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Food Stamps Restriction
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lemurcat12 wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »GlassAngyl wrote: »Totally for it. And they should add all junk food items as well. Leave baking items and they can make junk from scratch...
Then you'd complain they were spending the money on steaks and shrimp, I here it all the time. Food is expensive for the working poor ( not making a living wage and not poor enough for aid) and soda is cheap. Natural and healthier choices are twice as much as junk food, or haven't you noticed
This is thrown out all the time, but many times it's just not true. I eat a very 'healthy' diet and I fit it in, along with the rest of my family's groceries, on a pretty small grocery budget. Beans, whole grains, frozen veggies, frozen chicken etc are all pretty inexpensive.
1. Have you ever been on food stamps?
2. Have you ever been poor in your life?
3. Are you still poor?
Answer those and maybe we can have a deeper discussion
I actually grew up dumpster diving sometimes, alongside my parents and sisters, so if you'd like to have a deeper discussion about poverty I'd be more than willing to have one with you. You probably won't like what I have to say though
And I stand by what I said-I feed a family of 5 on a very tight grocery budget, and I eat a very 'healthy' diet (I follow the DASH protocol), and my family eats a fairly balanced diet as well. Nutrient dense foods are not automatically more expensive, and I've found that they're actually cheaper than convenience foods. This idea that that 'healthy' is more expensive is just not true many times.
eta: actually, no I'm not going to go there, because my past is a pretty dark place and I have no interest in revisiting it, especially on a public forum. Needless to say, yes I know what it's like to be truly poor, probably more than most posters in this thread. But that has absolutely nothing to do with my pp, which is that I feed myself and my family a well balanced, 'healthy' diet and do so on a very tight grocery budget, ($100 a week for 5 people/2 cats, and it also includes non-food items). Beans, whole grains, frozen veggies, bagged frozen chicken etc are usually inexpensive options and are staples in my house. The idea that 'healthy' automatically means more expensive is false.
We all have dark places that we don't want to visit and that's why it's absurd to try to think for someone else. You don't know another person's circumstance so they shouldn't be judged simply by what they buy in a grocery store. We all have to learn that, you of all people since you were a dumpster diver. When I go to buy groceries, I've noticed that food is expensive and getting higher by the day. Organic food is outrageously priced and that's supposed to be the healthiest. Fresh fruit is ridiculously high and fresh squeezed juice, no way. You can't buy a single piece of fruit for less than a dollar unless it's a banana. Now imagine feeding a family of 4. Yeah you can buy only grains and wheat, but what do you do with that? You need a balanced diet to eat healthy and trying to buy all four food groups for a growing family is expensive. BTW, chicken is not inexpensive, who eats beans and what is whole grains and how do you just eat them?
This is where nutrition counseling could be helpful. Organic or fresh foods are necessarily the healthiest. Frozen or canned vegetables provide plenty of nutrients. Dried beans and grains are very healthy. A ribeye at $15 per lb is not more nutrition than round steak at $4 per lb. Thinking that a balanced diet only comes from expensive foods shows a lack of nutrition knowledge.
I didn't say a balanced diet only comes from expensive foods, I said the healthier foods are more expensive. You can get family size bags of potato chips 2/$4 or bogo but 2lbs of grapes $7.98. I shop every week for groceries and I am not making this up for the sake of argument, I've been shopping for decades and have seen the rising prices of food. Parkay Butter spray is $3 for 8oz bottle but you can get Blue Bonnet margarine 4 stick pkg at 2/$1, and these are staples, so there is no nutritional counseling for me, maybe you need counseling for the real world.
You don't need to choose between grapes and potato chips. Things like beans, rice, frozen vegetables, onions, carrots, cabbage, oats, potatoes . . . . all very affordable (at least where I live). Yeah, anyone wanting a lot of fresh fruit is going to pay more, but that's not required for a healthy diet.
But people don't actually eat beans and whole grains like oats, according to pp.
It's regrettable, because beans + rice + lard + chicken gizzards, hearts, pieces and parts = magic.
Or at least one of the foundation dishes of Cajun and Creole cookery, admired around the world.
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/baked-louisiana-dirty-rice-beans
ETA: the first recipe is overly gentrified and not dirty enough. Here is one using a lard-based roux, gizzards and livers. I would also increase the amount of the "Trinity and the Pope" (vegetables and garlic) and add in black beans for a more complete dish nutrition-wise.
https://dricksramblingcafe.blogspot.com/2009/11/cajun-dirty-rice.html
Yeah, lots of low cost, filling foods are available, and they don't require fresh fruit out of season, expensive fresh veg out of season, and certainly not Parkay spray, which I would never buy or call especially healthy (vs. generic store brand butter without the mark up for pretend health and being able to spray it or just cooking with the fat from a slightly lower cost cut of meat). I am so much in favor of these dishes being cooked, preserved, taught, celebrated.
One of the problems with these kinds of dishes is, of course, that they are more time consuming, and that's a real issue, and of course knowledge -- which community classes can help with if people have the time to take them.
Also, if you don't know what you are doing and have to shift there's often a higher cost to changing -- someone relying on convenience foods who loses a job or decides to change her eating won't necessarily know how to switch to relying on beans and grains and greens and the like, or even potatoes and chicken thighs and frozen veg or in season fresh veg (although the veg are easier).
There was a good article I linked a while back about one issue for poorer families with eating veg is fear of waste. This isn't that tough a problem to figure out, but the barriers in the short term can be high.
I have thought through this a lot, from that same perspective, and on other threads. Remember that thread where the college student just had $10 or something ridiculous for 3 days? Like many people it caught my fancy, and I priced things out at Dollar General and determined that boxes of Zatarain's would form the staple of my diet, hacked with real vegetables, beans and roux. I remember agonizing over spending the last dollar on Frank's hot sauce vs. a bell pepper.
For the recipe above, the only skills needed are the ability to chop vegetables, mince meat, boil water, and brown fat and flour without burning it. The only tools needed are a knife, cutting board, a pan, and a spoon. But people just don't know this, because the most vulnerable have been forced (or lured) into utter dependency
This is exactly another problem created by government-encouraged dependency on convenience foods: broken, destroyed food traditions. As an example, back in the day, every poor and working household would have been frugally saving their bacon grease in a tin can under the sink, and they would have know how to use it, passed down from their parents.
That has been lost, and in fact much of the general population would regard that greasy tin can as something trashy, not something to be respected. (As a counterpoint, Crisco was originally marketed as "pure food from a clean factory" to shame home-produced butter and lard...today, and as reflected in the ingredients for the recipe that wasn't dirty enough for me, it's olive oil that is the virtuous, pure, expensive fat.)
I am so fascinated by the discussion of shame on this thread. There is so much shame attached to frugality--to the point that many on this thread are implying that pushing the poor closer to an elitist Gwennyth Paltrow-type diet of "clean" whole foods is shaming them. Is this topsy-turvy world?
And by way of illustration, I will say that I understand that shame. I grew up quite poor and very ashamed that my mom and grandmother hand-sewed and patched my clothes, cooked every meal from scratch, ate crap like "rhubarb," and that when we were in particularly dire straits, our neighboring farmer gave us (every week for a couple of years) gallons of fresh, raw, grass-fed, locally produced, cream-line milk from his Guernsey. Oh, how I burned with shame and disgust.
Now that I look back at that, I am filled with shame for my attitude, or possibly the outside forces that caused me to have that attitude. And my heart just breaks for the kid who thinks it is more desirable to have the 12-pack cans of Pepsi and a bag of Cheetos (because it is shameful not to be able to buy those things) instead of the cheap-@ss scratch-and-dent apples and bulk generic oatmeal and a mom who turns them into an apple crisp, just for him. When did frugality stop being a virtue in our society?
Nowadays I shame my own kids by taking them to the scariest grocery in town so I can get legit house-made chorizo for Portuguese kale soup, and a big pile of nasty old chicken feet to make stock.
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stanmann571 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Realizing that this may derail the thread, but I think this is a great conversation.
As part of any temporary benefits application process what would be your opinion on mandatory education of the following (as applicable):
Nutrition/Weight Management
Cooking
Budgeting
Home Economics
Thinking back to my military service, where if one applied for financial assistance they had to first attend a basic finance course and have their budgets reviewed by a counselor. This was a very effective program with an extremely low rate of repeat applications.
Where does one find time for mandatory classes? Usually someone on assistance is already working a huge amount of hours a week and still can't get by. Then the time it takes to put food on the table, spend time with family, etc etc.Alatariel75 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »Bring back the poor house! The state should have full control over those pesky people daring to live in poverty and need state assistance.
I really despair of our attitude to those at the bottom of the pile.
I have a large number of First Cousins. One of them, who was one year older than I, was added to the welfare rolls at age 12 when her father died and she received U.S. Social Security benefits for being an orphan. Those expired when she turned 18, but college was free to her because of her orphan status. Preparing for that, she started producing children at age 16 so that she had government benefits for unmarried mothers and their children to replace her government benefits to orphans when she turned 18. At 19 she agreed to marry a man who was quite unable to produce an earned income and she kept receiving generous government assistance for her needy children, her low-income household, and oh-by-the-way her medical care was free, too. It was to her benefit that her older brother was a prosperous schmuck who provided her rent and grocery money unknown to the government. That's the cousin. I have a sister whose decidedly different course of life has been showered with great wealth. One day my sister was speaking with my cousin and asked her directly, "Why don't you get a job?" My cousin replied, "I make more money on welfare than I could at minimum wage."
It is that one person's story, my cousin, that more influences all my thoughts on government assistance to the needy than any other. She died of cancer 14 years ago because the free government medical care was a bit less than timely at delivering care.
We, as a society, don't need to be cruel as you parody, but we don't need to be schmucks, either.
I know this wasn't your point, but it does make me wonder at a society that pays so little in minimum wage that people in some circumstances are better off receiving aid instead of working . . . .
There was a documentary a couple of years ago, and I can't remember what it's called, but one of the people who was in it was a young single mother. Over the course of the documentary, all she wanted to do was find a job and get off of 'welfare'. She did end up finding a full time job, but realized that it put her over the cap pf being able to qualify for assistance but below what she actually needed to feed her kids. Obviously it's slanted (because it's a documentary), but I wonder how many people we have in the US in similar situations?
This causes me to ask the next level of "Why?"
Wage is based on market forces, primarily skill set, so why do we have a population lacking the skills to earn a minimum livable wage?
But the problem here is - those minimum, unlivable wage jobs will continue to exist, and need to be filled, even if the people currently in them manage to skill themselves out of them. So there will always be that group of people in those jobs (some with the skills to not be in them but without the available positions) who are stuck in this cycle.
Most of these jobs are temporary and transitional and intended for kids young adults entering the workplace. The intent is to gain additional skills, training and experience to work towards positions with greater responsibility and increased pay.
BLS stats:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2016/home.htm
Seems very similar to dieting in a yo-yo cycle. Change will not come without changing behavior.
And? They aren't anymore and people have to do them.
There are ~330 M people living in the US, with ~255 M in the workforce. Only 700 k are at the minimum wage per BLS report cited.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
These jobs certainly are temporary and transitional. The root cause is lack of job skills. Without addressing the root cause you are only addressing a symptom and dooming a population to a life of poverty.
And how do you suggest the root is addressed?
It has to be multifaceted - supplementation via SNAP, WIC is a correction, but not a corrective action.
For skills the entire college loan system needs to be overhauled and we need to stop subsidizing training to fields with no hope of employment. There are tremendous opportunities in the trades which are all on the verge of collapsing over the next two decades due to the baby boomer retirement. Per BLS we are going to lose ~65% of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, welders, etc. in the next decade. Public education either needs to re-incorporate tradeskills into the curriculum, or a private option needs to be created and incorporated into state curriculum. Forward thinking states are already doing this.
Government and industry need to look to long term solutions as opposed to the horrible shortsightedness we're grown accustomed to. It is in the best interests of everyone.
That all sounds good in a perfect world.
Personal responsibility > government intervention
Every time.
How does personal responsibility come into play for this?
Are we talking about people who lost their jobs and need temporary help or are we talking about chronic unemployment or underemployment?
Is this just a pull themselves up by their bootstraps and just make it happen?
Primarily we're talking about chronic unemployment/underemployment and so called adults complaining that they can't provide for a family on a job/wage that's intended for a single/dependent HS/College student to subsist on.
I don't think businesses intend certain jobs for students only (many of them have shifts or hour expectations that aren't easily compatible with being in school), it's just that they know they can pay that little.
It's hard to support a business plan that has you paying much more for the same type of labor than other businesses around you, so as a result we've got all these service economy jobs that -- whether it is intended or not -- non-student adults are trying to survive on.
That's a consequence of poor lifestyle decisions. To exacerbate that by starting a family is an additional poor decision.
I don't think I agree that everyone working in a low wage job has made poor lifestyle choices.
There have been times in my life when I worked low wage jobs. I'm not a better or smarter or worthier or more thoughtful person now than I was then, despite now making enough to qualify as middle class. I don't think I'm a totally misleading example either.
This isn't to say that poor lifestyle decisions don't sometimes lead to having to work low wage jobs, I just don't think it is a universally safe assumption.
Even if everyone transformed into a model citizen overnight, we'd need people to stock the shelves at the grocery store, we'd need people to work in daycares, we'd need someone to make our fancy coffee drinks for us (using "need" in a relatively flexible sense). Is the theory of "low wage jobs are for people who make poor life style decisions" based on the assumption that the economy would be so improved in this theoretical America that the salaries for these jobs would increase and allow everyone to make more so there would be no low wage jobs?
9 -
French_Peasant wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »GlassAngyl wrote: »Totally for it. And they should add all junk food items as well. Leave baking items and they can make junk from scratch...
Then you'd complain they were spending the money on steaks and shrimp, I here it all the time. Food is expensive for the working poor ( not making a living wage and not poor enough for aid) and soda is cheap. Natural and healthier choices are twice as much as junk food, or haven't you noticed
This is thrown out all the time, but many times it's just not true. I eat a very 'healthy' diet and I fit it in, along with the rest of my family's groceries, on a pretty small grocery budget. Beans, whole grains, frozen veggies, frozen chicken etc are all pretty inexpensive.
1. Have you ever been on food stamps?
2. Have you ever been poor in your life?
3. Are you still poor?
Answer those and maybe we can have a deeper discussion
I actually grew up dumpster diving sometimes, alongside my parents and sisters, so if you'd like to have a deeper discussion about poverty I'd be more than willing to have one with you. You probably won't like what I have to say though
And I stand by what I said-I feed a family of 5 on a very tight grocery budget, and I eat a very 'healthy' diet (I follow the DASH protocol), and my family eats a fairly balanced diet as well. Nutrient dense foods are not automatically more expensive, and I've found that they're actually cheaper than convenience foods. This idea that that 'healthy' is more expensive is just not true many times.
eta: actually, no I'm not going to go there, because my past is a pretty dark place and I have no interest in revisiting it, especially on a public forum. Needless to say, yes I know what it's like to be truly poor, probably more than most posters in this thread. But that has absolutely nothing to do with my pp, which is that I feed myself and my family a well balanced, 'healthy' diet and do so on a very tight grocery budget, ($100 a week for 5 people/2 cats, and it also includes non-food items). Beans, whole grains, frozen veggies, bagged frozen chicken etc are usually inexpensive options and are staples in my house. The idea that 'healthy' automatically means more expensive is false.
We all have dark places that we don't want to visit and that's why it's absurd to try to think for someone else. You don't know another person's circumstance so they shouldn't be judged simply by what they buy in a grocery store. We all have to learn that, you of all people since you were a dumpster diver. When I go to buy groceries, I've noticed that food is expensive and getting higher by the day. Organic food is outrageously priced and that's supposed to be the healthiest. Fresh fruit is ridiculously high and fresh squeezed juice, no way. You can't buy a single piece of fruit for less than a dollar unless it's a banana. Now imagine feeding a family of 4. Yeah you can buy only grains and wheat, but what do you do with that? You need a balanced diet to eat healthy and trying to buy all four food groups for a growing family is expensive. BTW, chicken is not inexpensive, who eats beans and what is whole grains and how do you just eat them?
This is where nutrition counseling could be helpful. Organic or fresh foods are necessarily the healthiest. Frozen or canned vegetables provide plenty of nutrients. Dried beans and grains are very healthy. A ribeye at $15 per lb is not more nutrition than round steak at $4 per lb. Thinking that a balanced diet only comes from expensive foods shows a lack of nutrition knowledge.
I didn't say a balanced diet only comes from expensive foods, I said the healthier foods are more expensive. You can get family size bags of potato chips 2/$4 or bogo but 2lbs of grapes $7.98. I shop every week for groceries and I am not making this up for the sake of argument, I've been shopping for decades and have seen the rising prices of food. Parkay Butter spray is $3 for 8oz bottle but you can get Blue Bonnet margarine 4 stick pkg at 2/$1, and these are staples, so there is no nutritional counseling for me, maybe you need counseling for the real world.
You don't need to choose between grapes and potato chips. Things like beans, rice, frozen vegetables, onions, carrots, cabbage, oats, potatoes . . . . all very affordable (at least where I live). Yeah, anyone wanting a lot of fresh fruit is going to pay more, but that's not required for a healthy diet.
But people don't actually eat beans and whole grains like oats, according to pp.
It's regrettable, because beans + rice + lard + chicken gizzards, hearts, pieces and parts = magic.
Or at least one of the foundation dishes of Cajun and Creole cookery, admired around the world.
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/baked-louisiana-dirty-rice-beans
ETA: the first recipe is overly gentrified and not dirty enough. Here is one using a lard-based roux, gizzards and livers. I would also increase the amount of the "Trinity and the Pope" (vegetables and garlic) and add in black beans for a more complete dish nutrition-wise.
https://dricksramblingcafe.blogspot.com/2009/11/cajun-dirty-rice.html
Yeah, lots of low cost, filling foods are available, and they don't require fresh fruit out of season, expensive fresh veg out of season, and certainly not Parkay spray, which I would never buy or call especially healthy (vs. generic store brand butter without the mark up for pretend health and being able to spray it or just cooking with the fat from a slightly lower cost cut of meat). I am so much in favor of these dishes being cooked, preserved, taught, celebrated.
One of the problems with these kinds of dishes is, of course, that they are more time consuming, and that's a real issue, and of course knowledge -- which community classes can help with if people have the time to take them.
Also, if you don't know what you are doing and have to shift there's often a higher cost to changing -- someone relying on convenience foods who loses a job or decides to change her eating won't necessarily know how to switch to relying on beans and grains and greens and the like, or even potatoes and chicken thighs and frozen veg or in season fresh veg (although the veg are easier).
There was a good article I linked a while back about one issue for poorer families with eating veg is fear of waste. This isn't that tough a problem to figure out, but the barriers in the short term can be high.
I have thought through this a lot, from that same perspective, and on other threads. Remember that thread where the college student just had $10 or something ridiculous for 3 days? Like many people it caught my fancy, and I priced things out at Dollar General and determined that boxes of Zatarain's would form the staple of my diet, hacked with real vegetables, beans and roux. I remember agonizing over spending the last dollar on Frank's hot sauce vs. a bell pepper.
For the recipe above, the only skills needed are the ability to chop vegetables, mince meat, boil water, and brown fat and flour without burning it. The only tools needed are a knife, cutting board, a pan, and a spoon. But people just don't know this, because the most vulnerable have been forced (or lured) into utter dependency
This is exactly another problem created by government-encouraged dependency on convenience foods: broken, destroyed food traditions. As an example, back in the day, every poor and working household would have been frugally saving their bacon grease in a tin can under the sink, and they would have know how to use it, passed down from their parents.
That has been lost, and in fact much of the general population would regard that greasy tin can as something trashy, not something to be respected. (As a counterpoint, Crisco was originally marketed as "pure food from a clean factory" to shame home-produced butter and lard...today, and as reflected in the ingredients for the recipe that wasn't dirty enough for me, it's olive oil that is the virtuous, pure, expensive fat.)
I am so fascinated by the discussion of shame on this thread. There is so much shame attached to frugality--to the point that many on this thread are implying that pushing the poor closer to an elitist Gwennyth Paltrow-type diet of "clean" whole foods is shaming them. Is this topsy-turvy world?
And by way of illustration, I will say that I understand that shame. I grew up quite poor and very ashamed that my mom and grandmother hand-sewed and patched my clothes, cooked every meal from scratch, ate crap like "rhubarb," and that when we were in particularly dire straits, our neighboring farmer gave us (every week for a couple of years) gallons of fresh, raw, grass-fed, locally produced, cream-line milk from his Guernsey. Oh, how I burned with shame and disgust.
Now that I look back at that, I am filled with shame for my attitude, or possibly the outside forces that caused me to have that attitude. And my heart just breaks for the kid who thinks it is more desirable to have the 12-pack cans of Pepsi and a bag of Cheetos (because it is shameful not to be able to buy those things) instead of the cheap-@ss scratch-and-dent apples and bulk generic oatmeal and a mom who turns them into an apple crisp, just for him. When did frugality stop being a virtue in our society?
Nowadays I shame my own kids by taking them to the scariest grocery in town so I can get legit house-made chorizo for Portuguese kale soup, and a big pile of nasty old chicken feet to make stock.
I'm having trouble grasping the shame aspect on this as well.
My days in poverty on my own consisted of game meat (disabled vet, so hunting/fishing licence is free), beans, rice, and whatever else I could scrounge up to put in a crock pot and add to my stew du jour.
Have to laugh at this one - despised rhubarb and Swiss chard growing up and now these are considered delicacy items by my grocers and I proudly grow these in our garden now.
Funny that these habits have not changed much. Frugality is something that sticks with you.3 -
janejellyroll wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Realizing that this may derail the thread, but I think this is a great conversation.
As part of any temporary benefits application process what would be your opinion on mandatory education of the following (as applicable):
Nutrition/Weight Management
Cooking
Budgeting
Home Economics
Thinking back to my military service, where if one applied for financial assistance they had to first attend a basic finance course and have their budgets reviewed by a counselor. This was a very effective program with an extremely low rate of repeat applications.
Where does one find time for mandatory classes? Usually someone on assistance is already working a huge amount of hours a week and still can't get by. Then the time it takes to put food on the table, spend time with family, etc etc.Alatariel75 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »Bring back the poor house! The state should have full control over those pesky people daring to live in poverty and need state assistance.
I really despair of our attitude to those at the bottom of the pile.
I have a large number of First Cousins. One of them, who was one year older than I, was added to the welfare rolls at age 12 when her father died and she received U.S. Social Security benefits for being an orphan. Those expired when she turned 18, but college was free to her because of her orphan status. Preparing for that, she started producing children at age 16 so that she had government benefits for unmarried mothers and their children to replace her government benefits to orphans when she turned 18. At 19 she agreed to marry a man who was quite unable to produce an earned income and she kept receiving generous government assistance for her needy children, her low-income household, and oh-by-the-way her medical care was free, too. It was to her benefit that her older brother was a prosperous schmuck who provided her rent and grocery money unknown to the government. That's the cousin. I have a sister whose decidedly different course of life has been showered with great wealth. One day my sister was speaking with my cousin and asked her directly, "Why don't you get a job?" My cousin replied, "I make more money on welfare than I could at minimum wage."
It is that one person's story, my cousin, that more influences all my thoughts on government assistance to the needy than any other. She died of cancer 14 years ago because the free government medical care was a bit less than timely at delivering care.
We, as a society, don't need to be cruel as you parody, but we don't need to be schmucks, either.
I know this wasn't your point, but it does make me wonder at a society that pays so little in minimum wage that people in some circumstances are better off receiving aid instead of working . . . .
There was a documentary a couple of years ago, and I can't remember what it's called, but one of the people who was in it was a young single mother. Over the course of the documentary, all she wanted to do was find a job and get off of 'welfare'. She did end up finding a full time job, but realized that it put her over the cap pf being able to qualify for assistance but below what she actually needed to feed her kids. Obviously it's slanted (because it's a documentary), but I wonder how many people we have in the US in similar situations?
This causes me to ask the next level of "Why?"
Wage is based on market forces, primarily skill set, so why do we have a population lacking the skills to earn a minimum livable wage?
But the problem here is - those minimum, unlivable wage jobs will continue to exist, and need to be filled, even if the people currently in them manage to skill themselves out of them. So there will always be that group of people in those jobs (some with the skills to not be in them but without the available positions) who are stuck in this cycle.
Most of these jobs are temporary and transitional and intended for kids young adults entering the workplace. The intent is to gain additional skills, training and experience to work towards positions with greater responsibility and increased pay.
BLS stats:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2016/home.htm
Seems very similar to dieting in a yo-yo cycle. Change will not come without changing behavior.
And? They aren't anymore and people have to do them.
There are ~330 M people living in the US, with ~255 M in the workforce. Only 700 k are at the minimum wage per BLS report cited.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
These jobs certainly are temporary and transitional. The root cause is lack of job skills. Without addressing the root cause you are only addressing a symptom and dooming a population to a life of poverty.
And how do you suggest the root is addressed?
It has to be multifaceted - supplementation via SNAP, WIC is a correction, but not a corrective action.
For skills the entire college loan system needs to be overhauled and we need to stop subsidizing training to fields with no hope of employment. There are tremendous opportunities in the trades which are all on the verge of collapsing over the next two decades due to the baby boomer retirement. Per BLS we are going to lose ~65% of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, welders, etc. in the next decade. Public education either needs to re-incorporate tradeskills into the curriculum, or a private option needs to be created and incorporated into state curriculum. Forward thinking states are already doing this.
Government and industry need to look to long term solutions as opposed to the horrible shortsightedness we're grown accustomed to. It is in the best interests of everyone.
That all sounds good in a perfect world.
Personal responsibility > government intervention
Every time.
How does personal responsibility come into play for this?
Are we talking about people who lost their jobs and need temporary help or are we talking about chronic unemployment or underemployment?
Is this just a pull themselves up by their bootstraps and just make it happen?
Primarily we're talking about chronic unemployment/underemployment and so called adults complaining that they can't provide for a family on a job/wage that's intended for a single/dependent HS/College student to subsist on.
I don't think businesses intend certain jobs for students only (many of them have shifts or hour expectations that aren't easily compatible with being in school), it's just that they know they can pay that little.
It's hard to support a business plan that has you paying much more for the same type of labor than other businesses around you, so as a result we've got all these service economy jobs that -- whether it is intended or not -- non-student adults are trying to survive on.
That's a consequence of poor lifestyle decisions. To exacerbate that by starting a family is an additional poor decision.
I don't think I agree that everyone working in a low wage job has made poor lifestyle choices.
There have been times in my life when I worked low wage jobs. I'm not a better or smarter or worthier or more thoughtful person now than I was then, despite now making enough to qualify as middle class. I don't think I'm a totally misleading example either.
This isn't to say that poor lifestyle decisions don't sometimes lead to having to work low wage jobs, I just don't think it is a universally safe assumption.
Even if everyone transformed into a model citizen overnight, we'd need people to stock the shelves at the grocery store, we'd need people to work in daycares, we'd need someone to make our fancy coffee drinks for us (using "need" in a relatively flexible sense). Is the theory of "low wage jobs are for people who make poor life style decisions" based on the assumption that the economy would be so improved in this theoretical America that the salaries for these jobs would increase and allow everyone to make more so there would be no low wage jobs?
At which point, the entry level jobs would return to being filled by entry level workers. Instead of being falsely perceived as a career path.9 -
French_Peasant wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »LJGettinSexy wrote: »GlassAngyl wrote: »Totally for it. And they should add all junk food items as well. Leave baking items and they can make junk from scratch...
Then you'd complain they were spending the money on steaks and shrimp, I here it all the time. Food is expensive for the working poor ( not making a living wage and not poor enough for aid) and soda is cheap. Natural and healthier choices are twice as much as junk food, or haven't you noticed
This is thrown out all the time, but many times it's just not true. I eat a very 'healthy' diet and I fit it in, along with the rest of my family's groceries, on a pretty small grocery budget. Beans, whole grains, frozen veggies, frozen chicken etc are all pretty inexpensive.
1. Have you ever been on food stamps?
2. Have you ever been poor in your life?
3. Are you still poor?
Answer those and maybe we can have a deeper discussion
I actually grew up dumpster diving sometimes, alongside my parents and sisters, so if you'd like to have a deeper discussion about poverty I'd be more than willing to have one with you. You probably won't like what I have to say though
And I stand by what I said-I feed a family of 5 on a very tight grocery budget, and I eat a very 'healthy' diet (I follow the DASH protocol), and my family eats a fairly balanced diet as well. Nutrient dense foods are not automatically more expensive, and I've found that they're actually cheaper than convenience foods. This idea that that 'healthy' is more expensive is just not true many times.
eta: actually, no I'm not going to go there, because my past is a pretty dark place and I have no interest in revisiting it, especially on a public forum. Needless to say, yes I know what it's like to be truly poor, probably more than most posters in this thread. But that has absolutely nothing to do with my pp, which is that I feed myself and my family a well balanced, 'healthy' diet and do so on a very tight grocery budget, ($100 a week for 5 people/2 cats, and it also includes non-food items). Beans, whole grains, frozen veggies, bagged frozen chicken etc are usually inexpensive options and are staples in my house. The idea that 'healthy' automatically means more expensive is false.
We all have dark places that we don't want to visit and that's why it's absurd to try to think for someone else. You don't know another person's circumstance so they shouldn't be judged simply by what they buy in a grocery store. We all have to learn that, you of all people since you were a dumpster diver. When I go to buy groceries, I've noticed that food is expensive and getting higher by the day. Organic food is outrageously priced and that's supposed to be the healthiest. Fresh fruit is ridiculously high and fresh squeezed juice, no way. You can't buy a single piece of fruit for less than a dollar unless it's a banana. Now imagine feeding a family of 4. Yeah you can buy only grains and wheat, but what do you do with that? You need a balanced diet to eat healthy and trying to buy all four food groups for a growing family is expensive. BTW, chicken is not inexpensive, who eats beans and what is whole grains and how do you just eat them?
This is where nutrition counseling could be helpful. Organic or fresh foods are necessarily the healthiest. Frozen or canned vegetables provide plenty of nutrients. Dried beans and grains are very healthy. A ribeye at $15 per lb is not more nutrition than round steak at $4 per lb. Thinking that a balanced diet only comes from expensive foods shows a lack of nutrition knowledge.
I didn't say a balanced diet only comes from expensive foods, I said the healthier foods are more expensive. You can get family size bags of potato chips 2/$4 or bogo but 2lbs of grapes $7.98. I shop every week for groceries and I am not making this up for the sake of argument, I've been shopping for decades and have seen the rising prices of food. Parkay Butter spray is $3 for 8oz bottle but you can get Blue Bonnet margarine 4 stick pkg at 2/$1, and these are staples, so there is no nutritional counseling for me, maybe you need counseling for the real world.
You don't need to choose between grapes and potato chips. Things like beans, rice, frozen vegetables, onions, carrots, cabbage, oats, potatoes . . . . all very affordable (at least where I live). Yeah, anyone wanting a lot of fresh fruit is going to pay more, but that's not required for a healthy diet.
But people don't actually eat beans and whole grains like oats, according to pp.
It's regrettable, because beans + rice + lard + chicken gizzards, hearts, pieces and parts = magic.
Or at least one of the foundation dishes of Cajun and Creole cookery, admired around the world.
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/baked-louisiana-dirty-rice-beans
ETA: the first recipe is overly gentrified and not dirty enough. Here is one using a lard-based roux, gizzards and livers. I would also increase the amount of the "Trinity and the Pope" (vegetables and garlic) and add in black beans for a more complete dish nutrition-wise.
https://dricksramblingcafe.blogspot.com/2009/11/cajun-dirty-rice.html
Yeah, lots of low cost, filling foods are available, and they don't require fresh fruit out of season, expensive fresh veg out of season, and certainly not Parkay spray, which I would never buy or call especially healthy (vs. generic store brand butter without the mark up for pretend health and being able to spray it or just cooking with the fat from a slightly lower cost cut of meat). I am so much in favor of these dishes being cooked, preserved, taught, celebrated.
One of the problems with these kinds of dishes is, of course, that they are more time consuming, and that's a real issue, and of course knowledge -- which community classes can help with if people have the time to take them.
Also, if you don't know what you are doing and have to shift there's often a higher cost to changing -- someone relying on convenience foods who loses a job or decides to change her eating won't necessarily know how to switch to relying on beans and grains and greens and the like, or even potatoes and chicken thighs and frozen veg or in season fresh veg (although the veg are easier).
There was a good article I linked a while back about one issue for poorer families with eating veg is fear of waste. This isn't that tough a problem to figure out, but the barriers in the short term can be high.
I have thought through this a lot, from that same perspective, and on other threads. Remember that thread where the college student just had $10 or something ridiculous for 3 days? Like many people it caught my fancy, and I priced things out at Dollar General and determined that boxes of Zatarain's would form the staple of my diet, hacked with real vegetables, beans and roux. I remember agonizing over spending the last dollar on Frank's hot sauce vs. a bell pepper.
For the recipe above, the only skills needed are the ability to chop vegetables, mince meat, boil water, and brown fat and flour without burning it. The only tools needed are a knife, cutting board, a pan, and a spoon. But people just don't know this, because the most vulnerable have been forced (or lured) into utter dependency
This is exactly another problem created by government-encouraged dependency on convenience foods: broken, destroyed food traditions. As an example, back in the day, every poor and working household would have been frugally saving their bacon grease in a tin can under the sink, and they would have know how to use it, passed down from their parents.
That has been lost, and in fact much of the general population would regard that greasy tin can as something trashy, not something to be respected. (As a counterpoint, Crisco was originally marketed as "pure food from a clean factory" to shame home-produced butter and lard...today, and as reflected in the ingredients for the recipe that wasn't dirty enough for me, it's olive oil that is the virtuous, pure, expensive fat.)
I am so fascinated by the discussion of shame on this thread. There is so much shame attached to frugality--to the point that many on this thread are implying that pushing the poor closer to an elitist Gwennyth Paltrow-type diet of "clean" whole foods is shaming them. Is this topsy-turvy world?
And by way of illustration, I will say that I understand that shame. I grew up quite poor and very ashamed that my mom and grandmother hand-sewed and patched my clothes, cooked every meal from scratch, ate crap like "rhubarb," and that when we were in particularly dire straits, our neighboring farmer gave us (every week for a couple of years) gallons of fresh, raw, grass-fed, locally produced, cream-line milk from his Guernsey. Oh, how I burned with shame and disgust.
Now that I look back at that, I am filled with shame for my attitude, or possibly the outside forces that caused me to have that attitude. And my heart just breaks for the kid who thinks it is more desirable to have the 12-pack cans of Pepsi and a bag of Cheetos (because it is shameful not to be able to buy those things) instead of the cheap-@ss scratch-and-dent apples and bulk generic oatmeal and a mom who turns them into an apple crisp, just for him. When did frugality stop being a virtue in our society?
Nowadays I shame my own kids by taking them to the scariest grocery in town so I can get legit house-made chorizo for Portuguese kale soup, and a big pile of nasty old chicken feet to make stock.
The only shame I remember was being shamed by the kids who were in households receiving foodstamps.
How was I shamed. well, I wore thrift store corduroys and jeans and Kmart/Payless sneakers till the toes fell off.
They were wearing designer gear and jordans. How they afforded it? dunno.. because even in 1986, that wasn't inexpensive.7 -
stanmann571 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Realizing that this may derail the thread, but I think this is a great conversation.
As part of any temporary benefits application process what would be your opinion on mandatory education of the following (as applicable):
Nutrition/Weight Management
Cooking
Budgeting
Home Economics
Thinking back to my military service, where if one applied for financial assistance they had to first attend a basic finance course and have their budgets reviewed by a counselor. This was a very effective program with an extremely low rate of repeat applications.
Where does one find time for mandatory classes? Usually someone on assistance is already working a huge amount of hours a week and still can't get by. Then the time it takes to put food on the table, spend time with family, etc etc.Alatariel75 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »Bring back the poor house! The state should have full control over those pesky people daring to live in poverty and need state assistance.
I really despair of our attitude to those at the bottom of the pile.
I have a large number of First Cousins. One of them, who was one year older than I, was added to the welfare rolls at age 12 when her father died and she received U.S. Social Security benefits for being an orphan. Those expired when she turned 18, but college was free to her because of her orphan status. Preparing for that, she started producing children at age 16 so that she had government benefits for unmarried mothers and their children to replace her government benefits to orphans when she turned 18. At 19 she agreed to marry a man who was quite unable to produce an earned income and she kept receiving generous government assistance for her needy children, her low-income household, and oh-by-the-way her medical care was free, too. It was to her benefit that her older brother was a prosperous schmuck who provided her rent and grocery money unknown to the government. That's the cousin. I have a sister whose decidedly different course of life has been showered with great wealth. One day my sister was speaking with my cousin and asked her directly, "Why don't you get a job?" My cousin replied, "I make more money on welfare than I could at minimum wage."
It is that one person's story, my cousin, that more influences all my thoughts on government assistance to the needy than any other. She died of cancer 14 years ago because the free government medical care was a bit less than timely at delivering care.
We, as a society, don't need to be cruel as you parody, but we don't need to be schmucks, either.
I know this wasn't your point, but it does make me wonder at a society that pays so little in minimum wage that people in some circumstances are better off receiving aid instead of working . . . .
There was a documentary a couple of years ago, and I can't remember what it's called, but one of the people who was in it was a young single mother. Over the course of the documentary, all she wanted to do was find a job and get off of 'welfare'. She did end up finding a full time job, but realized that it put her over the cap pf being able to qualify for assistance but below what she actually needed to feed her kids. Obviously it's slanted (because it's a documentary), but I wonder how many people we have in the US in similar situations?
This causes me to ask the next level of "Why?"
Wage is based on market forces, primarily skill set, so why do we have a population lacking the skills to earn a minimum livable wage?
But the problem here is - those minimum, unlivable wage jobs will continue to exist, and need to be filled, even if the people currently in them manage to skill themselves out of them. So there will always be that group of people in those jobs (some with the skills to not be in them but without the available positions) who are stuck in this cycle.
Most of these jobs are temporary and transitional and intended for kids young adults entering the workplace. The intent is to gain additional skills, training and experience to work towards positions with greater responsibility and increased pay.
BLS stats:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2016/home.htm
Seems very similar to dieting in a yo-yo cycle. Change will not come without changing behavior.
And? They aren't anymore and people have to do them.
There are ~330 M people living in the US, with ~255 M in the workforce. Only 700 k are at the minimum wage per BLS report cited.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
These jobs certainly are temporary and transitional. The root cause is lack of job skills. Without addressing the root cause you are only addressing a symptom and dooming a population to a life of poverty.
And how do you suggest the root is addressed?
It has to be multifaceted - supplementation via SNAP, WIC is a correction, but not a corrective action.
For skills the entire college loan system needs to be overhauled and we need to stop subsidizing training to fields with no hope of employment. There are tremendous opportunities in the trades which are all on the verge of collapsing over the next two decades due to the baby boomer retirement. Per BLS we are going to lose ~65% of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, welders, etc. in the next decade. Public education either needs to re-incorporate tradeskills into the curriculum, or a private option needs to be created and incorporated into state curriculum. Forward thinking states are already doing this.
Government and industry need to look to long term solutions as opposed to the horrible shortsightedness we're grown accustomed to. It is in the best interests of everyone.
That all sounds good in a perfect world.
Personal responsibility > government intervention
Every time.
How does personal responsibility come into play for this?
Are we talking about people who lost their jobs and need temporary help or are we talking about chronic unemployment or underemployment?
Is this just a pull themselves up by their bootstraps and just make it happen?
Primarily we're talking about chronic unemployment/underemployment and so called adults complaining that they can't provide for a family on a job/wage that's intended for a single/dependent HS/College student to subsist on.
I don't think businesses intend certain jobs for students only (many of them have shifts or hour expectations that aren't easily compatible with being in school), it's just that they know they can pay that little.
It's hard to support a business plan that has you paying much more for the same type of labor than other businesses around you, so as a result we've got all these service economy jobs that -- whether it is intended or not -- non-student adults are trying to survive on.
That's a consequence of poor lifestyle decisions. To exacerbate that by starting a family is an additional poor decision.
I don't think I agree that everyone working in a low wage job has made poor lifestyle choices.
There have been times in my life when I worked low wage jobs. I'm not a better or smarter or worthier or more thoughtful person now than I was then, despite now making enough to qualify as middle class. I don't think I'm a totally misleading example either.
This isn't to say that poor lifestyle decisions don't sometimes lead to having to work low wage jobs, I just don't think it is a universally safe assumption.
Even if everyone transformed into a model citizen overnight, we'd need people to stock the shelves at the grocery store, we'd need people to work in daycares, we'd need someone to make our fancy coffee drinks for us (using "need" in a relatively flexible sense). Is the theory of "low wage jobs are for people who make poor life style decisions" based on the assumption that the economy would be so improved in this theoretical America that the salaries for these jobs would increase and allow everyone to make more so there would be no low wage jobs?
At which point, the entry level jobs would return to being filled by entry level workers. Instead of being falsely perceived as a career path.
I don't think many fast food workers or retail clerks necessarily think of their job as a "career path," they're just such a large part of our economy right now. People are taking them because they are the jobs available.
And even entry level workers need things like food and housing.
I'm not advocating for everyone to make the same thing or saying that retail clerks should make $100,000 a year, I'm just saying that having such a large portion of the jobs in our economy set up like this makes it really hard for people to get by. Even assuming nobody will have kids while working these jobs, providing for just yourself can be a struggle.7 -
So I've typed and retyped this reply and it comes down to this for me:
This thread has been weird for me because I don't think anyone's life will be ruined or pride will be wounded if they can't buy soda with their SNAP card. But I think there is a danger to us accepting the moralizing of food choices for people using government benefits. Soda seems like an easy enough decision, but what exactly would it accomplish? This is just a knee-jerk reaction to the current villain-du-jour. How would the keto people feel if the govt decided meat was too expensive and a "luxury" so it was off the list? And why do we always have to fill the loopholes we suspect the lower class is taking advantage of while ignoring the giant gaping loopholes being openly used by those on the other end of the spectrum?
I think it just sticks in my craw when politicians garner favor by convincing the middle class that all our budget woes would be alleviated if it wasn't for those fat, lazy, cheating poor people, buying all that soda with my tax dollars. Of course there are cheaters in the system, but the bulk of our wasted tax dollars are going to corporations and individuals living in huge houses, making payments to politicians to keep their tax breaks and buyouts coming, while spreading rumors about all those ill-behaved welfare recipients.
And I'm sorry, I know this was now way upthread, but I don't believe for a second there are people all over this country buying cases of soda with SNAP money and reselling it on the black market to fund their extravagant or sinful lifestyle while there children subsist on nothing but free school breakfast. Pics or it didn't happen.22 -
Chef_Barbell wrote: »suzannesimmons3 wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »tcunbeliever wrote: »There's zero nutritional value in soda, so sure, as a taxpayer I am totally not into subsiding either the soda industry or the energy drink industry, they should both be banned.
What else is next for the poor people?
The government would probably like it if they got jobs (better jobs) and stopped needing welfare. But as it's their dime it's their rules so they can (and will) put as many caveats on it as they want.
Do you realize that a lot of people work and still need assistance? But yes in a perfect world everyone would have jobs and there would be no poor people.
Some are handicapped too, not lazy, but unable to work. We, as a society, are quick to judge that anyone on assistance chooses to be on assistance as a way of getting out of work. It is not always the case. Is it ever...YES, but you can't lump everyone in the same category.6 -
Bigger fish to fry in MD these cats come in to 7/11 and fast food places and spend our tax money on that crap. Start with making them buy groceries from a food store for starters then we can look at fine tuning what they spend our tax dollars on. They don't have enough money since they buy inflated fast food instead of buying real food and packing it.4
-
So I've typed and retyped this reply and it comes down to this for me:
This thread has been weird for me because I don't think anyone's life will be ruined or pride will be wounded if they can't buy soda with their SNAP card. But I think there is a danger to us accepting the moralizing of food choices for people using government benefits. Soda seems like an easy enough decision, but what exactly would it accomplish? This is just a knee-jerk reaction to the current villain-du-jour. How would the keto people feel if the govt decided meat was too expensive and a "luxury" so it was off the list? And why do we always have to fill the loopholes we suspect the lower class is taking advantage of while ignoring the giant gaping loopholes being openly used by those on the other end of the spectrum?
I think it just sticks in my craw when politicians garner favor by convincing the middle class that all our budget woes would be alleviated if it wasn't for those fat, lazy, cheating poor people, buying all that soda with my tax dollars. Of course there are cheaters in the system, but the bulk of our wasted tax dollars are going to corporations and individuals living in huge houses, making payments to politicians to keep their tax breaks and buyouts coming, while spreading rumors about all those ill-behaved welfare recipients.
And I'm sorry, I know this was now way upthread, but I don't believe for a second there are people all over this country buying cases of soda with SNAP money and reselling it on the black market to fund their extravagant or sinful lifestyle while there children subsist on nothing but free school breakfast. Pics or it didn't happen.
Preach.
Pretty much identical situation in the UK.8 -
So I've typed and retyped this reply and it comes down to this for me:
This thread has been weird for me because I don't think anyone's life will be ruined or pride will be wounded if they can't buy soda with their SNAP card. But I think there is a danger to us accepting the moralizing of food choices for people using government benefits. Soda seems like an easy enough decision, but what exactly would it accomplish? This is just a knee-jerk reaction to the current villain-du-jour. How would the keto people feel if the govt decided meat was too expensive and a "luxury" so it was off the list? And why do we always have to fill the loopholes we suspect the lower class is taking advantage of while ignoring the giant gaping loopholes being openly used by those on the other end of the spectrum?
I think it just sticks in my craw when politicians garner favor by convincing the middle class that all our budget woes would be alleviated if it wasn't for those fat, lazy, cheating poor people, buying all that soda with my tax dollars. Of course there are cheaters in the system, but the bulk of our wasted tax dollars are going to corporations and individuals living in huge houses, making payments to politicians to keep their tax breaks and buyouts coming, while spreading rumors about all those ill-behaved welfare recipients.
And I'm sorry, I know this was now way upthread, but I don't believe for a second there are people all over this country buying cases of soda with SNAP money and reselling it on the black market to fund their extravagant or sinful lifestyle while there children subsist on nothing but free school breakfast. Pics or it didn't happen.
You've summed up a lot of my thoughts on this.
5 -
I am just not sure of the benefit of banning soda to this particular population. If the government wishes to regulate- I am thinking there should be tangible benefit- much like the regulations around asbestos, lead, etc... If we are looking to add more regulation why not go after cigarette smoking that has a proven direct correlation to adverse health outcomes to not only those who partake in the habit, but also to those in close proximity who choose not to partake. Not everyone who drinks soda is overweight or unhealthy. It is a product that many may just be purchasing and consuming in moderation. And while even in moderation there might be better choices, there are many that may also be as bad or worse.
I am all for promoting healthy dietary habits- and particularly to families with small children. Education should be readily available to all to make the most informed appropriate choices for ourselves and our families.
And if it is just a question that because they are receiving public assistance so we can control these things, then lets go full on board regulating the most harmful and work our way down. I am not advocating this mind you... but lets at least have the rules make some sense.1 -
stanmann571 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »Realizing that this may derail the thread, but I think this is a great conversation.
As part of any temporary benefits application process what would be your opinion on mandatory education of the following (as applicable):
Nutrition/Weight Management
Cooking
Budgeting
Home Economics
Thinking back to my military service, where if one applied for financial assistance they had to first attend a basic finance course and have their budgets reviewed by a counselor. This was a very effective program with an extremely low rate of repeat applications.
Where does one find time for mandatory classes? Usually someone on assistance is already working a huge amount of hours a week and still can't get by. Then the time it takes to put food on the table, spend time with family, etc etc.Alatariel75 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »Bring back the poor house! The state should have full control over those pesky people daring to live in poverty and need state assistance.
I really despair of our attitude to those at the bottom of the pile.
I have a large number of First Cousins. One of them, who was one year older than I, was added to the welfare rolls at age 12 when her father died and she received U.S. Social Security benefits for being an orphan. Those expired when she turned 18, but college was free to her because of her orphan status. Preparing for that, she started producing children at age 16 so that she had government benefits for unmarried mothers and their children to replace her government benefits to orphans when she turned 18. At 19 she agreed to marry a man who was quite unable to produce an earned income and she kept receiving generous government assistance for her needy children, her low-income household, and oh-by-the-way her medical care was free, too. It was to her benefit that her older brother was a prosperous schmuck who provided her rent and grocery money unknown to the government. That's the cousin. I have a sister whose decidedly different course of life has been showered with great wealth. One day my sister was speaking with my cousin and asked her directly, "Why don't you get a job?" My cousin replied, "I make more money on welfare than I could at minimum wage."
It is that one person's story, my cousin, that more influences all my thoughts on government assistance to the needy than any other. She died of cancer 14 years ago because the free government medical care was a bit less than timely at delivering care.
We, as a society, don't need to be cruel as you parody, but we don't need to be schmucks, either.
I know this wasn't your point, but it does make me wonder at a society that pays so little in minimum wage that people in some circumstances are better off receiving aid instead of working . . . .
There was a documentary a couple of years ago, and I can't remember what it's called, but one of the people who was in it was a young single mother. Over the course of the documentary, all she wanted to do was find a job and get off of 'welfare'. She did end up finding a full time job, but realized that it put her over the cap pf being able to qualify for assistance but below what she actually needed to feed her kids. Obviously it's slanted (because it's a documentary), but I wonder how many people we have in the US in similar situations?
This causes me to ask the next level of "Why?"
Wage is based on market forces, primarily skill set, so why do we have a population lacking the skills to earn a minimum livable wage?
But the problem here is - those minimum, unlivable wage jobs will continue to exist, and need to be filled, even if the people currently in them manage to skill themselves out of them. So there will always be that group of people in those jobs (some with the skills to not be in them but without the available positions) who are stuck in this cycle.
Most of these jobs are temporary and transitional and intended for kids young adults entering the workplace. The intent is to gain additional skills, training and experience to work towards positions with greater responsibility and increased pay.
BLS stats:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2016/home.htm
Seems very similar to dieting in a yo-yo cycle. Change will not come without changing behavior.
And? They aren't anymore and people have to do them.
There are ~330 M people living in the US, with ~255 M in the workforce. Only 700 k are at the minimum wage per BLS report cited.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
These jobs certainly are temporary and transitional. The root cause is lack of job skills. Without addressing the root cause you are only addressing a symptom and dooming a population to a life of poverty.
And how do you suggest the root is addressed?
It has to be multifaceted - supplementation via SNAP, WIC is a correction, but not a corrective action.
For skills the entire college loan system needs to be overhauled and we need to stop subsidizing training to fields with no hope of employment. There are tremendous opportunities in the trades which are all on the verge of collapsing over the next two decades due to the baby boomer retirement. Per BLS we are going to lose ~65% of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, welders, etc. in the next decade. Public education either needs to re-incorporate tradeskills into the curriculum, or a private option needs to be created and incorporated into state curriculum. Forward thinking states are already doing this.
Government and industry need to look to long term solutions as opposed to the horrible shortsightedness we're grown accustomed to. It is in the best interests of everyone.
That all sounds good in a perfect world.
Personal responsibility > government intervention
Every time.
How does personal responsibility come into play for this?
Are we talking about people who lost their jobs and need temporary help or are we talking about chronic unemployment or underemployment?
Is this just a pull themselves up by their bootstraps and just make it happen?
Primarily we're talking about chronic unemployment/underemployment and so called adults complaining that they can't provide for a family on a job/wage that's intended for a single/dependent HS/College student to subsist on.
I don't think businesses intend certain jobs for students only (many of them have shifts or hour expectations that aren't easily compatible with being in school), it's just that they know they can pay that little.
It's hard to support a business plan that has you paying much more for the same type of labor than other businesses around you, so as a result we've got all these service economy jobs that -- whether it is intended or not -- non-student adults are trying to survive on.
I agree. The job that always gets pulled into this discussion is fast-food workers, how it's always been traditionally a job for kids. Fast food restaurants are open during the week, how are teenagers supposed to be serving me my lunch during the school day? The business says they can't afford to pay more than minimum wage, society says those are meant to be minimum wage jobs that don't support someone full time, so who exactly are all those day jobs for? And why are all these huge service industries built on a business model that depends on teenage labor to stay afloat?
Retirees, as one example. supplementing a pension. College students, other people in transition.
That was my experience 20 years ago.
The other part of my experience 20 years ago, was being on the receiving end of a great deal of resentment. I was just out of HS, and waiting for my ship date to enlist. As a consequence I had no restriction on what shifts I could accept. There were a couple of folks in their mid 20s who had limited motivation and were angry when shifts that they had assumed to be theirs by right were given to me. They were spiteful when I was offered a promotion, and baffled when I turned it down... it would have been more money than I would earn for nearly 10 years thereafter(Salary position at the equivalent of $20 hourly)... but I had gotten what I needed... and had no desire to spend the rest of my life smelling like beef lard.... it gets in your pores, it gets in your hair, and it doesn't wash out. 2 days off and 3 showers later and your sweat still smells like hamburger and fry grease.
Considering the majority of people at retirement age no longer have access to a pension, I'd take retirees off the list. Minimum wage plus Social Security is not enough to get by in many areas.
I get it, there are many people out there who have made their own crappy beds. I honestly don't disagree in theory with your points. But there are so many aspects of the way people are educated and the direction they are steered in, that make them way more likely to find themselves in a deep hole before they figure out what they should have been doing all along (if they ever do). I just think it's short sighted to try to fix the problem by bearing down on the people at the bottom of the foodchain, rather than wading into the deep water and trying to fix the problem at the start. Because everyone assumes - that would never be me, that would never be my kid - until they find themselves there. I suppose that makes me a bleeding heart, but at least I come by it honestly
7 -
Bigger fish to fry in MD these cats come in to 7/11 and fast food places and spend our tax money on that crap. Start with making them buy groceries from a food store for starters then we can look at fine tuning what they spend our tax dollars on. They don't have enough money since they buy inflated fast food instead of buying real food and packing it.
Assuming this website is accurate, you cannot purchase fast food in Maryland with an EBT card.
http://www.ebtcardbalance.com/maryland-ebt-food-list-ef183 -
So I've typed and retyped this reply and it comes down to this for me:
This thread has been weird for me because I don't think anyone's life will be ruined or pride will be wounded if they can't buy soda with their SNAP card. But I think there is a danger to us accepting the moralizing of food choices for people using government benefits. Soda seems like an easy enough decision, but what exactly would it accomplish? This is just a knee-jerk reaction to the current villain-du-jour. How would the keto people feel if the govt decided meat was too expensive and a "luxury" so it was off the list? And why do we always have to fill the loopholes we suspect the lower class is taking advantage of while ignoring the giant gaping loopholes being openly used by those on the other end of the spectrum?
I think it just sticks in my craw when politicians garner favor by convincing the middle class that all our budget woes would be alleviated if it wasn't for those fat, lazy, cheating poor people, buying all that soda with my tax dollars. Of course there are cheaters in the system, but the bulk of our wasted tax dollars are going to corporations and individuals living in huge houses, making payments to politicians to keep their tax breaks and buyouts coming, while spreading rumors about all those ill-behaved welfare recipients.
And I'm sorry, I know this was now way upthread, but I don't believe for a second there are people all over this country buying cases of soda with SNAP money and reselling it on the black market to fund their extravagant or sinful lifestyle while there children subsist on nothing but free school breakfast. Pics or it didn't happen.
I don't disagree with the rest of your post, but sadly, have to tell you that people suck far, far more than you can possibly imagine. My late FIL was a deputy prosecutor specializing in financial crimes, and prosecuted state-wide fraud rings involving SNAP and other assistance. Most notable was a woman who was fostering many children, buying copious and expensive cuts of meats with the assistance intended for them, selling them to a local restaurant, and feeding the kids mac and cheese.
Here is an article that provides a good overview of 2016 shenanigans in PA and the many, many creative ways you can commit fraud, including exchanging your food stamps for heroin, always a fun time.
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/06/14/franklin-county-7th-welfare-fraud-cases-last-year/398128001/
ETA: here is another one detailing 8 instances of SNAP trafficking out of 35 welfare fraud cases in PA, but it doesn't get into what was being sold or the specific horrors that may or may not have been visited upon any children involved:
http://fox43.com/2017/04/26/pa-inspector-general-files-welfare-fraud-charges-against-77-people-in-february/3 -
French_Peasant wrote: »So I've typed and retyped this reply and it comes down to this for me:
This thread has been weird for me because I don't think anyone's life will be ruined or pride will be wounded if they can't buy soda with their SNAP card. But I think there is a danger to us accepting the moralizing of food choices for people using government benefits. Soda seems like an easy enough decision, but what exactly would it accomplish? This is just a knee-jerk reaction to the current villain-du-jour. How would the keto people feel if the govt decided meat was too expensive and a "luxury" so it was off the list? And why do we always have to fill the loopholes we suspect the lower class is taking advantage of while ignoring the giant gaping loopholes being openly used by those on the other end of the spectrum?
I think it just sticks in my craw when politicians garner favor by convincing the middle class that all our budget woes would be alleviated if it wasn't for those fat, lazy, cheating poor people, buying all that soda with my tax dollars. Of course there are cheaters in the system, but the bulk of our wasted tax dollars are going to corporations and individuals living in huge houses, making payments to politicians to keep their tax breaks and buyouts coming, while spreading rumors about all those ill-behaved welfare recipients.
And I'm sorry, I know this was now way upthread, but I don't believe for a second there are people all over this country buying cases of soda with SNAP money and reselling it on the black market to fund their extravagant or sinful lifestyle while there children subsist on nothing but free school breakfast. Pics or it didn't happen.
I don't disagree with the rest of your post, but sadly, have to tell you that people suck far, far more than you can possibly imagine. My late FIL was a deputy prosecutor specializing in financial crimes, and prosecuted state-wide fraud rings involving SNAP and other assistance. Most notable was a woman who was fostering many children, buying copious and expensive cuts of meats with the assistance intended for them, selling them to a local restaurant, and feeding the kids mac and cheese.
Here is an article that provides a good overview of 2016 shenanigans in PA and the many, many creative ways you can commit fraud, including exchanging your food stamps for heroin, always a fun time.
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/06/14/franklin-county-7th-welfare-fraud-cases-last-year/398128001/
While I have no inside knowledge of the amount of fraud that goes along with this program, and I am sure that there is, I don't believe you should punish the intended recipients of the assistance. Rather, go after those committing the fraud and deal with them appropriately. JMO5 -
dfnewcombe wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »So I've typed and retyped this reply and it comes down to this for me:
This thread has been weird for me because I don't think anyone's life will be ruined or pride will be wounded if they can't buy soda with their SNAP card. But I think there is a danger to us accepting the moralizing of food choices for people using government benefits. Soda seems like an easy enough decision, but what exactly would it accomplish? This is just a knee-jerk reaction to the current villain-du-jour. How would the keto people feel if the govt decided meat was too expensive and a "luxury" so it was off the list? And why do we always have to fill the loopholes we suspect the lower class is taking advantage of while ignoring the giant gaping loopholes being openly used by those on the other end of the spectrum?
I think it just sticks in my craw when politicians garner favor by convincing the middle class that all our budget woes would be alleviated if it wasn't for those fat, lazy, cheating poor people, buying all that soda with my tax dollars. Of course there are cheaters in the system, but the bulk of our wasted tax dollars are going to corporations and individuals living in huge houses, making payments to politicians to keep their tax breaks and buyouts coming, while spreading rumors about all those ill-behaved welfare recipients.
And I'm sorry, I know this was now way upthread, but I don't believe for a second there are people all over this country buying cases of soda with SNAP money and reselling it on the black market to fund their extravagant or sinful lifestyle while there children subsist on nothing but free school breakfast. Pics or it didn't happen.
I don't disagree with the rest of your post, but sadly, have to tell you that people suck far, far more than you can possibly imagine. My late FIL was a deputy prosecutor specializing in financial crimes, and prosecuted state-wide fraud rings involving SNAP and other assistance. Most notable was a woman who was fostering many children, buying copious and expensive cuts of meats with the assistance intended for them, selling them to a local restaurant, and feeding the kids mac and cheese.
Here is an article that provides a good overview of 2016 shenanigans in PA and the many, many creative ways you can commit fraud, including exchanging your food stamps for heroin, always a fun time.
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/06/14/franklin-county-7th-welfare-fraud-cases-last-year/398128001/
While I have no inside knowledge of the amount of fraud that goes along with this program, and I am sure that there is, I don't believe you should punish the intended recipients of the assistance. Rather, go after those committing the fraud and deal with them appropriately. JMO
They are two separate topics. My response is just aimed at the question about fraud.2 -
French_Peasant wrote: »So I've typed and retyped this reply and it comes down to this for me:
This thread has been weird for me because I don't think anyone's life will be ruined or pride will be wounded if they can't buy soda with their SNAP card. But I think there is a danger to us accepting the moralizing of food choices for people using government benefits. Soda seems like an easy enough decision, but what exactly would it accomplish? This is just a knee-jerk reaction to the current villain-du-jour. How would the keto people feel if the govt decided meat was too expensive and a "luxury" so it was off the list? And why do we always have to fill the loopholes we suspect the lower class is taking advantage of while ignoring the giant gaping loopholes being openly used by those on the other end of the spectrum?
I think it just sticks in my craw when politicians garner favor by convincing the middle class that all our budget woes would be alleviated if it wasn't for those fat, lazy, cheating poor people, buying all that soda with my tax dollars. Of course there are cheaters in the system, but the bulk of our wasted tax dollars are going to corporations and individuals living in huge houses, making payments to politicians to keep their tax breaks and buyouts coming, while spreading rumors about all those ill-behaved welfare recipients.
And I'm sorry, I know this was now way upthread, but I don't believe for a second there are people all over this country buying cases of soda with SNAP money and reselling it on the black market to fund their extravagant or sinful lifestyle while there children subsist on nothing but free school breakfast. Pics or it didn't happen.
I don't disagree with the rest of your post, but sadly, have to tell you that people suck far, far more than you can possibly imagine. My late FIL was a deputy prosecutor specializing in financial crimes, and prosecuted state-wide fraud rings involving SNAP and other assistance. Most notable was a woman who was fostering many children, buying copious and expensive cuts of meats with the assistance intended for them, selling them to a local restaurant, and feeding the kids mac and cheese.
Here is an article that provides a good overview of 2016 shenanigans in PA and the many, many creative ways you can commit fraud, including exchanging your food stamps for heroin, always a fun time.
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/06/14/franklin-county-7th-welfare-fraud-cases-last-year/398128001/
ETA: here is another one detailing 8 instances of SNAP trafficking out of 35 welfare fraud cases in PA, but it doesn't get into what was being sold or the specific horrors that may or may not have been visited upon any children involved:
http://fox43.com/2017/04/26/pa-inspector-general-files-welfare-fraud-charges-against-77-people-in-february/
Oh, no I know people suck. I was referring to a specific example someone posted earlier that they said happened in their town and was in fact happening in towns all over the country, which might be why soda was singled out.
I believe people committing fraud should be stopped, and with limited resources to do so, I think efforts should be focused on the type of fraud you've mentioned, where children are being neglected or worse. I just don't think the money we would save by stopping welfare fraud and limiting SNAP benefits would have nearly as much effect on tax rates or the national budget that some politicians suggest. There are far bigger leaks, in my humble opinion at least!6 -
As someone who audited government programs for a few years, I wanted to add my piece to the discussion.
We have a problem with foodstamps, and there is a LOT of fraud in that industry. A few of my auditor buddies discovered a foodstamp/WIC ring that was bringing in millions. This happened within my office while I was working there, so it wasn't a friend of a friend, I saw the numbers.
And a lot of this money isn't taken from the feds, (where it would be a drop in the bucket) but rather from states who are struggling to get by. That is why these discussions are important and are taking place. States are struggling and having to decide where money goes. They don't have the budget the feds do. They aren't paying billions for new spy gear or corporate bailouts. Instead, they have to make hard choices. Should money be spent on soda when it could be spent on education? What about roads? Not to mention the part of medicaid/medicare they have to pay for, and general infrastructure concerns. They have problems. But will not allowing soda solve them? Probably not.
I think the government should be able to tell people what to do with the government's money. However, TBH, auditing food choices is rather expensive. Auditors like to make money. If the state needs to save money, they are better off just cutting the food stamp benefits some, and hiring a nutritionist to write and send everyone a recipe book/meal planning book which would fit within their foodstamp allocation.7 -
Unfortunately I see the signs in all those stores every day EBT accepted in everything from Fast Food to 7/11 when they should be at grocery stores buying affordable food.3
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