Bottom line is this: He who pays the bills, calls the shots. If the gubmint gonna give you money, the gubmint gonna tell you how and when you can spend it. The sooner the dependents learn this, the sooner they’ll understand what we “teabaggers” are talking about when we say we are fighting for liberty.
I think it’s real easy:
Rice, corn, or fresh vegetables - really, really, easy.
Blame it on FLOTUS!!!
To understand food stamps, you have to start from the beginning, which is American agribusiness. In scale, it approaches the military-industrial complex in enormity.
From 1930 to in some places 1940, the Dust Bowl devastated farmers in the middle of the US from Texas to Canada. Tens of thousands of farms were wiped out. But the amazing thing is that, at the same time, the remaining farmers were so productive, that America had too much food and prices crashed.
Wheat cost 20 cents a bushel, and corn was being burned for fuel, while people elsewhere were starving. So FDR created the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, to destroy vast amounts of excess food, and transport and give away some of it to the starving people.
One of its first acts was to confiscate, slaughter and bury six million pigs. From there, at the point of a gun, it went around the country destroying food everywhere.
And since that time, American agribusiness has been a fascist-economics model of government-private business. Farmers are still paid to not grow food, and billions are spent every year to stabilize farm prices.
Now here’s the zinger: if the government wanted to, for the money it currently pays, every single person in America could have food for free. As things stand right now, instead the government still has to buy enormous amounts of food and store it in warehouses until it rots.
Expensive, temperature controlled warehouses. So if they gave this food to the poor, instead, it would actually *save* money.
Reagan did this with surplus cheese, and it was hugely popular. But how did it affect the market price of cheese? Simply put, it didn’t. This is because the stabilized price for cheese is so high, that the poor didn’t eat a whole lot of cheese.
So, as a lot of people have suggested, how do you get poor people to start cooking and eating healthier, subsidized food?
Well, you probably won’t have much luck if you start with them as adults. Years ago, they had the idea that if kids were given healthy school lunches, they would grow up to like healthy food. While this is eventually true, it took a lot of healthy food thrown into trash cans before kids finally started to eat some.
But there was an unforeseen problem. They might be willing to eat better food, but they did not know how to cook it. Ironically, about the same time, schools stopped teaching mandatory classes in home economics. Because it was “sexist” or something.
Not a good idea. Neither boys nor girls were taught home management skills. So how do you learn to cook, clean, do laundry, etc., if nobody teaches you? In many cases, you don’t.
So a good rule of thumb is that children of families on food stamps need to be enrolled in home economics classes, a modern incarnation of which should be much more comprehensive than it used to be.
I can imagine basic home economics taught even in elementary school, with four years of high school home ec, until the typical ‘C’ student knows how to make at least two dozen nutritious meals that taste good for several people, knows how to shop in grocery stores for maximum value at minimum cost, knows the value of a long term food preparation plan and how to make one, how to can food, store food, keep a hygienic kitchen, etc.
They may still prefer to eat only rice and beans, at least for a while, but at least knowing that other food is out there and tastes good means they probably won’t raise their own kids to only like rice and beans.
Go to your church or fraternal organization or community oranisaztion to get the food you need until you can support yourself.
So what? They’ll use their own money to buy beer, chips, etc...
I see it all the time. First person uses foods stamps, then the 2nd family member, in line behind them, uses cash to buy the beer.
No cheddar soup for YOU!
IMHO it should go even farther as in no convience food at all on food stamps.
When they first started food stamps I thought certain things were not allowed. They should not be, just basic good food. We have too many obese people.
Mandatory drug testing, to include alcohol and nicotine.
Stamps (now EBT cards) to be issued weekly at the end of an hour long “budget gourmet” cooking class.
Not usable for restaurants or convenience stores.
Loss of voting rights while receiving benefits.
I have no idea how much dollar value food stamps might provide per person, per month. But it would seem that it should not be enough finance someone eating out, even fast food, two or three times per day. Most working people budget how often they eat out, and I’d guess a food stamp recipient could use up their monthly amount well before the next month’s amount is available.
I remember being in the Navy, sending a good chunk of cash home to my family and living on a shoestring in San Diego, going to Safeway for stuff like chicken, bread, milk and eggs — and watching the guy ahead of me buying Doritos, cokes and Twinkies — and paying with food stamps.
It irked the heck out of me then.
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