Food Stamps

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

What kind of person denies food to the poor and needy?

It's not really a denial. It's not as if the people who want to get rid of the food stamp program are deliberately denying the poor access to food. If those who would otherwise receive food stamps were able to pay for said food, then they would be allowed to buy said food. So, though they cannot afford to buy food, they are not, legally or forcefully, being prevented from having access to or eating food.

Anyway, though I would have opposed the introduction of such a program (I would prefer to see some sort of updated workhouse for the long-term unemployed), I can't see the point of cutting it in one fell swoop. Better simply to gradually reduce the size and scope of the program. In addition, I would have it stipulate that only a 'survival diet' could be purchased through food stamps. Bread, water, a little cheap meat and a few greens.

You strike me as the sort of person who would ask a person who lost his legs in an accident why he doesn't stop being so lazy and go for a 5 mile run.

I'll let you get back to serving gruel to Dickensian orphans who work in a buggy whip factory for two cents an hour or whatever it is you do.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

Food stamps are one of many examples of a liberal welfare regime fouling up anti-poverty efforts. And as Hatman mentioned, it gives the poor a special currency to use in a public space identifying them for all to see. To indulge in a little hyperbole, it symbolically hollers, "Look there everyone! That bloke is a failure to their family, disgrace to their country, and is probably into some pretty shady stuff. They are so dysfunctional that they cannot even get food without a handout. Hey you there, go get a job you ****ing parasite." And so on and so forth. Poor folk have enough to be stressed out about as it is without measures that shame them and treat them as totally untrustworthy being institutionalized.

I also agree with Snowstalker and TNF here. Give everyone a lump of money. Make it a universal system that is not structured in a way that drives wedges between people of different classes. Everyone pays in and then everyone receives benefits back. That way we are all interdependent with everyone contributing under an agreeable understanding that the scheme exists to help each of us equally.

Food stamps are an EBT system that use what looks and functions exactly like a debit card. You swipe it at the terminal, enter a PIN and the payment goes through. There's not some red light on the register that turns on and a voice that starts saying "THANK YOU FOR PAYING WITH FOOD STAMPS YOU MISERABLE PARASITIC URCHIN" (unless Ayn Rand's followers have their own supermarket chain now or something). No one is being "identified for all to see" as a food stamp recipient.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

Expand, but cut unemployment benefits.

So let them eat, but not pay the rent. That makes sense.

I would not have unemployment benefits for as long as we're having them, yes. If a person can't find a job in a year, they should probably get a job that's below their qualifications unfortunately.

There are those who can't find a job in a year even below their qualifications.

I do agree we need to ask whether continually extending unemployment benefits are the way to go, or we need to rethink the program to make it more conducive to people finding jobs, but I don't think just cutting the benefits makes sense with the long-term unemployment problem we have.

I think it is fairly reasonable to say that someone who is aged 50 or over and hasn't had a job in more than 6 months will probably never find another job in their lifetime. If they do, it certainly won't be one that would allow them to live without some sort of government assistance. It would probably be better to gently nudge them into Social Security early and reduce or eliminate the penalties that would ordinarily come from collecting benefits before 65.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

ITT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgpa7wEAz7I

I think "Soup Is Good Food" is more appropriate.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

Reduce. Have programs encouraging people to work so to gradually reduce the spending on food stamps. Eliminating it entirely is not a good idea, but obviously having food stamps is not a good thing and we shouldn't encourage it to be good or normal. 

You assume no one on food stamps works and you assume the sort of jobs they have or could get are jobs that pay enough for them to buy food without help.