Well hell this is another rant but I have to say something about what happens to me when I go to the grocery store. I was born around here ( okla) but I moved away for about 10 years then moved back. The first time I went to the gro store after moving back I entered the checkout line in front of a woman and man in their mid-thirties. Their basket was heaping full with roasts, hamburger meat vegetables soft drinks and the like. Underneath all that were 4 cartons of marlboro cigarettes. I was surprised to see them pull out their WIC stamps (our version of welfare) and pay for the food…then the man pulled out a 50 dollar bill and payed for the cigarettes. Well my question at the time was obvious… if he had money for cigarettes shouldn’t he have money for food! I see this happening evertime I go to the grocery store. Seemingly healthy grown white ( and black) adults standing in line with their WIC stamps.
Now I am a middle-class working stiff that pays cash at the grocery line ( when I can afford to go) here in my town so you can imagine my frustration. I might be in that WIC line as well but I opted to get an education so as not to be a burden on others…does this happen in other states?
“I think it speaks to the duality of man sir.”
(private Joker in Full Metal Jacket)
Umm, WIC is a Federal program to provide healthy meals for pregnant women and young children whose family income is below a certain point (don’t know if it is the “poverty line” or not). You can’t buy just any old thing with WIC, only pre-approved items, that will be listed on the WIC form. Fr’instance, you can’t buy choco-sugar-puffs cereal, but you can buy Kix or Cheerios. It also covers items like 100% juice drinks, peanut butter, milk, and baby foods/formula.
I don’t believe you can buy meat with it, as meat is more expensive and wasteful than other sources of protien, and the gummit’s not willing to pay for the extravagance. The rules may have changed, though. I used to work in a grocery is how I know all this.
WIC is something of a pain in the ass, both to grocery store staff and other customers, as it results in one purchaser making 2 transactions, but it is a worthwhile program and should be supported. I’d rather suffer a little inconvenience than know some kid’s out there going hungry cause Daddy has to have his nasty cigarrettes and our society is so judgemental that we’re not willing to help out the poor. Without the WIC, do you think Pops would have put back a carton? Doubtful.
Yeah, I’m a socialist. So shoot me.
I probably am getting WIC mixed up with whatever our welfare system is here. And I do want children fed and all that shit but I don’t want to work my ass off every month so that I can buy cigarettes for some other bastard that had the same opportunity to get some kind of education and support himself that I did. By the way I quit smoking 30 years ago.
Aha, in GA we have food stamps and WIC. I agree with MissDavis about the WIC. I think you are thinking of food stamps (or whatever they are called there). And yes the same thing happens here. People buy more expensive food than I can afford with food stamps.
The grocery stores even have to give them back change if the total food stamps is more than the bill (ex let say they use $100 of food stamps for $85 of food, the store has to give them $15 in cash, that they can then use to purchase anything.)
The guy is going to smoke one way or other, but I do agree that we should not have to pay for this or his more expensive tastes.
Food stamps are even sold underground for pennies on the dollar and then used by people that do not even receive them. And there is no stigma to using them around here.
Most welfare type programs are only available to persons with very low incomes. So, let’s say you have your $50 of food stamps for the week, and with those you can buy many of the things you need from the grocery store (you cannot buy, in IL anyway, garbage bags, cleaning supplies and the like). In addition to the food stamp money, let’s say you have $50 cash, either from work or some form of governemnt subsidy. That money is yours to use as you please. It may be true that the family would better benefit from having the $50 spent on new shoes for Junior, but if the person with the money wants to spend it in some other way, it’s really none of your business. Surely you would not want the government imposing regulations on how you could spend your discretionary income.
The poor are entitled to the food stamps because they do not earn enough money to feed themselves/their famililes. The gov. regulates the use of food stamps by stipulating what can be purchased with them. Just becasue we (the taxpayers) are helping someone to buy food does not give us the right to dictate to them what they do with the rest of their money.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
I believe the law states that if the cashier has enough food stamps to give the change in food stamps, he/she is required to do so. If the store does not have the correct amount of food stamps, only then does it give the change in “real” money.
No kidding… I was going to say something about this as well, but I was thinking of more of a rant and decided to spare everyone that. There’s a fine line between helping someone and controlling them. Everybody still gets to make their own decisions, even those on Federal Aid programs.
You will only get back change of less than a dollar in Wisconsin. The stamps must also be in the book at the time of purchase. The book is identified with the person using it. The stores will take a few dollars worth not attached in the book.
Yes it does suck when they buy $50 in booze or smokes at the same time.
In GA, they do not give back food stamps as change, because then it is outside of the book of stamps and someone could have been dealing (selling) them.
Well why can’t I have a say in how they spend their money. They have a say in how they spend my money.
Let’s see. I try to be a responsible parent and purchase food and clothing for my child and family. Since I do this I do not have enough money left over for non-essential things (movies, restaurants, computers, etc.) Yet someone else who has been deemed “poor” can have their food bought for them and then spend their money on non-essentials (cigarettes, alcohol, etc.).
I know there are plenty of people that use the food stamps wisely, but there are also many who abuse it. They hurt those who do need it.
Call me cold blooded, but like aha, I have worked hard to make something of myself and I would like to see my money being spent on they same foods I would buy. (I do not buy cigarettes or alcohol.)
I gotta agree with Jeffery on this one. The government certaintly tells me how to spend my money, in fact, they take 30 to 40% right out of my paycheck! So why can’t the government place restrictions on what people on assistance programs spend their money on?
Well really I am just asking a simple question:
When you get out of high school ( a lot of us make it through high school no matter how poor we are} why not take advantage of scholarships for lower income families not to mention the basic education grant, government grants, lions club scholarships, mason scholarships and every other scholarship out there that is available and take some responsibility to GET A FUCKING EDUCATION so that you aren’t a burden to the rest of us that are trying to live on this planet. Ok so college isn’t for every one…so try some friggin vocational technology go to nursing school, learn to weld but above all GET SOME TRAINING AND GET A JOB! I can’t be held responsible for buying anyone’s cigarettes or whiskey! If bad things have happened through circumstance then I am all for helping my fellow man…but the point of high school is not to see just how fast you can get pregnant and drag your illegitimate kids through a grocery line and not for hanging around after you graduate to become the “older town guy” that buys the beer for the high school students and eventually gets married and ends up on food stamps at age 35.
The wife and I are white middle income people so guess what?? There are NO college scholarships out there for my kids…not if you are white and make more than 50K a year ( thats man and wife together) even tho it takes an average of 10K a year minimum to send a kid to college. So those guys with no education or training in the grocery line using food stamps better smile at me cause I am probably buying both of our groceries.
aahh now thats better…
“I think it speaks to the duality of man sir.”
(private Joker in Full Metal Jacket)
aha, I can see your point but it’s lost on me. try this, you work only 19 seconds per day to pay for social welfare, but a whopping 20 minutes a day to pay for corporate welfare.
Those cig’s were probably for the guy, not the woman and they probably weren’t married either.
Um, it’s really not that easy when you’re a single mother. No shit.
I do not belong to that category. I do not have children and I HAVE AN EDUCATION!!! (Sorry, it just appears from the tone of this thread that any mention of EDUCATION!!! must be in caps followed by exclamation points) I work in my field while I continue my EDUCATION!!! I make a funny-haha salary (about 10,000 a yr), which I can survive on. I make more than many, many of my colleagues affiliated with other universities. Obviously, they also have an EDUCATION!!! but are surely in a position to benefit from federal assistance. In spite of my EDUCATION!!! and resulting decadant salary, I could use some food stamps, too.
Well in Arizona they aren’t allowed to give back food stamps. I don’t know about other places.
As for the whole “get an education” and “get a job” rants…wow, you’re assuming a lot. Did you go ask those people if they went to college? Or if they had jobs? Or do you just assume that anyone on food stamps doesn’t have a job? I’ve BEEN on food stamps, I also went to college and I had a job. I got sick one winter, the year I was working full time to let my husband go to school full time without working. Yeah, I know, we’re shiftless human waste, aren’t we? Well I missed almost 2 months of work with severe bronchitis and some other problems. We could no longer meet rent, pay bills, buy groceries. I HAD a job, I just missed work for illness. I suppose rather than going on food stamps for the 4 or 5 months we got them, my husband should have sabotaged his scholastic carreer, dropped out of the university, and gotten a job so that we could make it up those months, according to you?
I bought macaroni and cheese level food with our food stamps, and I got a whopping $120 worth each month–you probably spend that in one night out at dinner with friends!
So let me just say, fuck you. You don’t know those people’s situation and yet you feel fine coming in here on your high-ass horse passing judgement around like party favors. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t people who abuse the system, but you don’t know those people, so keep your trap shut.
Oh…but you in your infinite wisdom know MY situation…
maybe you could get a job on the psyhic hotline…
in the meantime if you don’t have the maturity and emotional control to post in this forum with out a personal attack maybe you would be better off on another message board.
And I got your party favor right here.
“I think it speaks to the duality of man sir.”
(private Joker in Full Metal Jacket)
ROFLMAO! I can’t believe you told OpalCat to go to another message board! Why don’t you tell Ed Zotti to quit loafing and get a job? What a moron! Just keep digging your hole, you’re almost deep enough for us to bury you.
“You’re only calling us a cow college cos’ we were founded by a cow!”
aha – you’d have really liked to be behind me in line at the grocery store about 30 years ago.
We had just moved to Seattle – hubby was working construction (good money, but seasonal lay-offs until you built up your union seniority) and I wasn’t working yet.
Just once, one winter, we were living on unemployment and we applied for food stamps. (I think we got them for one whole month, and we jumped through hoops for that.)
Anyway, it was Christmas time – we didn’t have any money for gifts for my parents (and my parents were able to buy little things for the kids) so I used about $30 worth of the food stamps and bought gift boxes of chocolates and fruit for mom and dad.
Was that YOU in line – looking at me like I was scum of the earth?
For the rest of you guys, please don’t take this as a defense of welfare – I’m wholeheartedly in favor of it and would not deign to have aha or anyone else think it even requires defending.
Not being specialists on bear’s dicks, none of us responded. We didn’t want to look like fools. Joe Lansdale, The Two-Bear Mambo
I’ll avoid attacking you for saying “man and wife,” but I won’t let you get by so easy next time…
I am a (white) college student. My education costs approximately $13,000 a year (at a public university). My parents, who are married (and college-educated), easily make more than $50,000 (the actual number varies from year to year, 'cause my dad works freelance). They pay basically NONE of my educational bills (they paid for some extravagances when I was in Israel, and they pay most of my rent now), which they basically can’t afford. I have loans. I just found out, yesterday, that I will owe $3,117 for just ONE of my loans in eleven months. I have a couple other loans as well. Don’t mistake me. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t complain either. It’s true, college is ridiculously expensive right now, but the government makes it easy to pay for it, and with the education one recieves, it can be paid for. So stop kibitzing! Sheesh.
