I fully intend to vote some financially disabled politicians out of office on the next go around.
I do appreciate your concern for my BP. However, working in private industry and having to account for the money I spent I don’t see this as a major project. Put a spending limit on the cost per lb of meat/high end commodities and use WIC style nutritional standards. I would expect a handful of nutritionists already on the Federal Payroll could knock this out in a couple of months. the list goes to grocery stores who then sticker the items on the list. Done. Move on to the next pile of tax money blowing out the window.
Magiver, are you clear on the concept that if food-assistance recipients spend their allotment on junk food, your money is no more “wasted” than if they spend it on good food? Your money spent is the same either way. They don’t get an increased amount of your money if they spend it on junk food. They get their calories. They don’t starve to death. Your tax dollars don’t change based on what they buy and eat.
They’re both Federal. In fact, when you apply for EBT, you can use the same form for either of the two. And it’s county agencies that actually process the applications.
Where are you people living that food stamps are still used? NJ people get a credit card with the balance put in every month. The only diffference between it and a credit/debit card is that users can’t get change.
May I remind you that junk food calories are cheap and enjoyable. When your choices of enjoyable things in life are so severely limited, you might as well enjoy food. And sometimes you have no choice but to spend $2 on 1,000 junk food caloriesover 600 healthy calories.
Except, of course, that you still haven’t given a compelling reason WHY this should happen, other than that seeing poor people buy things you disapprove of gives you agita.
Magiver, are you more opposed to people on EBT buying junk food (snack cakes, Cheetos, etc.) or expensive good food (lean steak, lobster, shrimp, etc.)? Because it sounds like you’re opposed to both. I don’t see people on EBT buying ‘luxury’ foods like steak and seafood as often as I see them buying junk food and sodas, but again, where is the line for ‘luxury food’? If you know when to go to the supermarket, you can often find really nice steaks that have been way reduced, price-wise, because it’s near it’s sell-by date. In fact, on occasion, I’ve found steak cheaper than ground beef! As for ground beef, if people are well-versed in nutrition, they know that the more expensive ground beef is healthier than the cheaper ground beef because the more expensive stuff is leaner, lower in fat, and doesn’t shrink down as much.
So you don’t think ‘poor people’ need steak and lobster. OK, what about coffee? Is it OK if they buy coffee? And if it’s OK for them to buy coffee, does it have to be Maxwell House or cheaper, or can they decide to splurge some of their budget on something a little more upscale?
The point’s been made again and again, but you don’t seem to be getting it: the people who get EBT get a limited amount of money per month. When that money’s gone, it’s gone. They don’t get more because they run out of food before they run out of ‘month’. So it doesn’t cost you (or me) any more if they make poor choices than if they make good ones.
Do a lot of people make bad choices? Yes.
Would I be in favor of some funding to educate people on EBT as to smarter choices? Yes.
But it’s not your decision, because once you pay your taxes, it stops being your money!
Yes, and alcohol is the cheapest source of calories of all. Yet, the WIC counselor told my pregnant girlfriend that cheap, enjoyable Thunderbird wasn’t a good idea, insisting on milk. Imagine that.
The fact is, this isn’t Africa we’re talking about. Healthy calories are not at such a premium. Even if they tend to cost more, as a tax-payer I’d rather just raise the EBT allocation. It’s a public health issue, and many EBT users are establishing life-long eating habits for their children.
You’re not doing it right. Simply buying ingredient type foods is not enough by itself. A lot of healthy ingredient type foods are fairly expensive. Of course you will spend a lot of money if you go around buying bags of mixed fruit. That would be idiotic.
How long will your $.99 pizza last you? Will ramen by itself even keep you alive? Why the hell would you even want to be eating that stuff?
Go take a look at how much a generic brand of brown rice costs. Now go take a look at how much a generic bag of pinto or black beans costs. With those few dollars, you can eat for a month, and I’m sure you will be feeling better than you will after consuming your 15th ramen in a row. Buy some eggs; they are pretty cheap. Fry them up and throw them in with the rice and beans. Yes, vegetables can unfortunately be expensive, so don’t go picking through the organic produce – go for a big bag of frozen peas or something and add that in here and there.
Buying ingredient type food can be incredibly cheap if you are smart about it and very expensive if you are not.
Allyou people taking about healthy food, find out the allowance for your state and live on it for a month. Really live on it. No restaurants, no movies and popcorn, just supermarket food.
The task is to replace potato chips and Dr Pepper with dishes like vegetable lo-mein and egg plant parmesan. Instead of cheese doodles I buy cheese. One eggplant made something like 9 meals. I’m doing that right now. My “snacks” are homemade ice tea instead of pop and toast instead of potato chips.
I don’t see how fried snacks figure into a food budget. The question is how do people live on the allowance while buying high priced nutritionally vacant snacks?
My state is bleeding out and has already cut mental health care way back. It’s going to happen. Budget cuts are going to cut into every aspect of tax funded expenditures. Country roads will be downgraded to gravel, parks will close… It’s inevitable.
Annie-Xmas – I think people are simply using “food stamps” as a generic term.
Get this through your head: IT IS NOT YOUR MONEY ANYMORE.
And this:
Once again, only hurts the person buying it. THEY won’t have enough money at the end of the month, if they blow it all on fancy food. It’s no different if you or me goes to the store and spends all of our grocery money on expensive crap.
BTW, you don’t have to spend a ton of money to buy steak. Wait until it’s on sale, and look for a decent piece of meat. We’re not talking prime rib or filet mignon here, but steak doesn’t have to be THAT expensive. And in one minute you’re bitching that people are buying junk food; now you’re complaining that people are buying decent food that’s expensive. What is it now?
(Oh, and you DO know that the people using EBT are also paying taxes? It’s not just YOUR tax money alone.)
Once again, you have YET to demonstrate how restricting what people can buy with EBT/food stamps/whatever affects this.
I say again – creating a complex regulatory regime which costs more to develop and administer than it saves, is not an example of expense efficiency.
It sounds like you could use some food assistance, Magiver. That’s true of a lot of middle class people these days. Since, as noted SNAP is a Federal program, it does not affect your state’s coffers – perhaps you should utilize it.
You know, sometimes I’m really sad that MY tax dollars are going to bomb Afganistan, instead of giving someone right here at home the right to splurge on a birthday cake during hard times. Guess you can’t always get what you want, huh?
No, the question is “Why does Magiver care if people choose cheetos over eating between the 27th and the 1st of the month?”
After all, you’ve explicitly said they shouldn’t eat steak or lobster, either. Apparently it can’t be said enough… from your perspective, and from the state’s perspective, it doesn’t matter whether they spent the money on spinach or on hohos or on abalone. They don’t get more if they run out, so it’s their decision what to buy, and their problem if they choose badly.