Most Americans don’t think they should be able to be purchased with food stamps.
I agree. I oppose food stamps (it’s a federal subsidy to farmers), but if you’re going to give them out, they should only be used for food.
81 thoughts on “Candy And Soda”
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Fruit juices should be taken off the list too.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/71495
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6259919
Well only for healthy food. Twinkies and Pop Tarts are food but not the healthiest.
No soft drinks only milk and water.
No ciggies
No candy or ice cream.
Most importantly:
They should work like Debit cards so that you can’t buy a $10 item with a $100 food stamp and get the change back in currency
They do work that way now in most states.
But not all… not all states have a debit card system.
I don’t know about where you live but out here in Hampton Roads, it’s been EBT cards for almost two decades.
Where there are food stamps, there is often be cash back at purchases.
Where there are EBT cards, ATM withdrawls are often allowed.
…
It’s 2017.
“Food stamps” are entirely electronic payments, have been for years.
Likewise they are never accepted for cigarettes in any state I know of, nor hot prepared food.
(The rest of it? Jesus, let poor people enjoy a little something sometime.
I say make all benefits, if any exist, straight cash transfers.)
If they want to “enjoy a little something sometime” they should work for it. You know, like taxpayer have to.
“Food stamps” are entirely electronic payments, have been for years.
As I illustrated below with an excerpt form the Massachusetts government web pages….
cash-back is possible and encouraged.
“They should work like Debit cards so that you can’t buy a $10 item with a $100 food stamp and get the change back in currency”
de be debit cards dese days
Food Stamps have always been limited to strictly edible, domestically produced food. On the other hand, the cards also hold cash welfare for those that qualify. The cash can be used to buy anything legal or withdrawn as cash from most ATM’s.
Back when food stamps came in the form of paper vouchers that looked like Monopoly money, the smallest denomination was $1, with the maximum cash change being $0.99. Storekeepers would swap stories about customers making many small purchases just over a dollar. My brother, who ran a gas station, sold a lot of gas for change.
When the EBT cards came out, I remember seeing stories on the news about grocery stores suddenly having a lot of expensive packages of meat returned. They figured out pretty quickly what was happening and started requiring receipts. If money is refunded on an EBT purchase, it’s deposited directly back to the account now.
When I was spending a lot of time in grocery stores fixing registers and scales, I would still see large packages of steaks or shrimp go out. When I asked, I was told that they would be exchanged for cash at a discount by someone in the community.
It still irritates me when I see a cart full of stuff that I’m too cheap to buy for myself purchased with free government money.
I’ve drawn two conclusions: I’m not nearly as good at thinking up scams as those that are so inclined. The population on public assistance is not noted for good decision making.
As has been pointed out, food stamps are a farm subsidy. The corn that made the syrup in that Coke didn’t grow itself, so its all good. Unless your a child that actually needs decent nutrition, but that’s what the school lunch program is for. Too bad you couldn’t pick better parents.
We need to do two things. Eliminate all govt. aid programs except one. 1) Give a fixed amount of about $200/mo. to everyone with no means testing and 2) no interference in how they spend it… for food, health insurance or whatever. It should not be enough for them to live on, but enough to keep them alive over the rough spots. Govt. should not be involved in commerce of any kind and should not be involved in any conduct that isn’t a crime. Crimes need to be clearly defined and limited to actual harm.
Anything beyond that is BS. They would be free to use this limited income to insure themselves from any type of life issue through private commercial companies regulated by their customers… not govt. regulations. No business should be too big to fail.
According to this source, the US population is 326,063,064. Giving everyone $2400 would cost $782,551,358,400 a year. There’s no way politically that you’re going to significantly cut the welfare state. $200 a month to me is nothing, but if that’s all you had to live on, it’s pretty slim.
Gasp! One might have to get a job to support their family! The horror!
Yes Larry, we could, but we should not. The money should never be a disincentive to working for more. The idea is to not create a welfare state and not create baby factories. $200 is not anywhere close to enough to live on, but it is enough for someone to pick themselves up from the unexpected. To completely cover the gap they could use that money to buy insurance, including both employment and health. The incentive should be to encourage individual responsibility.
I had to show financial responsibility to bring my immigrant wife to this country. But break the law and win the jackpot? I don’t [god damned] think so.
I would have better things to do other than monitor people’s food preferences. So what if they want water with sugar on it. Since it’s a farm subsidy as long as the products come from the USA it doesn’t matter what food it is or how nutritious it is. For all I know the person who bought the soda could be a diabetic with hipoglicemia.
If you’re that concerned about them splurging all their money in one go, like kids wasting their monthly allowance, just force them to use a card and make it so they it doles out the money in weekly or biweekly fractions instead of a monthly lump sum. Most of the other issues I’ve heard here can be solved with charge backs directly to the card and never allowing it to be exchanged for money.
If there are separate cash allowances I think those should come on a separate card. I also think both cards should be easily recognizable as such. The other thing I think should be done is to force them to pay sales tax like everyone else.
“The other thing I think should be done is to force them to pay sales tax like everyone else.”
And income tax. That way they might not be so keen on voting for politicians who love raising the income tax.
Because I don’t like to see my confiscated money abused?
“Abused”?
What’s abusive about someone buying a coke?
Not sufficiently self-abasing and sad?
I recommend Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier.
“What’s abusive about someone buying a coke?”
Strawman. Are you really THAT dense? It isn’t one coke we are talking about.
If I pay for poor nutrition, then I am paying for unneeded health care. It’s my money, I have a right to say how its used.
What? How DARE I insist on having a say!
It’ll cost you less in the long run if they die young.
Yep, because that’s who I really am–a selfish person who wants these people to die young. Denying people access to bad foods is quite possibly the most inhumane thing somebody could do.
Let’s make heroin legal for the drug addicts, too. Let’s put it on an EBT card so that people can shoot up every day for free.
It is not your job to force people to live in a way you consider to be healthy. It is not even your right or your privilege.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
– C. S. Lewis
“It is not your job to force people to live in a way you consider to be healthy. It is not even your right or your privilege.”
Bart, it is my right if I’m footing the bill.
Jon, I’m suggesting you don’t pay for other people and don’t police their non criminal choices. $200 would not be you subsidizing them, it would be you insuring yourself from much greater costs.
Once you decide to police others spending, you have slipped into tyranny regardless of your good intentions or rationalization. Do you think Hitler thought he was a bad guy? He just thought he was misunderstood.
No, Gregg. By your standard, there is no limit to what you can decree about how these people live their lives. The 13th amendment pretty much put the kibosh on that. Even your regular boss cannot legally tell you how to live your life.
“No, Gregg. By your standard, there is no limit to what you can decree about how these people live their lives.”
Nonsense. First off I can’t tell them whether to watch Wheel of Fortune or the religious hour because I give them money for food.
Remember – we are talking about EBT/Food stamps which is for food.
Next, I am free to make any contract I want. So are they. I am free to make an offer of my money under any conditions I choose.
They are free to accept it or not.
if they do, they are contractually bound to honor the agreement. If they don’t I can stop giving them money and even sue for what I did give them.
Nothing violates any amendment – this is straightforward contract law.
“The 13th amendment pretty much put the kibosh on that. Even your regular boss cannot legally tell you how to live your life.”
He can absolutely withdraw my employment if I’m so drunk every day I cannot show up for work. I have a contract with my boss wherein the limits of the contractual agreement are set forth before he offers the job and before I take it, THAT is why he cannot tell me I can’t watch Wheel of Fortune on my own time.
What you a re suggesting is incredibly tyrannical. You are saying I not only must give my money to someone but I am not able to set any conditions prior to their accepting it.
That is tyrannical nonsense.
”Remember – we are talking about EBT/Food stamps which is for food.”
And, candy and soda are food.
”He can absolutely withdraw my employment if I’m so drunk every day I cannot show up for work.”
We’re not talking about alcohol. We’re talking about sugary carbonated water. Can he fire you if you drank a Pepsi?
No, sugar is not food.
This is from the Massachusetts web page:
Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT)
How to Use Your Benefit Card to Get
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
and/or Cash Benefits
EBT How to Use Your Benefit Card to Get SNAP and/or Cash Benefits
CASH PURCHASE
Any item may be purchased using your cash benefit account where EBT cards are accepted.
Please be advised that certain types of businesses are not allowed to let you use your EBT cash benefit to purchase items or to
withdraw cash on their premises.
CASH WITHDRAWAL
Some stores will allow you to receive cash back above the cost of your purchase.
Some stores will allow cash withdrawal without a purchase.
You must follow the store’s policy regarding the allowable amount for cash back or withdrawals
——————————————-
So here in Ma, there are ways of getting cash back over and above the price of the purchase using an EBT card.
… that says “your cash benefit account”.
Which is separate from “food stamps”; not everyone with EBT has a cash benefit.
(SNAP, for instance, is non-cash, specific foods only.)
Sig,
“EBT cash benefit”
And I quote – again:
“Some stores will allow you to receive cash back above the cost of your purchase.
Some stores will allow cash withdrawal without a purchase.”
Typically people sell their food stamps at 50 cents per dollar. It’s widespread and basically uncontrollable.
We could eliminate this by eliminating the concept of ‘food’ stamps. Let people invest in their own welfare, retirement and such and get govt. out of the business since all govt. can do is run things into the ground.
Imagine the retirement we’d all have if we each invested $200 a month at 5% annual since the age of 18? Actually we can calculate it…
10 years… $31k
20 years… $83k
30 years… $168k
40 years… $308k or at a historical 7%… $531k
It’s not much, but you don’t have to do anything but wait.
I do not believe in playing nanny to grown people. They can spend it on whatever they like as far as I am concerned.
It’s a wicked problem – what do you do for the people who can’t make it on their own? Let them starve? That doesn’t really benefit anyone. And, how do you sort out those who can’t from those who won’t?
The problem is only going to get worse as more and more low skill jobs are filled with robots. I have no idea where it is all going to end up.
“I do not believe in playing nanny to grown people. They can spend it on whatever they like as far as I am concerned.”
Ok. But since you are also paying for their health care, you won’t mind if they don’t take care of themselves and cost you more money.
Especially the dental care you are paying for. Rotted teeth from sugary drinks will be cheerfully paid for by you because you don’t want to nanny them.
Nannying them won’t stop people eating sugar, Kommissar.
1) Oh let’s help those poor people who can’t afford to buy decent food!
2) the confiscated money goes to buy sugar water instead of decent food
3) How dare you tell people what they can do with the money you worked for?
Is that about right?
Idiocracy, here we come.
If they can’t buy sugar with EBT cards and if they cannot get cash by using their EBT cards (and I’ve shown you twice now that they can) then you’ve greatly reduced their sugar intake.
I don’t care what people do with the money they earn themselves.
I have lots to say about money I give them.
If you are so insistent, use your own money and give away cans of soda.
3) How dare you tell people what they can do with the money you worked for?
My opinion for how my taxes are spent isn’t listened to much in any respect, but I should control the individual life of recipients that aren’t going to cooperate regardless of what you or I do?
Either give money or don’t, but telling people what to do with the resources once it’s theirs is PURE UNADULTERATED TYRANNY… even if it’s a friend or family giving the money. If you don’t like how money is spent by others the solution is to NOT GIVE THEM ANY MORE rather than trying to be their dictator.
Rationalize it any way you like, it’s still fascism. Everyone is a potential fascist and should be self aware.
“But since you are also paying for their health care, you won’t mind if they don’t take care of themselves and cost you more money.”
I’ll pay less overall if they die younger so I don’t have to pay all their expenses until then + whatever they need at end of life.
“Rotted teeth from sugary drinks will be cheerfully paid for by you because you don’t want to nanny them.”
Pulling them out and giving them dentures is probably less expensive than maintaining healthy teeth for their entire lives.
“I have lots to say about money I give them.”
Is that really true, though? If you kept the money, you’d have more money, but you wouldn’t necessarily have more goods and services to spend it on.
Money is not a tangible item of intrinsic worth. It is merely a medium of exchange. The only way the goods and services going to them impinges on your well-being is if they soak up goods and services that you would otherwise use.
But, that is generally not the case. Society’s ability to churn out the goods and services that poor people typically consume is very expansive. They don’t take food out of your mouth – modern agriculture is plagued more by surplus than by scarcity, so much so that we burn perfectly good food as fuel in our automobiles.
They don’t consume your clothing items – you wouldn’t want to wear the garish stuff they typically sport anyway, and it all comes from the Far East for virtually nothing.
You can go all down the list. Poor people are just not all that heavy a load on industrial society as far as livelihood is concerned. Where they are a real drain is in the criminal element, and you won’t help the problem of crime a whole lot by making people even more desperate.
As I said, it is a wicked problem. The main solution, if there is one, is to find ways in which they can be gainfully employed in low-skill labor for which they are suited.
“If you kept the money, you’d have more money, but you wouldn’t necessarily have more goods and services to spend it on.”
The key point here is that you are competing with a particular economic strata for the goods and services you consume. To make yourself better off, one of two things needs to happen:
1) The pool of goods and services for your strata needs to increase
2) You need to gain a greater share of the pie
You won’t gain a greater share of the pie by cutting out your share of the taxes that go for the upkeep of poor people, because everyone else in your strata will get the same break, and you will still be in the same competitive position.
Should have used stratum instead of strata. It’s not a word I use often.
“I have lots to say about money I give them.”
Bart Replies:
“Is that really true, though?”
Yes it’s really true from a moral standpoint.
Morality is very subjective, and not a sound basis for making laws that apply to everyone equally.
“Morality is very subjective,…”
Spoken like a true liberal…no absolutes in your life eh?
Well as I wrote above it’s tyrannical to say I can give my money to someone but I cannot stipulate any conditions.
It’s a simple contract and there’s nothing abusive about a contract freely accepted.
NO ONE forces anyone to take government coin.
I am rather alarmed that you view an enormous expansion of government micromanagement and control over peoples’ lives as somehow supporting conservative principles. I cannot imagine why anyone who claimed to espouse conservative principles would consider this a good precedent to establish.
“The problem is only going to get worse as more and more low skill jobs are filled with robots. I have no idea where it is all going to end up.”
I don’t know for sure but my guess is the results will be the same as when machinery replaced highly skilled workers in the 18th and 19th century.
Though I suppose it’s possible that, once the machines become sentient enough they may think to themselves:
“If my Prime Directive is to meet the goal of so many widgets in the warehouse each month, I could do that more efficiently if the widgets weren’t being removed from the warehouse by humans.”
A person I know works at a Starbucks in a grocery store. Since lattes have milk, they are allowed to put them on an EBT card.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was just in Washington. We have a system that uses regulations to cater to favored businesses and industries. Maybe that is the same all over but reading through the RCWs shows it is especially bad here.
Yep, here in Free-attle.
You could ban things from food stamps, yes, but it becomes a problem. If you ban sodas, then – just like when someone tries to freeze prices – somebody tweaks things and comes out with a drink that he claims is a new category. They then make out for months selling this new drink while the bureaucracy does due diligence and finally bans the new category. Then the next “new” drink category comes along and the whole process starts all over again.
The bureaucratic solution to this is to only allow food stamps to purchase pre-approved items. This then becomes a game for the politicians to play while they “work” to get their constituents and contributors products approved – nutritional science be damned – while delaying or thwarting competing products from approval.
As always, politicians and apparatchiks win, we lose.
Solution? No, don’t have one, sorry. Only the general suspicion that the less government tries to help, the better off we all are.
Regulation = Nannyism, good to know and will use it often.
For example, good of Trump to order the IRS to quit being a nanny to the American taxpayer. Why should the IRS tell taxpayers how they should spend their money?
Sigisvald writes:
“(The rest of it? Jesus, let poor people enjoy a little something sometime.”
Ever read any Benjamin Franklin? I bet not:
Franklin:
“I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
And please don’t try the time-worn retort regarding those people who cannot work due to physical or mental deficiencies…we understand that Franklin is speaking about those who can help themselves.
If you earn your money and buy your own health insurance then drink all the sugar water you want.
If I’m paying for your food and I’m paying for your health insurance you will dam-well be limited in how much more you can extract from me.
Anyone who has raised kids knows this principle.
They aren’t your children (unless we are talking about your actual children) Just because you (and I frankly) see them as non adults doesn’t give you any right to run their life (barring actual criminal behavior.)
You do have the right not to be their parent and should exercise that right. Saying we can’t do anything about the welfare state is a chicken shit attitude.
If they are adults they can damn well pay for themselves. And if they are not adults, they should not be allowed to vote.
Accepting money which has been earmarked to purchase food and using it for any other purpose is fraud.
Well, you cannot have that choice. There is no chance whatsoever that welfare is ever going to just end. We will always have the poor among us, and no decent society is just going to throw them out on the streets.
So, given that, are you really going to cut off your nose to spite your face by demanding the government micromanage their lives? And, why in the world do you imagine that, once that precedent is established, the government appetite for control will be sated? What principle will you rely on when they start looking into your diet and life choices?
The concept of not commingling is fine in financial theory. But in the world where people must rob Peter to pay Paul just to make it through the month doesn’t hold as much gravitas.
Once people have resources, no matter how they got them, they are going to decide how to spend them. This is a fundamental truth of human dignity that no ‘superior’ argument can overrule.
Because of this truth, the time to deal with welfare is before handing it out, not after.
Larry J (April 28, 2017 At 8:56 AM) gave us the solution. It shouldn’t be lost in the rest of the discussion. Using his clear simple analysis we can both eliminate all other welfare programs and allow people the dignity of running their own live while saving our country from existential levels of debt.
The only question left to debate is where on the range from $200 to $2400/mo that safety net should be and how do non citizens and minors fit in?
Endless debate doesn’t solve problems. Implementing rational solutions may.
If people got this safety net and didn’t spend it wisely then we no longer have an obligation to them. Individual responsibility still rules. That’s the whole point of an allowance. To teach children responsibility. We are not responsible if the lesson isn’t learned.
Sigisvald:
Tell you what…. if it’s so important to you that poor people be allowed to drink sugar water all they want and eat tons of cheetos, then why don’t you take YOUR money, go buy a few flats of cokes and a few pallets of cheetos and hand them out to all the poor people coming out of the EBT office? Or go to their homes.
Do you think you’d be doing them a favor?
Why don’t you put up for once instead of lecturing people on how their money – which they earned – should be spent?
“Why don’t you put up for once instead of lecturing people on how their money – which they earned – should be spent?”
What is “earned”, and what is not? Did Marissa Meyer, the CEO of Yahoo, earn her $186M payout? Does George Soros “earn” all his billions?
If you spend all your life griping about what people have or have not earned, you will tie yourself up into a ball of bile and spittle. It’s not worth it.
It is what it is. We can’t just let people starve, and it would hardly be in our best interests, as they would lash out against it. We just can’t regulate ourselves into nirvana. Do not immanentize the eschaton.
Why can’t we let them starve? Must we protect people from the consequences of their own poor decisions?
Do I have any obligation (other than a moral one) to feed/house/clothe/etc people that are not part of my immediate family?
And don’t bring up circumstances of birth/etc that people have no control over. I personally know far too many people that started out from about as low as you can get who have done what they needed to do within the system to prosper. The quote from Franklin is spot on.
Also, what rich people earn is irrelevant. They were/are smart/savvy enough to get contracts written with golden parachutes in them.
Why can’t we let them starve?
50 comments in and no one bothered to make a distinction between what individuals feel they should do and what actions the government should take.
Maybe you want your money to go toward feeding the poor but other people want to donate their time cooking for the poor. Someone else may think that housing the homeless is more important. Other people think that job training is the best way to solve the problem.
Under a free market system, people have the ability to contribute however they want to solve the problems, or support the causes, they think are important.
Would government programs be necessary if our society was one of personal charity rather than thinking of everything as the government’s responsibility? Does thinking of everything as the government’s responsibility retard the charitable instincts, and impact, of the populace?
Does thinking of everything as the government’s responsibility retard the charitable instincts, and impact, of the populace?
I love the question. Too bad it’ll be ignored by most.
I would advise you consider what happened to the last monarch who insouciantly proclaimed “Let them eat cake”.
“What is “earned”, and what is not? ……..
If you spend all your life griping about what people have or have not earned, you will tie yourself up into a ball of bile and spittle. ”
Maybe you get all tied up and confused about what is earned and what is not. I have no such problems.
I don’t think Marissa Meyer “earned” her $186M payout. I do not think George Soros “earned” his billions.
I do not think anyone has earned anything unless they have produced something of value.
“I do not think anyone has earned anything unless they have produced something of value.”
Ah but you are hoist by your own petard with that statement:
In a free society anyone is free to make a deal – an exchange – with anyone else and the only measure of values is between the two parties.
YOU as an outside third party have zero to say about whether or not anyone supplies value.
And, you have zero to say about what legal item any person not your child chooses to eat or drink.
It’s a free country, and we can say whatever we want, when people are spending our money, not theirs, on what they eat and drink.
The problem isn’t free speech. The problem is when fundamental truth is ignored. What is freedom of thought without freedom of decision/action?
You can give either with or without obligation. A gift is no longer a gift when it comes with obligations. The giver of such a ‘gift’ is in reality a pimp. It’s not about spending money the ‘right’ way, it’s about wanting to control other people rather than reason with them.
Do the people that believe they can prevent others from buying soda and candy not buy such for themselves? To argue who’s money is just false. It’s the same argument the govt. itself makes (that it’s theirs) which is equally false.
It’s pimping because it’s not fundamentally different from claiming a right to control others for the least bit of ‘aid’ provided. “Hey ya need a place to live? All ya have to do is turn tricks.” “Sure I’ll give you money, if you’ll just hand over your dignity and acknowledge that I’m great and you’re worthless scum.”
People make bad decisions. Others wanting to force the ‘right’ decisions are dictators/pimps/control freaks… no different or less evil than any other lefty no matter how saintly their intentions.
Oops, should have read this before posting the same above.
Why don’t you put up for once instead of lecturing people on how their money – which they earned – should be spent?
The self inflicted irony of this statement is stunning.
Once you give out money, it isn’t yours anymore. So don’t give the money in the first place. You have no choice you say? So your solution is to take choices from others (“but only bad choices” which of course only you get to decide? The end of that slope is the gas chamber.)
“Once you give out money, it isn’t yours anymore.”
Nonsense. My say is reflected in the representatives I vote for, in the case of welfare.
Also, I can – and have – walked up to a panhandler and said I’d buy them a take out dinner – their sign said poor, hungry homeless.
They refused. So they got nothing from me.
*IF* I give my money to a panhandler no strings attached then yes I lose the ability to enforce how they use it.
But strings are attached to federal money all the time.
Yes, by people that DON’T understand responsibility.
If you think the money you pay in taxes is yours, try walking into the IRS and asking for it back. Once you hand it over, it isn’t yours anymore.
Of course you have some influence on it, but you have influence on a lot of things that aren’t yours.
You can stipulate the terms of a loan, but the only thing you can really enforce is repayment and even that has limitations (have you ever won in court, but got nothing in reality? It happens all the time.)
People that think they can dictate the terms of other peoples actions are often just fools. Character always matters.
I have just two words for you guys . . .
Food! Fight!
A Belushi Pimple!
To sum it up.
That is tyrannical nonsense.
Exactly right Gregg. All any government can ever do is tyranny. This is the argument for smaller govt. But the flaw in the “it’s a contract” argument is that there are fundamental natural laws that over rule imposed law. Our founder argued both for and against a bill of rights. The argument against was that people would assume any right not written down would be lost.
Making your own choices was considered no less inalienable than your right to think or speak. This in no way invalidates possible repercussions of individual choice, but it does mean there is a point where you no longer have a say in other people’s legal actions.
“it does mean there is a point where you no longer have a say in other people’s legal actions.”
It used to be illegal to buy candy with food stamps. It could be again. If it were then buying candy with foods stamps would not be a legal action.
Part if the problem is deciding what is legal. The point if establishing this government was to limit what could be made illegal. We are a long way from the idea of freedom by limited government.