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I'm not sure the value of this as a top level comment, but I'll write it because it struck me as odd. I live in California. I stopped by Grocery Outlet today after work to pick an ingredient up for dinner and some bleach for cleaning. I walk up to the checkout line with my $10 worth of groceries, and in front of me are two groups. The first group currently checking out are a couple, both guant, face sores, interesting clothing/jewelry/tattoo choices, and are buying food and water. I presume they are either living on the street or out of their vehicle and do drugs pretty consistently. They have a whole load of groceries and what caught my attention was the lady who requested the cashier to separate the mushroom mind focus and energy https://lairdsuperfood.com/products/focus-and-memory-mushrooms bags of snacks she was purchasing because if they weren't EBT eligible she would pay for them on her own. Luckily as I was to find out, they were, and she went on to make a separate purchase of those with her handy card.
Next up in the grocery line, we have a black lady, also buying significant amounts of groceries, and frankly she was a good 300 pounds #healthyatanysize. Luckily she had her handy card too.
Now I make decent money, but I sure feel like a shmuck when I'm the only one paying for my food in the grocery store line. Not sure what to add to this, I see the proposals to shrink EBT just to the essentials, only for people to be shocked as that would require people to make their food like me! Maybe this is what I get for living in California, but frankly, I think EBT and systems like it are just as prevalent elsewhere. It just strikes me as odd that I'm a professional, in a good industry, and I would question spending $50 for a couple of tiny packets of specialty mushroom superfood, but two methheads get to have it as they wish. Maybe I'm out of touch with the plights of the poor, but idk, doesn't seem half bad, I've car camped in the past before.
To be fair with the lady with the kid behind me, I did not stick around long enough to see if she too had her handy card with her, but I feel somewhat saddened that I am missing out on this club.
It reminds me in college, I had some hippy friends, they showed me the beauty of the college food kitchen. Just walk in, grab food, no worries. Oh yeah and btw since you're in a full college courseload, and your income is below the poverty threshold, despite being a dependent, you can apply to EBT, unemployment benefits, free health insurance, etc. Idk, I didn't partake, despite having years of less than stellar income and a strict budget. Maybe I should have? Is that just like any other tax loophole? What's the difference between saving money via that, and wash selling bitcoin shares to offset other investment income or other such schemes which I don't necessarily disagree with morally.
The other thing I think of when I roll this over in my head, is the stratification of grocery stores as a class separator. The last few years my closest store has been Ralphs. For those of you who don't know, Ralphs is slightly more high-end than Grocery Outlet which is more bottom of the barrel. Shoppers of Ralphs are probably not going to encounter EBT users at the same rates in areas with many grocery stores. Think Target vs. Walmart. The effect I feel like this has is for those contributing more to the tax pool, they encounter the absurdity of the purchasers less, and therefore the blob of money dedicated to it is further from the mind.
I’d definitely be on board with reasonable limits on the types of food you can buy on EBT gibs. I don’t think it’s reasonable to allow people to use gibs for luxury goods or empty calories in the form of junk and snack foods. To be honest it might be more reasonable to simply give out the benefits as those kinds of foods so they have less option to trade for stuff or abuse the system. My thinking is that basic meats like ground beef or chicken canned or frozen veggies, cheap bread and basic Kraft cheese product are probably good enough to live fairly healthy, especially if you’re allowed to buy other stuff to supplement the diet for flavor or whatever. It’s hard to abuse the system when you’re getting canned corn and ground beef. It’s a pretty bland diet, you can obviously live off of it, but not something that you’d choose if you had better options.
Cheap bread isn't very healthy to have as a major component of your diet. Ought to be rye bread or the like, if we're trying to design something people can live on indefinitely with no adverse effects to their health.
I mean we can quibble about the bread. GV whole wheat is less than $2 a loaf. But even if you go with white bread it’s better than cookies.
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Cheap bread is likely universes better than straight up pillaging the junk food aisle or whatever. Also provides more incentives to get off the system as I believe a decent amount of Food Stamp luxury purchases is then used to essentially arbitrage via selling 'plates'
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