Housing is a much bigger issue than food for the poor in Canada. Presumably also the case in big US cities. Housing people is more complicated and expensive than feeding them. We can’t seem to solve that problem.
I think most SNAP benefits use inconspicuous EBT cards nowadays, very discreet.
I remember the actual stamps from when I was a 16yo cashier, and the occasional customer who would ring up a 25¢ stick of gum, pay with a $1 food stamp, get change in cash, then buy another stick of gum, etc., until they had enough cash for a pack of cigarettes.
In high school we read a book featuring a Texan who tries to buy ammunition with food stamps.
The US also has the Women, Infants and Children program which covers a limited selection of (presumably healthy) grocery items. Look for “WIC” on the labels on the store shelf.
Your linked article just goes to show, you can give people money, but you can’t control what they spend it on due to substitution effects. IMO, food ought to be taxed or subsidized according to its nutritional value, irrespective of the purchaser’s finances.
Last time I was in California, they had a surtax on sugary confections in restaurants. In theory, this is supposed to offset the medical cost of the increased morbidity; but the money is not remitted to the customer’s healthcare payer, so it’s really just another way to squeeze cash from tourists.
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The ‘house money’ angle makes sense, people spend $X on food now. If you give them $Y they are unlikely to spend $X + $Y, so you are subsidizing other expenses to some extent. Beer and cigarettes and what not are the usual criticisms. I’m sure some gets spent on clothing and car repair.
Another confounding factor is that (and someone keep me honest if this isn’t true) is that poorer people are more likely to live in a food desert. I know many towns in rural Kansas don’t have grocery stores, but do have a Dollar General store. So they can buy pizza or mac & cheese, but DG doesn’t sell produce. So yeah, they may spend more on junk food because that’s what’s available.
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I find this attitude towards poverty, blaming the impoverished, really disgusting.
It is one of the incredibly hypocritical aspects of this country that this is just accepted as fact and the cause of the problem by so many people that claim to be Christians.
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As a non-Christian, I see nothing wrong with Nick’s post. He said “some”, not many or most. There should be some accountability for many that are poor. “Many” people have made poor choices, and the government’s methods for helping is inefficient.
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Not to pick on this poster, just tired of seeing this reason used as defense for social apathy.
Without a breakout of:
- What you consider poor choices
- The percentages of the poor that made those choices
- The percentages of the not poor that made those choices.
This statement I have seen repeated here is utter shit.
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There should be accountability for all people. But far more importantly than holding the poor accountable, there should be accountability for the government/society with regards to the choices poor people have available to them. It’s easier to make “poor” choices when the only feasible choices made available to a person are bad options to begin with.
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While Lucy’s list is a pretty good list, one thing with making consumables free is that over-consumption doesn’t have a direct consequence or disincentive. A daily shower isn’t something most people would find unreasonable to provide, but a daily 150 gallon heated shower for everyone would be environmentally destructive.
Nothing I have said is in defense of social apathy. I took offense to what I felt was an overreaction. This topic requires so much more mental energy and time than I am willing to provide on a message board.
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By definition, there will always be plenty of “poor” people. I believe the government does its fair share of keeping the poor in poverty. I don’t have the solution offhand to lift everyone out of poverty. I don’t believe it is even possible to do so for a significant portion of the poor. That may be hard for some to hear. But there are ways to limit the “future poor” and equip those who still have decent options.
There’s enough food to feed all the people in the world.
We can do something about it. By forcing people to give out excess food for free. If they resist, they get punished.
It’s pretty easy.
So yeah, don’t say it’s not possible. You just don’t want to. Saying it’s not possible is just the rich’s way of shedding guilt.
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I do not think my comment in response was an overreaction to what i was replying to.
The statement was that poverty will always exist because “Some people are incompatible with the economy.”
I took the “some people” in the statement to mean the impoverished. Maybe i was wrong, and he meant the CEOs and others that are continuing to worsen income inequality by their actions, thus increasing the burden on the impoverished.
If that is what was meant, then i apologize for calling the comment “digusting.”
I think there’s a lot that could be done right now. Being homeless is essentially criminalized - panhandling is illegal, loitering is illegal, there aren’t enough beds in shelters and there aren’t adequate mental resources.
Being arrested is costly - you can spend months in jail for a crime not even worth any prison time because you can’t afford the bail or a decent lawyer.
Once a person gets stuck in that cycle, the system itself is designed to keep them in poverty.
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And their kids.
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It was “clear” to me that “some people” meant some people. The worst take for me would be “some of the impoverished..”
I do not believe he was talking about the poor.
At any given time in the US economy, you will have:
- Mentally ill people (serious cases)
- Disabled people (serious cases)
- People with varying levels of mental incapacity
(By definition IQ is normally distributed so the folks with an IQ of 80 or less will have a really hard time being “productive” in the economy).
You will need to subsidise 1-3 above pretty heavily (i.e they will likely receive much more in benefits over their lifetime vs anything they might produce tax-wise)
I took it more in “the disabled” rather than “the impoverished”, but YMMV.
Sure, prisons try to provide a minimum acceptable sustenance. But i think that your being able to leave whenever you want, and your being able to lock other people out both make my proposal a lot more humane than most prison systems.
This makes no logical sense.
Are you saying that the “some people” in the quote I was initially responding where not a subset of those in poverty, but some other group of people not experiencing poverty?
At least the others responding are supposing that “some people” are a subset of those in poverty.