SNAP Budget Proposal - Is Individual Delivery of Food Packages Really Going to Save Money?

[k9bfriender]

@Mosier

There’s more potential savings than just that.

For example, neighborhood grocery stores pay dearly for having a lot of variety and availability. They throw out a LOT of fresh food (conservative estimates are around 10%), in order to preserve the “customer experience.”

Yeah, produce and perishables, things that will not be in this box.

A government-run food delivery service could save a lot of money on this end, because of the economics of scale. Instead of individual stores having to overstock at every single location in order to guarantee local availability, a city- or county-wide service would only have to overstock by a smaller margin at a single location. Food waste could be much, much lower.

You are still having to build and run a parallel facility to what already exists in the private sector. And, if you are consolidating all of this into one area, rather than distributed like grocery stores are, then people will have to spend more time and resources in trying to get to the distribution center to pick up their food.

Also, retail brand-marketing is built into the cost of everything you see in the grocery store. A government-run service would save all this cost, as well.

I usually buy the generic store brands rather than name brands. It doesn’t save all that much. Government brand isn’t going to save any more.

Grocery store refrigeration is expensive, because all those items need to be kept at food-safe temps while also simultaneously being accessible to customers. A government service would be able to store foods at safe temps more efficiently. There’s a couple of bucks worth of electricity being saved.

Probably quite literally a couple of bucks. And it will take a long time to pay for building the new facility.

Also, the grocery store profit margin is not negligible. It’s small, sure, but the government service wouldn’t be trying to run a profit, so those savings would also lower the cost compared to current food stamps.

They are pretty small. They are about as small as they can be. If the margins are any higher, then people go to another store. You are still going to have to have people working there, to build and distribute the boxes. About the only staff you wouldn’t have would be cashiers, and they would be replaced with people performing a very similar job in checking your benefits card and allowing you to receive your supplies. Of course, these are all govt workers, with govt pay and benefits, rather than private enterprise workers who do not get paid as much in wage or benefits. So, you are going to be paying quite a bit more on labor.

I suspect that grocery stores keep very close track of what SNAP funds are spent on. Then, with this trended data, they raise prices on items SNAP recipients tend to buy. Why wouldn’t they? Consider that the government has to actually pass a law preventing landlords from raising prices on section 8 housing, and then tell me grocery stores wouldn’t do the same exact thing.

Grocery stores would not do the same thing. You do realize that people go to grocery stores that are not on SNAP, right? They need to not lose those customers. Sure, they could make a few extra cents off the snap people by raising the prices that they pay, but they lose thousands of dollars from the people who go to the grocery store across the street with lower prices.

Why should private industry profit from government assistance programs?

Well, that’s a good question. Other than the idea that govt is meant to help to promote private industry, and that private industry is creating the infrastructure to distribute goods, and that the private industry regularly profits from all sorts of govt programs.

But, good point, of course, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the program is the agricultural industry, without which, most people on family farms would be looking for food assistance themselves. You think that they should benefit, but none of the enterprises that gets that food from farmer to table should?

@Mosier

Why couldn’t SNAP recipients just order the food they want delivered? A hypothetical government service wouldn’t necessarily have to deliver the exact same food to everyone, right?

Are you talking about a custom box that is made up of all the items that the customer orders, a box that needs to be individually put together by govt employees working in these warehouses, or are you talking about having the options of boxes a, b, c, d, or e?

[k9bfriender]

@HurricaneDitka

I don’t believe SNAP is “the only food that you have access to” for most recipients.

@HurricaneDitka

Sure:

Right, other than the 25% of people who have access to nothing but SNAP, there are other people that have jobs and are doing their best to make ends meet, and so have less benefits coming from SNAP, and so, while it subsidizes their food purchase, it does not cover all of it. (And none of non-food items… toiletries and the like).

@HurricaneDitka

Have fuck-all-of-nothing to do with my claim about “most recipients”

“Most recipients” have fuck-all-of-nothing to do with my claim that “If the only food that you have access to is food that you don’t like,…”

[HurricaneDitka]

@k9bfriender

Right, other than the 25% of people who have access to nothing but SNAP …

My cite did NOT say that 25% of SNAP recipients “have access to nothing but SNAP”. It said 75% “use their own money, in addition to SNAP benefits, to buy food.” I suspect there are some that find the food provided by SNAP perfectly adequate, and so spend nothing additional on food even though they’ve got money to do so if they desired, and others that supplement their SNAP diet with food that they don’t have to buy out-of-pocket: soup kitchens, Sunday dinners at Mom’s house, churches / charities / neighbors providing them some assistance, etc.

The main point is that there are probably precious-few people that “are forced to eat that [food that they don’t like] or to starve”.

[begbert2]

@HurricaneDitka

No one’s forcing people to eat food they don’t like. We’re talking about offering free food to people. It’s a kind and generous thing to do. If those people don’t like what’s offered, they’re free to make other arrangements.

No, what we’re actually talking about is that currently we give people X amount of money and say “You can buy food with this. Any food you want, within the amount. Any food you need, within the amount. Please don’t starve.” And the proposed plan is to take half that amount away and instead give them a generic crate of food carefully chosen not to be tasty and tell them “If you don’t like this, fuck you, and also, fuck you very much. Suffer more!”

I can only think of four possible reasons to do this.

1. Because it has been determined that, without government handholding, poor people have a marked tendency to spend all their money on beer instead of food and die of starvation. This of course hasn’t been determined because it isn’t happening.

2. Because it has been determined that the free market is shitty and inefficient at distributing food to the poor and a system has been devised to operate a government program to do so that is cheaper and more efficient. This of course hasn’t been determined because the free market is pretty good at delivering food and in any case Trump doesn’t bother with those ‘plan’ things that losers mess with.

3. Republicans think that poor people aren’t suffering enough - only people with jobs deserve happiness. Specifically really good, high-paying jobs. If you don’t make at least $50,000 a year you deserve, nay, need to hate every aspect of your life. Because if you don’t the people who do make $50,000 a year or more won’t be able to revel in your misery.

4. Republicans reject literally all of reality and construct their own, fueled by imaginings and wishful thinking. In this reality welfare should be left in the hands of the church and relatives, and the church and relatives can and do provide all the welfare needed for people to live comfortably - because there really aren’t any people who actually need help because everybody can make a great living easily just by rolling up their sleeves and working a little. As history shows, because in the past there were no poor people at all.

[HurricaneDitka]

@begbert2

… I can only think of four possible reasons to do this. …

You didn’t think “save $12.9B” might be a reason to do this? You might want to examine the faults in your thought process if you missed that rather obvious one.

[Morgenstern]

@HurricaneDitka

…

The main point is that there are probably precious-few people that “are forced to eat that [food that they don’t like] or to starve”.

But their government gruel, it will be supplemented with vitamins, right?

[HurricaneDitka]

@Morgenstern

But their government gruel, it will be supplemented with vitamins, right?

The hyperbole contained in your (and a few other posters’) posts doesn’t really merit a response, but I’ll humor you with one more anyways. We’re not talking about gruel, we’re talking about “shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit and vegetables”.

[begbert2]

Cereals are made of wheat, which is a grass.

Just sayin’…

[begbert2]

@HurricaneDitka

You didn’t think “save $12.9B” might be a reason to do this? You might want to examine the faults in your thought process if you missed that rather obvious one.

That would be option two. You might want to examine your reading comprehension because you missed that rather obvious one.

[Czarcasm]

The people that use SNAP money are still able to use that to get food they can actually eat, though.

1. Will these mass-produced food boxes be able to cater to those with special needs, or will they have to throw out food they can’t use, then spend even more of their own money to get food they can eat?
2. We don’t have near enough food inspectors as it is. Will new inspectors be hired, or will what few we have be stretched even further, or will we just just exempt the this new food outlet?
3. Who is going to oversee this plan so that it doesn’t go to yet another 1 to 5 person operation that subcontracts it out to ghod-knows-who then proceeds to fails miserably?

[HurricaneDitka]

@begbert2

Do you have any evidence that the proposed food would be “carefully chosen not to be tasty” or is that just something you’re making up?

[carnivorousplant]

What is the objection to giving people food they like?

[begbert2]

@HurricaneDitka

@begbert2

Do you have any evidence that the proposed food would be “carefully chosen not to be tasty” or is that just something you’re making up?

Well, there is that whole “shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit and vegetables” thing.

But in addition to that, if the point was not to make the poor more miserable, what is the point? It sure isn’t to save money, not unless they don’t do the “distribute the food crate thing” at all.

I do concede that if the republicans reduce the SNAP amount in half and then don’t ship out the crates of pre-chosen lowest-bidder food to make up for it, then the non-delivered food won’t be non-tasty.

[HurricaneDitka]

@carnivorousplant

What is the objection to giving people food they like?

Well, one objection is that it apparently costs $129B more over 10 years.

[HurricaneDitka]

@begbert2

… It sure isn’t to save money…

What, if anything, are you basing this comment on?

[Czarcasm]

Since people get different amounts of SNAP funding depending on their situation, won’t mass-produced food boxes shortchange some people? Come to think of it, is there anything in the proposal that says the amount of food in the generic box will equal the amount of SNAP funding being taken away?

[begbert2]

@carnivorousplant

What is the objection to giving people food they like?

Who are you asking? As a liberal I have concluded that the republicans’ objection is that they want only people who don’t get handouts to like their food. People who get handouts should be grateful for it, but they should have as little as possible to be grateful for.

If you’re asking me directly, if I were a non-sadist who wanted to do this food crate thing for realsies, then there are several real issues with trying to ship people good tasty food that they like and aren’t allergic to.

1. Good food is expensive, and we’re supposed to be trying to keep costs down. Worse, lower-quality food is more cost-effective, in part just because there’s less competition for it, and in part because it can probably be culled from the leavings from food sold to worthwhile people. Sort of like the deal where a kindly shop owner gives away bread crusts and leftover bones for stew, except writ large and involving food factories’ industrial waste.

2. It’s an organizational and tracking nightmare. There are lots of poor people out there -like, dozens and dozens- and they all have different tastes, preferences, and dietary needs. Tracking dietary needs and allergies for millions of people who may not even have mailing addresses would be hard enough - there’s no way we’re going to also track whether people prefer wheat or white. Too much work, even if we’re not limited by what we can get cheap.

[begbert2]

@HurricaneDitka

What, if anything, are you basing this comment on?

Because even a cursory glance at the logistics of the situation proves beyond doubt that creating an entire new food collection, packing, allocating, and distribution system to run alongside the existing one (that is, grocery stores) is going to cost staggering piles of money. The grocery system simply isn’t inefficient enough to make doing it all over again from scratch cost effective.

[HurricaneDitka]

@Czarcasm

Since people get different amounts of SNAP funding depending on their situation, won’t mass-produced food boxes shortchange some people?

No. The proposal says “The amount of food received per household would be scaled to the overall size of the household’s SNAP allotment”

@Czarcasm

Come to think of it, is there anything in the proposal that says the amount of food in the generic box will equal the amount of SNAP funding being taken away?

The proposal says:

USDA would utilize a model similar to that currently used to distribute USDA Foods to other nutrition assistance programs to provide staple, shelf-stable foods (such as shelf-stable milk, juice, grains, ready-eat-cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans, canned meat, poultry or fish, and canned fruits and vegetables) to SNAP households at approximately half the retail cost.

[HurricaneDitka]

@begbert2

Because even a cursory glance at the logistics of the situation proves beyond doubt that creating an entire new food collection, packing, allocating, and distribution system to run alongside the existing one (that is, grocery stores) is going to cost staggering piles of money. The grocery system simply isn’t inefficient enough to make doing it all over again from scratch cost effective.

The proposal says:

This proposal would save $129.2 billion over the ten-year period between Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 and FY 2028. This estimate accounts for about $2.5 billion annually in additional administrative funds for states.
…
States will be given substantial flexibility to distribute these food benefits to participants. States can distribute these boxes through existing infrastructure, partnerships, and/or directly to residences through commercial and/or retail delivery services.

Your thoughts?