EBT is raising the price of meat because, even in the 70’s when I was a bagboy, the food stamp users bought the most expensive meats. Most cash buyers bought cheaper cuts.
No, I don’t object to poor people eating meat. But when I was poor; when my mother was poor, we ate hamburger. Why should you and I pay to have people who, in my experience, simply don’t want to work... eat steak?
The EBT people are using food stamp purchased goods to resell for cash so they have money for alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. I know this from a renter I had.
They do not. They hand their card directly to their drug dealer, and he buys what he wants off of it. Nobody goes to so much trouble as to buy stuff and resale it. They just sell the card and the pin number. The usual rate is two to one. For every $100.00 worth of drugs, they dealer gets $200.00 worth of EBT dollars.
The high beef prices are a result of the killer snow storm that crossed the Upper Midwest about 15 months ago. Hundreds of thousands of cows, and calves, were killed.
It's going to take awhile to get production back to normal levels.
Here's an example. Back then, chicken wings were a cheap protein source, great for the base of an inexpensive home made soup. Now they're a high-priced popular snack food.
Section 8 does the same things in rental markets. It punishes the working poor and lower middle class by driving up the price of renting.