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Food stamps and the I-know-what's-best-for-you crowd
The other day I caught someone on the news about some politician wanting to remove soda pop from the list of things you can buy with food stamps.
As someone who has had to depend on food stamps many times over the years, this annoyed me greatly. Today my feelings finally settled in on two items that may get across *why* I think this is a really stupid idea.
First of all besides the "sugary drinks are bad" bit (which I'll cover under point 2) I note that he's not calling for coffee, tea or any of a host of other drinks that you *can* buy with food stamps, but which have no "nutritional significance (other than calories) to be removed. Double standard much?
Second, food stamps are *very* limiting. Moreso know than when I first encountered them in the mid 70s. $200 a month max benefit for a single person (and I understand it may be lowered soon). Food stamps have *not* kept up with inflation, BTW. The single person benefit in 1975 was over $100 a month. And I dare anybody to tell me that food prices haven't *more* than doubled since then.
So, you have less than $7 a day to allocate to meals. If you are a good cook, you can use spices and the like to help keep the food from being too boring. Even so, a lot of the food is going to be moderately bland. Especially if you aren't good with spices.
So, both for variety and for sanity, you will be buying some stuff that isn't cheap. "Treats" are more important when you are stuff with a limited menu.
Me? I check the marked down stuff for the bakery, for the produce section and for the meat dept. Last month I was lucky and happened to be in the store as they were putting out the marked down meat that day. Just after Labor Day. I scored a bunch of steaks for about $2/lb. They went into the freezer and got pulled out a few at a time.
Of course, I'm sure there'd be folks who'd be livid if they saw me buying those steaks and knew I was using foodstamps.
Look folks, if you qualify for food stamps at all, things are at least somewhat grim. Denying folks the ability get the occasional treat if they can budget it is just being mean.
Oh. Wait. I forgot, no one on welfare or foodstamps or any other government aid program *deserves* anything good. If they weren't bad peoiple or failures, they woulldn't need the help.
Trust me, when you strip off the rhetoric, that's what just about all the rants about those programs biol down to.
Well, here's a hearty Fuck You to the folks who are so lacking in empathy or so blinded by ideoology that they want to make bad situations worse.
As someone who has had to depend on food stamps many times over the years, this annoyed me greatly. Today my feelings finally settled in on two items that may get across *why* I think this is a really stupid idea.
First of all besides the "sugary drinks are bad" bit (which I'll cover under point 2) I note that he's not calling for coffee, tea or any of a host of other drinks that you *can* buy with food stamps, but which have no "nutritional significance (other than calories) to be removed. Double standard much?
Second, food stamps are *very* limiting. Moreso know than when I first encountered them in the mid 70s. $200 a month max benefit for a single person (and I understand it may be lowered soon). Food stamps have *not* kept up with inflation, BTW. The single person benefit in 1975 was over $100 a month. And I dare anybody to tell me that food prices haven't *more* than doubled since then.
So, you have less than $7 a day to allocate to meals. If you are a good cook, you can use spices and the like to help keep the food from being too boring. Even so, a lot of the food is going to be moderately bland. Especially if you aren't good with spices.
So, both for variety and for sanity, you will be buying some stuff that isn't cheap. "Treats" are more important when you are stuff with a limited menu.
Me? I check the marked down stuff for the bakery, for the produce section and for the meat dept. Last month I was lucky and happened to be in the store as they were putting out the marked down meat that day. Just after Labor Day. I scored a bunch of steaks for about $2/lb. They went into the freezer and got pulled out a few at a time.
Of course, I'm sure there'd be folks who'd be livid if they saw me buying those steaks and knew I was using foodstamps.
Look folks, if you qualify for food stamps at all, things are at least somewhat grim. Denying folks the ability get the occasional treat if they can budget it is just being mean.
Oh. Wait. I forgot, no one on welfare or foodstamps or any other government aid program *deserves* anything good. If they weren't bad peoiple or failures, they woulldn't need the help.
Trust me, when you strip off the rhetoric, that's what just about all the rants about those programs biol down to.
Well, here's a hearty Fuck You to the folks who are so lacking in empathy or so blinded by ideoology that they want to make bad situations worse.
You've got a good set of observations there.
After all- what else can explain some of their political absurdities?
no subject
It sounds rather unkind, but it's not like anyone is buying their meals for them.
The vast majority of humans would prefer to produce more than they consume.
If we had a balanced, non-corrupt world economy, the number of people needing survival assistance would be vastly fewer. As they could then support themselves and families by what we used to call honest wages for honest work. And such a world economy tends to have more niches for more people that wish only to have employment within their abilities. Which becomes possible as the cost of living decreases due to elimination of economic crimes against humanity.
Were we able to create a world that enables all to survive whilst abusing none, we'd shortly see a rabid shrill, opposition to that world. Mostly from those haters who would loathe losing their Schadenfreude orgasms.