A discussion On Food stamps:

[gimpy117]

okay, so as a grocery store worker this has been eating me up: The fact that you can get big ticket items on food stamps such items as:

-Beef tenderloins -20.99/lb
-snow crab legs -10.00/lb
-King crab legs - 19.99/lb
-New your Strip, t-bone, ribeye 10-12.99/lb

honestly this grinds my gears. I think these items should be prohibited. Lets face it, food stamps are there because you cannot afford to eat supposedly...not because you cannot afford to eat like a king! I'm all for people being able to get normal, less expensive products like chicken, pork and less expensive beef cuts...but King Crab legs??? really?! we once even had a lady buy $200.000 worth on food stamps because she just got her benefits. Honestly unless these people start sharing this crab with me in a little fed up. I can't afford that stuff, and as a college student i'll get like 50 a month if i got EBT.

[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).

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

okay, so as a grocery store worker this has been eating me up: The fact that you can get big ticket items on food stamps such items as:

-Beef tenderloins -20.99/lb
-snow crab legs -10.00/lb
-King crab legs - 19.99/lb
-New your Strip, t-bone, ribeye 10-12.99/lb

honestly this grinds my gears. I think these items should be prohibited. Lets face it, food stamps are there because you cannot afford to eat supposedly...not because you cannot afford to eat like a king! I'm all for people being able to get normal, less expensive products like chicken, pork and less expensive beef cuts...but King Crab legs??? really?! we once even had a lady buy $200.000 worth on food stamps because she just got her benefits. Honestly unless these people start sharing this crab with me in a little fed up. I can't afford that stuff, and as a college student i'll get like 50 a month if i got EBT.

Years ago I was strapped for money for the week. So I make due with what I have to work with. Peanut butter and jelly go a long way. So do eggs. I went to the grocery store to get my lunch supplies for the week. It was peanut butter, jelly and loaf of bread. Cheap, fills the belly and generally full of protein from the peanut butter. Five or six buck and done. As I'm waiting to check out a food stamp recipient loads onto the conveyor two lobster tails, two steaks and a bunch of flowers. The guy was not only eating great but providing for a date planned and probably getting laid after eating. All on the tax payers living in the state of Maryland.

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Years ago I was strapped for money for the week. So I make due with what I have to work with. Peanut butter and jelly go a long way. So do eggs. I went to the grocery store to get my lunch supplies for the week. It was peanut butter, jelly and loaf of bread. Cheap, fills the belly and generally full of protein from the peanut butter. Five or six buck and done. As I'm waiting to check out a food stamp recipient loads onto the conveyor two lobster tails, two steaks and a bunch of flowers. The guy was not only eating great but providing for a date planned and probably getting laid after eating. All on the tax payers living in the state of Maryland.

i know. eats me up. I eat on the cheap as well. I'd be okay with a food stamper getting PBJ, or at least something a little more...but that? ugh.

[Respenus]

The following idea is similar to food stamps, or any type of stamps, in purpose, for what about a rationing book (which wouldn't be a bad idea in general, but let's try to limit the outcry)? This way you would be given money to spend rather freely and on necessities, without the necessary control of what type of food stuff stamps are being used for. The first major problem I see with this idea, is that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to equip only a certain number of people with the cards and others not and how stores would control it. Perhaps people with rationing cards would get basic goods at a discount price?

[soopaman2]

My old lady is in the business as well. She is an assistant manager at a very large supermarket company here.

One of my favorite stories is the ones who wait at the store for the stroke of midnight (when they were 24/7 in operation, as they are not anymore), (sometimes with their dealers accompanying, or a cab waiting outside) to buy a pack of gum, get 100$ back (the limit), then repeat until the cash (welfare portion, not stamps) is ran out. So much for paying bills, this dance repeated itself 2 days later on the 3rd of the month as well.

The store used to bring in security as most would usually stop by the HABA (health and beauty aids, like razors, and medicine) to shoplift razors and expensive medicine to return later (the store has a no reciept police. aka give them the pickle)

It is disgusting. We (working class) have to budget, and go without sometimes to pay our obligations, while the fraud is rampant.

This takes away from the unfortionate souls who really need stamps and welfare. And makes the genuine down on their luck people look bad.

And when the right kills these programs due to these abusers, their will be more good people suffering than fraudsters.

We should require drug tests for all government benefits. All adults being claimed, mother and father (if there is a father).

Community service, at least 15 hours a week for the township, which can cut service costs for the community. These people would actually be forced to be helpful to society, rather than just taking.

Also some of these poor impoverished people show up in Lexus', Benzes, with rims and 20 inch wheels. As well as huge speakers, and a radio system that makes my gaming rig look like an Atari 2600.

That includes unemployment too.

I sound so conservative...

I am still lefty, but abuse is abuse.
This program is helpful, but the costs could be trimmed with actual regulating. You should want to help yourself, first. And prove it.

I am sick of paying taxes, so miss nubian queen, and trailor park Royalty can drive around in a benz and not work.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Respenus

The following idea is similar to food stamps, or any type of stamps, in purpose, for what about a rationing book (which wouldn't be a bad idea in general, but let's try to limit the outcry)? This way you would be given money to spend rather freely and on necessities, without the necessary control of what type of food stuff stamps are being used for. The first major problem I see with this idea, is that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to equip only a certain number of people with the cards and others not and how stores would control it. Perhaps people with rationing cards would get basic goods at a discount price?

The priority for me is to make sure that other people'S moeny gets not wasted on luxury goods and luxurious details in ways of life. The aid given thereforew should be linkied as close as possible to the purposes it is meant for: essential food to prevent hunger and disease, shelter, education options and school material for children in a household. People should not make a living by such aid, nor should they sack money for buying cigarettes, the latest MP3 player, filet steaks, and Boss Bottled, expensive style.

I see no advantage in your idea, therefore. I even see it as inferior to a stamping system. I would prefer to supply only a very very small ammount of cash, and give instead purpose-bound values: stamps, in other words.

Oh, and I think there should be a law that makes stamps non-tradable, so that they cannot be exchanged/sold for money. They should be personalised in any way, like a monthly pass for the Bus, for example. Same ID on stamps and in a receiver pass - by that you prevent trading stamps. Irresponsible parents thus cannot trade the stamps for school material for their kids for money - money that then goes into buying alcohol or cigarettes. What is meant to help the kids, should remain theirs, beyond doubt. A black market trading for stamps should be battled against from beginning on.

It must not be a big bureaucratic effort, I think. In these days, with chip cards and all that digiatl data processing capacity, so much is possible so easily and so quickly, assuming the job of establishing such a system is not left to lobbyists or political dilettants.

---

On forcing wellgfare reciever to work in communal services, I am aware of the fact that this opens doors and gates for abuse by employers as well. We have this very very big problem with socalled 1-Euro-jobs here in Germany, that's why. It led to the establishing of economic business models that from all beginning on depend on paying employees only 1 Euro per hpour, and the remaining needs of the employee being taken care of by the tax payer. As a consequence such jobs destroy regular jobs, again at the cost of the general public. Plus it makes you feel like dirt knowing that your emplyoer only emplys you because you are worth to him just one Euro per hour - that is abuse, and in principle modern slavery, unvoluntarily subsidised by the tax payers, while some profiteer collects the cream. That'S why I tend to think on a design that accepts to give the basic wellfare help for free, an essential basis of help without much luxury, and then with an option to increase slightly over that aid level - by signing in to community service jobs like soopaman mentioned - this then earny the wellfare receiver additional stamps or special stamps or maybe even a little money. - But again, children's aid should be unaffected by this.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

okay, so as a grocery store worker this has been eating me up: The fact that you can get big ticket items on food stamps such items as:

-Beef tenderloins -20.99/lb
-snow crab legs -10.00/lb
-King crab legs - 19.99/lb
-New your Strip, t-bone, ribeye 10-12.99/lb

honestly this grinds my gears. I think these items should be prohibited. Lets face it, food stamps are there because you cannot afford to eat supposedly...not because you cannot afford to eat like a king! I'm all for people being able to get normal, less expensive products like chicken, pork and less expensive beef cuts...but King Crab legs??? really?! we once even had a lady buy $200.000 worth on food stamps because she just got her benefits. Honestly unless these people start sharing this crab with me in a little fed up. I can't afford that stuff, and as a college student i'll get like 50 a month if i got EBT.

This may be a first, but I agree with you 100%.

I personally think that people who are completely on the dole should, after a certain period of time, be issued ration packs rather than the ability to make their own purchases on the taxpayer dime.

If fact, I think that this is indicative of what is the problem with our welfare system as a whole - instead of helping people simply get by, we've gone so far as to take the misery out of poverty. Let's be honest: in the US if you're on welfare and food stamps, odds are you still have clean, running water, taxpayer funded utilities, a nice flat screen TV, etc.

[Skybird]

Ready-packs indeed are another possibility. One pack per week, for an adult for example so and so much milk, butter, tea-bags, apples, bananas, citrons, eggs, bread, some ordinary cheese, potatoes, and so on.

Again, no cigarettes, no soft drinks, no whisky etc.

On cloathes and school material, you probably still are better off with a stamp system. The needs are too diverse and cannot be systematically predicted.

Social aid, wellfare, is about the essentials of life, and staying healthy. It's not about luxury. The system we have in Germany now, called Hartz-IV, in itself again is not perfect, since it is too theoretically founded, and not pragmatically oriented towards reality. It was thought out by some disconnected egghead in the locked ivory tower, I think. As a result some parasites - singles for the most - live relatively comfortable by it, while others, especially hard-trying families with kids, who are good-willed to get out of fate's pit indeed, get too little.

Oh, and one thing. Getting pregnant while on wellfare should get rewarded by punishing sanctions. Protect the new baby, if you think that is a moral imperative, but let the parents feel the penalty for sure. Only bread and water, so to speak.

[soopaman2]

Here in America getting knocked up with another sprog is rewarded with more welfare and stamps.

Yeah that is another issue.

It should be a safety net, not a way of life.