I don't think banning soda precludes those other things override. It is low-hanging fruit in the sense that it is easy to pass this but hard to pass comprehensive nutritional reform throughout the U.S., but just because its hard to make a big reform doesn't mean we should ignore small reforms.
As far as fruit juice, yes its bad for you but soda is worse. If you think there's a different line that should be drawn, you can argue for that. Soda is pretty clearly in the "fucking horrible" area of nutrition, and its pretty easy to place a line barring "fucking horrible" from being allowed.
Once you go after "mostly bad but sometimes good and important to only consume in small quantities" you're going to have a much harder time finding the proper place to draw the line.
3. We need comprehensive national nutrition reform. Banning soda from being buyable with food stamps to fix inner city nutrition will be as effective as a screen door on a submarine.
I would definitely agree that this is treating a symptom instead of the disease. I'm still not against it though, sometimes you have to take baby steps. Or do something like this to start the national conversation.
Armored Gorilla on
"I'm a mad god. The Mad God, actually. It's a family title. Gets passed down from me to myself every few thousand years."
Tell me it isn't random to the person waiting at the register who isn't aware that soda is now not nutritional enough for poor people.
"Hi person waiting at the register who doesn't read their mail, watch the news, or look at posters. In an entirely non-random event, New York has decided that it is not interested in providing public assistance for your soda purchases.
This is an entirely non-random event because at no point was any random chance involved whatsoever. No dice were rolled, no random numbers were generated, no dartboards were used, no hats filled with grocery items randomly fished through.
I'm sorry you don't know what the word random means, but that's ok, because I'm hoping to keep soda banned from food stamp purchases but allow food stamps to be used to purchase dictionaries."
I don't think you have any idea how hard it is to get the word out about food stamps in general. When you can apply for them, what the terms are, what you can get. These are not really commonly known things. Even in this thread, people are confused about what you can get, where and how between different states.
To the person attempting to make a purchase the distinction can seem random. As though what was allowed and not was arbitrarily decided by rolling some dice and picking something. One might even argue there are worse food products out there than soda, or equivalent, or only slightly better. It is only chance then, that soda is singled out.
But that is entirely beside the point.
Derrick on
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
You still haven't given a solid response to the fact that all of these "treats" are still quite purchasable with regular ol' cash.
The logic on this is really simple:
- Poor people are statistically far less likely to made good nutritional choices
- Poor people have staggeringly higher rates of obesity and diabetes
- Foodstamps are not "their money," they are charity provided by taxdollars.
- Ergo, concordantly, vis a vis, poor people (as a statistical group) are not capable of choosing healthy dietary options and it behooves the government, if capable, to both keep them from choosing poorly and incurring more wasted taxdollars later on in medical bills.
Also, I did not say that people on food stamps should have infinite soda. I simply said that as grown adults they can choose what to use their limited allotment of resources on.
Like beer, right? The drink people use as both a treat, sustenance, and refreshment?
Treats are for people who can afford them after they've already fed themselves with the basics, clothed themselves, ensured their children have an education. That sort of thing
This, to me, very heavily implies that people on food stamps who buy soda aren't doing the above, given that it is what this thread is about.
I've already replied to you but I'll clarify: we're comparing apples and oranges here. As stated before, I don't think there's anything wrong with "treats". No, the people who buy soda regularly are probably still sending their kids to school; but the entire point of this thread is that the people who buy soda regularly are not buying the food they should to keep themselves (and their kids) healthy.
On one hand we have Urban Poor Family A, who buys a 2L bottle every few weeks. This is fine in my mind because as long as you aren't sitting on your ass 24/7, some soda every so often won't do you any harm, but more because the occasional bottle of soda can be afforded without food stamps anyway.
And on the other hand we have Urban Poor Family B, where every member drinks multiple cans a day. As a taxpayer who supports social welfare, I would like this family to try eating more healthy food, and if that can be done by discouraging their use of soda, then that would be just dandy. They can still buy soda with their own money! Nothing wrong with that.
I don't think you have any idea how hard it is to get the word out about food stamps in general.
The device you're posting these messages on, are you familiar with it?
Computers are neat.
"Databse --> Find all "Food Stamp" recipients --> prepare draft letter --> "YO SODA IS NOT OK ANYMORE BTW THIS WASN'T A RANDOM DECISION" --> print fifty thousand times --> send mail.
When you can apply for them, what the terms are, what you can get. These are not really commonly known things. Even in this thread, people are confused about what you can get, where and how between different states.
Getting information to people not on food stamps could be hard. Getting information to people on food stamps is really, really, really easy. They're all in a database already.
To the person attempting to make a purchase the distinction can seem random.
Well its too bad that some people on food stamps might have a poor understanding of what the word random means and how legislative decisions are made.
It is only chance then, that soda is singled out.
But that is entirely beside the point.
Name a single food category as unhealthy as soda that also constitutes a similar or larger portion of the state's food stamp budget.
PotatoNinja on
Two goats enter, one car leaves
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
3. We need comprehensive national nutrition reform. Banning soda from being buyable with food stamps to fix inner city nutrition will be as effective as a screen door on a submarine.
I would definitely agree that this is treating a symptom instead of the disease. I'm still not against it though, sometimes you have to take baby steps. Or do something like this to start the national conversation.
Exactly.
Nutritional reform is going to be a huge issue in the years to come, but that shouldn't stop us from addressing the most pertinent issues when we can.
Poor people are unhealthy because they make bad choices and it's often cheaper to do so. Changing the latter is going to be an enormous legal battle that may or may not go on for years, given the corruption within our own government in that regard; changing the former, not so much.
As many have pointed out, sugared sodas have no more real nutritional value than cigarettes or booze.
The device you're posting these messages on, are you familiar with it?
Computers are neat.
"Databse --> Find all "Food Stamp" recipients --> prepare draft letter --> "YO SODA IS NOT OK ANYMORE BTW THIS WASN'T A RANDOM DECISION" --> print fifty thousand times --> send mail.
Breaking off with you on this one, the poor population as a whole does not have easy access to the internet. Those of us who use it every day on high speed networks via work and paying $50-$100 bills every month for DSL, Cable or FIOS tend to take it for granted. Even public libraries have a limited number of available seats.
Edit: This is another conversation entirely, but I just wanted to point it out.
Armored Gorilla on
"I'm a mad god. The Mad God, actually. It's a family title. Gets passed down from me to myself every few thousand years."
I wouldn't ban syrup. No one really uses it in quantities as massive as soda. I'd be slightly hesitant on the jerky too. Candy bars would be cool though.
The device you're posting these messages on, are you familiar with it?
Computers are neat.
"Databse --> Find all "Food Stamp" recipients --> prepare draft letter --> "YO SODA IS NOT OK ANYMORE BTW THIS WASN'T A RANDOM DECISION" --> print fifty thousand times --> send mail.
Breaking off with you on this one, the poor population as a whole does not have easy access to the internet. Those of us who use it every day on high speed networks via work and paying $50-$100 bills every month for DSL, Cable or FIOS tend to take it for granted. Even public libraries have a limited number of available seats.
No, they don't need the internet.
If you have any mail or phone or electronic or other contact with these people, you just send a letter with that.
Does the state have the means to contact people on food stamps? Obviously. Just send a little notice along with whatever you regularly send.
The device you're posting these messages on, are you familiar with it?
Computers are neat.
"Databse --> Find all "Food Stamp" recipients --> prepare draft letter --> "YO SODA IS NOT OK ANYMORE BTW THIS WASN'T A RANDOM DECISION" --> print fifty thousand times --> send mail.
Breaking off with you on this one, the poor population as a whole does not have easy access to the internet. Those of us who use it every day on high speed networks via work and paying $50-$100 bills every month for DSL, Cable or FIOS tend to take it for granted. Even public libraries have a limited number of available seats.
No, they don't need the internet.
If you have any mail or phone or electronic or other contact with these people, you just send a letter with that.
Does the state have the means to contact people on food stamps? Obviously. Just send a little notice along with whatever you regularly send.
None of that matters anyway though since the policy isn't there to keep someone from the minor inconvenience of discovering they can't buy something they don't need. It's cool if they can keep that from happening. If not, oh well.
The device you're posting these messages on, are you familiar with it?
Computers are neat.
"Databse --> Find all "Food Stamp" recipients --> prepare draft letter --> "YO SODA IS NOT OK ANYMORE BTW THIS WASN'T A RANDOM DECISION" --> print fifty thousand times --> send mail.
Breaking off with you on this one, the poor population as a whole does not have easy access to the internet. Those of us who use it every day on high speed networks via work and paying $50-$100 bills every month for DSL, Cable or FIOS tend to take it for granted. Even public libraries have a limited number of available seats.
No, they don't need the internet.
If you have any mail or phone or electronic or other contact with these people, you just send a letter with that.
Does the state have the means to contact people on food stamps? Obviously. Just send a little notice along with whatever you regularly send.
Agreed, just saying the internet generally isn't a viable option for delivering information to this group.
Armored Gorilla on
"I'm a mad god. The Mad God, actually. It's a family title. Gets passed down from me to myself every few thousand years."
On a related note, should public sector employees be allowed to buy soda (or smokes or booze)? My tax dollars are paying for that too, as well as their health care.
This is a false equivalency. You are paying public employees a wage for their work, not subsidizing their smoking/drinking/soda.
What if they get a meal allowance, should they be allowed to purchase a mocha cafe latte with it? How about department-funded meals, like a Christmas party or something? Those would both seem to be taxpayers subsidizing meals.
I also think it's funny that a person can't buy sweetened ice tea with food stamps, but they can buy unsweetened tea and a big bag of sugar. Assuming the hoi polloi even buy sugar rather than stealing packets from McDonald's, of course.
Putting "liquid fucking death shit" on the "not allowed" list strikes me as just fine.
Jesus Christ its not formaldehyde
C'mon, its pretty terrible to drink. I'm obviously being sarcastic but soda is truly terrible for you and there's no reason to drink it. It is liquidized unhealthiness.
Wouldn't Vitamin Water also classify as a sugar-added drink? It has almost as much sugar as Coke, and none of it comes from fruit juice, it's "crystalline fructose", which is usually processed from corn (though not HFCS).
You still haven't given a solid response to the fact that all of these "treats" are still quite purchasable with regular ol' cash.
The logic on this is really simple:
- Poor people are statistically far less likely to made good nutritional choices
- Poor people have staggeringly higher rates of obesity and diabetes
- Foodstamps are not "their money," they are charity provided by taxdollars.
- Ergo, concordantly, vis a vis, poor people (as a statistical group) are not capable of choosing healthy dietary options and it behooves the government, if capable, to both keep them from choosing poorly and incurring more wasted taxdollars later on in medical bills.
So back to beets and lentils again, and ignoring all negative externalities to treating grown people who had a stroke of bad luck as stupid children.
Hint- everyone on foodstamps is not chronically poor. It's more than likely that many of them will be wasting their taxdollars on you later with medical bills. My best friend, his mother when their family was just starting out, had to go on food stamps.
She was working (pregnant) as a special education teacher and speech therapist. Her husband was working on his CPA. They are quite intelligent enough to decide for themselves, and thank God they weren't overly dissuaded from using a service the government wants someone in her position to actually use.
Now, she's making money in the top bracket as a teacher, and the husband is a senior account in a firm. They have 3 children who all have degrees.
THESE are people you're babying. These people who, since you seem to be equivocating intelligence with income, could more than likely buy and sell you with little trouble these days without batting an eye. So let's back off the welfare queen unicorn for a bit (massive props for that term by the way ), and get a little bit of a reality check.
Can we do it? Sure. Does it make sense? Not really. More importantly, given the negative effects it can have, IS IT WORTH IT?
I say no. You're welcome to disagree. I'm simply saying your reasoning is massively flawed.
I would definitely vote against this. It's impractical and based on feelings (like recrimination and disgust) and nobody can show that there will be an appreciable impact.
I would definitely vote against this. It's impractical and based on feelings (like recrimination and disgust) and nobody can show that there will be an appreciable impact.
Feeling-based legislation is full of fail.
It's actually being done on a 2 year trial basis so they can study the impact.
3. We need comprehensive national nutrition reform. Banning soda from being buyable with food stamps to fix inner city nutrition will be as effective as a screen door on a submarine.
I would definitely agree that this is treating a symptom instead of the disease. I'm still not against it though, sometimes you have to take baby steps. Or do something like this to start the national conversation.
Exactly.
Nutritional reform is going to be a huge issue in the years to come, but that shouldn't stop us from addressing the most pertinent issues when we can.
Poor people are unhealthy because they make bad choices and it's often cheaper to do so. Changing the latter is going to be an enormous legal battle that may or may not go on for years, given the corruption within our own government in that regard; changing the former, not so much.
As many have pointed out, sugared sodas have no more real nutritional value than cigarettes or booze.
Right, which is what I said I support it even though I don't like it.
It's very easy to do this with no voter resistance for the primary reason that there isn't really any voter outcry when you put restrictions on the poor. People love restricting the poor. I'm less sure politicians are willing to take actual steps to improve the health of their constituents in a significant manner though.
Got any statistics on that obesity by income thing? I have a hard time believing someone who makes $20,000 a year is substantially fatter than $30,000 (I am aware the gap between 30 and 50 thousand is like 10% though)
Got any statistics on that obesity by income thing? I have a hard time believing someone who makes $20,000 a year is substantially fatter than $30,000 (I am aware the gap between 30 and 50 thousand is like 10% though)
I don't have them off the top of my head, but obesity decreases as you increase income.
I would definitely vote against this. It's impractical and based on feelings (like recrimination and disgust) and nobody can show that there will be an appreciable impact.
Feeling-based legislation is full of fail.
It's actually being done on a 2 year trial basis so they can study the impact.
What, by weighing people? I'm going to go out on a limb and predict: zero impact. There, I saved everyone a whole lot of money.
Hockey Johnston on
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I wouldn't ban syrup. No one really uses it in quantities as massive as soda. I'd be slightly hesitant on the jerky too. Candy bars would be cool though.
Well, I'd agree with syrup, too. I was just saying that there isn't any really good argument for making unhealthy foods that are often abused subsidized to the people most overwhelmingly likely to abuse them.
Basically, the statistics show that poor people are sugar addicts, more or less. I don't condone libertarian freedoms of choice for those using tax money to fund their poor health decisions; libertarian ideals are pretty much off the table once you start using other people's money to buy your food.
Atomika on
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I would definitely vote against this. It's impractical and based on feelings (like recrimination and disgust) and nobody can show that there will be an appreciable impact.
Feeling-based legislation is full of fail.
It's actually being done on a 2 year trial basis so they can study the impact.
Right, which is what I said I support it even though I don't like it.
It's very easy to do this with no voter resistance for the primary reason that there isn't really any voter outcry when you fuck with the poor.
Yeah, I don't like that aspect of it either. You know that some of the people (not all, just some) who vote "yes" on this... when it comes time to vote on a sin tax on soda are gonna whine and cry about "government interference!"
Although I still think that subsidizing corn syrup on one end and then taxing a product with it on the other is pretty much public policy fail.
But in terms of difficulty, restricting food stamps is way on the easy side of the line while repealing corn subsidies is way on the hard side.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
So back to beets and lentils again, and ignoring all negative externalities to treating grown people who had a stroke of bad luck as stupid children.
This slippery slope argument of yours still doesn't work given your inability to create any argument against food products like beer. Especially given a beer provides more nutrients than a soda.
Hint- everyone on foodstamps is not chronically poor. It's more than likely that many of them will be wasting their taxdollars on you later with medical bills. My best friend, his mother when their family was just starting out, had to go on food stamps.
She was working (pregnant) as a special education teacher and speech therapist. Her husband was working on his CPA. They are quite intelligent enough to decide for themselves, and thank God they weren't overly dissuaded from using a service the government wants someone in her position to actually use.
Now, she's making money in the top bracket as a teacher, and the husband is a senior account in a firm. They have 3 children who all have degrees.
THESE are people you're babying. These people who, since you seem to be equivocating intelligence with income, could more than likely buy and sell you with little trouble these days without batting an eye. So let's back off the welfare queen unicorn for a bit (massive props for that term by the way ), and get a little bit of a reality check.
Cool. Then they probably have money set aside that they can spend on the occasional soda. And no one's seriously called anyone a welfare queen as far as I know.
Can we do it? Sure. Does it make sense? Not really. More importantly, given the negative effects it can have, IS IT WORTH IT?
I say no. You're welcome to disagree. I'm simply saying your reasoning is massively flawed.
You haven't actually demonstrated any negative effects outside of some irrational sense of pride in being able to buy soda with food stamps. Plenty of people have demonstrated the negative effects of soda. Furthermore, you still haven't explained why people shouldn't be able to buy beer.
I would definitely vote against this. It's impractical and based on feelings (like recrimination and disgust) and nobody can show that there will be an appreciable impact.
Feeling-based legislation is full of fail.
It's actually being done on a 2 year trial basis so they can study the impact.
What, by weighing people? I'm going to go out on a limb and predict: zero impact. There, I saved everyone a whole lot of money.
Same way the get the average weight of people in any given demographic today?
THESE are people you're babying. These people who, since you seem to be equivocating intelligence with income, could more than likely buy and sell you with little trouble these days without batting an eye. So let's back off the welfare queen unicorn for a bit (massive props for that term by the way ), and get a little bit of a reality check.
Who is doing this? Not a single person in this thread, for the last few pages at least, has made this assertion.
Everyone who has posted here has done nothing to imply that people who are poor, on foodstamps, or otherwise downtrodden are intellectually inferior or inferior in any other way. The one exception are the claims that the poor are often making the worst choices about what to buy with their money, in terms of health.
And in any case, in regards to this whole "treating grown adults like spoiled children" retort, as PotatoNinja pointed out, no one is telling people what they can and cannot drink. They're saying that you can't use food stamps to buy soda. There is a unfathomably huge difference between the two.
Rikushix on
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
Got any statistics on that obesity by income thing? I have a hard time believing someone who makes $20,000 a year is substantially fatter than $30,000 (I am aware the gap between 30 and 50 thousand is like 10% though)
Well, there's this. Granted, it's from a horribly right-wing site, but the data doesn't appear to be all that biased. It basically asserts that there is a direct relationship between nutritional welfare and obesity, though there isn't much there talking about the variables within the data. SNAP is the name for the federal nutritional program.
Average of the top five: 30.92% obese, 13.9% SNAP
Average of the bottom five: 21.0% obese, 6.9% SNAP
Basically, the most obese states have the highest incidences of people on welfare, and vice versa.
Posts
This isn't red tape unless you consider any restriction on food stamps red tape.
As far as fruit juice, yes its bad for you but soda is worse. If you think there's a different line that should be drawn, you can argue for that. Soda is pretty clearly in the "fucking horrible" area of nutrition, and its pretty easy to place a line barring "fucking horrible" from being allowed.
Once you go after "mostly bad but sometimes good and important to only consume in small quantities" you're going to have a much harder time finding the proper place to draw the line.
I would definitely agree that this is treating a symptom instead of the disease. I'm still not against it though, sometimes you have to take baby steps. Or do something like this to start the national conversation.
I don't think you have any idea how hard it is to get the word out about food stamps in general. When you can apply for them, what the terms are, what you can get. These are not really commonly known things. Even in this thread, people are confused about what you can get, where and how between different states.
To the person attempting to make a purchase the distinction can seem random. As though what was allowed and not was arbitrarily decided by rolling some dice and picking something. One might even argue there are worse food products out there than soda, or equivalent, or only slightly better. It is only chance then, that soda is singled out.
But that is entirely beside the point.
What's wrong with that?
You still haven't given a solid response to the fact that all of these "treats" are still quite purchasable with regular ol' cash.
The logic on this is really simple:
- Poor people are statistically far less likely to made good nutritional choices
- Poor people have staggeringly higher rates of obesity and diabetes
- Foodstamps are not "their money," they are charity provided by taxdollars.
- Ergo, concordantly, vis a vis, poor people (as a statistical group) are not capable of choosing healthy dietary options and it behooves the government, if capable, to both keep them from choosing poorly and incurring more wasted taxdollars later on in medical bills.
Quid keeps saying all the things I want to say!
I've already replied to you but I'll clarify: we're comparing apples and oranges here. As stated before, I don't think there's anything wrong with "treats". No, the people who buy soda regularly are probably still sending their kids to school; but the entire point of this thread is that the people who buy soda regularly are not buying the food they should to keep themselves (and their kids) healthy.
On one hand we have Urban Poor Family A, who buys a 2L bottle every few weeks. This is fine in my mind because as long as you aren't sitting on your ass 24/7, some soda every so often won't do you any harm, but more because the occasional bottle of soda can be afforded without food stamps anyway.
And on the other hand we have Urban Poor Family B, where every member drinks multiple cans a day. As a taxpayer who supports social welfare, I would like this family to try eating more healthy food, and if that can be done by discouraging their use of soda, then that would be just dandy. They can still buy soda with their own money! Nothing wrong with that.
The device you're posting these messages on, are you familiar with it?
Computers are neat.
"Databse --> Find all "Food Stamp" recipients --> prepare draft letter --> "YO SODA IS NOT OK ANYMORE BTW THIS WASN'T A RANDOM DECISION" --> print fifty thousand times --> send mail.
Getting information to people not on food stamps could be hard. Getting information to people on food stamps is really, really, really easy. They're all in a database already.
Well its too bad that some people on food stamps might have a poor understanding of what the word random means and how legislative decisions are made.
Name a single food category as unhealthy as soda that also constitutes a similar or larger portion of the state's food stamp budget.
Exactly.
Nutritional reform is going to be a huge issue in the years to come, but that shouldn't stop us from addressing the most pertinent issues when we can.
Poor people are unhealthy because they make bad choices and it's often cheaper to do so. Changing the latter is going to be an enormous legal battle that may or may not go on for years, given the corruption within our own government in that regard; changing the former, not so much.
As many have pointed out, sugared sodas have no more real nutritional value than cigarettes or booze.
Breaking off with you on this one, the poor population as a whole does not have easy access to the internet. Those of us who use it every day on high speed networks via work and paying $50-$100 bills every month for DSL, Cable or FIOS tend to take it for granted. Even public libraries have a limited number of available seats.
Edit: This is another conversation entirely, but I just wanted to point it out.
I wouldn't ban syrup. No one really uses it in quantities as massive as soda. I'd be slightly hesitant on the jerky too. Candy bars would be cool though.
No, they don't need the internet.
If you have any mail or phone or electronic or other contact with these people, you just send a letter with that.
Does the state have the means to contact people on food stamps? Obviously. Just send a little notice along with whatever you regularly send.
None of that matters anyway though since the policy isn't there to keep someone from the minor inconvenience of discovering they can't buy something they don't need. It's cool if they can keep that from happening. If not, oh well.
Agreed, just saying the internet generally isn't a viable option for delivering information to this group.
What if they get a meal allowance, should they be allowed to purchase a mocha cafe latte with it? How about department-funded meals, like a Christmas party or something? Those would both seem to be taxpayers subsidizing meals.
I also think it's funny that a person can't buy sweetened ice tea with food stamps, but they can buy unsweetened tea and a big bag of sugar. Assuming the hoi polloi even buy sugar rather than stealing packets from McDonald's, of course.
Wouldn't Vitamin Water also classify as a sugar-added drink? It has almost as much sugar as Coke, and none of it comes from fruit juice, it's "crystalline fructose", which is usually processed from corn (though not HFCS).
So back to beets and lentils again, and ignoring all negative externalities to treating grown people who had a stroke of bad luck as stupid children.
Hint- everyone on foodstamps is not chronically poor. It's more than likely that many of them will be wasting their taxdollars on you later with medical bills. My best friend, his mother when their family was just starting out, had to go on food stamps.
She was working (pregnant) as a special education teacher and speech therapist. Her husband was working on his CPA. They are quite intelligent enough to decide for themselves, and thank God they weren't overly dissuaded from using a service the government wants someone in her position to actually use.
Now, she's making money in the top bracket as a teacher, and the husband is a senior account in a firm. They have 3 children who all have degrees.
THESE are people you're babying. These people who, since you seem to be equivocating intelligence with income, could more than likely buy and sell you with little trouble these days without batting an eye. So let's back off the welfare queen unicorn for a bit (massive props for that term by the way
Can we do it? Sure. Does it make sense? Not really. More importantly, given the negative effects it can have, IS IT WORTH IT?
I say no. You're welcome to disagree. I'm simply saying your reasoning is massively flawed.
"HOW IN THE WORLD COULD WE TELL THIS MANY PEOPLE ABOUT SOMETHING!?!?"
Uhh.... send them a letter.... maybe along with their regular stamp allotment / benefit summary / new cards / whatever.
"WHAT IF POOR PEOPLE ON FOOD STAMPS DON'T KNOW!"
Well, uh, I guess its gonna suck when they have to put that soda back.
Yes, I didn't mean to imply it was but I can see how you might infer that from the post.
Feeling-based legislation is full of fail.
I notice signs at the grocery store all the time regarding changes in WIC/SNAP policies. Right behind the cashier.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It's actually being done on a 2 year trial basis so they can study the impact.
Right, which is what I said I support it even though I don't like it.
It's very easy to do this with no voter resistance for the primary reason that there isn't really any voter outcry when you put restrictions on the poor. People love restricting the poor. I'm less sure politicians are willing to take actual steps to improve the health of their constituents in a significant manner though.
Got any statistics on that obesity by income thing? I have a hard time believing someone who makes $20,000 a year is substantially fatter than $30,000 (I am aware the gap between 30 and 50 thousand is like 10% though)
Drink whatever the fuck you want!
But you can only buy certain things with food stamps.
I don't have them off the top of my head, but obesity decreases as you increase income.
There are all sorts of theories as to why.
What, by weighing people? I'm going to go out on a limb and predict: zero impact. There, I saved everyone a whole lot of money.
Well, I'd agree with syrup, too. I was just saying that there isn't any really good argument for making unhealthy foods that are often abused subsidized to the people most overwhelmingly likely to abuse them.
Basically, the statistics show that poor people are sugar addicts, more or less. I don't condone libertarian freedoms of choice for those using tax money to fund their poor health decisions; libertarian ideals are pretty much off the table once you start using other people's money to buy your food.
You and your facts!
Yeah, I don't like that aspect of it either. You know that some of the people (not all, just some) who vote "yes" on this... when it comes time to vote on a sin tax on soda are gonna whine and cry about "government interference!"
Although I still think that subsidizing corn syrup on one end and then taxing a product with it on the other is pretty much public policy fail.
But in terms of difficulty, restricting food stamps is way on the easy side of the line while repealing corn subsidies is way on the hard side.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Good job, New York.
So, are you actually going to make an argument? Or just bounce around calling things stupid?
This is what states rights were made for.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Cool. Then they probably have money set aside that they can spend on the occasional soda. And no one's seriously called anyone a welfare queen as far as I know.
You haven't actually demonstrated any negative effects outside of some irrational sense of pride in being able to buy soda with food stamps. Plenty of people have demonstrated the negative effects of soda. Furthermore, you still haven't explained why people shouldn't be able to buy beer.
That's actually a question.
I'm pretty sure it will create a 100% drop in the amount of food stamp money spent on soda.
Same way the get the average weight of people in any given demographic today?
With such a blindingly obvious answer that I moved straight to mockery. Sorry if some of you can't keep up here :P
Who is doing this? Not a single person in this thread, for the last few pages at least, has made this assertion.
Everyone who has posted here has done nothing to imply that people who are poor, on foodstamps, or otherwise downtrodden are intellectually inferior or inferior in any other way. The one exception are the claims that the poor are often making the worst choices about what to buy with their money, in terms of health.
And in any case, in regards to this whole "treating grown adults like spoiled children" retort, as PotatoNinja pointed out, no one is telling people what they can and cannot drink. They're saying that you can't use food stamps to buy soda. There is a unfathomably huge difference between the two.
Not sure. I look forward to the results from the study they'll be able to do and what recommendations are put forward because of this.
Well, there's this. Granted, it's from a horribly right-wing site, but the data doesn't appear to be all that biased. It basically asserts that there is a direct relationship between nutritional welfare and obesity, though there isn't much there talking about the variables within the data. SNAP is the name for the federal nutritional program.
Basically, the most obese states have the highest incidences of people on welfare, and vice versa.