That’s a fair point and I don’t know how that reconciles with observable facts. But I know a lot of these people personally; I’m not repeating some recycled UL.
It’s likely that many or most of the people on SNAP are also getting a lot of their food from WIC. But I don’t know if that fully accounts for it.
In NYC the maximum SNAP benefit for one person is $250 a month -even the USDA’s low cost food plan is at least $225 a month for an adult. So while there might be a little extra , it certainly isn’t “far more in benefits than they can actually use”.
If you know people who are selling their benefits ( or food they buy with the benefits) it’s unlikely that it is because they get more benefits than they can use - after all, they could buy more food or better food ( steak instead of chicken ). It’s much more likely that they are selling them to get cash to buy things they need that food stamps won’t cover like soap or toilet paper and making up the food difference by going to soup kitchens or food pantries.
Since you mention giving the excess to friends and relatives , I wonder it’s actually WIC rather than food stamps that’s providing the “excess” food or even if the food they are giving away comes from a food pantry. As best as I remember, WIC doesn’t provide a dollar amount but certain quantities of specific foods - and if you don’t eat eggs, you can’t substitute and get extra peanut butter with your WIC benefit. And some pantries provide pre-packaged boxes of food that don’t take into account what people actually eat - I don’t mean the food is inedible, but if a food pantry gave me a bag of lentils, I’d be giving them away because I don’t eat them.
As I noted in a subsequent post, many or most othe people on SNAP are also on WIC, and their food budget is subsidized by both sources. Though I’m not sure if that fully accounts for it.
It’s not just that, but even if you do eat these things, the amount allotted by WIC is far more than what any normal person consumes.
On this particular aspect I speak from personal experience, having been on WIC myself (actually, my wife and kids) at one point (I was never on Food Stamps). WIC provided free milk, juice, cheese, and eggs (likely other stuff that I don’t recall just now) in such quantities that we were awash in these things, even allowing for the fact that I myself was technically not being provided for. It was particularly an issue for milk and eggs, which don’t freeze well, but even the juice and cheese became an issue because our freezer got so full of them there was hardly room for anything else. And we were hard pressed to palm them off on other people, because at that stage in our lives a high percentage of the people we knew were similarly on WIC and were likewise awash in all these same items. I don’t recall how this resolved itself, or if we ended up just throwing a lot of the stuff out.
Years ago, I took my cat to the vet with a broken leg after a boo-boo with my truck. The vet did little more than tape him up and remarked, “He’s a cat. As long as the two halves of the broken bone are in the same room, it will heal.” He recovered quickly and eventually outlived every one of his siblings. Cats can be amazingly resilient.
And it took me something like ten years to convince one cat I lived with that he wasn’t about to be kicked any time someone lifted a foot in his presence.
ETA: Young cats heal well, yes. So do young humans. It doesn’t mean, in either case, that they’re actually physically invulnerable.
That’s one think I always admired about my husband. If he didn’t want to drink, smoke, or eat something, he would sit there calmly, give a little wave of the hand, and politely say, ‘oh, none for me, thanks.’ Never arguing, never getting upset, just politely refusing. Put a drink in front of him (“here, have another, catch up with the rest of us”) it would sit there untouched.
Sometimes even when it’s not Mardi Gras.
My daughter and her friends went to some of the Pride Week events in Chicago last year. They noticed a bunch of guys with variously colored handkerchiefs sticking out of their pockets and asked what they signified. They had a code system to let people know who was single, who was looking for a fling, who was looking for a relationship, etc. Unobtrusive and efficient. 
I saw a UFO in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s, for which I had no explanation at the time. It was a black triangular object with two bright forward-facing lights like headlights, and many smaller running lights on the underside. It was traveling low and slow in a straight line east to west directly over my head. My current supposition is that it was some sort of blimp or dirigible for night reconaissance. I don’t think it had anywhere near enough airspeed to keep a fixed wing craft aloft.
Worst I’ve witnessed is a cart loaded with junk food (chips, sodas, snack cakes, etc.) and lots of pre-packaged frozen processed foods (like chicken fingers/nuggets and breaded chicken patties, etc.). Not the healthiest diet at best, but it was food.
Inasmuch as I noticed a vehicle, it was typically a 10+ y/o mid-sized economy on its last legs.
What’s your source on that - a quick search returned that “nearly 20% of children on SNAP also receive WIC” (source is census.gov from 2021) so that’s definitely not “most” - and I know WIC is only for pregnant and nursing women and children under 5.
I really wish I’d never seen/heard it, too. But unfortunately I’ve seen it more times than I like.
Several years ago I was standing at an intersection waiting for the walk signal so I could cross the street. Standing on this same corner was a teenage boy waving a sign around advertising for a nearby business. A pickup truck driven by a young woman pulled up to the red light. She rolled down her window and yelled at the boy “I’ll show you my boobs if you dance for me!” The boy did a really awkward dance. And… then the walk signal came on. I would have felt like a perv if I stuck around to see if she actually did it, so I proceeded to cross the street and I have no idea if she actually did show him her boobs, or if she was just messing with him.
That said, I vised Lahaina, Hawaii on Halloween once. They have an annual Halloween parade that often gets compared to Mardi Gras. There were a few women walking around topless there. Some “wearing” body paint on their chest, but no actual garment, one just plain topless, and one walking down the street breastfeeding a child while topless. I’m told things get more wild as the night goes on, but I didn’t stay out that late.
If you don’t leave a valid will, it is fairly likely the lawyers will end up with all the money. 
Yes, I think as many women made it clear they don’t like it, Construction workers toned it down or stopped, since the workers likely thought all women liked it, instead of just some.
That is not impossible. But “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” is a UL and myth.
Yeah. I lived for a month on hypothetical food stamps and various food aid (but not WIC). The stamps covered about half. But the food aid more than covered the rest. In Santa Clara County, at least, no one (with a place to cook food) needs to go hungry, although the diet might get boring.
What is “various food aid”? Food pantries or other government food programs?
Catholic church, local aid, various agencies handing out free lunches in the park, etc.
I was testing the system as I was on a Commission. I didn’t use Food stamps, obviously, I just limited my shopping to that amount. One Church gave out a box with beans, rice, government cheese and fruit for example.
And I didn’t actually take any of the food aid, I just recorded it. One exception was a smaller Catholic Church that had a basement full of sacks of potatoes, onions and day old bread from Trader Joes, and the Priest begged me to take some of the bread as they had too much. I left a donation, of course.
I noted what free lunches were available in the park, and ate only those- bean burritos, or PB&J sandwiches with a piece of fruit were common.
My source is people I know on these programs, of which there are many. However, most people I know who are on SNAP and/or WIC are young couples with young children, so it’s likely that the crossover is much bigger in my sample than among the population at large. I was careful to hedge in saying “many or most”, but I’m surprised it’s as low as 20%. Thanks for the added info.
Eligible income for WIC is higher than for SNAP (though I believe the latter was increased in response to the covid pandemic) so anyone eligible for SNAP would generally be eligible for WIC, though as you note it doesn’t cover children over 5.
I’ve had to put a few people like that into a category of what I’d call ‘Nice people “on paper” but who nonetheless rub me like sandpaper’. I like the clever zing that the late Bill Hicks said:
When somebody tells you “it takes more energy to frown than smile”, tell them “It takes more energy to point that out than to leave me alone”.
I would like to tell the people talking about SNAP/Food Stamp amounts-- my senior mother is on food stamps and she is stilling receiving the extra Pandemic EBT amount. (In her case it is an extra $200 and she lives alone.) I have no idea when they planning on ending the extra amount.
I dated a woman who raised and sold rabbits. From what I witnessed, when a male is placed in the female’s cage, they get to business within a few seconds and are finished 10-15 seconds after starting. I always assumed that’s where the “going at it like rabbits” trope came from: the speed of the act, not the number of times the act is performed.