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Want sugar? Using foodstamps? GTFO, says NYC.
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Spoken like a true promised person who has never had to deal with, or even entertain the thought of dealing with, being on government assistance.
Hows that silver spoon. Life taste better eaten off it? Bet it does.
It was one example and I don't know why you're so hung up on it.
Because you have an untenable position that you yourself admitted was inaccurate yet you still expound it. Processed foods are a cheaper diet than healthy meals and restricting food stamps to healthy foods dilutes their buying power.
You cited chicken breasts. Good job.
Speaking as someone who has been on benefits, they do, however, add up pretty fast.
The fact that you can't buy shit like toilet paper on benefits has always baffled me. Medicines, alright, fine, I can understand that. But the blanket ban on anything inedible leaves some pretty gaping holes. Maybe a sub-account or something would be useful.
Food stamps are a form of aid to help poor people eat. It's entirely reasonable to restrict eligible items to thinks that have nutritional value. I don't mean "healthy", I mean "shit with literally ZERO nutritional value" (IE Pepsi).
You're still hung up on chicken breasts. Show me on the doll where chicken breasts touched you?
I've been on unemployment, try again brosef. Also, try to not to make it personal. I initially refrained from calling you out on committing food stamp fraud, so please try and keep it classy.
Let's move on.
I guess I'll post my Standard Rebuttal, then:
For the vast majority of people, it is entirely viable to eat both healthy and cheap with minimal effort. Staples like veggies, beans, rice, potatoes, pasta and the like are inexpensive. Meat such as chicken and lean pork generally can be bought in bulk for pretty low prices. And you can cook a healthy, if somewhat boring, 3-course meal in less than fifteen minutes with minimal knowledge of how to cook. Pots and pans can be bought cheap.
Yes, there are examples of people who have no car, can't find a bus stop, are too poor to drop $10 on a set of functional cookware, and live 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. But most people have the means to eat healthily and affordably. They're just frightened by the prospect of having to cook real food, likely because they view cooking as some sort of arcane alchemy that can only be performed by people who watch cooking shows all day long.
Something that someone mentioned was nutrition education, which would fix exactly that problem!
Once upon a time you could buy them with foodstamps. And once upon a time that was assumed you would. (cite needed I know)
In the past, people on foodstamps were usually in very dire financial straits. Enough that yes, they could not afford toiletries, and no, they couldn't help it or couldn't find a job more than 5 hours a week at McDonalds but if they got more than that 5 hours they'd be fucked for aid and they'd be in an even worse position.
All the nutrition education in the world won't make the food more affordable though for the very poor though.
For a lot of people it seems.
Healthy staples are generally cheaper than processed, pre-made meals. And yes, you pretty much can show up at the store and buy whatever's cheapest at the moment and still be healthy. Assuming you can shop at a grocery store and not an AM/PM.
You can have access to proper grocery stores all you like, fresh and/or healthy foods are more expensive.
How many people really have literally no means of getting to a grocery store? This means no car, no access to a bus, no bike, and the grocery store is more than 2-3 miles away. Is this really a staggering number?
Can you give me an example of a crappy, unhealthy meal that is more expensive than healthy foods? Last night, I had some zucchini, red potatoes and pork chops. It cost something like 4 dollars and fed a family of four.
Rice, beans and bread maybe. A healthy diet that does not make.
Costco, which now accepts food stamps, is a damn good place to spend your food allowance.
I had this discussion recently with my GF about ways to improve the food people buy on public allowance. It is depressing as fuck to see people use their Oregon Trail card (the food stamp program) on garbage like Twinkies, Twizzlers, frozen pizza and ice cream. She thinks that there should be rules regarding what can or cannot be purchased, and ideally we would strike garbage food from the list. I don't think it's capable of being implemented, because for every garbage food, you have a generic variation, and junk food travels across food categories (if you ban potato chips, do you ban crackers, and if so, what kind of crackers are banned) and have varying levels of nutrients, components, etc. It's just a nightmare. The only way I think blanket bans work is if you can manage to successfully categorize a foodstuff, and it would not surprise me to see the soda companies come up with a variety of food that somehow skirts the ban.
I think a better way to encourage healthy eating, besides offering free cooking classes, would be to reward those people who choose to buy healthy foods, or scratch ingredients, with a greater bang for your buck. For example, if you buy a 10 lb bag of rice for $5.00, the program rewards you by only deducting $2.50 from your allowance. I think this would be far easier to implement than blanket bans, and scratch ingredients are simpler categories to refine.
I just looked it up, and this is what the Swedish financial support is supposed to cover:
I suppose there's a lot of opportunity for "raaah socialism" about the free time part, but this is intended to cover living. That includes a bit more than "here are some food stamps so you stop starving".
Feral addresses this point earlier. I'm assuming you mean less expensive, and the affore mentioned 10/$10 pizzas.
Your numbers seem dubious to me, though I do live in an expensive town, as I mentioned.
I live in an expensive urban area and it's not like fresh produce or meat is that outrageously priced.
I can get 10/$10 shitty pizzas any day.
I'm not saying more nutrition education is a bad idea, it would do wonders, but its not the sole fix.
Yeah, thats it, call me out for providing a means for my destitute friend to stay hygenic. Hey, I bought him soap too, does that take it up to felony territory? Then you post keep it classy? Like I said. Promised.
Unemployment =! full on government living assistance. Get some perspective. You've obviously never been in as dire a position as is being discussed, and obviously noone you've cared about has either. And you tell me to keep it classy.
If you've taken the step to get on food stamps, you likely don't have affordable transportation (my boy was getting around town on a borrowed bike), you aren't going to real grocery stores, you're going to more or less the corner store.
Every argument you've made in the thread screams 'I don't get it' because you've never had to directly deal with someone in a position as destitute as food stamps / living assistance. Don't let the 'food stamp' misnomer color your perceptions, it's living assistance. Whens the last time you lived without TP, toothpaste or soap? I'm betting the answer is "well, never, har har, monacle, monacle, monacle."
It's different from the unemployment insurance provided by your employer post-termination. It typically indicates a far more dire and precarious living situation.
Kind of sort of...
Food stamps is SNAP, which does not offer direct cash assistance nor any way to purchase non-food items. SNAP is federally-funded but administered by each county.
Most counties have their own assistance programs, which might be state-funded or county-funded. In California, they're called GA or General Assistance, and that's a cash amount that is added to a separate account.
However, the EBT card that the county gives you for SNAP is basically a debit card, but like Organichu said above, it can withdraw from either account. It looks and feels like food stamps because you access it through the same card... even though it's a completely different program.
The key difference is that the eligibility requirements for cash assistance not only differ from SNAP but differ from state to state or even county to county. For instance, in California, you can get GA if you're on disability, if you've filed for disability, or if you have kids. (I think you might be able to get it if you're a senior, so don't take this as an exhaustive list of eligibility criteria.) Generally speaking, able-bodied adults who are just 'down on their luck' can't get it.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I mean, we've got SNAP, Social Security retirement, Social Security disability, state disability, TANF, WIC, state and county cash assistance programs, and unemployment. And almost all of these are administered directly by counties, so if you move from, say, San Diego to Los Angeles you have to refile for some of these benefits (or take three steps back on the filing process if you're waiting for approval).
I think that we've needed real welfare reform for a while, and part of that would be a simplification of the process. My dream is to see one single national form that basically asks for your income, your age, number of kids, whether or not you have a medical disability, and all the other eligibility requirements. You submit this form to a single "welfare" office, and the agency computer comes back and says "You are eligible for... SNAP, TANF, WIC, and GA."
Some counties already have a system like this, and there are community nonprofits that do things like this, but if you're recently poor and you've never dealt with the system you don't necessarily know about them, and you're kind of wandering into a county office going, "uh, help me?" and the county office goes, "sorry, wrong office, go to HHS across town..."
Meanwhile the people who are poor for a lifetime, have poor families and poor friends, trade all the secrets for getting on welfare programs and staying on them, including ways to game the system.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This is provided because sometimes people aren't in a position where they can even get a checking account
but WELFARE FRAUD (which seems to be hard to do, when I called to cancel my food stamps they already knew about my new income level! if you have taxable income, they know about it)
Well, anyone have any ideas about the feasibility of allowing food stamps at a business like that?
--LeVar Burton
It ain't my fault your friend's life is fucked up. It is however less than awesome of you to cheat the food stamp program in your state by effectively buying food stamps from your friend in exchange for toiletries. I'd think if you were such a nice guy, you'd just buy him a years worth of toilet paper / soap / toothpaste which'd cost maybe $60?
Neither is food stamps. I mean sue, you could cheat the system and pretend like it is, but that would be unethical.
No buddy, you don't "get it". If you're so fucked that you can't afford to wipe your ass, you shouldn't be buying "luxury items" like pepsi on the state's dime. You should worry more about your friend getting his shit sorted than the indignity of his living assistance benefits being restricted to purchase things that actual assist him with living.
I don't see why not. Some states allow restaurants to take food stamps for meals-on-wheels type services. Subway accepts food stamps (at least in CA, dunno about other states).
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Welfare is only obtainable under an absurdly specific set of conditions
Anyone who hasn't actually tried to get it really needs to go fucking read up on it because every time we get these threads there's lots of wharglbargl when the majority of the population isn't eligible for TANF under and circumstance
Food stamps, on the other hand, are pretty easy to get. You make less than $18,000 a year you get them (number goes up with dependents)
Just thought I'd repeat this: In most states your food stamps card can be used as a debit card. I still have my SNAP card (with $2 on it!), if I felt the need I could go stick cash on it and use it in lieu of my debit card. There are a number of reasons someone would want to do this (for one, it's impossible to go overdrawn)