When I have the energy, I shall start a Pit thread dedicated to you so that I can respond to this properly.
Don’t you get it? That’s money well spent! Make 'em suffer, since the good, decent people aren’t allowed to kill 'em.
Probably too easy to convert vitamins to money.
LOL. Too funny. Keeping people in dependence is kindness! Bravo!
First off, I’ve been on food stamps. And I really hate the elitism going on here.
But here’s the real problem: HEALTHY FOOD IS MORE EXPENSIVE! It costs more to make sure the food is healthy. And it means the food stamp people get LESS, if they try to go healthy.
Poor people are often obese because they can’t afford to buy the food that’s good for them. Food stamps don’t give you enough to go make healthy choices.
I know there are people that get mad at the idea that “their money is being used to subsidize others.” I thought the general consensus on this board was that people that feel this way, (like Rand Rover, for example) was that they are elitist snobs. Yet everyone is jumping on board here.
People don’t seem to get this simple fact: You aren’t entitled to your money! The only reason you have money is because your government protects your rights. And that government, being a democracy, has it in its best interest to keep its people well fed, so that, come election time, they are in good condition to vote well. (Yeah, my original rant used education/libraries, but food works, too.)
Anyways, my point is that the majority do not have a lot money. Yet, they have the most voting power, and, thus, are more important to the government than the rich. So put up with them using “your” money. You have more than they ever will. And if you don’t want to pay, you have enough money to leave, and go be somewhere where you’ll have to hire your own bodyguards and moneyguards. I bet you’ll find it costs more than just living here.
As for the OP: I’m pretty sure that the cost of people gaming the system is less than the cost to try and stop it. And remember, only actual emergencies when the poor absolutely cannot get the money get paid by the government. The chronic conditions that you mention are just going to be ignored, not payed by anyone. The rest of the problem is just the overinflation of medical treatment in the private sector. It would be far more effective just to make that system more efficient through consolidation, which will likely be a product of UHC, if it can ever get passed.
Oh, please. This isn’t about “keeping people in dependency”. Forcing people to eat glop won’t make jobs available any faster. There will always be poor and unemployed people; our system is even designed to always keep a percentage of the population unemployed.
What this IS about is cruelty. Some people see the poor simply as victims they can torment. People who can’t fight back whose lives they can make miserable so they they can gloat, can bask in the suffering of their victims. Exactly the attitude that keeps popping up in “punish the poor!” threads like these.
yawn.
I grew up poor and know plenty of people on foodstamps who weren’t victims of anything, except maybe themselves. They’d rather drink than work and I don’t like my money which resulted from my work (which isn’t really mine at all, it belongs to the gov’t! according to one person here) used to pay for their sloth.
A little tough love is sometimes the best medicine for these people not the victimization hand holding that they have nothing but contempt for anyway.
Ah, the “I grew up poor” line. The economic version of “some of my best friends are black people”.
As for the rest, it’s classic “poor people are all lazy and we need to punish them for it”.
What he said. At the absolute least you should ignore pleasantness as a measure of success in favour of nutrition and the cost of provision. Trying to optimise unpleasantness is just wasteful.
No, the reason I am poor is because I was laid off in 2007 and my former industry is shedding workers like a sinking ship sheds rats. I have obtained employment, but I am having to work my way up from entry level again. I had no clue, 25 years ago, that many of the skills I learned then would be obsolete today - and no one else had a clue, either, at the time.
I have never tasted a pork rind, eat ice cream maybe all of three times a year, and stopped drinking Coca-Cola around 1983. Thank you for tarring the poor with such a broad brush.
Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m eating meat (beef/chicken/venison/fish) only 3-4 times a week and most of my vegetables are currently coming from my backyard garden, significant amounts of which will be preserved to eat in the winter.
Are there some poor people who make bad food choices? Sure. And there are a lot of others who make very good food choices. Just like middle class and wealthy people.
“Lots of legumes” would probably, literally, kill me as I am allergic to most of them. Allergic as in my face, mouth, and other things swell up, I start to wheeze and gasp for breath, and start to go into shock after a mouthful of some varieties. Your draconion approach would probably endanger the health of lots of other people with very specific medical problems.
Only if you believe that too much sugar somehow causes diabetes. It doesn’t work that way. Being obese can be a trigger, but not all obese people are diabetic, nor are all diabetics obese. Type I diabetes is an auto-immune disease, it is completely unrelated to the person’s diet prior to losing the ability to produce insulin. My husband is diabetic because of injury to his pancreas that destroyed a significant portion of the organ - again, completely unrelated to diet. If you eat enough healthy food (however you define that) to become obese you can still wind up diabetic. If you maintain a proper body weight despite eating a lot of sugar at every meal you might well have normal blood sugar.
That said, tap water is usually better, but people who are poor long term are frequently in less than idea housing that may have plumbing issues. We have well water that, while potable, is naturally “flavored” and needs filtering to be tolerable by most people (we purchased our filtration system back when were were in the upper middle class). If your water is bad you may gravitate towards soda, which is better than drinking beer at every meal (which was a common practice before the 20th Century). There is a subset of people who are poor because they are ill/disabled, and for them normal tap water may contain levels of bacteria that, though harmless to normal people, may be deadly for them. People with cancer, HIV, or other immune disorders may be advised to stick to bottled drinks that don’t contain bacteria (Water used in cooking would, of course, be hot enough long enough to kill bacteria. When my father-in-law was dying of cancer we were told to NOT feed him any raw fruits or vegetables for fear of bacterial contamination, and we had to sterilize his eating utensils as well).
So please, educate yourself a little better about these issues.
Do you believe everyone below the poverty line has government health insurance? If so you are wrong. There are millions of people who are poor enough for food stamps yet do not qualify for Medicaid.
I suppose it would come as a surprise to you that millions of people who are poor today were taxpayers much like yourself a year or two ago, before something happened to them (job loss, accident, illness, natural disaster, whatever) to plunge them into poverty. Most of them will, with some time, climb back out and become taxpayers again. With a little help, they’ll probably do it faster. Yes, there is a nugget of chronically poor that fit the stereotypes but they are a minority of the poor.
Categorizing all poor people as “wards of the state” does nothing but infantilize them. Most poor people are not children - they are adults going through a temporary misfortune. It is, quite frankly, insulting.
Yes, poor people suffer heart attacks and diabetes. So do the middle class and the wealthy. Apparently this problem of diet and health is not limited solely to the poor. If you justify the government intervening in the eating habits of the poor then surely you will not object to the government telling YOU want you can and can not eat - right?
Sure there is. It’s humiliating when you describe me as “ward of the state” despite being a self-supporting adult for over 25 years, and still paying my rent every month without a cent from the government. It’s grinding to have to explain over and over my very real dietary limitations and restrictions to arrogant, self-serving twits who look down their noses at me as they insist I’m only being “difficult” and should shut up and eat what they give me regardless of whether or not it would land me in the hospital. It’s grinding to have to go from agency to agency and spend hours waiting in line and filling out forms and documenting your income again and again and again… the fact that I do not have a traditional job just makes it more difficult. Last year I had to go to everyone who had employed me on a temporary basis and get a letter stating they no longer employed me - that was fun!. Almost as much fun as having to go to everyone I had worked for as an independent contractor and get a statement from them that I was not their employee but an independent contractor - which I also had to do. This magnified a four page form into 36 pages of documentation. Rinse and repeat for every program you try to enroll in. It’s both humiliating AND grinding to have some effing busybody inspect my grocery cart and criticize my food choices - the most recent egregious piece of BS was the woman who was very insistent I should get the jar of house brand peanut butter instead of the almond butter, which, admittedly cost more - but eating peanut butter could potentially kill me whereas almond butter is perfectly safe for me, and still cheaper than meat. No doubt you’d have something to say about the crate of diet soda I purchase every week for my husband - you know, the diabetic. Who has given up a lot of his favorite foods in favor of rice and low cost protein and garden vegetables such that this is his one “luxury” item we have written into our budget. I have a garden in part so my small portion of cash for food can go towards higher quality foods when I do buy food - I don’t need you sneering down my nose because I selected a slightly better than crap cut of meat. Those steaks are not going to be steaks - they’ll be cut up for stir fry and stew. I can get 3-4 meals out of 1 serving of sirloin, so sue me.
One really good thing about moving “food stamps” to a plastic debit card is that it makes it FAR less likely that someone using the card at the checkout is going to have their purchases scrutinized and criticized by busy-bodies who haven’t a clue, which used to be a frequent humiliation/harassment of the poor. The poor swipe their card just like everyone else and the only one likely to know is the checker - who if they’re professional will STFU 'cause it’s none of their business.
The majority of the people on food stamps are children. We should not feed them. They will just come back and rob us some day. They will be taught by their shiftless parents how to game the system.
Foreclosures are going up too. People that were too stupid to get a proper mortgage should live in the streets and like it. But not in my streets.
There is plenty of food in dumpsters behind restaurants. That will serve them all. They are so annoying.
People of food stamps should be forced to give public offerings of incense and myrrh to the generous people who have been so kind to these undeserving waifs. Once a week they should show up in the middle of town and have a ceremony of thanks to the nice people who were so kind to them.
Limestone quarries should be used for burying these people. But only if the quarry is far away from the cities so I don’t have to see them.
Dude, Nestle is a Swiss company. Do you truly hate working class Americans so much that you’d outsource their jobs? 
Your post is a scurrilous lie.
What you are describing is Communism, i.e., “a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.” Thankfully, that ideology has failed IRL.
I know I’m late to this party, but I love this particular quote from upthread, and don’t think it could be repeated too often, or loudly:
No, it’s the simple truth. No government means your money is just inferior toilet paper.
BRAVO! I applaude your patience to write out a well-composed post to explain your position to what appears to be a group of elitist snobs. I am one paycheck away from being in the same position you are so I can totally understand what you’re saying. Thanks for bringing a little dignity to this thread.
Thank you for your post. Sorry to hear about the health problems in your family also.
But you are obviously not the type of EBT recipient who is spending all their allotment on full-sugar soda, chips, twinkies and poptarts.
So what is your point, exactly, in a thread about restricting the purchase of junk food with food stamps?
Yeah, Carol. That’s what fiat money is all about. It might trigger a demand for a return to the gold standard, but then you are delivering the American economy into the hands of Russia, South Africa, and Canada, and none of us want Canada shoving us around.