i know there is a wide division between those who believe food stamps are good and those who believe they are worthless.

if you think food stamps are a good idea, i challenge you to work at a grocery store for a week.

i work at a local grocery store, and after THREE DAYS i can pick out people who use food stamps, before they say anything. just from the food they put on the conveyor.

almost without exception, they food they choose is thus: boxes and boxes of little debbie "snack cakes," dozens of candy bars, cases of soda, and cartons of ice cream. the healthiest thing i've seen purchased with food stamps has been corn dogs. i counted over 50 candy bars on one ticket (they were the majority of the sale) with food stamps. most of the rest was pre-cooked microwavable bacon. what the hell? too lazy to work, too lazy to turn on the stove, so they buy a dozen boxes of microwavable bacon that amounts to one package of real bacon that costs less than each package of microwaveable?

and the kids... the kids come up to the counter clutching armfuls of candy bars and soda, and pile them on the conveyor with the nodding approval of the morbidly obese parent, who then piles shrink-wrapped gold-plated cholesterol nuggets on the conveyor. Then the children stand by, waiting for me to scan their candy... watching me with bright sugar-coated eyes, mocking me. they know they're spending more for junk food for that day than i spend on groceries in a week. they know i'm paying for it.

what i wonder is... is that all they get for the week? are they that short-sighted with that little self-control that they spend a weeks worth of grocery money on junk food that they will consume in one day (they buy nothing else to eat) or do they go somewhere every day and buy all this crap again? they certainly don't LOOK like they have any shortage of food.

it seems like some of the ridiculous convenience-driven products (like pre-cooked microwaveable bacon) that save 2 minutes and cost 10 times as much, are sold entirely to people who use food stamps. why does nobody else buy them? because they are so expensive, and because even if you have a job you still have the extra 2 minutes it takes to cook real bacon instead of warm up pre-cooked bacon. apparently the people who get paid by the government to sit on their fat ass (which takes up a whole couch) are SO BUSY doing that, that they can't make real bacon.

i think a main driver of obesity in the US is food stamps. people who don't have jobs sitting around all day eating candy bars, snack cakes, and microwave bacon... ARE BOUND TO GET FAT. i personally think it's more humane to let them starve to death, and hope they do it before they have kids. the best thing for them would be to cut off foodstamps... they would have to get a job. with all the money saved in taxes (only something like 8-12% of tax money slated for food stamps or other government assistance goes to the people, the rest is "administrative cost") people would have extra money to spend, which would increase the economy enough to open up extra jobs. not that there is a shortage of jobs right now anyway, there's just so many people who've figured out that it's easier to let the government pay you to not have a job.

i think it's a government conspiracy to control people. fat, lazy people who are dependent on the government and addicted to junk food are less likely to revolt when their rights are taken away. that's why those programs are designed to keep people out of school and out of work. it's almost exactly the same pattern as an abusive husband (i used to work at a low-cost daycare, and i was trained to recognize the signs of an abusive relationship - the abuser/controller forbids the other to get a job or an education, keeps her dependent on him, etc.). because these same programs also encourage people to pop out babies (who, when they grow up, are almost certainly going to be on assistance too), they are trying to increase the number of people on these programs. eventually, most people will be on these programs. they will do what they are told, and the government will have few problems. as long as they can keep corporations to make money, and poor, fat masses to control, they will be happy.

</rant>

I too used to work at a grocery store, for about a year back in HS. The abuses were defenitly there. Seems like the food stamp people would load up on name brand food. Instead of getting lots of Always Save or Best Choice stuff they would buy the name brand food every time. And like you said, soda, candy, lucky charms, all the unhealthy crap you could think of. About 2/3 of the uses were grossly overweight. Another thing i noticed was that many of the users drove nice vehicles, or nicer than you would think for having food stamps.

The program defenitly needs an overhaul. Food stamps should only be available to use on pre-approved generic and healthy foods. If the government is giving people the money to spend on food, the government should have the authority to tell them what to and what not to eat.

hey lukecp, that sure does sound like WIC program to me.

yes, WIC is a good program. but it is limited, and why go limited when you can abuse the other system? and WIC is only for pregnant women, or women with small children. many people who need assistance don't qualify for WIC. if food stamps were more like WIC, the abuses would be cut down.

Exactly. WIC is a much better program. When i worked at the store lots of low-income mothers used WIC to buy baby formula, milk, generic cereals, ect. Anything to be bought with WIC had to be WIC approved, and the items on the shelf carred a "WIC Approved" tag. This needs to be done with foodstamps to cut the abuses. The idea of foodstamps is good, helping hungary people, but the abuses are rampant and it needs to become limited, to save everyone money.

While I don't know exactly how much they get in food stamps and how many people it is supposed to feed, I can almost guarantee my cost of food in a month is less than they are spending per person in a WEEK. Granted, its because I don't eat healthy, but then again, a bunch of candy bars isn't exactly healthy either.

Heck, that grocery store had ramen on sale 10 cents a pack. That is what poor people should be getting! The stuff is CHEAP, it isn't real unhealthy (a little bit of oil, but not horrible), but cook up about 3 packages and add a can of corn that had the juice strained, maybe cut up some carrots or something, and you can have a decent soup for 4 people that cost less than a buck total. I'm going to be trying rice and ramen and see how that works. That is another 15-20 cent meal.

I think if we are going to be giving these people money, it should be tightly controlled how it is spent. Make foodstamps like wic, though expand the food selection a bit (but only a bit). For welfare, instead of giving them money, it might be more effective if we could somehow limit how it was used. Say it can only be used for food, rent, utilities (not cabletv or internet), prescriptions, and childcare (only if the parent is working). Forgive me if I missed something vitally important, but I think that would pretty much cover it. Then, keep it so you can only be on it for a max of say two years and cannot re-apply for 5 or 10 years. There would have to be exceptions, but not many. Though, administrative costs for implimenting that might make it a bit high, I think there would be a net savings since people would get off their ass and get a job. If they can't use the welfare money for cable tv, movies, candy, etc, they are still going to want those things, so they can get a job and pay for them. While they are at it, they can then take over payment on their rent and such.

Thats another good idea. Welfare in itself isn't a bad idea....those who can't help themselves for periods of time deserve to be helped. But like food stamps there are many abuses. If the govenrment gives them aid i think there should be some restirictions on what it should be spent on. Rent, utilities, and maybe some other things. Lots of people in my impovirshed area back home spend the money on beer, junk cars to litter their yard, drugs, cable, whatever. Stuff i can't afford as a college student. The administrative costs would be high as you said, but it might make up for the difference in money the gov't would save on abused welfare payments.

And the welfare program right now, IIRC, only allows people to be on it 2 years at a time and a max of 5 years in their lifetime. Someone correct me if i'm wrong, but those are the numbers i remember from poly sci 90.

A lot of bills can now be paid electonically. Perhaps if a person qualified their bills could electorinically submitted to whichever agency for payment. Usage could be pretty easily monitored and audited that way.

I worked at a grocery store for three years in high school, and some people used food stamps wisely, but not many. What I noticed the most, was that people bought more expensive things all the time. They would buy shrimp and steaks and loads of other things that hardly anyone else in my small town would buy.

Also, what pissed me off, was how many people came into the store and wanted to buy cigarettes with food stamps. I swear, people came in all the time wanting to do this, and then would be all pissed when I told them that they couldn't do it.

And yes, people would buy lost of junk food too, it was appalling. What's worse is that I had aquaintances from high school who had gotten pregnant, and gotten food stamps, and came in and bought soda and doughnuts and shit for all her friends. It was a way for them
to be popular, buying friends with food stamps.

My experience in working in grocery stores was a little bit different. I didn't notice a lot of people buying true junk food, but lots of frozen dinners. Not exactly the holy grail of proper nutrition, but definitely better than candy bars and potato chips.

I used to work at a grocery store too, and the people with food stamps could piss me off like no others. There was this older lady who had them, and if that wasn't bad enough, she expected us to carry and lift stuff around for her while at the same time not only complaining about here horrible situation but being very rude also. There was another family whose mother actually bragged that they had more children so they could get more food stamp $$. They had more money for grocerys than my mom spent on my family growing up. They ate nicer stuff than me, that PISSED me off!

I think welfare should be reduced quite a bit. In my experience, there were just a bunch of lazy people living off the government.

I worked at QuikTrip (A GAS STATION) over the summer03 and had somewhat the same experience as you grocery store workers. Idiots always wanting to buy cigs with stamps. Fountain drinks were a big ticket item too. Sunday morning the gas station was more like a grocery store than anything else (this particular QT was located at the most white trash corner in KC metro area). I don't need to go into detail about the price/type of products stocked in a gas station.

i say we need beer stamps!

I say we blow up all their lincoln navigators! I worked at a grociery store in st. louis with a lot of people bringing in foodstamps and wic and it really pissed me off to see them driving brand new fucking lincoln navigators

I worked at WalMart for a total of about 5 years through high school and college. 90% of the time was spent as a cashier. We all know that WalMart is the white trash Mecca to which the welfare fed scum of the earth pilgramidge.

I agree that WIC(Women Infants and Children) is a great system and the welfare and food stamps system could take a note from them. During my tour as a customer service manager I was privy to the exact balance of peoples monthly food stamp accounts. Let me tell you it was sickening.

A family of four, two kids, neither parent having a job, typically had a monthly stipend of between $500 and $600. This is usually in addition to the WIC benefits they receive, which is basically free baby formula, milk, baby cereal etc.

My wife and I spend nowhere near $250 a month on groceries. We don't eat like gourmets, but we realize that we are in college and are in a certain economic class as a result.

My opinion is that if your ass is too lazy to get even a minimum wage job, and believe me when I say that this is the vast majority of cases, you should eat like it. You should buy the $.29 box of macaroni, and the ramen, and the off brand cereal.

Welfare assholes buy lobster at WalMart with food stamps. I've seen it so many times. Food stamps should be closely regulated by the goverment just like WIC is. You can't force people to buy off brand food because that causes problems with competition between producers. But you can cut peoples benifits in half and force them to live within their means. The means that working people like me and my wife and some of you reading this make possible for these leaches.

Personally, I think welfare is not needed by our society. It causes people to get into the hand out mentality, and generation after generation come to depend on it because that's what their parents did. If you can't get a job because of some ailment or physical problem, that's different. If you're too lazy to get a job, there's a name for people like you. The homeless. And that's exactly what you deserve to be.

What really makes me sick is toward the end of the month when the food stamp balance is getting low the sick fucks end up choosing to buy cigarettes and beer before food for their kids with the little cash they do have. I've seen so many parents literally choose between the hamburger meat or fruit and the cigarettes that are on the counter. Guess which decision they make time and time again. It makes me sick.