Should food stamps stop covering bottle deposits?

Great Debates
81

How fast can the poor family turn around a case of bottles? I’ll guess their compensation might be in about the ballpark of minimum wage.

And, for the purpose of discussion, can we agree on whether they’re spending the money on toilet paper or narcotics? I’d assume toilet paper, since I’m not sure the minimum wage job of carting bottles back and forth would pay well enough to afford narcotics. Even if it does, this doesn’t obviate the need for public welfare safety net, though in this case the welfare need may be for rehab.

In fact, your argument is not quite correct. True, their “minimum wage job” is not productive, but it will lead to an increase in GDP – not only does the bottled water get produced but so does the toilet paper they buy with the proceeds.

Yes, that depends on the “broken window fallacy” – but so does much of the U.S. economy. The Valdez oil spill led to a significant surge in U.S. GDP! It was, in effect, a gigantic broken window that needed repair.

Please understand I’m not defending the behavior, or claiming broken windows are good. I just want to protest a double standard. Halliburton’s shareholders were enriched enormously by “windows broken” in Iraq, yet Bricker feels the need to trot out his views on economic efficacy not on Halliburton, or the Valdez oil spill, etc. but on a poor family in Maine.

82

I appreciate the clarification – I think it moves you from being factually wrong to simply “wrong, in my opinion.” That is, I disagree, but I can see it’s a matter of interpretation.

A poor person would not be criticized for buying scrap metal for a dollar a pound and reselling it for six dollars a pound, Broomstick. The criticism would arise if he got that scrap metal by using public money he was given for some specific other purpose – say, food.

Your inability to see differences in those categories is emblematic of the issue here.

A tax break is not public money in the same way that a small business loan or a grant is. And none of them are public charity in exactly the same way that food stamp benefits are.

A tax break means that the government takes less of your money in taxes. That’s not an act of charity: you earned that money! It’s yours. The government takes a portion of it to further causes we, as a society, are properly funded by common contribution. When a tax break is enacted, it’s done to encourage or stimulate an economic behavior. The government gives an income deduction tax break for home mortgage interest not out of a charitable heart, but to encourage home ownership and ultimately to improve their tax base and overall conditions.

Small business grants and loans are similar, in that their design is not completely motivated by charity. No one says, “We should give a tax break to the stadium builders because, dammit, it’s the RIGHT thing to do!” Instead, the tax break comes because, at least theoretically, the stadium will provide new jobs and create dozens of other economic opportunities, all of which will ultimately raise government income. Targeted loans and business set-asides, like the government 8(a) reservation of contracts for business owned by minorities, are perhaps a closer call, but even then they are fairly described as distinct from the outright charity of food stamps. These grants represent, like the home interest deduction, government’s use of its money as a carrot to encourage a particular type or direction of economic development.

You will not find any post of mine here, or anywhere, which claims these folks are lazy or scammers. But it’s beyond cavil that they are abusing the restrictions that exist for the benefits they are being given, such abuse would not garner admiration from anyone, whether the abuser were poor or not.

I guarantee that a stadium owner who got tax breaks to upgrade his stadium seats, let’s say, and then sold the upgraded seats at a profit instead of installing them would be universally reviled, even though he’s far from poor. It’s not that they are poor: it’s that they are gaming the charitable impulse.

83

Yes, I forgot the sarcasm tag. :smack:

I’m 54 and I have heard these arguments for decades. The details may change, but it all comes down to telling the poor what to do and not do. If changes are made to the programs to reduce the fraud, it will just make it harder for the needy to get help and the fraud will go on in a different way.

I’ve been on SS Disability for a long time. It is just barely enough to get by on. In fact I and many others are getting less total disability then just a few years ago. My typical COLA has been less than my rent increase the last few years, and there is no COLA for next year.

There is little to no money for things like; underwear, socks, shoes, and other needed things.

For the record I don’t drink, smoke, or do street drugs. I have never spent money on Hookers & Blow. I don’t have a big screen TV, a Smart Phone or any other techie gadget. My computer is 13 years old and it was a gift to begin with. I could go on with a hundred more complaints (OTC stuff adds up real quick).

I’m sorry for the mini-rant & hijack. I’m just tired of these same arguments again & again.

I’m sorry.
Merry Christmas!

84

It may warrant a story in the local paper, maybe some criminal charges. A few people might hear about. I rather doubt that people will call for drug testing for stadium owners who get tax cuts. I don’t think I’d see it plastered all over my Facebook feed from the usual suspects, I don’t think Obama would get blamed for stadium-seat-tax-break abuse, I don’t think people would call for an end to all forms of corporate tax breaks because of a few limited examples of fraud, and I don’t think I’d see any coded language about how “typical” that is of stadium owners.

85

Those are, generally, cherry-picked specific complaints that wouldn’t transfer from food stamp recipients to stadium owners. There won’t be calls for drug tests because there is no inference that the extra money is being used for drugs by the stadium owner. You won’t see it from your usual suspects, but you’ll see it from Shohan’s Usual Suspects, screaming about corporate welfare and the rich raping the system. Obama wouldn’t be blamed, but Bush would, if he were in office. And finally, certainly there are people that would call for an end to corporate welfare for wealthy corporations based on a few limited examples. And you wouldn’t see coded examples: you’d see outright statements that it was typical behavior from rich pricks.

86

So far as I recall, I didn’t participate in any threads about Halliburton or the Exxon Valdez in which this observation was pertinent. So in what way do you perceive a double standard?

87

I was explaining why you were wrong. The Halliburton example just clarified why you were wrong.

Please send me a PM when you start the thread explaining how private charity can replace much of the need for public welfare programs.

88

Explain it some more. So far as I can read, your claim is that I am wrong because I adhere to a double standard – failing to argue my economic point when the subject is the Exxon Valdez spill or Halliburton, but pointing it out here.

But I reminded you that I didn’t participate in discussions about the Exxon Valdez or Halliburton in which their economic behavior was at issue. So there is no double standard.

You also advanced an argument which you admitted was a fallacy – the broken window fallacy. Are you relying on a fallacious argument to show me I am wrong?

So how, specifically, am I wrong again?

89

Was your mother a smoker? If she was, she might have been telling the truth about not being able to tell the difference.

90

Serious question: has there been a thread on the SDMB in which such a discussion took place?

91

:confused: The person performs labor to get income. If that’s not a “job,” you’ll have to provide a cite for what dictionary you’re using. (The Halliburton examples were just to demonstrate that some “jobs” Bricker might think of as “jobs” have the same intrinsic character as the job Bricker claims is not a “job.”) HTH.

But what’s the point of useless rejoinders and surrejoinders about misunderstood definitions? :confused: I’m waiting for you to start the Public Welfare is Unnecessary because of Charity thread which might have educational content.

92

Sorry, I haven’t been getting notification e-mails.

That being said, Bricker I respect you and think you’re a good man. But I have to disagree with you here. I just don’t see it being difficult to resell sealed, new grocery items at a major loss.

93

Is it fair to say that a mugger has a “job,” robbing people at gunpoint?

That’s an example of labor, and income, but not (IMHO) something that society is prepared to call a “job.”

Why would I start such a thread?

94

I have no idea – I can say confidently that I don’t recall such a thread, but of course I’m about to start my seventeenth year as a poster here, and in that time may well have missed such a thread.

95

Well as someone who is not completely broke, I very much doubt I’d buy it. And since your “major loss” is going to have to be below wholesale for a a shady corner store owner to buy it, you aren’t going to get as much as you think.

96

Gawd, what a mess…

“Food Stamps” were originally issued by the Department of AGRICULTURE - with an eye toward reducing the huge surpluses of grain and dairy.
This is why they did not cover non-food items. IIRC, they did not even cover meat.

If I wanted cigarettes, there were small stores which would exchange cigarettes for Food Stamps - at about 5:1.

Every once in a while we get stories about luxury foods (lobster, caviar, et al) being bought with EBT, aka ‘Food Stamps’.
I’ll guarantee that very few of those goods are consumed by the purchaser - they are doing someone else’s shopping - and maybe getting 50 cents on the dollar.

97

I’m currently using food stamps. My young daughter and I receive the maximum amount, which is about $11 a week. I also have a job - actually I have two jobs but one is a sub job and I don’t get called very often. Honestly the only item I need which carries a deposit is bottled water - our water supply can be a little unreliable sometimes. That doesn’t mean I don’t buy a soda once in a while but a food budget of $11 a week doesn’t allow me many luxuries. It drives me nuts when food stamp abuse hits the news because it gets us all a bad name.

What also bothers me though is stories like this getting blown out of proportion. In my dim and distant past I’ve had my times with alcohol and drugs and though it’s been a while I’m pretty sure that stuff hasn’t gone down in price. If someone is using food stamp money to buy bottles to cash in for a couple of dollars, the chances of them using that cash for something illicit is probably fairly slim. Yes, you can go to the Dollar Tree and buy a couple of bottles of mouthwash for the alcohol content. Chances are though, that small amount is being used for something more necessary like toilet paper or bus fare.

I’m far more irritated seeing people carrying $60 birthday cakes and deli platters out of specialist departments and paying with food stamps, things that can be made relatively inexpensively at home and probably with better ingredients. I would think far more likely those are the items which are being purchased fraudulently for other people and being exchanged for cash.

98

Who says a job has to be legal?

There is a term of “professional criminal”, someone who has a job involving illegal activities whether they’re a drug dealer, computer hacker, theif, mob hitman, whatever.

People who break food stamp rules, either to re-sell groceries for cash or, in another instance I heard of, purchase baking supplies to make cookies to sell for cash, are in fact displaying job skills that in another context would be praised. Their status as poor people on food stamps, though, makes you denigrate those skill sets they display and dismiss them as criminals.

99

There are plenty of shady flea markets around that sell all manner of goods that are either forged or stolen outright at rock-bottom prices. All of them that I’ve been to invariably have people selling food, too - which may well have been purchased with food stamps and is now being converted to cash.

Maybe you wouldn’t purchase such goods, and maybe the guy running the corner store wouldn’t, but there are people who do buy such goods. It’s a matter of those selling finding those buying.

100

I’m curious where you live that the MAXIMUM amount of SNAP benefits is only $44 a month for a mother and one dependent.