occasion and that they are going to be sacrificing later in the month.

The big problem is that being poor and being poorly educated go hand and hand. The two groups are not exactly the same but there is a large overlap. So yes, education about good nutrition and education on HOW TO COOK is important and should be included with assitence.

70

I’m almost afraid to post this reply but here goes…

I think the idea of different benefits depending on nutritional value is an interesting idea.

Actually, controlling how much junk food everybody buys (food stamp recipient or not) would help a lot with our health care/insurance cost problems.

But how much governmental control are we willing to take? It sure would make me mad if someone restricted my coffee intake. And, wow inforcing the whole thing and fighting over what is nutritional and what is not would be a nightmare!

Anyway, I’m not against public assistance. And I agree that some restrictions are need. But no matter how hard we try, someone will always find a way to abuse the system, and these will be the people that get noticed, not the many people who are using their benefits in a thoughful way.

Sorry if I’m vague and rambling.

71

Originally posted by CrankyAsAnOldMan
Kids happen, folks. Even when you are careful. I really loathe this holier-than-thou attitude about “not having kids you can’t afford.” Mother Nature laughs pretty hard at such plans.

To paraphrase Katherine Hepburn, “Mother Nature is what we were put here to rise above.” We are more than animals. Birth control, abortion, and adoption exist so that people do not have to have children they cannot afford.

72

**even sven, ** I don’t mean to criticize you at all, but there are definitely people out there who could learn to do a much better job managing their finances and their nutrition, and there is definitely some overlap in those two categories.

I didn’t grow up poverty-stricken, but we weren’t exactly rich, either; most of our clothing came from Salvation Army for much of my childhood, and I was so sick of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by the time I was out of grade school that I didn’t eat another one for years. We didn’t have a car, either, for most of that time, and in my hometown buses don’t run past rush hour or on Sunday, and infrequently at other times. So I’m definitely familiar with the concept of all-day errands; I’ve run quite a number of them myself. And believe me, Mom fed us some really weird crap in an attempt to provide balanced nutrition on a budget; would you believe brewer’s yeast on homemade popcorn, while attempting to convince us that it was cheese? Plain boiled lentils? (Another thing I couldn’t touch for years.) Plain slabs of cold tofu?

Part of the reason we were pretty broke when I was a kid, though, is because my mother (who was a single working mom) chose to earn next to nothing running an emergency social services program for Salvation Army. In addition to the war stories of clients we heard from her over the dinner table, she couldn’t afford a babysitter or using a sick day if my sister or I had to stay home from school, so off to work with her we went. We also helped out when they served meals on holidays, or on other random occasions when the need arose. Once she even brought one of her clients (a very colorful 90-something year old lady) to live with us for a while.

So yes, I’m aware of many of the problems that poor people face. Many of these issues can be mitigated with coping skills, in most situations. Nowhere, or no time, to cook dried beans? If you put them in a dish overnight, most kinds cook in less than an hour. Canned ones are more expensive, but still pretty darn cheap, and require no cooking at all. Can’t plan ahead to prepare food ahead of time? Time to learn some organizational skills, or if the kids are old enough, to teach them to prepare basic foods themselves. I was cooking family dinners by the time I was 10 years old. Some poor people may couch-surf, but others live in houses with kitchens, or at least somewhere to plug in a Crock-Pot bought from a thrift shop for a couple of bucks. Many alternatives are out there, with a little ingenuity.

Plenty of people feed a bunch of kids on a budget, even working people. I see them all the time in the Mexican produce stand where I shop; husband goes to cash his minimum-wage paycheck, while wife and bunch of kids all help grabbing sacks of rice, beans, cheap veggies (another favorite snack Mom used to give us was a plain peeled whole carrot – believe it or not, we actually liked them that way! It’s all a matter of what you’re used to), tortillas for 4 dozen for $1.

73

My question is, is there a method for clerks to report suspected abusers of the food-stamp programs? Most everybody I know who’s done the retail grocery clerking thing, as well as a bunch of posters here, have noted the people who seemed to be simply wasting tax dollars buying luxury goods and such. If they knew that there was an easy way for clerks to report suspected violators, mightn’t they curb this behavior, to some degree?

74

[quote]
How do you get that from:

I feel that anyone that is gainfully employed deserves access to decent free health care, safe affordable housing, and free quality education.

[quote]
I didn’t get it from there and was not responding to it… I got it from your statement that you shouldn’t have to work to support someone else’s lifestyle choices (by which you were referring to the decision to have a child). I asked if you felt the same way about subsidizing public education. You said you had a vested interest in keeping the next generation “educated and coherent.” I pointed out that eating is required to make education effective and maintain coherence.

I’m not sure why you’re dragging in something to which I didn’t respond in an attempt to claim that I’m goading you. Please stop.

75

occ… I haven’t clerked since the EBT card for food stamp recipients went into service so I can only say from my experience before then.

Stamps were issued in books. To use anything over a $1 stamp you needed to tear it from the book in the presence of the cashier or have the book so they could match serial numbers. I’m not sure what the point of this was except if someone was stealing them from a till after they were spent or something.

In a few cases store managers asked customers for ID and wrote their info down to turn them in and in other cases they would note the serial numbers on the stamp books.

There really is no way to do anything with the guy who buys 5 25 cent packs of gum with 5 $1 stamps and then cigarettes with the quarters afterwards except ask (not order) him to leave the store.

The cash register knew what items were food stamp items and what were not. You would hit the food stamp total button and enter the tender as food stamps and then it would tell you what the remaining cash balance was.

This got extremely tricky with the people who would buy say $100 dollars of mixed grocery and other items. Say their food stamp total was $85. You tender the foodstamps and now they need to give you $15 in cash. But they only have $5. So they start asking you to take food stamp items off the bill until they owed no more money. Here they get non food stamp items for food stamps. Repeat offenders were well known and straightening their order so this did not work was a nightmare. I believe the registers are a lot smarter now.
Some random thoughts:

Since the food stamp program exists people who need it really should take advantage of it. I don’t want to see kids starve when there is help available. It is the people who cheat the system and even admit they cheat the system (yes there are obnoxious and cocky people out there) that bother me.

I based my above comments about incidents on a decade of cashier experience in the supermarket. I would see the same families every week and am not spiting the kids birthday cake or afternoon snacks… I dealt with plenty of polite and decent hard working people who also needed foodstamps.

I’m bitter towards the people who came in every week with the same games. $20 dollars in expired coupons for items they did not buy. Every foodstamp gimmick they could try. The “I can get lucky charms on WIC … never had a problem before” story. Handing me a box of crackers that her kid was snacking on when they were further back in my line and saying “these are open I don’t want them anymore.”

76

We are more than animals. Birth control, abortion, and adoption exist so that people do not have to have children they cannot afford.

[sarcasm]
Hey! I have a GREAT idea!

Poor woman gets knocked up and can’t afford a kid? Forced abortions is the way to go!!!

No? Okay, let’s have her have the baby and force her to put it up for adoption. Knock her out real good afterwards and tie her tubes without her permission!
Women in China seem to like it, anyway …

[/sarcasm]

77

My family wasn’t wealthy when I was growing up. We certainly weren’t poor, but there were priorities. I don’t think my parents had a new car until most of us were out of the house. Many were the nights when we had pancakes for dinner, or some cheap pasta dish. We went to Catholic schools, but we wore hand-me-down clothes. There were five kids - both my parents worked. We never were on welfare, or AFDC, or foodstamps. My sister was a single mother with two children, but she never took foodstamps, although I believe she used WIC when her husband left her while she was pregnant with their second child. Her children often grew up doing without, but as young adults, they both hold down jobs, pay their bills and

I have no problem providing people who need it temporary assistance. But I do have a problem with people like nitroglycerine, with their attitude of entitlement. Every person has the responsibility to provide for themselves and their progeny. If they need help, certainly we must make sure children have enough to eat. But It should be the goal of every person on assistance, and of the department giving that assistance, to get them to a point where they are self-sufficient. And I believe that raising children dependant on public aid makes that generation more likely to nurse on the public tit.

StG

78

Juice really isn’t much better than soda. It’s less acidic (better for your teeth), but it’s still little more than sugar water. You’d do better to drink water and take a vitamin tablet once a day.

79

I don’t see how I have an attitude of “entitlement”. I have perfectly valid reasons for utilizing the food stamp program, not the least of which is the high cost of daycare. So according to you, I should go get a job where I can make in cash what I get now in food stamps. OK, fine. That means I’ll Have LESS cash then I do now because of added daycare costs, but I’ll make too much to be eligble for food stamps. Might as well forget about Gas and Electricity too, not to mention our sole “luxury”, the internet, seeing has how we barely get our bills paid now. Sure, I could get a job that pays 200 dollars more, but it would end up costing at least twice that much every month. Therefore, I don’t see anything wrong with collecting food stamps. The program is there, I meet the income requirements, so I’m going to take advantage of it.

Jon

80

And for the people who don’t like food stamp recipients to buy “better cuts of meat” and whatnot, Keep in mind that if you know how to shop, you can pretty much double or even triple your buying power. I’ll stock up on non perishables when i find good deals, on soda when its on sale. I’ll buy ten pounds of hamburger when its on sale for 89 cents a pound and stick it in the freezer. That way we can have a really nice steak dinner or a roast that isn’t mostly gristle once in awhile.

Jon