Posted on 10/02/2010 4:21:32 PM PDT by STONEWALLS
HOUSTON—At midnight on the first of the month, a scene unfolds at many Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sites that underscores the deep financial strains that many low-income American consumers still face.
Parking lots come to life after 11 p.m. as customers start to stream into the stores, cramming their shopping carts full of milk, infant formula and other necessities.
Then at midnight, when the government replenishes their electronic-benefit accounts with their monthly allotments of food stamps, nutritional grants for mothers with babies or other aid for needy families, they head for the registers.
"We're not starving or anything, but we come every month at 11:55," said Tyrel Fogle, 26 years old, early Friday morning as he loaded a cart with frozen food at a Wal-Mart here on the northwestern edge of the nation's fourth largest city.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I figure that the white working class and middle class have about another 25 years for their vote to count...after that the permanant underclass will overwhelm them...and it may come sooner than that.
“If you really think about it, the only reason someone gets out there in the middle of the night and buys baby formula is that they need it, and they have been waiting for it,” Bill Simon, the head of Wal-Mart’s U.S. store business, said at a Goldman Sachs conference last month....
Um. BS. If you’re on food stamps you ought to be able to go from month to month without needing to show up just before midnight.
You’re there at midnight because you are a poor household manager and you probably don’t have to wake up for work in the morning.
Give it time Tyrel. It took a long time to free the slaves too.
Yeah, the Republic is on its last legs. Very sad, but maybe it was inevitable all along. All you have to work with is humans, faults and all. A super-duper great awakening might turn it around for awhile, but I doubt it.
Gripes me when they spend cash on booze and cigs and whip out food stamps for staples. And they load up on seafood and steak. “Gotta work da system.”
I really find this amazing. A city the size of Houston probably has hundreds of soup kitchens and food banks that could help these folks.
The undercurrent running through the story is the breakup of the family unit.
Single mother, pregnant girlfriend, mom and teen daughter with younger brother, the one married couple were young and barely making it.
I don’t begrudge them anything. I pray for them. But, when society unravels this was always going to be the result. It will only get worse unless society replaces its social fabric and the free markets return.
Part of the reason some may be absolutely DESPERATE to feed their BABIES at the end of the month...is because they TRADED their food stamp cash for actual cash.
They say, “You give me $50...I’ll go to the store and get you $80 worth of food.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130272928
NPR has run a somewhat identical story.
Of course some of these folks buy the high end stuff (best steaks, etc.) because they'll resell the merchandise in their neighborhood for cash.
Example (sorta):
A concerned citizen called police Sept. 23 after seeing a man dumping new bottles of water on the ground near a local store with a goal of returning the bottles to get money to buy cigarettes. Officer Rick Roberts spoke with the man, who advised he had bought the water with his food stamps and was dumping the water out so he could recycle the bottles to get cigarette money.Link.
Remember all the stories about the food banks not keeping up?
Here’s what happens: They get their cards and they make deals for cash. Then they hit up the food banks, too.
“Gripes me when they spend cash on booze and cigs and whip out food stamps for staples.”
I see that all the time while I’m in the check out line...because they keep the smokes under lock and key, the cashier has to go get get them for the shopper...so everything stops while that happens.
Time was, people had to count out the stamps like money...now they can just swipe the card with no ackwardness.
You know, it will be the true unveiling of the liberal socialist agenda when the day comes that "white" actually is a minority. Of course, one does not need to be a Nostradamus to forsee that Affirmative Action, Title (put roman numeral here), etc., does not apply to white people because, well, while they might be a minority, they're not a minority because, well, well, because they're white people.
“You’re there at midnight because you are a poor household manager and you probably don’t have to wake up for work in the morning.”
I have seen this midnight surge. I think it is due in part to embarrassment, as well as irregular and chaotic lifestyles.
They get too much “help” already. Many of them need to be deported (does anyone still think that only those here legally get “benefits”?)
I feed my family of five on a $400 a month grocery budget. We eat well too! I could do it for $250-300 if I had to.
I know a single mom with two children that gets $500 a month food stamps. Before the end of the month she is asking her mother for help with groceries.
When it isn’t your money you will never manage it well.
She gets $645 in food stamps, around $200 in WIC and the school age child gets free breakfast and lunch
This daughter has 4 children, 15,14, 12 and 7 ..she spends less on groceries than the food stamp allocation for the woman with the small children..she has no "free lunch" so to speak and packs the kids lunches daily
When I hear the media cry about the "starving families " I want to throw up
the customers with food stamps ate better than I did when I was working in a store back in my college days. I was eating butter sandwiches, sometimes with no butter while the “stampers” would pile on the rib and strip steaks, shrimp and whatever the sale of the week was.
At the local convenience store, there was a open market for food stamp/cash conversion, this was around 20 years ago, not sure of that can happen now.
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