You are exactly right. My mother was a home extension agent who moved to rural eastern North Carolina in 1950 to teach poor women how to plan meals and cook them as economically as possible, how to raise children, and in general how to keep house. Since that time the home extension program in North Carolina has evolved into a middle class affair teaching middle class women how to raise roses.
I am not familiar with the extension service in any place, except for NC, but if our state is a proxy for the rest of the country, we need to stop paying middle class extension agents to teach middle class folks how to play as long as there are so many poor people (who may be poor and ignorant of their own volition, but who are none the less charged with raising children) how to do what needs to be done.
I am a lawyer who eats beans and rice for supper at least 2 or 3 nights per week. Beans and rice are quite affordable, they are very good when cooked right, they can be made in a multitude of ways, and they are quite healthy. Unfortunately, I consume much beer, so my general diet is not the best in the world, but the point is we can have good, healthy food that is reasonably priced.
It infuriates me to see heaps of expensive potato chips and soft drinks in grocery carts that get paid for with government (read taxpayer) largess. Those items are expensive, deadly, and worse than useless.
I am not a big fan of the government telling we what I can and cannot eat, but it does not bother me a whit for the government to refuse to pay for food that is worse than useless. I understand that some folks just do not know how to cook, but it is pretty easy to learn that. We would be money ahead to remove extension agents from rose gardens and put them back in kitchens and nurseries.
potato chips are hardly the worst thing on the shelf. Ever read the label on your basic bag of ripples? It should say potatoes, oil, salt.
” My mother was a home extension agent who moved to rural eastern North Carolina in 1950 to teach poor women how to plan meals and cook them as economically as possible, how to raise children, and in general how to keep house.”
“I am not a big fan of the government telling me what I can and cannot eat,...”
So,you don’t particularly like the government telling you what you can and cannot eat,but you have no problem with the government telling “poor women” not only how to plan meals and cook them,but also how to raise children and keep house. As if poverty precludes the knowledge of how to do those things. And.. it’s okay for the poor to suffer the indignity of the government interference and condescension.
But... you wouldn’t like it yourself...would you like the government agents to come in and tell you how to raise your children or keep your house? I think not based on your comments here.
“We would be money ahead to remove extension agents from rose gardens and put them back in kitchens and nurseries.”