News Us politics - read first post before comment

[mamachick]

I know that she cat is right and I have seen it too. Even worse, is a high percentage of people on food stamps sell part of them for about half price. Though some of them may purchase cigarettes, booze, and drugs, others need toilet paper, tylenol, and toothpaste. I can't say I blame them.
I just think this is just another crappy Trump idea that is going to hurt the poor even more. Its more control. One group at a time, he is on his way to exert more control over every one of us.

 

[scout86]

Even worse, is a high percentage of people on food stamps sell part of them for about half price.

Got any data to back that up? I'm sure some people do that, but I doubt it's a high percentage. I don't know a ton of people who I know are getting them, but I don't know any who are selling them. Mostly, they're taking their coupons and trying to buy food in such a way as the $13 (that's one case) goes as far as it possibly can.

 

[EveHarrington]

@brat17 I’m not talking about the homeless when I spoke earlier. We don’t have...

This same attitude toward the “well dressed” is what makes it so hard for people with PTSD who “look good” to get help.

Look too good?

You must not have a mental illness!

Look too good?

You must not need food assistance!

Please STOP the judgment based on the cover!

It’s sad how people assume you must look like shit in order to need help.

MANY who need help take EXTRA care to look good because they don’t want to look “mental” or look “needy”.

 

[Fadeaway]

This is a real touchy subject and I am doing to disagree here with some people that I highly respect. Just because I am calling bullshit doesn't mean I care about you any less or cherish the support and advice you have given me any less.

. Even worse, is a high percentage of people on food stamps sell part of them for about half price. Though some of them may purchase cigarettes, booze, and drugs, others need toilet paper, tylenol, and toothpaste. I can't say I blame them.

This is bullshit. You CAN'T do that, haven't been able to since EBT cards were introduced. in 1997 Clinton put a lot of new regulations on food stamps. You can't buy anything other than food items with nor can you sell them because they are on a card and it works like a bank card. They finger print you and take a retina scan when they issue you that card. I am sure some super save identity thieves can work around it, but the average food stamp user isn't going to dare risk it. Those EBT cards most likely also contain all the cash that person has since foodstamp cards also work as a persons bank card and they get their welfare checks and foodstamps on the same card or if they work and can't get a bank account like many poor people can't, they can have their paychecks direct deposited onto their foodstamp cards.

There are a lot of foodstamp myths but 99% of them all date back prior to Clintons reformation. You can not by cigarettes or alcohol with food stamps current technology makes it virtually impossible. It automatically gets denied.

It's been a while since I have been on food stamps but back when I first started on food stamps almost 20 years ago I didn't know how to cook and probably bought what a lot of people would consider junk because I couldn't fix a homemade meal to save my life and was never taught about nutrition. I have gone shopping with food stamps in a Lexus. Wasn't my vehicle, I wasn't even driving, but the woman that tried to beat me up in the parking lot didn't care that wealthy acquaintance had taken pity on my and drove me to the store after my abuser threw my keys on the roof. Believe me, I paid my fair share in emotional distress and humiliation for having dared to show up at the grocery store to buy food with foodstamps in a lexus. Dang, 20 years and I had no clue how much pent up emotions and self loathing I still had over that.

Now, I am a health nut and cook everything from scratch and know how to eat extremely healthy for very cheap, but it took years of self teaching. In that time I have been on and off foodstamps as needed. I probably qualify right now based on having a dip in income the last two months. I just don't want to go through the process again for less than $50 for two people for 3 months worth. We'll get by. But in the last few years I have used foodstamps to buy organic food, and i will tell you people have just as much issues with someone who buys organic food with foodstamps as they do with someone who buys junk. That doesn't change the fact that once upon a time I was the person filling my cart with junk food because that was the food I was raised on and didn't know any better. I credit the mandatory WIC classes for helping me learn how to eat better.

I can eat real healthy for very cheap, but most people don't have the time to put into the amount of prep I do every month making homemade chicken broth and turning into to multiple batches of home made cream of chicken, cream of broccoli, cream of potato and leak ect. Certainly not a single working mother who is most likely to be on food stamps.

 

[Deleted member 541]

@Fadeaway Here no eye scan no fingerprints. That’s all just a pin # and as long as a person has your pin # they can use your card. I’m not going to argue with people, I only stated what I have seen. And yes, I’ll stick by what I’ve said. I have seen people filling their carts with junk food and using food stamps. “Personally” I think that if you use them, that they should be used to buy healthy food.

I also will say that I think food stamps are not something that the government should get rid of, they are needed. Just as the housing issue that we have and Trump is trying very hard to get rid of that program too.

The biggest issue in our country really isn’t the social programs that are a livesafer for so many. Where they really should spend the money is finding jobs for people. Bringing back indrustry to support people. In many places around the US we have a huge population of homeless. These people need jobs to allow them to get off the streets and into housing.

The problem really isn’t foodstamps, it’s lack of jobs.

 

[hodge]

The problem is an obscenely low minimum wage.

 

[Deleted member 541]

@hodge Yes, minimum wage is an issue also. But as far as the homeless are concerned, the minimum wage doesn’t matter if they don’t have a job. There are many issues here in the US. Jobs, minimum wage, no industry, affordable housing, and I’m sure many many more issues that I’m missing....

 

[Anarchy]

The minimum wage only serves to exclude the most vulnerable from getting work.

On an unhampered market, wage rates tend to be the discounted marginal value of the work that the people do (discounted, because the workers get paid ahead of the completion of the product for example construction workers don't have to wait until the completed building is handed over to get paid. They're welcome to wait and get the full payment at the end, but most preferred to receive payment in advance of that that's discounted at the interest rate, in weekly oreport monthly installments.

If a minimum wage is below the lowest wage on an unhampered market, then it is harmless, and in the eyes of the advocates of a minimum wage, it is also pointless.

As soon as the minimum wage is above wages that actually exist on that market, it begins to price those people out of their jobs.

Even the unions (which benefit by minimum wages excluding people who will work for less than the union rate) are careful not to push the minimum wage too high

If the minimum wage actually raised people's standard of living, why be mean with it, why not peg it at $100 an hour? Or even $1,000 an hour? Just think how prosperous that would make everyone.

The reason that unions don't seriously push for such generous minimum wages, is that the leaderships are well enough aware that as soon as the minimum wage gets above union wage rates, their members will start to be priced out of work.

It is one of the things about interventionism in prices

If those intervening don't understand economic. It's, then a seeminglywell meaning intervention can often have the opposite effect to the one that was intended.

Minimum wages are one of those interventions, they price the poorest and most vulnerable out of the labour market, and into welfare or destitution.

Sorry, it was typed as

The problem is, if those intervening in an economy don't understand economics. A seemingly well meaning intervention can often have the opposite effect to the one that was intended.

Sod that autoincorrect

 

[Deleted member 41765]

It occurred to me the the box food program has been alive and kicking for decades and is the model used on Indian reservations. These people are walking, breathing health impact data. Below is the commodity supplemental food list:

Link Removed

 

[Anarchy]

Nice find ShikibuZ
The reservations are a very good example of lots of things, they're pretty much little Soviet soyuz embedded within the larger united state.

The apartheid era south African, semi autonomous, black homelands were rightly condemned. The reservations appear to be very similar in a lot of respects.

If anything the mental and physical health outcomes are even worse than the Bantustans, and probably comparable to the former Soviet soyuz, where life expectancy actually declined from the 1917 coups, to the final collapse of the system in the early 19 90s. Even in the 2000s people from my area in England were working on timber harvesting in Siberia, because the locals out there were so poorly nourished and so screwed up that they weren't physically capable of working.

Most other places in the world, life expectancies increased dramatically through the 20th century.

I notice that dried milk powder is still part of the boxes! Showing that the department of agriculture still puts preservation of its bureaucracy, and the interests of producer's lobbies well ahead of the interests of a largely lactose and milk protein intolerant population of consumers!

That's exactly the opposite of a free market, where everyone penny spent counts as a vote for, and every penny not spent, counts as a vote against (economic democracy, even if I don't think that is what Jesse Jackson is imagining when he uses the term!)

Without the department of agriculture'slargesse with other people's money, I suspect that a lot more dairy farmers would have had to follow Scout's neighbour, and found something to do that consumers were more willing to pay them for.

 

[Justmehere]

It occurred to me the the box food program has been alive and kicking for decades and is the model used on Indian reservations.

Have you ever been on an Indian reservation?

It’s not a model for good development or relationship between a people and their government. They are treated like children. It keep them stuck in a cycle of dependency many are trying to end.

Based on existing data, there can be little doubt that the American Indian and Alaska Native population as a whole is confronted with ongoing disparities in health.47–55According to the Indian Health Service (IHS), the federal agency that provides medical care to roughly 1.6 million American Indian and Alaska Native people, the age-adjusted death rate for adults exceeds that of the general population by almost 40%, with deaths due to diabetes, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, and accidents occurring at least three times the national rate, and deaths due to tuberculosis, pneumonia and influenza, suicide, homicide, and heart disease also exceeding those of the general population.27. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567901/

The data doesn’t appear to support that Indian Reservations are a good model to follow.

 

[mamachick]

Fadeaway-you can call Bullshit on my and I don't take offense at all. I am sorry to shatter others beliefs and I am not making a judgement about people who do this.
I dont or never have got food stamps but I am very aware how most of it works from both family members and because I worked as a LPC for a domestic violence center for 10 years. I am not insensitive. In 1983 while I worked full time for a hospital, all I had in my refrigerator was ketchup and mayonnaise packets that I stole from the cafeteria when I got coffee at work. My daughter ate at my sisters who babysat and at school. Summers were awful. I was broke.

My nephew died Christmas day from cancer. He lived in low income housing and got a food stamp card. I don't know about fingerprinting or anything else, but I know that he regularly gave his card to his sister and she bought $100 worth of groceries and paid her $50. (other working people who struggle are lined up for this half price food deal) With the $50 he got, he used for cigarettes and vodka.

I have another family member with kids that has done the same thing to pay for cable. She works for min wage but less than full time hours. Now the kids can watch tv while eating beans. These people do not get a welfare check or have money put on an EBT card. Clients have constantly reported doing this. No, I have no stats and don't need any.

I had a college teacher that had been poor and abused with several young children before going back to school. She required a project for her class where each student had to call welfare and ask what benefits would be for a mother and 3 small children. Then each student had to make up a budget to pay rent , utilities, diapers, food budget, transportation, etc-down to the T. Actually, it couldn't be done. The recipient would need help from someone, (relative, boyfriend, etc) or they would have to do something illegal (babysit under the table, drive others for money-unreported earnings)

We should be keeping the food card program as it is, and adding at least $15 per month for each family member for soap, tampons, etc. We don't know how hard it is unless we have walked in their shoes. The closest I have gotten is from what I have observed and do have empathy for. As a therapist, I think that when people are forced to cheat just to wipe their butts, it does nothing for their self esteem. We should be doing something to fix this broken system.