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However, the fact that 1.5 million veterans are on food stamps is more difficult for me to understand. Is it because many of them just cannot find jobs? Or are most of these veterans senior citizens who simply do not have enough retirement income to meet their needs? Whatever the explanation, I find the information contained in the article to be very sad indeed.
I'm sure some of the Vets receiving food stamps are elderly but I don't know how many: this article states that in 2012 there were 3 million elderly relying on food stamps. If there are vets under 50 who were receiving SNAP they will no longer do so unless they are disabled because starting this year, non-disabled non-elderly adults without children can only receive SNAP benefits for 3 months every 3 years.
I am sad about the large number of people who aren't vets too, there should not be this many poor people in this great nation. And I am appalled and embarrassed by all the poor shaming and the cutesy little ideas about ways we can make the lives of the poor even worse by making them go to welfare stores, or only allowing them to buy certain foods.
And, as has already been pointed out, the vast majority of recipients work or have recently worked or are elderly or disabled:
"Among SNAP households with at least one working-age, non-disabled adult, more than half work while receiving SNAP—and more than 80 percent work in the year prior to or the year after receiving SNAP. The rates are even higher for families with children—more than 60 percent work while receiving SNAP, and almost 90 percent work in the prior or subsequent year." What's more, many SNAP participants aren't physically able to work. About 20 percent of SNAP participants are elderly or have a disability, according to the USDA."
When I was a kid in the 50's and 60's my Grandmother would give anyone who came to her door and asked for food a meal and a cup of coffee, she was poor so sometimes all they got was toast or a boiled egg, but they always got something. When people questioned her about why she was helping these 'bums' she just smiled and said:
Exactly right. Many have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. They need help. Americans are the most generous people on Earth.
But we aren't chumps. We know there's a difference between someone down on their luck and someone who's content to milk the System their entire life. In turn, they teach that "milking system" to their children. I'm not advocating cutting the bums off, but we do need to break the cycle somehow. Tackle and end the fraud. That's not too much to ask.
The fraud? milking the system?
The report indicates that the vast majority of trafficking – the illegal sale of SNAP benefits for cash or other ineligible items – occurs in smaller-sized retailers that typically stock fewer healthy foods. Over the last five fiscal years, the number of retailers authorized to participate in SNAP has grown by over 40 percent; small- and medium-sized retailers account for the vast majority of that growth. The rate of trafficking in larger grocery stores and supermarkets—where 82 percent of all benefits were redeemed—remained low at less than 0.5 percent. While the overall trafficking rate has remained relatively steady at approximately one cent on the dollar, the report attributes the change in the rate to 1.3 percent primarily to the growth in small- and medium-sized retailers authorized to accept SNAP that may not provide sufficient healthful offerings to recipients. These retailers accounted for 85 percent of all trafficking redemptions. This finding echoes a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that suggested minimal stocking requirements in SNAP may contribute to corrupt retailers entering the program.
Wow! 1.3% that's huuuge. And as I said before, a good amount of that is because the poor, like the women I worked with in Nevada only get a few hundred dollars cash benefits and no housing assistance, they sleep on the streets or they sell foodstamps to get a place to live. If you were in that situation, what would you do?
Ok, now do everything you did with two kids, one still in diapers, a run off father who refuses to pay child support, with a run down 15 year old car that may or may not run any given morning, while you also live two miles from closest bus stop where you have to take public transportation when the car doesn't work, all while working two jobs and relying on your elderly mother to babysit.
Do all that and THEN get back to us with how hard it is. Three weeks, SMH
But then, unlike many people today, my husband and I were raised to have a good work ethic and to provide for ourselves and our families without any kind of government assistance, except that to which we significantly and directly contributed through paycheck deductions.
I'm sure many people feel the same way, including many who currently receive some kind of food assistance. I don't think it's a generalization to say that the majority of people currently receiving food assistance would prefer to be self-reliant. Unfortunately, life doesn't always deal each of us an even hand of cards, and circumstances may not favor all people equally.
There are exceptions to everything, obviously, but I think it is fair to say that most low-income people would prefer a living wage job over relying on government food assistance.
I'm sure many people feel the same way, including many who currently receive some kind of food assistance. I don't think it's a generalization to say that the majority of people currently receiving food assistance would prefer to be self-reliant. Unfortunately, life doesn't always deal each of us an even hand of cards, and circumstances may not favor all people equally.
There are exceptions to everything, obviously, but I think it is fair to say that most low-income people would prefer a living wage job over relying on government food assistance.
A living wage job is not a right. It is a limited resource, for which you compete, and getting one is mostly merit based. If you don't get one, sorry but you don't get Doritos or flat screen TV. You get enough food to not die. Doritos are not a right.
A large amount of welfare recipients do in fact work. Just remember when you go to a retail store, fast food, or supermarket a large amount of those workers are getting food stamps because they are making poverty wages.
They pay taxes so they have the right to foodstamps. Also a lot of people worked for many years and paid into thr system to also have the right to get assistance.
I laugh when the drug testing for welfare topic comes up because a lot of people on welfare work so they need to take another drug test?
People just like to assume everyone on welfare is a bum because they are miserable and looking for something to argue about.
Really does that $20 a year you pay into the welfare system bother you that much?
There is much worse wasteful spending done by the government welfare is at the bottom.
A living wage job is not a right. It is a limited resource, for which you compete, and getting one is mostly merit based. If you don't get one, sorry but you don't get Doritos or flat screen TV. You get enough food to not die. Doritos are not a right.
Yep, you tell that to the next military family who gets food stamps, I'm sure they will be grateful that you offered your opinion.
I did volunteer work with poor women in Nevada. A woman with two kids received $383 in cash and $500 in SNAP benefits. A weekly motel room costs $500-$600 a month, so she can either sleep on the street with her kids, sofa surf, or she can sell enough food stamps to come up with rent money. Nothing nefarious about it. And the going rate in Nevada is 50 cents on the dollar for food stamps. So to pay $125 a week for a motel room she had to sell $234 in food benefits.
I know virtually nothing about Nevada, but I have never seen a family actually sleeping in the streets in Denver. (Maybe it does happen here, but I have personally never even heard of such a thing happening here, and as I mentioned earlier, I volunteered at a food bank for over a year.) I have learned that when it comes to small kids, there are almost always people willing to help.
But older teens and adults? Not so much, but I think that is because people are afraid to help now. (I am referring to the fact that if you take someone in and then later want to put them out, you might have to go through an actual eviction process. I have also learned through personal experience that many -- I would even say most -- dishonest people are very skilled at giving very convincing sob stories, which is one of the reasons why I am inclined to be much more skeptical and much less compassionate now than I used to be. One more case of a few bad human beings spoiling things for many good ones.)
Anyway, I think the above post illustrates why, in my opinion, the U.S. welfare system needs a COMPLETE overhaul -- to address the total picture that impoverished people face and not just "band-aid" the individual components of poverty piece by piece.
Last edited by katharsis; 01-22-2016 at 11:13 AM..
A living wage job is not a right. It is a limited resource, for which you compete, and getting one is mostly merit based. If you don't get one, sorry but you don't get Doritos or flat screen TV. You get enough food to not die. Doritos are not a right.
There are deeper social and political issues issues underlying employment, wages, and even food availability and pricing that go far beyond whether someone receiving SNAP buys a bag of Doritos. People are reacting to the symptoms and not the underlying pathology.
The flat screen TV is a non-sequitur since we are talking about food assistance, so let's talk about the chips. If bag of chips costs $1.00 and bunch of bunch of broccoli costs $3.00, for many people it's a non-choice - especially if your kids feel just as full after eating the chips. However, instead of asking why the healthy foods are so exponentially more expensive than the junk food, people react to other people buying chips in the checkout line.
The way food is priced and available in most of the US, it's the broccoli that's the real luxury item, not the Doritos. It's much cheaper, actually, to keep poor people on SNAP eating Doritos and soda than to encourage them to purchase more expensive items like fresh produce or non-processed items.
The flat screen TV is a non-sequitur since we are talking about food assistance, so let's talk about the chips. If bag of chips costs $1.00 and bunch of bunch of broccoli costs $3.00, for many people it's a non-choice - especially if your kids feel just as full after eating the chips. However, instead of asking why the healthy foods are so exponentially more expensive than the junk food, people react to other people buying chips in the checkout line.
The way food is priced and available in most of the US, it's the broccoli that's the real luxury item, not the Doritos. It's much cheaper, actually, to keep poor people on SNAP eating Doritos and soda than to encourage them to purchase more expensive items like fresh produce or non-processed items.
Yes, absolutely. This is why it annoys me when people disparage "people on welfare" for (often) being so fat. Many of these people either don't know or they forget that unhealthy and high-caloric foods ARE generally significantly less expensive than healthy food. A tuna casserole using all canned and processed food for four people costs about $3.00; a dinner consisting of fresh lean meat and two fresh vegetables can cost at least twice as much. A package of cookies costs the same as about four individual containers of yogurt, but you can feed 12 people with the package of cookies. A single orange costs about 75 cents, but a gallon of sugar-laden juice drink can cost as little as $2.00 -- Kool-Aid costs even less -- and serves 8. And so on. And then, of course, studies have shown that sugary and salty foods are actually addicting, and this leads to people eating more of these foods than they should.
However, that being said, people don't need to eat steak to eat healthy -- and many would argue that it is actually healthier NOT to eat steak!
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