I'm pretty sure they've done studies on what's bought with SNAP and turns out it really isn't any different from the average person. What's on sale, good volume, good price, etc, etc. None of these "anecdotes" where people claim to see SNAP recipients loading up their cart with lobster and wine, wearing designer clothes, before they take it out to their brand new Mercedes Benz.
Which is a whole other kind of bullshit I'd like to see put to rest because it's a pack of lies.
This article is fairly judgy but seems to indicate that SNAP households buy food that's pretty much the same as the average American. A smidge less healthy - about 9% on sugared drinks rather than 7% for non-poor families.
The "cart full of steaks" thing comes from fraud, because some people sell the high-priced food to people they know for cash. Not because poor people have luxurious tastes!
The debt ceiling extension is good. Maybe when we’re in power we can abolish it. It’s not a hostage we want to take, so better to keep it safe for now.
We'll never be able to abolish it when we're in power short of holding the presidency and the house and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, because the pubs will absolutely not let us otherwise. Threatening to blow up the economy is too valuable a weapon to them when they're in the minority, and they won't give it up.
I do wonder if we might be able to briar patch them into giving it up while they control everything, though. Do their stupid default dance, get people riled up about it, make them think the only way to keep dems out of their hair is to remove the debt ceiling, make Trump think he's really sticking it to the dems by making it into law.
It's a stupid cartoon strategy, but we live in a stupid cartoon country these days, so who fucking knows.
Space tourism to the ISS to help pay for resupply costs? Maybe private sponsorship of science modules for prestige. Build a Trump Tower in space attached to the ISS.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
I read up on the white house budget proposal and its in fucking sane. Like the infrastructure spending is on a 20% federal 80% local split are you fucking kidding me?
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I read up on the white house budget proposal and its in fucking sane. Like the infrastructure spending is on a 20% federal 80% local split are you fucking kidding me?
I actually looked for a gif of Boss Hawg from The Dukes Of Hazzard doing his trademark smug chuckle but I couldn't find a good one. Please imagine it instead.
Think of it as Blue Apron for food stamp recipients.
That's how Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration's proposal to replace nearly half of poor Americans' monthly cash benefits with a box of food. It would affect households that receive at least $90 a month in food stamps, or roughly 38 million people.
Ouch, my brain.
So it will be extremely wasteful and more expensive than the alternatives?
Blue Apron costs significantly more per person that buying ingredients at the store and oh my god why is everything in the budget so incredibly stupid...
Call it a hunch, but I suspect the Blue Apron comment early on this page is an inside joke for those of us who listen to Pod Save America/Lovett or Leave it, etc....
Think of it as Blue Apron for food stamp recipients.
That's how Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration's proposal to replace nearly half of poor Americans' monthly cash benefits with a box of food. It would affect households that receive at least $90 a month in food stamps, or roughly 38 million people.
... god damnit.
OR we just established that Mulvaney is a Friend of the Pod!
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Think of it as Blue Apron for food stamp recipients.
That's how Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration's proposal to replace nearly half of poor Americans' monthly cash benefits with a box of food. It would affect households that receive at least $90 a month in food stamps, or roughly 38 million people.
Ouch, my brain.
So it will be extremely wasteful and more expensive than the alternatives?
If it costs more money then it’s worth it to make sure these people get their allotted bread crust, block of cheese, and cabbage for the month and not be able to just buy something like Ice Cream which is too good for them.
Blue Apron costs significantly more per person that buying ingredients at the store and oh my god why is everything in the budget so incredibly stupid...
And wouldn't this possibly put little stores out of business? or least significantly impact their business? If a sizable portion of their customer base is getting food from some central food distribution location, and their customers no longer have food cash to spend, then I could see things going badly for little businesses that are trying to serve lower income people.
The GOP likes to say they care about small business, but this would be a case of likely preferring the larger business (cause you know some large company would get the contract, probably someone with a Mar-a-lago membership).
Blue Apron costs significantly more per person that buying ingredients at the store and oh my god why is everything in the budget so incredibly stupid...
And wouldn't this possibly put little stores out of business? or least significantly impact their business? If a sizable portion of their customer base is getting food from some central food distribution location, and their customers no longer have food cash to spend, then I could see things going badly for little businesses that are trying to serve lower income people.
The GOP likes to say they care about small business, but this would be a case of likely preferring the larger business (cause you know some large company would get the contract, probably someone with a Mar-a-lago membership).
they do!
they fully support bakeries that refuse to make cakes for gay couples, ummmm chick-fil-a is small right?, and coal. also farmers*
Is this the thread to talk about the proposal that they replace SNAP with a box of food mailed to you, and how dumb and terrible that is?
Blue Apron really finally got that sweet federal contract huh?
(this is facetious)
It's nothing at all like Blue Apron. Blue Apron sends out boxes of fresh, healthy foods tailored to your family's needs. This would be much the same as a food pantry box, just canned and dry food.
Did anyone else have a video about the nutritional value of crickets at the end of that article?
As terrible as this is, it won’t even come to a vote right? I mean the last CR was essentially a two year budget blueprint that’s ready to be passed right?
+2
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Mx. QuillI now prefer "Myr. Quill", actually...{They/Them}Registered Userregular
Is this the thread to talk about the proposal that they replace SNAP with a box of food mailed to you, and how dumb and terrible that is?
Blue Apron really finally got that sweet federal contract huh?
(this is facetious)
It's nothing at all like Blue Apron. Blue Apron sends out boxes of fresh, healthy foods tailored to your family's needs. This would be much the same as a food pantry box, just canned and dry food.
Did anyone else have a video about the nutritional value of crickets at the end of that article?
Blue Apron costs significantly more per person that buying ingredients at the store and oh my god why is everything in the budget so incredibly stupid...
And wouldn't this possibly put little stores out of business? or least significantly impact their business? If a sizable portion of their customer base is getting food from some central food distribution location, and their customers no longer have food cash to spend, then I could see things going badly for little businesses that are trying to serve lower income people.
The GOP likes to say they care about small business, but this would be a case of likely preferring the larger business (cause you know some large company would get the contract, probably someone with a Mar-a-lago membership).
Family owned businesses like Walmart, who the CNBC article said probably takes in 20% of SNAP benefits, which account for 7.5% of grocery sales nationwide.
Here's the part the really torques me though, and shows you where their head is at:
The USDA claims they can deliver the food at half off retail. And the WH claims its immune to fraud and abuse (see previous sentence...).
And even if that's all true:
The proposal would save nearly $130 billion over 10 years
They're pocketing the excess instead of just giving them more food.
It also hurts farmer's markets where people can use SNAP benefits!
So extra bonus.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Blue Apron costs significantly more per person that buying ingredients at the store and oh my god why is everything in the budget so incredibly stupid...
And wouldn't this possibly put little stores out of business? or least significantly impact their business? If a sizable portion of their customer base is getting food from some central food distribution location, and their customers no longer have food cash to spend, then I could see things going badly for little businesses that are trying to serve lower income people.
The GOP likes to say they care about small business, but this would be a case of likely preferring the larger business (cause you know some large company would get the contract, probably someone with a Mar-a-lago membership).
Family owned businesses like Walmart, who the CNBC article said probably takes in 20% of SNAP benefits, which account for 7.5% of grocery sales nationwide.
Here's the part the really torques me though, and shows you where their head is at:
The USDA claims they can deliver the food at half off retail. And the WH claims its immune to fraud and abuse (see previous sentence...).
And even if that's all true:
The proposal would save nearly $130 billion over 10 years
They're pocketing the excess instead of just giving them more food.
Sure they could do that
It'll be like sub school lunch quality(which is a giant dump for foods to crappy to sell in stores)
Think of it as Blue Apron for food stamp recipients.
That's how Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration's proposal to replace nearly half of poor Americans' monthly cash benefits with a box of food. It would affect households that receive at least $90 a month in food stamps, or roughly 38 million people.
Ouch, my brain.
So it will be extremely wasteful and more expensive than the alternatives?
If it costs more money then it’s worth it to make sure these people get their allotted bread crust, block of cheese, and cabbage for the month and not be able to just buy something like Ice Cream which is too good for them.
The money will also go to the food distributor who gets the no-bid contract rather than poor people who qualify for the assistance.
I would say that the irony of Republicans advocating a communistic centrally planned food distribution scheme to replace cash equivalent vouchers that support market competition is hilarious, except it isn't. The utter lack of shame, consideration, and humanity is just sad.
Blue Apron costs significantly more per person that buying ingredients at the store and oh my god why is everything in the budget so incredibly stupid...
And wouldn't this possibly put little stores out of business? or least significantly impact their business? If a sizable portion of their customer base is getting food from some central food distribution location, and their customers no longer have food cash to spend, then I could see things going badly for little businesses that are trying to serve lower income people.
The GOP likes to say they care about small business, but this would be a case of likely preferring the larger business (cause you know some large company would get the contract, probably someone with a Mar-a-lago membership).
Family owned businesses like Walmart, who the CNBC article said probably takes in 20% of SNAP benefits, which account for 7.5% of grocery sales nationwide.
Here's the part the really torques me though, and shows you where their head is at:
The USDA claims they can deliver the food at half off retail. And the WH claims its immune to fraud and abuse (see previous sentence...).
And even if that's all true:
The proposal would save nearly $130 billion over 10 years
They're pocketing the excess instead of just giving them more food.
Sure they could do that
It'll be like sub school lunch quality(which is a giant dump for foods to crappy to sell in stores)
You can never have too much cricket peanut butter!
Think of it as Blue Apron for food stamp recipients.
That's how Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration's proposal to replace nearly half of poor Americans' monthly cash benefits with a box of food. It would affect households that receive at least $90 a month in food stamps, or roughly 38 million people.
Ouch, my brain.
So it will be extremely wasteful and more expensive than the alternatives?
If it costs more money then it’s worth it to make sure these people get their allotted bread crust, block of cheese, and cabbage for the month and not be able to just buy something like Ice Cream which is too good for them.
The money will also go to the food distributor who gets the no-bid contract rather than poor people who qualify for the assistance.
Monsanto will get the supply gig, to make up for cutting farm subsidies, and Walmart will get the distribution contract to make up for the loss of SNAP revenue.
Then they will allow a merger between the two on the premise of saving even more money when they outsource the USDA to them.
How accurate is the 2010 USDA study estimating SNAP funds to have a 1.79 multiplier on GDP growth?
Because I would very much like to have "The SNAP cuts alone will shrink GDP by almost a quarter trillion dollars over 10 years relative to current projections" in my back pocket if it's a credible factoid.
I thought I'd read a higher multiplier more recently, but google keeps sending me back there.
I don’t know the current numbers exactly but yes, SNAP makes us more money than it costs.
Though the Federal Government doesn't actually make that back in it's coffers, just in overall GDP growth. Though some of it does wind up in State/Local sales tax revenue.
I'm pretty sure they've done studies on what's bought with SNAP and turns out it really isn't any different from the average person. What's on sale, good volume, good price, etc, etc. None of these "anecdotes" where people claim to see SNAP recipients loading up their cart with lobster and wine, wearing designer clothes, before they take it out to their brand new Mercedes Benz.
Which is a whole other kind of bullshit I'd like to see put to rest because it's a pack of lies.
This isn't the thread for it, but I will point out that this isn't a total lie at all. My fiancee use to get super mad because people would spend their EBT cards on expensive wedding cakes when she worked at a bakery and when she was a checkout clerk she would see people with kids just get junk food. Both of us don't like seeing that but at same time its their choice, it just burns my hide because I remember getting by on hot dogs and creamed corn and would love if my parents had the option of fresh fruits and veggies.
And I personally know a few people who scam the program and sell their food stamps for cash every month. Its crap, but I also fully support the SNAP program. Though I would love to see it expanded to allow people to purchase toiletries and pet food.
It also hurts farmer's markets where people can use SNAP benefits!
So extra bonus.
Yeah I read and article about this today, like I know my local farmers market takes SNAP but I didn't even think about it. I think thats a wonderful idea/program and should continue.
Edit: I would love to somehow see what I call the "Wal-Mart Cycle" end. When I worked there pretty much everyone who was a full time non-management employee was on SNAP, myself included, and it was easier to just shop on your break or right after your shift then go to another grocery store, and it sucked that the money was going right back to Wal-Mart.
I'm pretty sure they've done studies on what's bought with SNAP and turns out it really isn't any different from the average person. What's on sale, good volume, good price, etc, etc. None of these "anecdotes" where people claim to see SNAP recipients loading up their cart with lobster and wine, wearing designer clothes, before they take it out to their brand new Mercedes Benz.
Which is a whole other kind of bullshit I'd like to see put to rest because it's a pack of lies.
This isn't the thread for it, but I will point out that this isn't a total lie at all. My fiancee use to get super mad because people would spend their EBT cards on expensive wedding cakes when she worked at a bakery and when she was a checkout clerk she would see people with kids just get junk food. Both of us don't like seeing that but at same time its their choice, it just burns my hide because I remember getting by on hot dogs and creamed corn and would love if my parents had the option of fresh fruits and veggies.
And I personally know a few people who scam the program and sell their food stamps for cash every month. Its crap, but I also fully support the SNAP program. Though I would love to see it expanded to allow people to purchase toiletries and pet food.
Just to build on this a bit, I also know a few people who sell their stamps, and mostly they do it because the limitations prevent them from getting what they need. So they sell their stamps to get less overall but more flexible cash. In these particular cases it’s often for baby supplies because it doesn’t go as far as you want, or you’re also looking after somebody else’s kid for a while.
I won’t say none of it goes to vices, but, fuck, who am I to judge somebody in that circumstance. People make worse choices under stress. It’s coping. Most of us aren’t paragons of rational spending, we just have a better capacity to get away with it. They need more help and resources, not fewer options and a paternalistic food box.
There definitely exist a relative handful of people who are somewhat abusing the system, but a non-profit acquaintance of mine once said that any benefit system that is too tightly controlled to allow for any fraud is probably helping a lot less people than it could. Sounded right to me.
Oh totally, and I don't judge the people that sell them. And yeah we really should be expanding what it covers, not excluding.
Also I want to give a big shout out to the people in the benefits office. When I was on food stamps they were always overworked and understaffed but were also always extremely helpful and friendly, even when someone was screaming at them.
Double shout out to the lady who was looking over my case at the 3 month mark and realized that the person who entered my original data put a decimal in the wrong place and I was getting about $100 less a month in benefits then I should have been. Going from $70 a month to $170 I felt like I was cheating somehow.
I used to work for a large, semi-famous low income housing development with a large, mostly Muslim refugee, population.
I saw all kinds of shenanigans with abuse of welfare benefits, most egregiously the men with four wives, three of whom were technically single mothers under the eyes of the law and recieved considerable money in food stamps, housing assistance, and child subsidies. Guys barely needed jobs and could just cycle between their households.
It made me mad, sure. The polygamy thing alone was troubling. But the landlord knew about it and bent over backward just to keep them happy because they didn't need the trouble of the community starting to think that they didn't respect their religion. The landlord raked it in from Section 8 housing, and didn't want to upset the boat.
They also didn't report when they offered a full time translator job to a tenant and she refused because she would actually lose money in the exchange when she counted the benefits she got for not working. Technically she should have lost at least her unemployment for having been offered a full time job and refusing it.
So two things you can take from this. First, there are businesses that are complicit in the government benefits biz, and you can hardly blame people for making the best of what resources they have. Secondly, the vast majority of people who recieve food stamps and the like are legitimately going through hard times with few opportunities, and some, like the tenants that I worked with, literally fought their way out of a lawless war zone and crossed halfway around the world to a land where nobody speaks their language and a third of the population hates them for the color of their skin.
I'm not about to start quibbling over whether they buy a wedding cake with their food stamps.
The fact that the current administration wants to not only end the programs that saved these people from war and famine, AND pointlessly and cruelly change the system that lets them feed their families with a modicum of dignity...THAT is the thing that angers me.
So... it turns out the reason for the food parcel proposal to save money by having people not able to travel to pick up the parcels, instead going hungry. I believe @CelestialBadger picked that first. And the reason it got scuppered, was because Walmart wouldn't benefit. @ArbitraryDescriptor gets the win on that one.
I don't mean in the atypical "bootstraps" mentality way. I mean in the most craven assholish way possible. Slashing food assistance budgets to literally make people go hungry, and only stopped by pressure from their corporate overlords.
The food box idea neatly encapsulates the reality that the Republican party is only for limited/less intrusive government when it comes to rich white men.
And the reason it got scuppered, was because Walmart wouldn't benefit. @ArbitraryDescriptor gets the win on that one.
Walmart quite frankly would not have been able to expand to their present size without food stamps; they pay their workers crap in order to force them to have to sign up for government benefits, and then get that additional EBT revenue from their own workers (in addition to other shoppers that need EBT).
I used to work for a large, semi-famous low income housing development with a large, mostly Muslim refugee, population.
I saw all kinds of shenanigans with abuse of welfare benefits, most egregiously the men with four wives, three of whom were technically single mothers under the eyes of the law and recieved considerable money in food stamps, housing assistance, and child subsidies. Guys barely needed jobs and could just cycle between their households.
It made me mad, sure. The polygamy thing alone was troubling. But the landlord knew about it and bent over backward just to keep them happy because they didn't need the trouble of the community starting to think that they didn't respect their religion. The landlord raked it in from Section 8 housing, and didn't want to upset the boat.
They also didn't report when they offered a full time translator job to a tenant and she refused because she would actually lose money in the exchange when she counted the benefits she got for not working. Technically she should have lost at least her unemployment for having been offered a full time job and refusing it.
So two things you can take from this. First, there are businesses that are complicit in the government benefits biz, and you can hardly blame people for making the best of what resources they have. Secondly, the vast majority of people who recieve food stamps and the like are legitimately going through hard times with few opportunities, and some, like the tenants that I worked with, literally fought their way out of a lawless war zone and crossed halfway around the world to a land where nobody speaks their language and a third of the population hates them for the color of their skin.
I'm not about to start quibbling over whether they buy a wedding cake with their food stamps.
The fact that the current administration wants to not only end the programs that saved these people from war and famine, AND pointlessly and cruelly change the system that lets them feed their families with a modicum of dignity...THAT is the thing that angers me.
Something about this should be illegal, and I'm inclined to say its offering a below living wage job.
The way Walmart benefits from food stamps is a fairly beneficial symbiosis. They may profit well, but they also ship a wide range of nutritious fresh foods to poor areas. The minimarkets that would exist otherwise generally only stock a small range of half-spoiled fresh food.
Posts
This article is fairly judgy but seems to indicate that SNAP households buy food that's pretty much the same as the average American. A smidge less healthy - about 9% on sugared drinks rather than 7% for non-poor families.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/well/eat/food-stamp-snap-soda.html
The "cart full of steaks" thing comes from fraud, because some people sell the high-priced food to people they know for cash. Not because poor people have luxurious tastes!
"Be vewwy vewwy quiet..."
Kind of a shame that black people benefit from it though, so what ya gonna do, let them continue benefitting from it?
Obviously not.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I actually looked for a gif of Boss Hawg from The Dukes Of Hazzard doing his trademark smug chuckle but I couldn't find a good one. Please imagine it instead.
They both do the same amount of damage so I don't see much of a difference.
So it will be extremely wasteful and more expensive than the alternatives?
... god damnit.
OR we just established that Mulvaney is a Friend of the Pod!
If it costs more money then it’s worth it to make sure these people get their allotted bread crust, block of cheese, and cabbage for the month and not be able to just buy something like Ice Cream which is too good for them.
And wouldn't this possibly put little stores out of business? or least significantly impact their business? If a sizable portion of their customer base is getting food from some central food distribution location, and their customers no longer have food cash to spend, then I could see things going badly for little businesses that are trying to serve lower income people.
The GOP likes to say they care about small business, but this would be a case of likely preferring the larger business (cause you know some large company would get the contract, probably someone with a Mar-a-lago membership).
they do!
they fully support bakeries that refuse to make cakes for gay couples, ummmm chick-fil-a is small right?, and coal. also farmers*
whatever the hell they are anymore
Did anyone else have a video about the nutritional value of crickets at the end of that article?
Because it could also be crickets.
Everyone aboard the Snowpiercer.
Family owned businesses like Walmart, who the CNBC article said probably takes in 20% of SNAP benefits, which account for 7.5% of grocery sales nationwide.
Here's the part the really torques me though, and shows you where their head is at:
The USDA claims they can deliver the food at half off retail. And the WH claims its immune to fraud and abuse (see previous sentence...).
And even if that's all true:
They're pocketing the excess instead of just giving them more food.
So extra bonus.
Sure they could do that
It'll be like sub school lunch quality(which is a giant dump for foods to crappy to sell in stores)
The money will also go to the food distributor who gets the no-bid contract rather than poor people who qualify for the assistance.
I would say that the irony of Republicans advocating a communistic centrally planned food distribution scheme to replace cash equivalent vouchers that support market competition is hilarious, except it isn't. The utter lack of shame, consideration, and humanity is just sad.
You can never have too much cricket peanut butter!
Monsanto will get the supply gig, to make up for cutting farm subsidies, and Walmart will get the distribution contract to make up for the loss of SNAP revenue.
Then they will allow a merger between the two on the premise of saving even more money when they outsource the USDA to them.
Tell me about the budget again.
Because I would very much like to have "The SNAP cuts alone will shrink GDP by almost a quarter trillion dollars over 10 years relative to current projections" in my back pocket if it's a credible factoid.
I thought I'd read a higher multiplier more recently, but google keeps sending me back there.
Though the Federal Government doesn't actually make that back in it's coffers, just in overall GDP growth. Though some of it does wind up in State/Local sales tax revenue.
Let's please try to contribute more than a joke post when discussing budget stuff in this thread.
This isn't the thread for it, but I will point out that this isn't a total lie at all. My fiancee use to get super mad because people would spend their EBT cards on expensive wedding cakes when she worked at a bakery and when she was a checkout clerk she would see people with kids just get junk food. Both of us don't like seeing that but at same time its their choice, it just burns my hide because I remember getting by on hot dogs and creamed corn and would love if my parents had the option of fresh fruits and veggies.
And I personally know a few people who scam the program and sell their food stamps for cash every month. Its crap, but I also fully support the SNAP program. Though I would love to see it expanded to allow people to purchase toiletries and pet food.
Yeah I read and article about this today, like I know my local farmers market takes SNAP but I didn't even think about it. I think thats a wonderful idea/program and should continue.
Edit: I would love to somehow see what I call the "Wal-Mart Cycle" end. When I worked there pretty much everyone who was a full time non-management employee was on SNAP, myself included, and it was easier to just shop on your break or right after your shift then go to another grocery store, and it sucked that the money was going right back to Wal-Mart.
To completely butcher two quotes, "Sufficiently advanced ignorance is indistinguishable from malice".
Just to build on this a bit, I also know a few people who sell their stamps, and mostly they do it because the limitations prevent them from getting what they need. So they sell their stamps to get less overall but more flexible cash. In these particular cases it’s often for baby supplies because it doesn’t go as far as you want, or you’re also looking after somebody else’s kid for a while.
I won’t say none of it goes to vices, but, fuck, who am I to judge somebody in that circumstance. People make worse choices under stress. It’s coping. Most of us aren’t paragons of rational spending, we just have a better capacity to get away with it. They need more help and resources, not fewer options and a paternalistic food box.
There definitely exist a relative handful of people who are somewhat abusing the system, but a non-profit acquaintance of mine once said that any benefit system that is too tightly controlled to allow for any fraud is probably helping a lot less people than it could. Sounded right to me.
Also I want to give a big shout out to the people in the benefits office. When I was on food stamps they were always overworked and understaffed but were also always extremely helpful and friendly, even when someone was screaming at them.
Double shout out to the lady who was looking over my case at the 3 month mark and realized that the person who entered my original data put a decimal in the wrong place and I was getting about $100 less a month in benefits then I should have been. Going from $70 a month to $170 I felt like I was cheating somehow.
I saw all kinds of shenanigans with abuse of welfare benefits, most egregiously the men with four wives, three of whom were technically single mothers under the eyes of the law and recieved considerable money in food stamps, housing assistance, and child subsidies. Guys barely needed jobs and could just cycle between their households.
It made me mad, sure. The polygamy thing alone was troubling. But the landlord knew about it and bent over backward just to keep them happy because they didn't need the trouble of the community starting to think that they didn't respect their religion. The landlord raked it in from Section 8 housing, and didn't want to upset the boat.
They also didn't report when they offered a full time translator job to a tenant and she refused because she would actually lose money in the exchange when she counted the benefits she got for not working. Technically she should have lost at least her unemployment for having been offered a full time job and refusing it.
So two things you can take from this. First, there are businesses that are complicit in the government benefits biz, and you can hardly blame people for making the best of what resources they have. Secondly, the vast majority of people who recieve food stamps and the like are legitimately going through hard times with few opportunities, and some, like the tenants that I worked with, literally fought their way out of a lawless war zone and crossed halfway around the world to a land where nobody speaks their language and a third of the population hates them for the color of their skin.
I'm not about to start quibbling over whether they buy a wedding cake with their food stamps.
The fact that the current administration wants to not only end the programs that saved these people from war and famine, AND pointlessly and cruelly change the system that lets them feed their families with a modicum of dignity...THAT is the thing that angers me.
https://splinternews.com/white-house-reportedly-had-a-sinister-ulterior-motive-f-1822992435
These f'n guys... are assholes.
I don't mean in the atypical "bootstraps" mentality way. I mean in the most craven assholish way possible. Slashing food assistance budgets to literally make people go hungry, and only stopped by pressure from their corporate overlords.
I just... can't even...
Walmart quite frankly would not have been able to expand to their present size without food stamps; they pay their workers crap in order to force them to have to sign up for government benefits, and then get that additional EBT revenue from their own workers (in addition to other shoppers that need EBT).
Grift and giving poor people shittier food are legit the only possible justifications
Something about this should be illegal, and I'm inclined to say its offering a below living wage job.