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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25594 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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The idea underlying all of these objections is one of deserving. Certain poor people don't deserve access to government food assistance. Those who do don't deserve to derive any pleasure from eating beyond not starving.

No, the underlying objection is to the lack of need. Conservatives view charity as primarily to cover a lack of ability to provide for yourself.

All three examples given in the prior post show a lack of need:

  • A drug user is spending significant amounts on expensive and non-essential drugs rather than food
  • A obese SNAP recipient is spending and eating significantly more than they need
  • A SNAP recipient spending $50 on goods which provide little to no nutrition is clearly not on a tight food budget

Looking at how the US government describes the SNAP program I think the conservative view has the right of it here:

SNAP provides food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being.

The three people described above can afford nutritious groceries with fewer SNAP benefits than they're getting. They further appear to be putting the saved money towards other luxury items. The purpose of SNAP is not helping people purchase luxury goods. If you think it should be I welcome you to donate your own money and ask you don't try to take mine.

SNAP exists to prevent childhood malnutrition, which if you are an IQ believer is way more expensive down the line than food stamps. It may not be the most cost effective way of achieving this goal, but it does work- there is basically no involuntary childhood malnutrition in the USA nowadays.

But we agree these cases are indeed waste and not proper uses of SNAP, right?

The OP seems to hold the idea that these kinds of spending are perfectly fine and that objections to them are just the conservatives hating specific kinds of poor people. That idea is what I'm disputing - I think it's both out of line with the stated goal of SNAP and also the conservative conception of the purpose of charity.

Before we discuss whether or not this waste is worth it and whether it can be practically reduced we need to be on the same page about whether it is actually waste or desired results of this program.

What cases are you discussing, specifically?

Now, to be clear- I am perfectly willing to admit that there is lots of waste, fraud, and misuse involved in food stamps. I also totally understand being irritated about food stamps recipients eating better than you do. I simply follow-up with the acknowledgement that childhood malnutrition is a problem that causes IQ decline(much more expensive than some Dino nuggets and the like) and that as inefficient as it is, food stamps does address the problem as well as can be done.

You have to make the connection to justify the program. Child malnutrition possibly existing and being a problem does not mean SNAP actually solves the issue. The evidence of drug users selling their cards for cash, obese people (who probably have obese children), and buying junk food is indicative it does not.

Fat children being poor coded is evidence that foodstamps ensures poor kids have enough food.

We would have to take them away to see if that is true. I suspect it is not.

The three examples I listed above:

  • A drug user is spending significant amounts on expensive and non-essential drugs rather than food
  • A obese SNAP recipient is spending and eating significantly more than they need
  • A SNAP recipient spending $50 on goods which provide little to no nutrition is clearly not on a tight food budget

As originally brought up in an earlier comment by @tomottoe and then mentioned by the OP.

Two of those cases are yes, waste/misuse. I would call the obese person on foodstamps a borderline example; I've already said elsewhere in the thread that the benefit amount should be reduced for adults, but it's not like you can(legally)redirect foodstamp spending to something else if it's more than you need.

I think our opinions are reasonably close. My opinion is that the program should be tightened up to curb misuse, but limiting starvation and malnutrition in your country is usually good and a more limited program which does so is worth having.

I'd approach fixing the problems differently, but I'm a lot less concerned about how exactly the problems in SNAP get fixed than about agreement that they are problems.

A obese SNAP recipient is spending and eating significantly more than they need

This is not necessarily true in the case of "spending". Calories are actually very cheap, because rice exists and is far cheaper than any other foodstuff (it tastes lousy by itself, but a little butter and salt fix that). I eat quite frugally ($60 a week or so AUD, a bit over $40 USD) and I could double my caloric intake (and swell up like a balloon) for maybe an additional 10% on that (and that's with the decent rice, over twice the price of the true cheap stuff!). It's everything else that costs real money (particularly meat), because rice has negligible amounts of anything but calories.

In practice, most people don't eat as frugally as I do, but... yeah, price of a diet and calories of a diet are not closely related. (Also, do remember that while calories expended do go up somewhat as you become obese - because of the extra work hauling yourself around, and the nonzero metabolism of fat tissue - it's not actually that strong an effect; being twice the weight doesn't require twice the calories or even close.)

First, if you increased your food budget to double your needed caloric intake I would still say you're overspending, even if your expenses are relatively low compared to others. It'd just usually not be any business of mine if I'm not paying for it.

As your current food budget is showing, you don't need that much food. Ideally SNAP would be giving exactly as much as is needed to top up the person's budget to the point where they can eat healthily, but targeting a program this accurately is unreasonable.

Second, is this actually how a significant amount of obese people are eating? Getting fat on rice flavored with butter and salt sounds difficult. Nor do I think people would be complaining about an obese person purchasing a cart full of vegetables and rice with SNAP - I think the complaints implicitly include that they saw carts full of typical junk food that is easy to overeat and get fat on.

Getting fat on rice flavored with butter and salt sounds difficult.

I'm not fat, and I'm willing to put that down to genetics & metabolism rather than any personal virtue, but I can absolutely house a very large amount of rice with butter & salt. Or noodles with butter & salt. Or bread, with salted butter so thick you can see tooth marks.

Getting fat on rice flavored with butter and salt sounds difficult.

That's very similar macros to the Cajun dietary staple(rice and gravy is slightly more nutritious, but it's close enough for government work). If you go to southern Louisiana you will see many very fat people whose diet consists largely of rice covered in stock and roux with some meat, which costs approximately as much as rice flavoured with butter and has a very similar nutrient profile.

I'll take your word for it. It's definitely plausible on a calories/dollar metric, I was more surprised to hear you can eat that much rice without running into problems with stomach size. I find it quite filling and it's not a snack food you can nibble on throughout the day.

A Cajun diet is cheap, I spend less per person than food stamps allots. But a big chunk of the food stamps target population can’t cook, may face some additional frictions(lack of consistent kitchen access for the poorest is a real thing), and or just refuses to eat healthy from scratch meals. Yes fixing these problems would be good but nobody really knows how to do that.

Oh, don't I know it. My point was more the (lack of) proportionality; one can eat way more calories for way less money, so someone who's obese isn't necessarily spending more than someone who isn't.

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