What do households on food stamps buy at the grocery store?
Short answer: "SNAP is a multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidy of the soda industry."
"For years, dozens of cities, states and medical groups have urged changes to SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to help improve nutrition among the 43 million poorest Americans who receive food stamps. Specifically, they have called for restrictions so that food stamps cannot be used to buy junk food or sugary soft drinks. But the food and beverage industries have spent millions opposing such measures, and the U.S.D.A. has denied every request, saying that selectively banning certain foods would be unfair to food stamp users and create too much red tape."
Not to mention the fact that when someone sees a food stamp user (most of the EBT cards are pretty recognizable) using the card to buy chips, sodas, snacks and so on, the attitude is, 'Well! LOOK at that waste of our tax payer dollars!" but when the card user is seen buying hamburger, steaks, chops, roasts, etc, then the attitude changes to "How DARE that poor SOB waste my tax money like that?? I DON'T get to eat like that!" So where is the middle ground? I've been there several years ago when I was let go from a job for no fault of my own, so I know of where I speak.
ReplyDeleteWhich is actually perfect as the government subsidizes Corn to the tune of 2.84 Billion dollars: a significant percentage becomes sugar and the rest feeds our cows: so to the Gent's point: win-win
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