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| | Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?Page 1 of 5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) | Mayor Bloomberg is proposing a ban on using food stamps to buy soda and other sugary drinks. Is this a good idea or a form of discrimination against the poor? Is soda "food"? Joel Berg of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger objected, "The problem isn't that they're making poor choices, the problem is that they can't afford nutritious food." But isn't using food stamps to buy soda a poor choice? Aren't food stamps meant to give poor people the ability to buy nutritious food?
What do you think? Here's one article on the subject:
http://tinyurl.com/2elcvqv
New York seeks to ban sugary drinks from food stamp buys
New effort to battle obesity
Posted: 10/11/2010
* By: The Associated Press
NEW YORK - Using food stamps to buy sodas, teas, sports drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages would not be allowed in New York City under a new government effort to battle obesity.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson announced Thursday that they are seeking permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the nation's food stamp program, to add sugary drinks to the list of prohibited goods for city residents receiving assistance.
If approved, it would be the first time an item would be banned from the federal program based solely on nutritional value.
Spending government money on "foods of little or no nutritional value not only contradicts the intent of the program, it also effectively subsidizes a serious public health epidemic," New York officials wrote in their proposal.
The idea has been suggested before, including in 2008 in Maine, where it drew criticism from advocates for the poor who argued it unfairly singled out low-income people and risked scaring off potential needy recipients.
In 2004, the USDA rejected Minnesota's plan to ban junk food, including soda and candy, from food stamp purchases, saying it would violate the Food Stamp Act's definition of what is food and could create "confusion and embarrassment" at the register.
New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said he believes New York's request has a better chance of being approved than the "skimpy" 2004 Minnesota program because it focuses only on beverages.
He said it also has the advantage of being a temporary program with an evaluation plan to study its effectiveness.
USDA spokesman Aaron Lavallee said Thursday the agency received the proposal and will consider it.
The food stamp system, launched in the 1960s, serves some 40 million Americans per month and does not currently restrict any food item based on nutrition.
Recipients can essentially buy any food for the household, although there are some limits on hot or prepared foods. Food stamps also cannot be used to buy alcohol, cigarettes or items such as pet food, vitamins or household goods.
The ban would apply to any beverage that contains more than 10 calories per 8 ounces, except for milk products, milk substitutes like soy milk and rice milk, and fruit juices without added sugar.
A 20-ounce sugar-sweetened drink can contain the equivalent of as many as 16 packets of sugar.
Some New Yorkers who receive the assistance said officials had good intentions but felt the proposal went too far.
"I can see the sodas, but suppose somebody's in bad shape and they just want juice?" said Harold Vilson, a 56-year-old Brooklyn resident who said he uses food stamps.
"If people want to buy that stuff, they should be able to. If it's not an illegal product, they should be able to buy what they want to buy."
The program would be temporary, so officials could study its effects over two years. It would apply only to food stamp recipients in New York City -- 1.7 million of the city's more than 8 million residents -- and would not affect the amount of assistance they receive.
"Sugar-sweetened drinks are not worth the cost to our health, and government shouldn't be promoting or subsidizing them," said Bloomberg, who also has outlawed trans-fats in restaurant food and has forced chain restaurants to post calorie counts on menus.
In fiscal year 2009, New Yorkers received $2.7 billion in food stamp benefits and spent $75 million to $135 million of that on sugary drinks, the city said.
Officials said stores that participate in the food stamp program would be responsible for enforcing the ban. They acknowledged the possibility that food stamp users could travel outside city limits to buy the prohibited drinks.
Advocates for the poor expressed alarm about the proposal, which the New York City Coalition Against Hunger said "punishes poor people for the supposed crime of being poor."
"It's sending the message to low-income people that they are uniquely the only people in America who don't know how to take care of their family," said Joel Berg, the group's executive director. "The problem isn't that they're making poor choices, the problem is that they can't afford nutritious food."
There still are many unhealthful products New Yorkers could purchase with food stamps, including potato chips, ice cream and candy. Officials said the proposal targets sugary drinks because they are the largest contributor to obesity.
More than half of adult New York City residents are overweight or obese, along with nearly 40 percent of public school students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
City officials said lower-income residents are most likely to drink one or more sugar-sweetened drinks a day; adult-onset diabetes is also twice as common among poor New Yorkers compared to the wealthiest.
In New York, a proposal to adopt a penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened soda failed to get out of the state Legislature earlier this year; Bloomberg backed the state proposal. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/12/2010 7:46:14 PM | | Just another nanny state proposal. The country is sinking like the Titanic and these geniuses are concerned about soda pop consumption. In CA they are worried about legalizing pot with a 12.4% unemployment rate. As bad as we are, we deserve better than this. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/12/2010 7:48:53 PM |
What do you think?
I think BRAVO! It's about time attention was paid to some of the behavioral CAUSES of ill health!
Sugar-water is NOT a food! It should be regulated more like a drug that some get addicted to... | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/12/2010 7:51:33 PM | Now you want to tell people what they can and can't buy? What's next? Coffee is not exactly good for you and neither is bacon, butter,ice cream, and a million other things.You are suggesting a slippery slope arwen52.They are on food stamps.It's not jail.
Is it not bad enough that you Americans have no health care for your people so that over a million a year die from not being able to receive any medical attention.Now you want to take away their twinkies? What a country you have.People dying from not being able to get medical attention yet you are all more concerned about "allowing" people to buy junk food.
Yes I can see it now your politicians ranting about the evils of junk food while stepping over your dying citizens. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/12/2010 8:25:01 PM | The amount of benefits the household gets is called an allotment. The net monthly income of the household is multiplied by .3, and the result is subtracted from the maximum allotment for the household size to find the household's allotment. This is because Food Stamp households are expected to spend about 30 percent of their resources on food.
Listed below are maximum allotments for different size households from 2006 to until 2007:
People in Household Maximum Monthly Allotment
1 $155
2 284
3 408
4 518
5 615
6 738
7 816
8 932
Each additional person
+117
Surely the figures have risen some since 2006 yet as you can see the small amount of food stamps that people are eligible for isn't nearly enough money to buy nutritious meals anyways.
I think that they should increase the amount given per person and leave well enough alone. The reason for obesity in New York is more likely because on this small amount people are probably more prone to buy the cheap unhealthy but filling food products to make it go farther and because many smaller stores that are close by do not sell a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/12/2010 10:07:48 PM | | There's no big difference between most juice drinks and pop, and personally I don't care what a family buys with their food stamps/EBT card, it's their life. Okay, I would care if they were buying tobacco products or illegal drugs or booze with food stamps, but that's more if they were denying their children food. I'm just not that interested, outside of abusing children, in what people do in their own private lives. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/12/2010 11:35:28 PM | I think the use of the word "Ban" is misleading. Nobody is banning sweetened soda. People who use food stamps can still buy soda all they want to.
In my state food stamps never cover all of a families food expenses. Most families still have to go to a food pantry for part of their groceries. The food pantries don't have any of these items.
Food stamps are from money pooled together from all of us, to help people struggling to survive so they can pay other bills with what little money they have. It's not supposed to be for everything or it would cover more than just food. The people who qualify for food stamps usually also qualify for energy assistance for heating their homes, and for help with the telephone bill, and for rent assistance and other kinds of help.
Right now there is a way for food stamps to be limited easily through the computer scanners so that someone using the food stamps can buy a number of things that aren't food in addition to food so that you can check out all at once. The things that are food get covered by the program and the things that aren't have to be paid some other way.
People can't take their energy assistance to buy other things except to pay for utility bills. The reason is that some people would take the money to the casino or bar or drug dealer to spend it.
Right now, food stamps don't pay for alcohol, and I don't see why they can't in addition limit the program to cover only food, since water is free, and soda isn't essential to life.
In fact, soda is addicting, and I think that taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for anything created to be addicting and a vanity consumer item. (I think that everyone who is objecting to this change is probably already addicted themselves, but are in denial about it.)
Soda can ruin your teeth, and most people on food stamps have no dental care, and so can get seriously ill from drinking soda and not being able to take care of their teeth.
Let's see if we can take the money from paying for soda and use it to pay for some basic dental care for children. And if they want cosmetic-only dentistry like having their teeth capped or whitened, they can pay for that themselves, or get a grant or foundation to pay for serious injuries and congenital dental problems like cleft palate.
I think many kids would do better in school if they didn't have tooth aches to deal with. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 4:55:57 AM | You would think the mayor of New York had better things to do with his time...yeesh. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. This is not going to make a dent in the obesity problem in NYC. Poor people will still buy soda, alchohol, cigarettes and whatever else they want without the food stamps.
Instead of punishing the poor, why not make money from the rich? I say tax the hell out of sugary soda so the poor people truly can't afford it. Let the rich buy it and get fat. After all, they can afford liposuction and weight loss surgery. Problem solved. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 6:58:42 AM | A well intentioned proposal. Why will it not work?
Well, because there's a large difference between (a) absence of self-control, (b) stupidity. Plenty of low income obese people have (a) and lack (b).
Design it to be as difficult as you want to buy soda and other health-noxious items with food stamps or any other kind of income supplement and I can demonstrate to you in five minutes or less how to get around the "prohibition".
Say you had DNA and retinal scanners in the stores to track people's food stamp accounts and Big Bro Welfare tracks every food stamp recipient. You want to buy cigarettes, soda pop and a hit of crack with food stamps? Locate a drug dealer who wouldn't mind some cut-rate groceries. You get his list, buy it with stamps, and trade it for yours. Pfft, he would probably front you the cash to go in and buy his list while he peddles the rock outside.
This just goes to the whole fundamental problem with all kinds of prohibitive laws. This may sound off-topic, but it's not-- its the explanation why such a prohibition simply could not work.
Mild prohibitions just do not work, all they do is guarantee steady supply by raising profit margins for illegal suppliers. You cannot even just legalize illegal commodities then tax the market out of existence because just like cigarettes, once the taxes start going high enough, the illegal supply kicks in and undercuts the prohibition.
Even purely legal but regulated commodities reflect the same pattern. Any form of patented pharmaceutical gets too expensive, bang, grey market supply kicks in and imports it from places where it's less pricy. Same thing with counterfeit Ed Hardy, or pirated Hollywood movies on line. If you charge $ 45.00 for a t-shirt or $14.00 for Iron Man II, some guy will supply it for less, illegal or not.
The only kinds of prohibitions that work at all are the sort of ruthlessly draconian ones we'll never accept as a society, because they involve state-supported spy networks monitoring the general population coupled with punishments scary enough to make John Wayne Gacy sleep with a nightlight.
The People's Republic of China solved their mass opium addiction problem in a few years, because they simply shot every addict and every dealer, and gave long prison camp sentences to anyone who complained about it. Singapore's drug problem is under control, because there's huge signs in the airport that tell you that "possession of illegal drugs in the Republic of Singapore is punishable by death", in about ten languages, and they're not kidding.
There's also a whole supply-side problem that's really linked to the collapse of inner-city neighborhoods.
If you really wanted to improve public health in the dive neighborhoods whose inhabitants rely heavily on food stamps, you'd need to do a whole series of different things, starting with bringing in enough of a concentration of jobs to create the critical mass of a market for proper grocery stores in close enough proximity that people could walk to them, or else a decent public transit network. Anyone whose diet is primarily dependent on the stuff that's available in a corner store is going to verge on malnourished, obese or both at once, at best. Banning purchases of soda on food stamps is like giving band-aids to a guy with skin cancer. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 8:49:18 AM |
Surely the figures have risen some since 2006 yet as you can see the small amount of food stamps that people are eligible for isn't nearly enough money to buy nutritious meals anyways.
I'm a full time working woman - I buy groceries for a family of 3, and TRY to keep to a grocery budget of $600/month ($150/week) and a good portion of that budget is non-food (paper towels, shampoo, razors, etc.). We eat very well - so an allotment of $408 (allotment for a family of 3) would go a LONG way to subsidize the grocery portion for nutritious meals.
For the record, I don't buy sugary drinks or sodas - and I don't consider them 'Food'. I don't have a problem putting strict limitations on what one can buy with foodstamps, much like WCI (women infants and children) subsidies. I also don't have a problem with taxing sodas - not because I don't drink them, but because like cigarettes and alcohol, they are strictly elective. I'd rather them tax luxury items rather than raise income taxes or tax essentials. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 10:02:39 AM |
Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Personally, I think food stamps should be outright banned, done away with, gotten rid of.
Except (maybe) for people with absolutely no immediate family, like old (past retirement age) widows and baby orphans.
The only concession I would make is to either have the government dictate exactly what you can buy with food stamps (like WIC checks), have a centralized government 24 hour soup kitchen like a (or in the) school lunchroom where people can go (via bus) and redeem the food stamps (and you can either get unemployment benefits...or food stamps, not both), or have the denominations based on calories rather than dollars.
Is this a good idea or a form of discrimination against the poor?
Don't you have to be poor to be on food stamps?
Theoretically. or ideally, isn't it only the poor on food stamps?
So any decision whatsoever that affects food stamps...doesn't it automatically mean some kind of discrimination against the poor?
You can't buy cigarettes or booze or vitamins with food stamps...is that saying all poor people really just want to buy liquor and smokes and take vitamins? Discrimination!
What about poor alcoholics? It's a disease!
isn't taxing simply discriminating against the rich?
Is it okay to discriminate against people with money, but not okay to discriminate against those without? One form of discrimination is okay and good while the other is bad? | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 11:46:03 AM |
There's no big difference between most juice drinks and pop, and personally I don't care what a family buys with their food stamps/EBT card, it's their life. Okay, I would care if they were buying tobacco products or illegal drugs or booze with food stamps, but that's more if they were denying their children food. I'm just not that interested, outside of abusing children, in what people do in their own private lives.
So it wouldn't bother you if they were buying filet and crab legs? | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 12:29:01 PM |
I think BRAVO! It's about time attention was paid to some of the behavioral CAUSES of ill health!
Sugar-water is NOT a food! It should be regulated more like a drug that some get addicted to...
so, to sum it up, you think that sugar is the root of all ill health? Physical and mental?
"It's sending the message to low-income people that they are uniquely the only people in America who don't know how to take care of their family," said Joel Berg, the group's executive director. "The problem isn't that they're making poor choices, the problem is that they can't afford nutritious food."
Can you say rice and beans? I have to agree, it's probably the rich that have the choices in what they purchase, that abuse their own health.
So it wouldn't bother you if they were buying filet and crab legs?
well. if they only get to eat once a month, it may as well be something tasty! BTW lets not insinuate that the fish we eat these days are healthy food, especially shellfish that are bottom feeders and eat mostly crap, and beef thats been injected with hormones for growth. yum!
Surely the figures have risen some since 2006 yet as you can see the small amount of food stamps that people are eligible for isn't nearly enough money to buy nutritious meals anyways. not true, for a superficial comment just compare food prices to food stamp allowances, and no, they have not met inflation rates. As a last word, oh yea, lets get everyone hooked on those oh so healthy artificial sweeteners! ruthlessly draconian "ruthlessly draconian," gotta love that. There's also a whole supply-side problem that's really linked to the collapse of inner-city neighborhoods. ya think? That's just too good. Mild prohibitions just do not work, all they do is guarantee steady supply by raising profit margins for illegal suppliers. You cannot even just legalize illegal commodities then tax the market out of existence because just like cigarettes, once the taxes start going high enough, the illegal supply kicks in and undercuts the prohibition. send me that info, outside the fact that tobacco is cheaper to purchase on american indian reservations. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 1:18:25 PM | yeah... and let's stop them from buying white bread and chocolate and any kind of processed meats... and condiments too...and that's just for starters!
(...as things can get lost in translation, please note sarcastic tone in aforementioned comment...) | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 1:41:48 PM | | Mayor Bloomberg is a very dangerous man. He wants to ban guns and keep the populace under video survaillance . He knows what's best for everyone including how much soda poor people should drink. The guy ought to be tarred and feathered and dumped into the Hudson river (think mob pitchfork scene in Frankenstein movies). | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 3:20:56 PM |
Now you want to tell people what they can and can't buy? What's next? Coffee is not exactly good for you and neither is bacon, butter,ice cream, and a million other things.You are suggesting a slippery slope arwen52.They are on food stamps.It's not jail.
Nobody is forced to be on food stamps. The purpose of food stamps should be to provide sustenance for those in a desperate situation. They shouldn't be a way of life, nor should they aid toward the fastest growing preventable health problem in this country-- obesity. The government can't and shouldn't control how the general population eats or how it feeds its children but it should control how government handouts are spent to ensure its neediest recipients-- children-- get what their bodies require. If somebody doesn't like such restrictions, they're more than welcome to spend their cash on a Coke.
People in Household Maximum Monthly Allotment
1 $155
2 284
Surely the figures have risen some since 2006 yet as you can see the small amount of food stamps that people are eligible for isn't nearly enough money to buy nutritious meals anyways.
Those figures starts at $5/day for an individual, which is more than enough to buy nutritious meals. An ear of corn costs a quarter, a potato is less than that, a bell pepper is a little more. A couple pieces of fruit cost less than a dollar. A breast of chicken or a thin steak are also less than a dollar. So I'd say those amounts seem quite generous. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 5:44:40 PM | | The facts of the matter are that if you are not eating from the outside aisles and eating organics then you are eating unhealthy foods. So to eliminate soda (and by the way the soda companies make their best profits at the schools) does very little to help the poor make only healthy choices. I have a feeling that there are many people who make poor choices in lots of areas of life. Should the government police everyone at all times? | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 6:29:49 PM | If all the junk food were removed from a typical grocery store, about 2/3's of the store would be gone. There's so much unhealthy stuff we Americans have grown used to eating as if it were real nutritious food.
Soda's, sugary breakfast cereals, these aren't food, they're candy !
Frankly, I have a lot of sympathy for this idea.
You would think that the right wing, smaller government folks would applaud this sort of thing.
If the government is going to assist people in need, it should do it in ways which are actually nutritious and healthy for them.
Naturally, the Coke Cola and Pepsi companies don't like this one bit. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 6:32:58 PM | | I'd say yes. People on welfare should not get a blank check to buy what ever they want. I'd also like see everyone on that is on welfare, housing and food stamps be required to pass a drug test before they can get the taxpayer benefit. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 6:34:01 PM | | Intelligent lifeforms get so appalled at government imposing a ban such as this on their everyday existence and vow to never get into a position where they need to rely on food stamps to feed themselves and their families so in that regard I would say it's one of the best things to ever happen in the state of New York. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 7:20:04 PM | I'm really torn on this one.
First, I have to confess that I always have a couple of litres of Pepsi around. And I drink a couple of cups of coffee every morning with heaping teaspoons of sugar.
But, I'm assuming that you can't use food stamps to buy cigarettes - and I would argue that Type 2 diabetes is a far more expensive illness than heart attacks or cancer.
Canada and the US are very similar in most ways, but any trip south always makes a Canadian amazed at: the sheer number of truly obese people there; and the prevalence of cheap, unhealthy food in the supermarkets. It's easy to buy unhealthy food here - but it's really, really hard not to buy it in America.
So, on balance, I sort of support the ban. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 8:01:15 PM | I'm really torn on this one.
First, I have to confess that I always have a couple of litres of Pepsi around. And I drink a couple of cups of coffee every morning with heaping teaspoons of sugar.
But, I'm assuming that you can't use food stamps to buy cigarettes - and I would argue that Type 2 diabetes is a far more expensive illness than heart attacks or cancer.
Canada and the US are very similar in most ways, but any trip south always makes a Canadian amazed at: the sheer number of truly obese people there; and the prevalence of cheap, unhealthy food in the supermarkets. It's easy to buy unhealthy food here - but it's really, really hard not to buy it in America.
So, on balance, I sort of support the ban.
Do you honestly think that it is only sugary drinks that are bad for us? If you ban one bad thing you have to ban all bad things.Just taking Pepsi out of your diet will not fix anything.First it's the sugary drinks then it's just sugar,then anything with any fat,salt or preservatives in it.From there it's a hop skip and a jump away from punishing people for not exercising because,after all,you don't become morbidly obese from only what you eat.
Now it's not only food that causes problems and illness(far from it).There is also,drinking,careless behavior,Sunbathing,unprotected sex which will give you std's,multiple babies born to teens and unfit parents.Do you have any idea how much the foster care system cost the taxpayers?So will it be mandatory abortions or how about forced sterilizations and chastity belts for everyone?
When governments get involved in personal choice then it starts to smack strongly of communism.Be careful what you wish for because it's never a wise idea to give a government too much power.People always seem to get a woody when talking about taking away "other peoples" choices,but how will you feel when they get around to inevitably taking away yours? | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 8:16:00 PM | ^^^^^^^^^^
I agree it is a slippery slope indeed. All of those people wanting the govt to control people's lives are all for it if the govt is smacking someone else around. What they fail to realize is that their time in the barrel is coming and then it will be too late to reverse course. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/13/2010 9:08:05 PM | Why would it bother me if they bought crab legs, etc.? Do they like to eat that? Why are people so hell bent on beating up the poor and deciding choices for them. Let's make this more equal, the company you work for is paying you, so they should have a say in what you spend that money on. No more fast food, pop, or whatever is unhealthy and you shouldn't be spending their money on. That way everybody is denied and/or told what to eat, what's good for them, and those who think they know what others should be doing can rule the world...pinky. 
Really, if people want to eat good tasting food with money they get from my taxes, good for them. I prefer that to them buying cheap crap they don't want or like. I'm really not that important that I should have a say in what they eat. My own prejudice should never be put into practice for the whole world...you know, unless someone is harming a child, because children are helpless. And yeah, you know it is damaging to children to be pointed out and treated unequally just because their parents are poor. I very much believe that. I have no problem giving some extras to poor children, and some pop, I can't imagine bothering to be so petty. | |
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| Should New York Ban Using Food Stamps To Buy Sugary Drinks?
Posted: 10/14/2010 6:18:04 AM |
When governments get involved in personal choice then it starts to smack strongly of communism.Be careful what you wish for because it's never a wise idea to give a government too much power.People always seem to get a woody when talking about taking away "other peoples" choices,but how will you feel when they get around to inevitably taking away yours?
I see you're not from America so perhaps you're not totally clear what food stamps are. They're government handouts to the poor that don't have to be paid back. Why shouldn't the government have a say in where its money goes? It's not unlike living at home and having your parents say, "As long as we're supporting you, you'll live by our rules." Most people don't like that so they eventually move out. Anybody who has a problem with the government dictating how they spend their food stamps is more than welcome to get off food stamps. Government assistance programs should be unpleasant so that people will work hard to get off of them and stay off them. | |
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