Indeed food stamps were meant to help the hungry, but not to have them buy tenderloin steaks etc. When I was single I worked in a restaurant, I had nothing to eat from Friday night until Monday morning. I went to work early to eat, I did not expect anyone to feed me for free. One Christmas I would not have had anything to eat, but my landlady came and told me to eat the leftovers from a party the night before. There were times when I was growing up we had only potatoes, and what we called burnt flour gravy. some times it was bisquits and honey my brother’s gathered from a hollow tree, we even ate the wax. I do not expect anyone to go through what I did, but when I give to the local food pantry and they are fussy about what food the people will eat even though I had just bought it at the store I can’t feel that sorry for them! many people I know give food and they skimp to help others.
I agree on your food stamp idea, My husband worked with a man who said he sold his food stamps!
How exactly does one sell their food aid? It’s not actual stamps, and hasn’t been for a long time. It’s a debit card that can only be used for food. If you sell it, you won’t have it next month.
It’s called being an entrepreneur.
Why not? If they budget the money and choose to to but a nice cut of meat once in awhile, who cares? Is it somehow more moral to eat rice and beans and scavenged food than using your assistance to buy a treat for your family now and again.
I think what you’ve described is a failed society. It makes me sick that people had to live like you describe, rather than having a society of such wealth be willing (because we are able) to provide a baseline for everyone person that is above scavenger.
You were mistreated by our society and that should make you mad at the society that failed you. Instead you look askance at people who have a better safety net as if they’ve done something wrong. People should not have to live hungry, bleak, joyless lives in a civilized society. It is wrong to believe that a nice meal is somehow considered gaming the system.
They sell the card with the remaining balance, then report the card lost to get a new one. New cards are issued through the mail until at some point it is decided that you have lost too many cards, then you are required to come to an office and pick up the replacement.
I don’t know if there is a point where a new card would not be issued*; it might depend on whether a person is receiving individual benefits or benefits for a family that includes kids.
*My daughter has lost her EBT a few times, to the point of having to pick up the replacement in the office and receive a lecture about not losing it or facing consequences, but the consequences were not spelled out. It may have been an idle threat, or maybe my grandsons will suffer for her inability to keep her shit together. I tend to believe she is not selling her card, but I really have no idea how anyone can lose something so important all the fucking time!
New info. If the card keeps getting lost, a “protective payee” system can be set up where someone else has to manage benefits on behalf of the person who can’t keep track of the card.
When you see someone with multiple cards, you may be seeing a protective payee using the cards of the folks they are managing benefits for. Protective payees are common, lots of people who get benefits are unable to manage on their own due to a number of factors (assisting the disabled being one of the main purposes of the protective payee program).
Or they go shopping with the buyer. For example, you pick out $100 worth of groceries and I pay with my food-stamp card. You then give me some amount of cash less than $100.
Oh, tell us about the welfare queen and her Cadillac, Uncle Ronnie! The idea that people on assistance should be expected no occasional treat is mean-spirited. Perhaps the person with the steaks is celebrating a birthday or anniversary. Perhaps they cut it up and make a weaks worth of food. We have a safety net so that people don’t have to put their hands in hollow trees and dig out wax (good luck finding one of those in the inner city). If your story is accurate, then shame on society for failing you. If one food pantry won’t take your donation, take it elsewhere. Looks to me like you’re quite busy finding excuses not to have empathy.
“There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.”
“Cardboard box?”
“Aye.”
“You were lucky.”
A couple things about those tenderloins being purchased. First off, there is the distinct possibility that the purchaser suffers from a condition commonly known as being “stupid”. Which might well explain why they need assistance in the first place. Paying for their food is expensive enough, hiring people to monitor their purchases simply cannot be done.
Also, some food stores find that their more expensive cuts of meat simply don’t get sold within the time frame allowed. They discount the shit out of their porterhouse, tenderloins and sirloins to get them out the door without losing. They are seldom on display for very long, sharp eyed carnivores, such as myself, get to know when they are likely to be discounted and offered.
Also, even at full price, a good cut of meat can be sliced thin and marinated, added to a dull vegan stir fry it becomes a hearty meal, properly stored, good for couple three days worth of solid healthy meals, or about twenty minutes feeding my son. (I didn’t ask for a linebacker, but the hospital does not take returns…)
Many a rigid, constipated and uptight Calvinist has sought for a way to help people without offering any advantage to a clever asshole. Very difficult, very time consuming, hence expensive. Simply more efficient to help folks out and not worry about it.
Spent some years in the food co-op movement, back in the day of actual physical “stamps” and, Lordy, what a pain in the butt and monstrous inefficiency. In the beginning, we couldn’t even give back a few cents in change as cash, because they might buy cocaine or something. (Wasn’t it Reagan who talked about some guy he heard about buying orange juice for a quarter,buying it wih a one dollar food stamp, and using the change to buy vodka? I remember wondering where he bought his vodka!)
(Put short: just worry about helping and being generous, leave judgement about deserving to whichever Higher Power floats your boat. Its over your pay grade…)
Its like conservatives revel in assuming the worst in every instance in order to excuse their own shitheaded view of their fellow man. I could almost see spittle in the corner of their mouths when they talk about how the poor is robbing the rich blind.
If I see someone using food stamps, the first thing I do isn’t to look at their purchases and judge them. I think about the unfortunate situation that got them there and hope they can get out of it. I don’t judge what they buy because each seeming luxury could be, like elucidator said, an occasional treat, discounted, or the result of some other temporary fortune. The point is they are using food stamps, not they are living beyond their means.
And even if they are, so what? If someone buys steak and lobster with them, they deserve to die? Fuckers like Martin probably would criminalize poverty and bring back debtor prisons, execute the homeless, that’ll solve the problem! :rolleyes:
Its more a personality type that is reflected in a political stance, every culture, every human group has its uptight constipated Calvinists, who simply know that there is too much ease and comfort in the world, and it is mostly squandered on the undeserving.
I just wanted to say that I liked your books although it was really sad when Mary went blind from the scarlet fever.
I really enjoyed this post.
Oh, you!
I’m not discussing a balanced budget multiplier.
“Thought to have.” Sums up the reality pretty succinctly.
Ah yes. “Economics isn’t really a science, so whatever economists say is crap. When it’s contrary to my beliefs, at any rate.”
What, tenderloins aren’t food?
Hey, when I was on foodstamps I would sometimes purchase the on-sale steak variety for the week at my local butcher’s. I would get home, chop it into cubes, divide the pile into 4 ounce smaller piles, and use 1 such pile to make a stir fry for 2 people to share. So that 1 steak made 4 meals for us, and since I was going to the effort of serious gardening I could afford to spend some of the food stamp budget on meat rather than just beans But no doubt you’d sneer at that instead of seeing it as a way to stretch quality protein over multiple meals, or frugal shopping as I watched what was on sale or discounted.
But relax - my situation is improved and I no longer qualify for such assistance. So I’m no longer feasting on your dime. 
That is truly appalling. I do not want to live in a country where such things occur. Society failed you if indeed you were in such straits.
Also, if you did not ask for help you were being foolish. What, you would have starved quietly to death rather than ask for help? Why?
The food stamp program was developed to prevent to sort of hell you lived in. Why do you resent it?
I paid taxes for 30 years as an employed citizen in part so help would be there if I ever needed it. I’ll be damned if I put up with some sanctimonious survivor of past societal abuse looking down at me because I took advantage of the safety net I helped fund for THIRTY YEARS when I found myself down on my luck.
Oh, how terrible! Poor people might have standards, too!
Maybe some of the people at the food pantry have medical conditions that have dietary restrictions? (My spouse and I both have such conditions) People also give expired or rotten food to pantries sometimes - don’t the poor deserve food of the same quality you eat, or does being poor mean you should eat garbage and be grateful for it?
And, frankly, if people are having trouble feeding themselves I have to question if they should be attempting to donate to food pantries.
No, Society didn’t fail me, it was my decision to not ask for help. No one knew my situation. During the depression we were very happy to get food to fill our stomachs and were very grateful for what we had. My husband and I saved for our old age and went without things others took for granted, although we are not rich we have all the comforts we want. And do help others. If one isn’t grateful for what is given to them, they don’t deserve it. Of course that is not the Majority of people but I would guess that some people think they are owed the best! There were some words from and Old poem that went;,“He looked the whole world in the face, he owed not any man”. In those days it was such a man that was honored. Not someone like the Donald who had one business go bankrupt, and let the people he owed take a loss. If that is true then Why the big fuss over Gold faucets?