Should food stamps only be used to buy certain foods? (Congress, ethical)
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Social security is a hand out. In most cases you take more than you give. Lets tell old folks what they can and can't buy with their checks?
SS is still mostly a handout for some. But a working couple could now be contributing $24K+/yr, plus $6K combined income tax on their contributions. Say $1.2M after 40 years, ignoring increases in the ceiling. It's a bit of a stretch to characterize their benefits as a "handout"...
Seeing as our tax dollars go towards paying for food stamp cards, should there be limits on what can be purchased with them? I say we should cut out brand name products, soda, junk food snacks ie; Twinkies, Ho Ho's, etc, sugar cereals, etc. It should be used on nutritious foods, especially seeing as food stamps are mainly used for kids. I think we should have a say seeing as it's taxpayer money. In my teens, I worked at a grocery store. I witnessed daily what was purchased with FS. Most of it was food that is absolutely horrible for you and almost all of it brand name. If you want junk food, buy it with cash...not on my dime.
Now if we could only stop the other food stamp epidemic...people selling the card balances for cash.
It would be interesting to see some real data on this.
Food Stamps are provided these days to assist with providing food for your family, because you don't have enough money to do so. Because of that, I feel that ANY foods purchased with food stamps, (food assistance program whatever), should be staples, cereals, milk, margarine/butter, meats, bread, vegetables, fruits, sandwich fixins, etc. Soda/ice cream, twinkies, etc are not necessary for survival..
I mean really, why are people getting this assistance, to help them survive, to help them provide what they cannot do on their own. There should also be limits..
If you have children, and are divorced/single/ or more than 1 father, then the fathers HAVE to be paying support, or going to jail. If you don't KNOW how the father is, then you need to be all about finding out, because the child deserves to know who their own parents are, and BOTH parents should be providing for their support.
Are you aware there are career welfare recipients out there, who keep on popping babies, and recieiving aid for rent/food and everything else. There was actually a new report about a year back that detailed several families that had huge SUV's, 60" tv's or better, cell phones, and had no jobs, and were in fact proud that they were getting it all paid for by the American Tax Payer, and one of them even made it out to sound as if they deserved the free ride because their ancesters were "ripped out of their homes and sold as slaves. (A fact that cannot be proven, and additionally, many black people came over as free people, and in the 1860 census there were over 1600 black slave owners, meaning that their ancestry may have included people who came over as free people, people who captured and sold toehr africans as slaves, and themselves were slave owners).
So, Yes, what you can buy should be restricted to ONLY those staples necessary to provide a balanced nutritional meal to survive on. if you want treats, earn your own damn living and buy it yourself. (Did i say that?).
Not at all. I'm quite familiar with generic foods, as I used a lot of them while raising my children. There are certain ones that we would just avoid, because they weren't as good as name brand ones, and they tasted off. Cereal is a good example. Take a bag of the generic oat cereal and a box of Cheerios, and pour a bowl of each. The difference in quality is visible, as is the difference in smell and taste.
This isn't the only example by a long shot, but there are many things in generic varieties that just don't measure up. I did use a lot of house brands, because as a general rule most of those taste as good as national brands.
If that doesn't scream for the need for extreme reform and fraud crackdown I don't know what does. Heck, I've never even been on a cruise. Unless these folks were employees working on the cruise this is insane!
Seeing as our tax dollars go towards paying for food stamp cards, should there be limits on what can be purchased with them? I say we should cut out brand name products, soda, junk food snacks ie; Twinkies, Ho Ho's, etc, sugar cereals, etc. It should be used on nutritious foods, especially seeing as food stamps are mainly used for kids. I think we should have a say seeing as it's taxpayer money. In my teens, I worked at a grocery store. I witnessed daily what was purchased with FS. Most of it was food that is absolutely horrible for you and almost all of it brand name. If you want junk food, buy it with cash...not on my dime.
Now if we could only stop the other food stamp epidemic...people selling the card balances for cash.
Definitely.
You could cut the amount being spent on the food stamp program and greatly promote health by limiting food stamp purchases to rice, beans, corn and a few other staples.
It should be used to buy whole raw food, nothing processed or packaged. If it doesn't have significant nutritious value, it shouldn't be covered.
I can agree with you, however you have to ask yourself. Are these people in a situation to have the time to prepare the food.
Have you ever been working poor (2 jobs minimum wage)? Between commute times and working 14-16 hour days. I can say from experience that additional time to prepare ingrediants from scratch is not there. You look for high calories and low prep time/work because you simply don't have the time. Dried beans are dirt cheap for example but take hours to prepare. The same can be said for most rice that has some nutritional value. This is why the fast food business is booming. Because its fast. There isn't prep work involved. There aren't dishes, pots and pans to clean. Raw foods still have to be cooked otherwise you still don't get the full nutritional value.
You have to address the other facets of the problem. The question is can the private sector do this on their own or does the government have to step in for them to take initiative?
I'd like to see a lot of government programs cut entirely (foodstamps welfare etc.) because they aren't needed. The same for a lot of inconvenient regulations. That will never happen though because an unemployed population is necessary to suppress wages and paying liveable wages aren't good for stock returns....
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