A discussion On Food stamps:

[CCIP]

To play devil's advocate on the other hand - spending food stamps on these big ticket items helps subsidize expensive and risky or inefficient fishing and farming industries that otherwise wouldn't turn a profit and would probably end up losing quite a few jobs. So while it's unfair, from the regulators' perspective it's just another way to drive up demand for products most people otherwise wouldn't buy.

[GoldenRivet]

I LOVE IT when im in line behind the family with two shopping carts.

One full of food the other full of liquor and beer

food stuff was paid in food stamps

the other in cash

Yay America!

happens all the time and its damn near impossible by now to do anything about it.

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by CCIP

To play devil's advocate on the other hand - spending food stamps on these big ticket items helps subsidize expensive and risky or inefficient fishing and farming industries that otherwise wouldn't turn a profit and would probably end up losing quite a few jobs. So while it's unfair, from the regulators' perspective it's just another way to drive up demand for products most people otherwise wouldn't buy.

see the problem is, it's artificially inflating a market again, something that IMO isn't really healthy for the economy.

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

I LOVE IT when im in line behind the family with two shopping carts.

One full of food the other full of liquor and beer

food stuff was paid in food stamps

the other in cash

Yay America!

happens all the time and its damn near impossible by now to do anything about it.

oh yes, I remember a person who would get milk that had a $1.00 deposit on the bottles. They would dump out the milk in the bathroom or outside the store, return the 5 bottles for $5.00 and buy beer with it

[Skybird]

I wish in Germany part of the social wellfare payments would be made not in money, but food stamps, and value stamps for school material, and stamps for other vital, essential purposes. So that payments would not get wasted for cigarettes, chips and soft drinks, and money meant to pay for school stuff for children does not get used to buy stuff for the adults. Stamps are a way to bind aid money to a certain purpose - the purpose it is dedicated for. And that in principle is a good thing.

But food stamps in Germany? It has been mentioned in past discussions here. The outcry always was about "social discrimination" and "right of self-determination".

Well, as long as you take other people's money for free, you live by their rules. Even more true when these rules are anything but "inhumane" or "excessive", but simply make sense and are reasonable.

[JU_88]

Same in the uk, welfare is simply money, so it can be spent on anything, no matter anyway, if we have this financial collapses that is supposedly coming, that will spell the end of the welfare state in most developed countries I expect.
We got unsustainable ponzi capitalsim (Banks lending money they created out of thin air) fueling these unsustainable socialist government scemes. Its a bad system and its not going work for much longer, since we cant print our way out of all this debt.
Germany tried this in the 1930s. didnt work out too well for them did it?
The sad part is, after 2008 we actually had a chance to start putting things right and we blew it, we bailed out the trouble makers and just carried on with business as usual.... a terrible mistake for which we have not yet seen the consequences.

If we actually had responsible capitalism in place, we would not be in this mess.

[mookiemookie]

So if Pennsylvania and North Carolina can have state-run liquor stores, why not a state run grocery store? Welfare benefits would only be good at state stores that only carry basic necessities (hamburger meat instead of snow crab legs, fruit juice instead of beer and wine).

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

(hamburger meat instead of snow crab legs, fruit juice instead of beer and wine).

Hamburgers are anything but healthy, and fruit juice usually is refined with plenty of sugar and can be classified to be as unhealthy as usual soft drinks. There is an extremly strong statistical link between education level/social class, and food-induced health problems and obesity. The poor and uneducated tend to eat that bad stuff by greater ammounts than the more educated or people with higher income in general, since it is cheaper, tastes good, and knoweldge on its bad quality is not present in the individual's mind, even more it often is part of the "way of life". Since treating food-induced health problems also is at the cost of the tax and insurrance payer (health insurrance and social wellfare), all this bad stuff (too much bad fats, too much salt, too much sugar, too much alcohol, tobacco in general) should not be sold in state-run shops at all, I think - and should not be available for food stamps.

No need to exaggerate it. But some healthy sanity should be applied, I think. Bad food habits probably produce the biggest share of the health system costs alltogether. And others have to pay for it - me as a netto-payer says "thank you for your egoist stupidity, Sir." If somebody gets hit by fate withoiut it beign his fault, then I support the idea of insurrances. But if insurrances get abused to finance the egoism or the self-induced stupidity of somebody, then I have a problem with that - and no, I refuse to be "solidaric" in such a scenario. I am not solidaric with the egoist or the stupid.

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Hamburgers are anything but healthy, and fruit juice usually is refined with plenty of sugar and can be classified to be as unhealthy as usual soft drinks. There is an extremly strong statistical link between education level/social class, and food-induced health problems and obesity. The poor and uneducated tend to eat that bad stuff by greater ammounts than the more educated or people with higher income in general, since it is cheaper, tastes good, and knoweldge on its bad quality is not present in the individual's mind, even more it often is part of the "way of life". Since treating food-induced health problems also is at the cost of the tax and insurrance payer (health insurrance and social wellfare), all this bad stuff (too much bad fats, too much salt, too much sugar, too much alcohol, tobacco in general) should not be sold in state-run shops at all, I think - and should not be available for food stamps.

No need to exaggerate it. But some healthy sanity should be applied, I think. Bad food habits probably produce the biggest share of the health system costs alltogether. And others have to pay for it - me as a netto-payer says "thank you for your egoist stupidity, Sir." If somebody gets hit by fate withoiut it beign his fault, then I support the idea of insurrances. But if insurrances get abused to finance the egoism or the self-induced stupidity of somebody, then I have a problem with that - and no, I refuse to be "solidaric" in such a scenario. I am not solidaric with the egoist or the stupid.

Oh yes, healthy foods should be included, but not Luxury foods like this. A t-bone is more more "healthy" than a normal cut of meat because of all the fat it has in it...and you can get 96% lean hamburger if you want. But I just can't see a nutritional reason for people on food stamps being able to get crab and hamburger. Plenty of other healthy alternatives out there that don't cost over 10.00 a pound if you know that to look for (which honestly probably isn't beef at all, rather chicken, pork, or fish). I'd have no problem a family picking up a salmon fillet for 6.99 or so. it's a fine healthy cut of meat, not the cheapest but good for you.

I'm just saying. Crab and Fine steak does not really make sense at all, it's not more healthy or anything. It's just well, Luxury food that has no other warrant to it other than being tasty and very, very expensive per pound.

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

So if Pennsylvania and North Carolina can have state-run liquor stores, why not a state run grocery store? Welfare benefits would only be good at state stores that only carry basic necessities (hamburger meat instead of snow crab legs, fruit juice instead of beer and wine).

Overhead. Plain ad simple. It's expensive to run a store. I probably can't say who, but the place I work for has an overhead from stock loss alone that equals the total profit of 8 stores alone per year (and it really pisses management off as well ). And that does not include other costs. It would cost a huge amount of money per year for enough "state" stores for people to have reasonable access...lets remember not all welfare takers have good transportation. It would just be prohibitively expensive to build or buy a government store that fills these needs.

However, the easiest thing to do would be to just make these items not accepted through the food stamp system.

[Sailor Steve]

I can't even get food stamps. Apparently my small pension is too much money for me to qualify. Fortunately we also have food banks. That's probably where the people in question get their "real" food.