As a libertarian, you sure aren’t looking at any long term implications of letting them do as they please because it’s cheaper RIGHT NOW.
Who funds their visits to the ER after they all become diabetic? You do.
Let them work for their food as a dwindling majority does. Whether it’s a volunteering gig for the government or other, they need to provide something. On hard times? I feel for you brother, let me help you by offering you some food for picking up trash along highways.
Right. Sneering at people, calling them wards of the state, saying they are incapable of making choices, that’s all very very kind. I shall make a note.
Food stamps causes diabetes? :dubious::smack:
Yeah, it’s funny how everyone wants to avoid big government handouts, so their plan is to create a giant government bureaucracy to make sure we’re giving out handouts the exact right way.
In our society we have these tokens that people can exchange for goods and services. The development of these tokens was a major advance from barter economies, because if you wanted a chicken, and the chicken guy wanted clay pots, but you only had reed baskets, you’d have to find a guy who had pots before you could get your chicken, and what if the clay pot guy didn’t want baskets either?
Giving someone money to purchase whatever food suits their particular needs is a lot cheaper and more efficient than forcing them to accept a particular ration of goods. Food is cheaper today than at any point in human history. If you don’t want to give away food, then fine, but stop pretending you’re doing it out of kindness. Yeah, you just want it to be degrading and barely better than starving to accept welfare, but you’re doing because you want people to better themselves.
If you want to make people work for their food stamps, well, how much productivity is my 91 year old grandmother going to provide? She can barely walk 50 feet, how is she going to pick up garbage along the side of the highway? If you don’t want to provide food stamps for her, just say so.
I don’t understand. List of what?
You’re expanding this discussion, it seems to me, into a rant against the poor. To stay on topic, I’ll just point out that it’s not a matter of just “blocking” it’s a matter of the fight over what will be blocked. You go convince the cola companies to not lobby against this idea. Gee…maybe it’s not the poor you should be railing against (part of the time). 
You actually believe that the gov’t would be able to accomplish this at a lower cost than WalMart (or any other major grocery) contracting directly with the suppliers? None of this stuff is a high margin product, it’s low margin commodity product, and sticking the government in the middle will do nothing but make it more expensive overall. I can see the bureaucrat trying to negotiate with a WalMart executive team over how much it will cost to carve out space in every WalMart for these foodstuffs, then trying to replicate this negotiation with the other 100 major grocery chains and thousands of independent stores.
All I see is an incredibly costly morass, and lots of food stamp users finding shelves with nothing on them, or crap that nobody wants to eat.
I don’t get it either…
Whatever is cheapest.
The gov’t could have a list of foods or they could also tell Nestle or whomever to make some kind of nutritious protein mush by the ton and distribute it to Wal-Marts etc which would earn a small markup.
The point is to make the poor uncomfortable in the dependence, while also feeding them very well and preventing health problems.
Seriously, can we keep the current Food Stamp program, and just let the cashiers spit in their faces?
Groceries dear.
As to the diabetes. The type 2 so prevalent in today’s society from not eating the proper nutritional food values.
Do food stamps cause it? Of course not, but it sure isn’t helping by NOT limiting what you can buy with them either. You think someone who is a lifelong welfare abuser is going to make the right choice of food for themselves or their kids?
I won’t hold my breath.
Put them to work.
WIC- Good Idea
Welfare- BAD Idea (as currently run)
Good one, ha ha. But cashiers might not do it, so it isn’t a good enough deterrant.
What Kearsen is saying is that it’s trivial for an unscrupulous person to convert EBT credits to cash by buying groceries for a friend and having the friend repay you with cash, presumably at some discount to make the deal work. Then, the EBT card holder has some cash to spend on booze or cigarettes, and the friend has groceries bought at a discount.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Oh, IC. Well, then it’s just more argument for just giving people cash. Anyway the benefits are so low that its fungible anyway. It’s only the odd case that wouldn’t want it for themselves in a given month. Anyway, if people have friends doing this, it’s against the law.
Asking a question and having well reasoned discussion about it or having experts answer your questions, is apparently not why you are here. I mean why ask a question when you’ve already made up your mind? This is not the place of that.
This is probbaly dead right.
So, a big question is balancing the cost of fighting the big soda companies’ lobbying power vs. the health costs to society of soda-related diabetes and obesity.
Are there studies available that prove a direct link between excessive consumption of sugary soda and these two expensive, lethal health problems?
Obesity research is a big area and getting these foods out of schools is a big issue. However, I just don’t know about the connection of the food to diabetes. Part of the problem is with the question: what about access to soda is connected to obesity or a certain disease? People don’t need to stop drinking it, but drink proper amounts of it, etc. In any case, it’s hard to believe that the limited time people are on food stamps and the limited value of them leads to enough junk food purchases to destroy health. If so, nutrition education is the issue, not complex regulatory schemes. (I know the connection to food stamps wasn’t your point but the point of others.)
And they shouldn’t be able to wear nice clothes, either. Just give them some burlap to cover up with so we don’t have to see their bodies. And they shouldn’t get carpeting in those projects; cement floors are good enough. And heat? Just enough to keep them from freezing. They can wrap themselves with more burlap if they’re cold.
In all seriousness: it’s already though to be poor. As a society, we probably shouldn’t devote a lot of resources to making it tougher.
Here’s the actual list of permissible foods under the SNAP (AKA Food Stamp) program:
I think they should allow vitamins - especially for children. that really surprised me.