1) The poor don't need more food. Obesity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get food stamps (because they don't have an address), food insufficiency is not.
2) Food stamps only imperfectly translate into increased cash income, meaning that the poor will spend . . . more money on food.
3) If the increase in food stamps takes the form of expanded eligibility, rather than larger grants, the administrative issues and public outreach will delay your stimulus until well after it is no longer needed.
4) The limits on the type of goods available to food stamp consumers, and the growing season, mean that some (it's hard to say how much) of the food stamp spending will simply draw down perishable stocks rather than generating new economic activity. Eventually this will probably generate more economic activity, but probably well after your stimulus is needed.
5) The economy doesn't need a food sector more distorted by daft government programs than it already is. If you want to give money to the poor, give it to them. Even if they spend it all on drugs, it will hardly be much worse than spending it all on increasing their already astronomical obesity rates.
I'm not particularly a fan of food stamps, especially since I found out in the '70s that my family qualified for them and we were in NO way poor or in need of help buying food.
However, the truly poor generally buy cheaper food, which is correlated with high calories and starches. That accounts in part for obesity among the poor.
What Donna B. said. Obesity is not a function of the quantity of the food purchased, but rather its quality.
However, the truly poor generally buy cheaper food, which is correlated with high calories and starches.
Maybe cheaper per calorie, but I doubt they're cheaper per serving. Since even the truly poor do not generally seem to be deprived of calories I don't think price is a major factor in poor dietary habits. Convenience and taste are probably much more important.
This comment misses the point, and betrays a real ignorance of the terms of the debate. Thanks for not letting that stop you from weighing in, though.
Every economist I know - right or left - would, of course, much rather simply give out cash.
Here in the real world, however, there are institutional considerations, such as: how fast can we print and mail checks to millions of people? The answer: not very, especially in the middle of the tax return season.
So: food stamps. Most recipients already have their cards, and we can transfer money onto them electronically. In this respect, they are a very good platform for delivering (at least part of) the stimulus, becuase they allow us to act swiftly.
The point was never that food stamps were a good way, in the abstract, to deliver the stimulus. But rather that, all things considered, they did have some advantages.
This post is like a cartoon of libertarianism: "In my make-believe, idealized model of the world, this policy you propose has all these exceedingly obvious flaws!"
Got it, thanks.
The evidence that the poor are forced into buying potato chips rather than apples by their incomes is pretty underwhelming. As Mixner says, the food is cheaper per calorie, but that's the point--they buy things that have a lot of calories, when there are at least equally cheap foods available per serving that have fewer calories. You may have to buy chicken wings instead of breasts, but you don't have to bread and deep fry them.
Hi Megan. Your blog is great, but you just majorly wiffed on this one. I'm not gonna rip you a new one since I to take your criticism of food stamps as largely isolated to the ill-advised idea of including them in a stimulus package, but you just said said awfully dumb stuff. Living in an impoverished neighborhood in Brooklyn and having volunteered on the front-lines at soup kitchens and so forth, I can tell you that there are in fact people whose health is imperiled by malnutrition, that there are lots of people who actually are choosing between food and rent, that food stamps help them, and that yes, it's a massively effed up program. But a poorly-structured program is not the same thing as an unnecessary program. In NY, we're working to get more farmers markets and CSAs to accept food stamps, trying to get more people who qualify for he program to do so, and trying to do consumer education about nutrition.
This is such a no-brainer that I bet you'll just smack your forehead in regret when I point out that a fat person is not a healthy person, and that an unhealthy lower class can wreak havoc on a healthcare system. The reason food stamps are good - when they provide access to nutritious food - is that they make sure that people don't buy cheap, unhealthy foods as a way to make rent. That's why a lot of the "food insecure" are overweight: they load up on the fattening stuff because they have an economic incentive to do so. Food stamps incentivize healthier, smarter food spending.
And by the way, the reason a lot of people who qualify for food stamps fail to sign on for them is *not* because they lack an address, its because of a host of other reasons, notably the fact that until Spitzer was elected, it took several more pages of paperwork to qualify for food stamps than it did to buy a handgun. I may be a gun-friendly fellow, but that's nuts. And though I work in finance and am more than a bit skeptical of welfare spending, I also get to talk to people on a daily basis who need food stamps to get by. Should the program be dramatically reformed? You bet. Am I impresssed with your understanding of hunger issues? Not much.
And don't even get me started on the "but poor people are fat!" stuff. That is an entirely separate debate/literature to which you are doing a disservice, and in a single bullet point no less.
Hmmm....so food stamps make you fat? Never heard that one before. Can I send that one to Readers Digest? If it makes the jokes page, I'll share credit.
I agree that food stamps aren't a magic wand, and that there is a troubling amount of lousy food out there. I think we'd all like to see food stamps that people were able to exchange for healthier food and maybe better public health or education programs that made people aware of the dangers of grease and refined starches. But, it is the program we have, and the stimulus package is intended to increase spending and get some liquidity back in the system, not make us all healthy and svelte... those are different problems with different solutions and I think I probably agree with you on those.
That being said, my understanding is that the food stamp proposal is not about expanding program availability. It is about increasing benefits. Remember the stunt where the House Dems went for a month or so on $21 a week? It was to bring attention to the fact that you can't stretch a small budget to buy sufficient amounts of healthy food.
And I'll concede that there is a problem in the political coalition that makes food stamps available. Agribusiness does trade food stamps for subsidies for corn and soy and that makes it harder for us all to find nice, cheap, local veggies and fruits. Show me a bill to gut Big Corn and Big Soy, and I'll sign on. But increasing the food stamp allocation, in this case, isn't making the subsidies larger or the distortions worse.
Finally, I'm not sure that your point #2 is a refutation of my claim that food stamps facilitate consumption spending substitution for the poor. If food stamp recipients consume only food purchased with food stamps, then I think your point holds. However, I think it's the case for many people that food stamps are used to supplement food purchases, not as a complete replacement for cash purchases. So if one could increase the percentage of calories consumed that are paid for with government assistance, you would increase the amount of income they have available for other spending.
On average, what fraction of food budget is covered by food stamps? If say, the average person spends $100/month on food, of which $50 is covered by stamps, and they're doling out added benefits of $25 a head, then the food stamp money liberates $25 of cash. So as long as the recipient doesn't spend more on food, this might work.
But if food stamp benefits are already generous enough that most people's needs are covered as-is, then this looks like a boondoggle.
Greg Mankiw (taking a break from "My So-Called Life") pointed out recently that food stamps are not a good tool with which to manage aggregate demand because it cannot really be used symmetrically.
According to traditional Keynesian theory, fiscal policy should be expansionary in bad times and contractionary in good times. But who wants to cut food stamps for the poor when the economy starts to pick up? Obviously it's better for poor people to have a stable--rather than highly volatile--supply of food stamps.
Cash rebates make more sense--though I myself would still prefer permanent reductions in tax rates or nothing at all.
I've also "worked on the front lines", and while theoretically, food stamps might push people into healthy food, in practice, they don't seem to. If you restricted food stamps to produce, unprocessed meats, and so forth, then yes, it might force the poor to spend money on healthy food, but of course, you can choose between tater tots and apples, and the poor choose tater tots. A healthy, balanced diet is not inherently more expensive than living on chicken fingers; it's just less hedonically satisfying in a life with relatively few hedonic satisfactions. To be sure, I've only written one article on the subject, and that a while ago, but as of 2003, the researchers on the subject I spoke to agreed that the problem in poor communities was not an insufficient quantity of food, or that it was not possible to compose a balanced diet out of what the poor were spending on food; it was that the poor were choosing unhealthy foods over healthy ones. It is possible that if we doubled their food stamps, they would suddenly cut their calorie consumption in half, but there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that this is the case, and it seems to fly against everything we know about human nature, and obesity. The new research on obesity indicates that people are almost always eating to set points that rise slowly every year; whatever causation there is in the link between income and obesity almost certainly runs the other way.
I have (what I think is) a unique idea for a fiscal stimulus. I'd love to know if anyone thinks it's extraordinary good, utterly stupid, or somewhere in between or whatever.
Let me preface it by saying I lean toward no fiscal stimulus at all, preferring to let the Fed, rather than politicians, try to manage economic cycles.
But if we are to have fiscal stimulus, a key objective is obviously that it be effective & efficient in terms of immediate stimulus per dollar lost to the Treasury. Getting more money in the hands of lower income/wealth individuals (who will spend a higher portion of it immediately) via tax rebates (particularly employee payroll taxes) and increased transfer payments (e.g., food stamps) fit that criterion, but have a fairness problem in that they represent increased wealth transfer, albeit for the (at least ostensible) purpose of stimulus.
As a result, our political process has produced tax cuts more focused on the middle class than would be most effective and efficient.
So here's my crazy idea to ensure efficiency & effectivess while avoiding that fairness problem: Government issued gift certficates (instead of those cash rebates) that must be spent within 3 months, issued to most/all of the population. Granted, since money is fungible it won't all be incremental, but we could help ensure that by precluding necessities (as distasteful as that sounds), such as food, gas, heating oil, etc., since that's stuff that would be purchased anyway. Using such gift certificates would ensure that a high portion of each stimulus dollar is spent immediately.
I do see the drawback of the expense of processing (government fulfillment of) these gift certificates, but I'm guessing that that expense (or more precisely the incremental expense over that of administration of cash rebates) would be small relative to the size of the stimulus and relative (in qualitative terms) to the benefit of greater fairness.
Another drawback to my "gift certificate" idea is that the processing delay (mainly on the fulfillment end) could inhibit and/or delay the multiplier effect, although that's just an assumption on my part, I have no idea of magnitude, and no idea of the extent to which that problem could be mitigated by streamlining/accelerating the fulfillment process. And of course, some retailers (and perhaps others) honoring the gift certificates would have to adopt a new process and spend some time on it, but here, too, magnitude might not be significant and would be lower the next time this tactic were used (due to learning/experience curve, etc.).
I'd greatly appreciate any comment.
Vouchers for farmers' markets apparently do encourage low-income recipients to eat more healthfully. Here is a link to blog post that references this study http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-farmers-market-effect/
The Tucson AZ Community Food Bank's farmers' markets do accept food stamps.
Seems like if there were a way to help people get shares in community-supported agriculture (CSA), they would eat more veggies as well. I certainly eat more collards and squash than I ever did before I joined a CSA.
Brooks: Theoretically that would be a less bad stimulus than others that have been proposed. In practice, it would be political suicide. Imagine an ad showing of a family about to lose their home getting handed a gift certificate that lets them buy an iPod but not avoid foreclosure. Since it fails practically, I'd just go for the best theoretical solution, which as you say is no stimulus at all.
Regarding obesity and nutrition, I lean toward Megan's side. I eat more pizza than broccoli, and it's not due to lack of money or nutritional information. Due to unfortunate quirks of evolutionary history, unhealthy food tends to taste really good. It's amusing that many of the same people who correctly note the foolishness of stuff like abstinence-only sex ed expect everyone to take vows of purity with regard to diet and exercise.
Brooks: I think the gift certificate idea is a very good one. I think it ought to be restricted to the lower end of the income spectrum. The advantage claimed for food stamps is that they go to people who mainly spend all their income every month, and are thus likely to be used quickly - the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says increased food stamp grants show up as cash in the economy within two weeks. The problem with gift certificates for rich people is that they may lie in a drawer for 6 months, which is what tends to happen with the Barnes & Noble certificates I get for Christmas. (Of course generalized gift certificates that could be used at many stores would get spent faster, partially ameliorating this problem.)
Megan's post makes a series of claims which would need to be backed up by data, but aren't. SOME of America's poor adults don't need more food; how many, and is this as true for poor kids? (I've heard it's not so true for young children, who can't buy their own food.) The meaning of Point 2 is completely unclear to me; is she saying that raising food stamp grants means poor people end up with less money NET in their pockets? This defies all logic and common sense. Whether the larger food stamp grants raise the cash in their pockets at a 100% rate is immaterial, since 100% equivalent cash value will quickly be going to food retailers and producers and thence out into the economy regardless.
Point 3 is a claim that can only be made with data to back it up. CBPP makes its claim that increasing food stamp grants leads to very rapid injections of cash into the economy on the basis of data, not speculative inference. Claim 4, again, is a claim that could be meaningful, or utterly insignificant, depending on data. When grocery stores and supermarkets in poor parts of the country start earning more cash, does it help the local economy? Maybe one could call up some people in upstate NY and Northeast DC and try to get a sense of that.
And claim 5, finally, runs smack into the two problems that the food stamp concept tries to solve, which are (1) that when you give people cash, they only spend a portion of it, which reduces the efficiency of this idea as economic stimulus; and (2) we lack an efficient bureaucratic mechanism for giving cash to people who aren't paying payroll taxes or receiving unemployment or SS checks, i.e., many of the poor.
I am in general becoming increasingly allergic to rhetoric which is simply oriented towards arguing that whatever the problem is, there's nothing to be done about it within the sphere of politics. This is a political blog. If one doesn't believe politics can accomplish anything, why write such a blog?
Just issue government debit cards that cannot be used to withdraw cash, but rather, must be used to purchase goods and services. Problem solved.
By the way, there is a lot of sarcasm in the above paragraph.
It is possible that if we doubled their food stamps, they would suddenly cut their calorie consumption in half, but there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that this is the case, and it seems to fly against everything we know about human nature, and obesity. The new research on obesity indicates that people are almost always eating to set points that rise slowly every year
In other words, raising food stamp grants would have no impact on obesity? So what's the problem? And who is claiming that the point of raising food stamp grants is to fight obesity? The point is to act as an efficient economic stimulus. If you claim that raising food stamps would increase obesity, fine; that's a valid argument against them. But I doubt there's any data to support that; and in any case, one has to recognize that the nanny-state attitude here is being displayed by you, in arguing that we shouldn't give food stamps to poor people because they'll only make them fatter, rather than by advocates of increasing food stamps as economic stimulus, who haven't said anything about that issue.
Generally speaking, the research on the relation between poverty and diet seems to accept that lower income produces higher obesity, because there is an inverse relation between energy density and energy cost. In brief, if you don't have much money, it makes more apparent sense to maximize calorie intake at the lowest available cost, to preserve some margin for emergencies etc. There is a good related point in Megan's response about high satisfaction levels in certain (higher fat) foods. It should also be remembered that there is such a thing as habit-forming, and so giving the poor more money directly targetted at food may well produce a "more of the same" food buying pattern. In other words, once they get hooked on high-fat foods, they will just buy more of the same to feed the habit as their purchasing power expands, even to a relatively slight degree. Furthermore, if people are unused to preparing more healthy food, then they may well consider that buying it is a waste of time/boring/pointless.
"So what's the problem?"
The reason why obesity rates were pointed out is that the poor seem to have plenty of food, so extra food stamps aren't going to increase their spending on other things. The point of the plan is to increase spending on non-essential goods.
"we lack an efficient bureaucratic mechanism for giving cash to people who aren't paying payroll taxes or receiving unemployment or SS checks, i.e., many of the poor."
And people who don't pay payroll taxes, or are already receiving government assistance deserve any cash from the government because?
The reason why obesity rates were pointed out is that the poor seem to have plenty of food, so extra food stamps aren't going to increase their spending on other things.
This defies both logic and economics, and is flatly not true. To some extent, more food stamps will substitute for cash which the poor currently spend on food; that cash will then be spent on the myriad other things poor people want but can't afford, as shown by empirical data of what happens when you raise food stamp grants. To some extent, more food stamps will be used to buy more food; this means the government will send more money to food retailers, which then goes out into the economy, which is why we call it "stimulus".
And people who don't pay payroll taxes, or are already receiving government assistance deserve any cash from the government because?
First, we are discussing economic stimulus to avoid a recession; the question of whether people "deserve" money is a philosophical or religious one. Second, they deserve it because they are the long-term unemployed, a category that has risen significantly throughout the low-job-growth Bush recovery of the last 6 years. They don't show up in unemployment stats, but in the lower total percentage of 18-to-65-year-olds employed, which has fallen from I believe 65% to 63% since 2000. Perhaps people have grown significantly lazier in the past 7 years, but I somehow doubt it, and even if they had, we're discussing how to avoid a recession, so who cares?
And one more point: if the government issues more food stamps to the poor but the poor don't use them, it doesn't cost anything.
Brooks, read what I wrote. To some extent, the food stamps will substitute for other things, but they are very imperfectly fungible. And to the extent that they draw down food stocks, rather than increasing production immediately, they don't stimulate new activity--particularly if businesses know the increase is supposed to be temporary.
Assuming that the poor have some budget constraint on food, they can possibly eat more of it, but they don't need more of it, which is why directing the stimulus towards giving them more food is bad, distortionary policy. It would be marginally less bad if the poor actually used the money to consume higher quality, lower calorie food, but there's no evidence that this happen; most fat people are fat because they're hungry. It is much more likely that the causal relationship between fat and income runs from fat to income than from income to fat--and yes, they could reinforce each other, but what we now seem to no about obesity contradicts this view.
Interestingly, Paul Krugman offered a very good explanation of why economists have generally gravitated toward monetary policy rather than fiscal policy as the means of managing aggregate demand:
"And one more point: if the government issues more food stamps to the poor but the poor don't use them, it doesn't cost anything."
This seems straightforward, but is not quite as simple as you make it sound. Money still has to be set aside, which then cannot be used for other (perhaps more "profitable") activities, and, as such is effectively a cost to the government and constrains its freedom to some extent.
Are you--as an alleged economist--daft? The purpose of upping food stamps during a recession isn't so recipients buy more food. It's so they spend less on food and spend more dollars on other consumer goods--especially durable goods, like TVs and refigerators. Ever hearof a guy named Keynes?
And why the wanton cruelty--there's no other word for it--toward the poor? So they're fat, lazy and don't have zip codes. Have you no compassion for American families who sometimes have trouble putting food on the table?
Finally, I will guarantee you that the svelt, healthy, deserving "rich" people in America spend way more per capita on food than the people you snidely call "the poor." Explain to me why giving "the poor" more food money will make them fatter, when the more the rich spend on food the thinner they get.
This is the third post since yesterday to use the word "daft". Any reason for its sudden appearance?
The Democrats are doing food stamps because Democrats do food stamps. The Republicans are doing things for businesses because Republicans do things for businesses. The "stimulus" package is for a) posturing (We're from the government and we're going to do something for you) and b) transferring money from unfavored groups to favored groups. Posturing and redistributing money is what politicians do for a living. The "stimulus" package will do nothing for the economy, which is not in the tank and which will recover from the ending of the housing bubble in due course if the politicians keep their hands off.
Mortimer, read some of the posts on the thread, and they will enlighten you. Basically, the extra amount of money is not much (not enough to make the poor move up an income bracket) and so they will continue with a combination of survival strategy and habit: buying cheap food because it is higher in calories, tastes better (to them), and because they are used to it. The point about the amount spent misses the issue, which is that the rich pay MORE for "higher quality" but LOWER CALORIE food. The poor reverse the equation, and pay LESS for HIGHER CALORIE food.
Brooks, read what I wrote. To some extent, the food stamps will substitute for other things, but they are very imperfectly fungible. And to the extent that they draw down food stocks, rather than increasing production immediately, they don't stimulate new activity--particularly if businesses know the increase is supposed to be temporary.
Megan, I did read what you wrote, and I responded to it above. This is a valid sounding point, but needs some data to substantiate it. Is it worse than money that's spent in other ways? I mean, if you hand out cash and people spend it on consumer electronics, that also goes partly to draw down stocks rather than generating new activity. Ditto with anything, especially housing at the moment. So how significant is this? It might be utterly insignificant. Needs data.
And you really need to consider the fact that you are making an argument here based on a moral aversion to the way a certain class of people would (arguably) spend the money you're putting into the economy. If we give people cash, they'll spend some of it on drugs, alcohol, and strip clubs. So what? We're talking about how to avoid a recession.
brooksfoe,
SOME of America's poor adults don't need more food; how many,
Apparently, the vast majority get more than enough food.
and is this as true for poor kids?
Maybe not "as" true, but mostly true.
See "Poverty and Malnutrition" and the following sections in this document
The comment I made concerning truly poor peoply buying cheaper, thus higher calorie food is obviously being misunderstood.
They buy potatoes, not green beans or broccoli.
They buy chicken thighs, not wings or breasts. They don't fry them because oil is expensive.
They buy white rice, not the more wholesome brown or wild rice.
They buy bologna & hot dogs, not pork tenderloins.
Need I go on? To eat a healthy, low fat diet requires $$.
I ain't bragging or nothin', but it looks like I'm the first one to post who actually grew up poor. Yay!
I'm not sure which idea made me giggle more: That poor people have enough food already, or that one of the reasons they buy fatty foods is for the calorie count. That reminded me of Survivorman, like, "the carbs in these Doritos will give me an extra 10 to 12 hours of sustenance."
My mother also took advantage of something called WIC, which was a Godsend of a program. I actually don't know if that was a government thing or not.
This was all 20 years ago, I don't have a clue how things work now. Maybe the system is messed up.
Dang it, I had all of this saved in one file, somewhere, and I've typed all the easy keywords I can think of, but still no luck with retrieval. Anyway, here goes:
The current best guess is not that the poor - those loathsome fatty characters with absolutely no redeeming virtues of any merit but stuffed with will-sapping vices - are unaware of the nature of what they purchase and the consequences of that type of diet. They are not particularly given to or in the habit of giving into oral gratification. And they wish they could afford a better diet.
But here's where the 'afford' part comes in: the most heavily processed, least nutritious foods, the ones full of the emptiest calories . . . are precisely those that are the quickest and easiest to prepare.
In times past, the traditional role of Mom was to be the family dietician, and she was expected to serve up healthful bounteous helpings for the little nippers, while at the same time pleasing the taste buds of the Man of the House. And you know, she did, more or less, and when there was less-than-healthy food - soda was the particular bane of our mom - she was expected to proscribe it, or at least ration it wisely.
These days, mom picks up a pizza on her way home from work, or maybe some Chinese takeout. She buys those little frozen pillows of deep-fried lasagna, or frozen french-fries. Or something that can be microwaved in less than ten minutes. Yes, apples are healthy, and all adults virtuously recite this fact as if it were a viable alternative. When everybody damn well knows what hypocrites they are, and when the only way most people will eat an apple is if it's baked in a pie. Which, while still a possible healthy alternative, is just about unheard-of for most people any more, except for special occasions. No, if you want apples in a pie, you buy those nasty little 'pastries', or, if you can afford it, have somebody else bake it (_Not_ the local supermarket.)
And that's the long and short of the 'obesity epidemic'. Unpaid work at home indeed. Part of which, as Megan notes, though for the wrong causative factors, is coming back to bite us.
I find what you say somewhat disquieting. Maybe you don't mean to, but you seem to be patronizingly implying poor people are unusually stupid about food choice.
I think most everyone tends to buy junk food and unhealthy food over healthy food. The comfortably middle-class are not eating a low-fat Mediterranean diet, usually not even when they claim to do so. What can offset things for them, although maybe not that much considering obesity rates in all economic classes, is that they can afford things like gym memberships or exercise equipment. They're also at least somewhat more active. Poverty can be a rather sedentary life.
Also in some cases junk food truly is more convenient and stores better than healthier foods. You know how fast apples turn brown or rot? Soda lasts longer than milk. Corn chips are easier to manage corn-on-the-cob in most cases. Unless they're getting gas money to boot they often do need to think of things that'll store as they may be unable to take that many trips for groceries.
I don't know how to say this without sounding rude, but I'm going to guess you've never actually been poor.
Food stamps do *Not* mean only eating high carb foods. Am in my 70's, and due to circumstances have only my small social security annuity check and approx. $5/day in food stamps.
I eat well balanced meals: E.g., Buying only on Sale-- An inexpensive chuck roast makes 3-4 meals as pot roast or stew. One can of tuna for 2 lunches as sandwiches or salad. A whole chicken for soup and chicken salad. All made with less expensive fresh veggies than frozen. (Cooking meals like my grandmother did.) I would use the FS increase in purchasing power for spices & variety of ingredients--but am content & happy with what I'm given.
Tho, I do wonder if posters here would fare as well on $5/day, with their steaks, chops, french fries, store-bought bakery items....
ScentofViolets - I can see here you get the analysis from, but you really are oversimplifying the story here - and, for that matter, putting too much emphasis on family situations and the mother of the household. As for the idea that the poor don't give into oral gratification - of course they do! Everyone does - that's part of how human beings are wired. People don't wish they could afford a better diet - what they want is a magic way to eat the same satisfying, highcalorie obesity generating junk - and stay slim and nicely toned. That's why every generation the same failed (and dangerous) diets come back to haunt us.
Donna B,
The data cited in the document I linked to is not consistent with your claims. Quote:
You refer to the "truly poor," and perhaps their consumption patterns differ significantly from those of the merely "poor," but if that's what you're saying I'd like to see some data.
"This is a political blog. If one doesn't believe politics can accomplish anything, why write such a blog?"-brooksfoe
Brooksfoe is mistaken. The argument being made is against fiscal stimulus in general and against food stamps as a form of fiscal stimulus in particular.
There are more criticisms besides the ones Krugman made of using fiscal policy in the way that the politicians now are trying to. One is that the increased spending (on food stamps or whatver) will raise deficits, raise real interest rates and crowd out private investment. And it isn't obvious, a priori that the positive effect on consumption will outweigh the negative effect on investment.
Secondly, an increase in consumption and a decrease in investment bodes ill for long-run productivity growth. It seems foolish to implement policies that offer dubious benefits in the short run yet will certainly prove costly in the long run. There is nothing like a liquidity trap right now. So why not let the Fed do its work and forget about costly food stamps and rebates? I think that's what McArdle beleives, and if so, she's right.
Attempts at short-run fiscal stimulus are misguided, and fiscal stimulus through food stamps is absolutely loopy.
"I ain't bragging or nothin', but it looks like I'm the first one to post who actually grew up poor. Yay!"
Maybe, but I type slow. Although my family was only poor when I was little. We had color TV, may have had more than one car, and I believe owned the house but this is a tad deceptive. There was seven of us in a house with minimal necessities. We got our water from a well. The color TV was one they had from before we became poor and was not worth anything or they likely would've sold it. We practically lived on strawberries and rice. The family chopped wood for the fire so we could stay warm in winter and our Christmas gifts were mostly things our parents made. Granted that kind of poverty is likely rare in the US today, but it does exist. I would prefer private groups give the truly poor food than do a food stamp deal, but of all welfare things I think this seems the most basic and simply humane.
Tho, I do wonder if posters here would fare as well on $5/day, with their steaks, chops, french fries, store-bought bakery items....
The problem is not whether it is feasible to live on $5/day, but the fact that the wealthy don't need to budget in that fashion and the poor are unlikely to do so. Payroll comes around every week or two; foodstamps are recharged once a month. How is it spent? Typically, in a couple large trips (partly, perhaps, because they can't afford to spend more gas money than that), and what looks good now is what is purchased. By the end of the week/two weeks/whatever, they're back down to trying to feed a family of five for the next two days until on a half-dozen potatoes and an onion.
Living on $5/day is feasible, provided you're not a large person with a voracious appetite, but it requires careful advanced planning and budgeting. Interestingly, people who have and exercise these skills tend not to stay poor very long, even if a bad start in life or a setback has put them there for the present. People who don't have them -- sometimes because of pure sloth, and more often than not because they were never trained in how to do it -- tend to eat a lot of processed fats and carbohydrates at considerably more than $5/day for the first 2/3 of the cycle and then run on the hairy edge of starvation for the last 1/3. So one end, they eat lots of unhealthy, fattening food; and on the other end, they get limited caloric intake that puts the body in emergency-preservation mode. Repeat like clockwork until you have a lower-class obesity epidemic.
I see I'd missed a context to this. You're referring to food stamps as an economic stimulus effort. Now that I agree is debatable or even loopy.
I was more thinking of the existence of food stamps or if they're ever necessary. In that case I'd say their existence is probably necessary at least in some cases. (Even if it's just the 2% of the poor according to Heritage)
Scent,
When everybody damn well knows what hypocrites they are, and when the only way most people will eat an apple is if it's baked in a pie. Which, while still a possible healthy alternative, is just about unheard-of for most people any more, except for special occasions. No, if you want apples in a pie, you buy those nasty little 'pastries', or, if you can afford it, have somebody else bake it (_Not_ the local supermarket.)
I love apples and eat them several times a week.
Tell me, if we're all hypocrites and no one is actually buying raw, unprocessed apples any more, why do I see great big piles of them, in lots of varieties, in the produce section of grocery stores? Ditto for pears, oranges, peaches, nectarines, plums, melons, bananas, grapes, and so on. Are they just there for decoration?
I think people are ignoring the potential stimulus value of food stamp fraud. Any increase in food stamps should be done with the old, easily corrupted paper system. When I was growing up, the mob ran exchanges of $60 for $100 worth of food stamps. This would give the poor an unexpected boost of cash with which to purchase consume goods.
As for the piles of apples, my theory is they are piled up by economists waiting to test out questionable theories about the poor.... A sort of honeytrap, but crunchy and green. Now you know what security cameras in stores are really for!
Thomas, as I say, if the poor need money, give them money. Giving them food is pointless and undignified: it is (these days) almost never what they need most, and it presumes that you have a better notion of what they should eat than they do.
All the rest of the arguments are revolving around a model of obesity that has now, in my view, been largely discredited. The better obesity researchers almost all believe that obese people are obese because they are much, much hungrier than thin people, not because they "eat the wrong things"--giving them unlimited access to a salad bar will not alter the total number of calories they take in, because they will eat until their caloric desires are sated. The poor are undoubtedly eating bologna because they can't afford filet mignon, but there's no evidence that they would be thinner or better nourished if their food budget doubled; they would simply upscale either the same, or a greater, number of calories.
Donna, that statement is--wildly at odds with my experience. I can only speak, of course, to the homes of welfare families that I have been in, and those were all clustered in New York City, which does have a generous benefit level. But people there bought white rice because they liked white rice--brown rice was available in the local supermarket at little to no markup. They deep fried fairly often, no surprise with generic vegetable and peanut oil retailing at under $2.00 for the large bottle. They ate wings, and thighs, and necks, and a huge amount of processed food that could have been prepared for a third the cost from scratch. In this, they were not terribly different from the large numbers of Americans who abhor vegetables and love all manner of fatty, starchy foods. But they weren't forced to it, and believe it or not, they knew what kinds of foods make you fat; they're not children, or savages. They were making a choice. A choice, I might point out, with zero moral content, and which therefore needs no defense that they are forced to it by the terrible hand of exigency.
Megan, would you care to explain why potentially damaging your own body has "zero moral content"? This hardly fits with any religious or philosophical view that I know of. Also, are you so sure that hunger is really about calories per se? What about stomach-filling - the "drink water to take the edge off your appetite" idea? Furthermore, I doubt that your salad-bar analogy works on any level. How much lettuce would you have to work your way through to make it to say, 2000 calories (easily achieved on pizza). As for people making "bad" choices, they don't have to be savages or children to do so - simply human, with limited willpower and a capacity to ignore the likely outcome. Setting up this sort of extreme dichotomy doesn't help your argument.
Megan, the more you write on this topic the wronger and wronger you get. You claim--again without any citation--that the best researchers say that "obese people are obese because they are much, much hungrier than thin people." Where does this come from? Can you provide a CITATION?
Also, I do not believe you have ever been in a "welfare family's" house, where you claim to have seen--gasp--people eating a high-fat diet. Whose welfare families' houses have you been in? My guess is zero. I can't remember when I read a more racist sentance than this: "They deep fried fairly often, no surprise with generic vegetable and peanut oil retailing at under $2.00 for the large bottle. They ate wings, and thighs, and necks."
By the way, peanut oil was, back in the day, way, way more expensive than vegetable oil. Again----please do some research.
I have to say, McArdle, I admire your pluck. It takes quite a bit of stamina, I imagine, to pump out all this verbiage when the only thing you really want to say is "I hate poor people—what with their neck-frying and such—and I wish they would all die." But it's all in a day's work, I guess.
"Daft" is a great word. I love it. We should also increase the usage of its sister-word "daffy," which might lead to a resurgence of the sadly-declining interest in Daffy Duck. Poor old Daffy, he just can't seem to get work anymore.
I'm sorry, were we talking about something?
I don't know whether I agree with McArdle's point of view about obesity or her concerns about "distorting the food sector" (actually, I can see how it might not be the best thing to inject money into the food sector this way), but the idea that she hates poor people is just stupid. She is literally insisting that we give real money to poor people rather than food stamps. While a whole slew of the rest of you are paternalistically insisting that food stamps would be great because they would restrict the choices of the poor to something that seems at first glance like it would be wholesome (because a one time government check will magically inculcate healthy dietary habits that will last a lifetime, or something), she is arguing that we can trust the poor to make their own decisions about where to spend the money they get. I agree with her. There are all sorts of people who worry that giving real money to the poor will result in the poor hoarding their new cash until long after spending it will fail to benefit the economy. I promise you that what little saving will actually occur will have little effect on the economic outcome. I can't say that the whole idea of "economic stimulus" makes a hell of a lot of sense to me, but if spending money will save the economy, putting it in the hands of the poor first just is the best way to get the job done.
Regarding the idea that the poor are fat because they can't afford nutritious food, is there any evidence at all that any kind of food is more expensive--relative to wages at, say, the tenth percentile--than it was 60 years ago, when obesity was much rarer?
Oh, please don't shatter poor Glenn Kenny's carefully cultivated delusions.
Also, there is some research that suggestive that healthy food is more expensive. Here's a New York Times article on it:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/a-high-price-for-healthy-food/
"if the poor need money, give them money."
I must admit that I kind of agree with this.
I have somewhat mixed feelings on the obesity claims but that is a complex area that is not going to be solved tomorrow. The secular rise of obesity in the modern world is worrisome, concerning and anybody who is sure that they have it solved has almost certainly over-simplified something (or they are much, much smarter than I am).
But I do think that telling people what they should spend their money on is paternalistic. I like giving money to poor people as a way of increasing consumer demand because they will spend it.
I rather dislike the idea of telling them would they can spend it on. Now, if the real reason is one of implementation due to infrastructure issues then okay -- that is at least a reason.
But I don't want to be judged for my decisions on how to spend money and I think that people who are low income should be given the same level of dignity.
"A choice, I might point out, with zero moral content..."
What this world needs is more people to point out that there are, in fact, actually choices with zero moral content.
"Zero moral content" should replace "daft" as your catchphrase. Let's make a list...
Also, there is some research that suggestive that healthy food is more expensive. Here's a New York Times article on it:
Yes, more expensive per calorie. But not necessarily more expensive per serving. An apple generally costs less than a candy bar. Since getting enough calories doesn't seem to be much of a problem for the vast majority of poor people, they could presumably switch to a healthier, lower-calorie diet without increasing their total food costs. Of course, eating healthier is easier said than done for most people, poor or otherwise. But the big obstacles are taste and convenience and culture (and maybe genes), not cost.
Megan wrote:
The poor don't need more food.
I disagree. Food stamps in CT go to individuals with assets under $2000, and income (say, for a couple w/o children in 2005) under $1390 per month. Now, how much do these individuals typically need to eat? Let's suppose that each person eats $12 in food per day - which is in line with the higher end of what the census bureau estimates our couple would require for a healthy diet, assuming that they can cook all food at home (and assuming that MacDonald's isn't OK). That's $720 per month for the couple. So the couples at the high end of the distribution are squeaking by. But the majority of that population, earning under $1200/month, has a wopping $480/month to spend on rent, clothing, health expenses, and transportation. Too little.
As an aside, I think Megan is making a mistake in assuming that this additional money on food stamps isn't fungible. Unless the poor are getting all of their food from the food stamps program, then additional food stamp money would free up income to go toward other expenses.
Buying an apple isn't going to round out the typical poor person's diet (of course every little bit helps), and as terrible a reputation as calories have, they remain the primary reason we consume food to begin with. Servings just aren't a useful metric here. Let's say I am a poor person eating a 2000 calorie diet that consists entirely of Twinkies, and this costs (like the study indicates) $3.52 a day. Now, I decide to go on a diet plan which will reduce my caloric intake to 1200 calories a day (this is a pretty standard weight loss plan). If I halve my twinkie consumption, I will pay 1.76 a day for 1,000 calories, and have 1.76 to spend on nutritiously dense food that I will eat just to get that extra 200 calories. But to get that extra 200 calories it will cost me $3.63 cents, or more than it cost me to buy all the calories in a 2,000 calorie diet of junk food, and twice what I save by reducing my caloric intake of junk food in half.
I don't think anyone would agree that eating 1,000 calories worth of twinkies and 200 calories worth of vegetables and the like would count as a rounded, healthy diet. This is a gross simplification. But it shows that the more I move my diet towards nutritious food, the more expensive my diet becomes. If I want half of my daily intake of calories on what boils down to an extreme diet plan to come from healthy food (just 600 calories of a 1200 calorie diet), I have to be willing to shell out three times as much money as it would cost me to get 2000 calories worth of junk food. And if I want to drop twinkies altogether, I have to really be willing to pay for my new lifestyle choice.
There are probably some legitimate difficulties with this study, because it really oversimplifies how dietary decisions work, and the fact that there is a spectrum of prices even for nutrient rich foods isn't represented by the average number they come up with. But there is a point here which is totally valid-poor people have real incentives to supplement their diets with high calorie food that has little nutritional value, and this seems like as much a recipe for obesity as anything. It's absurd to talk about buying bananas and lentil beans as if one's personal dietary prescription has any meaning for a study that's designed to probe into the linkages between poverty and obesity. Sure, if 30 million Americans all decided tomorrow to eat more pinto beans, maybe obesity rates would plummet. Good luck getting that program off the ground.
Alex:
Now, how much do these individuals typically need to eat? Let's suppose that each person eats $12 in food per day - which is in line with the higher end of what the census bureau estimates our couple would require for a healthy diet, assuming that they can cook all food at home (and assuming that MacDonald's isn't OK).
Food stamp allotments are based on the Thrifty Food Plan, according to which an adult male can get by on $5-6 per day. That's tough, but not completely unreasonable. You can usually find some kind of meat on special for $2-3 per pound, rice and/or legumes are pretty cheap if you buy big bags, and you can probably even throw in some fruits and vegetables without going over. Not the greatest diet, but it's at least not openly hostile to good health.
Spending $12 per day on food is not absurd, but it's well above the minimum needed for a reasonably healthful diet, unless you're eight feet tall.
Joseph Delaney:
But I don't want to be judged for my decisions on how to spend money and I think that people who are low income should be given the same level of dignity.
I agree that it's no one's business but yours how you spend your money. But when the government takes money from taxpayers and gives it to the poor, I think the taxpayers do have a right to demand that it be used responsibly. The general argument against paternalism doesn't apply to people who have already demonstrated, by applying for government aid, that they are in fact not capable of taking care of themselves.
gerontion,
You're not going substitute a diet that consists entirely of healthy food for a diet that consists entirely of twinkies.
More importantly, the prices mentioned in the article you link to just aren't remotely credible as the costs of a healthy diet, as many readers have pointed out in the comments, several citing actual prices of healthy foods from their local supermarkets. The article claims a cost of $36.32 per person per day for a 2,000-calorie diet of "low energy dense foods." I have no idea what kind of food this could be referring to. 2,000 calories of premium organic lettuce? As one reader says, at that price it would cost her $145 per day to feed her family of four, or $52,000 a year! The idea that it would cost $52,000 to feed a family of four a healthy diet is absurd.
"I agree that it's no one's business but yours how you spend your money. But when the government takes money from taxpayers and gives it to the poor, I think the taxpayers do have a right to demand that it be used responsibly. The general argument against paternalism doesn't apply to people who have already demonstrated, by applying for government aid, that they are in fact not capable of taking care of themselves."
I'm sorry, but what you've just said here is utterly ignorant. But hey, you can pat yourself on the back now for not being poor. And there is a whole class of people that you can feel justified in looking down upon, because, as we all know, applying for government aid=being helpless and stupid. So it really works out for you, doesn't it?
I agree that I wouldn't substitute a diet of twinkies-Even a poor person would be paying more than 3.50 a day on food-but not much more. If we take the maximum food stamp allotment for a single person as our guide (if there is a better way to go, I'd love to hear it suggested), that's 162 dollars a month for 2008, which is Mr. Berg's 5 to 6 dollars a day. But that really isn't a lot of money, as glib as he is about suggesting that a nutritious diet can be eeked from it. Something like the McDonald's dollar value menu would be pretty tempting for a guy who only has six bucks to spend any given day. It's cheap and it will fulfill a large portion of his caloric requirements-the sacrifice in essential nutrients is made up for by these expedients. I agree that the study seems to overstate the cost of nutritious food, but junk food really is cheaper than real food-if you think otherwise you are kidding yourself-and a 200 dollar a month budget doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot of room to splurge.
Gerontion:
It's true by definition that someone who needs government aid is not capable of taking care of himself.
MM,
you should take a Poll of all these 'pro-Food Stamp' types:
1.) Do you think it makes sense that the Gov't raises tax revenue to support higher food prices and, then, raises more tax revenue to fund Food Stamps for those who have difficulty 'affording' the higher food prices? If so, explain...
guys, the purpose of the stimulus is to goose aggregate demand. whether that happens because people are buying more potato chips or more organically grown kale is totally, completely beside the point.
megan, you can continue to ignore my point about the institutional advantages of using food stamps as a way to do this, but that really is what is at issue here. continuing to hold your fingers in your ears and shouting "just give people cash!" doesn't change anything I wrote above.
what's more, your continued insistence that increasing food stamps will only affect purchases of food is embarassing for someone who professes to have a grasp of basic economics: except for people with very low levels of food consumption, the increase in food stamps will be inframarginal. that is, giving them more food stamps will just free up cash they were spending on food. they can then spend that money on whatever they want, not just food.
The evidence that the poor are forced into buying potato chips rather than apples by their incomes is pretty underwhelming. As Mixner says, the food is cheaper per calorie, but that's the point--they buy things that have a lot of calories, when there are at least equally cheap foods available per serving that have fewer calories. You may have to buy chicken wings instead of breasts, but you don't have to bread and deep fry them
This betrays an ignorance of the market dynamics of the super-markets and groceries in poorer neighborhoods. We got the education the hard way when we moved from Manhattan to (a relatively better part of) the Bronx. The regular groceries do not carry fresh vegetables and fruits. The (almost rotten) stuff that is usually on display are overpriced. So people don't buy them on two counts: price and quality. So they stay on the shelf longer and the circle continues. I am not sure if the city is supposed to inspect sell by dates and the like, but even if it is, it does not work here. The stuff that looked like it won't start stinking within two days were the tv dinners.
For our part, we looked at a few other options and switched to costco.
So... we're borrowing money to hand it out to people in order to boost aggregate demand. And we're supposed to be concerned that that the people to whom we hand out the money spend it instead of save it. Yet in order to to borrow money for us to hand out, someone has to be saving it so that we can borrow from them, or we wouldn't have it to hand out in the first place.
How long are we supposed to go on pretending that this idea of boosting aggregate demand makes any sense whatsoever?
In case anyone hasn't noticed, we've been boosting the crap out of aggregate demand with all of the deficit spending we've being doing lately and it doesn't seem to have made a difference. Because with all due respect to Lord Keynes, it makes no damn sense whatever.
Megan,
Welcome to the club. I once engaged in a very similar debate at Political Animal and ended up being called malicious and malevolent.
"The regular groceries do not carry fresh vegetables and fruits."
It's not like fresh vegetables or fruits are required for a healthy diet. In fact many frozen alternatives have more vitamins because they are picked fresh, and haven't been sitting around at ambient temperature for a week before showing up in a supermarket. Canned isn't that bad either, they just may not taste as good.
From looking at my budget, my wife and I spend $13 a day on food. This includes going out to eat about once or twice a month (restaurant, not fast food). We only buy the healthy type stuff at the store, but stock up on essentials when there is a big sale. We used to do the same on $10 a day, but now we eat a bit higher quality food (more seafood, better restaurants etc.) This is fairly close to the food stamp numbers people have been throwing out. This is living in San Diego, so it's not a necessarily cheap place to live. We could cut this budget down quite a bit, but we like the food we eat.
My point being, it seems like $5 per person, per day is plenty of money for food.
"Daft" -- The Atlantic's decision to hire McMegan. (Am I the only one who occasionally trips over the incongruity of a writer like James Fallows appearing in the same lineup as McArdle?) More daft -- me, for returning to this blog more than once.
I blame Matt Yglesias and Sadly No! for pushing this daft blog, but of course, I mostly have myself to blame for being attracted to tall women and for my habit of reading just about any blog rather than working.
Poor Yancey:
Imagine that. The nerve of those people!
Welcome back to the friendly confines, where arguments like this:
Are considered Very Serious.
So really, the poor should be grateful we demand that they eat food that tastes like crap but is good for them, rather than food that tastes good and is bad for them. Unfortunately, due to their inferior "culture," genes, and laziness, the ingrates do not do so. Therefore, we should feel no obligation to reconsider our distribution of benefits to the poor, except in terms of restricting (and really hopefully eliminating) them.
You really take the cake, Mix.
Here's a question for you, Mix. Since it's so easy to acquire sufficient healthy foods to supply a family's needs via food stamps, why don't they do it? You've said it's because of laziness, "culture" whatever that means, and genes which strikes me as ridiculous. So what's your solution, buddy? Cut off their food stamps? Or are you going to institute food stamps that can only be spent on designated "healthy" foods? Are you going to accept creating a whole new government bureaucracy to oversee that? Because somebody's going to have to. Are you going to establish government-funded "healthy cooking" schools to train the poor how to prepare healthy meals that taste good for $5 a day per person?
It's real easy to sit back and be indignant at all the lazy, fat poor people sitting on their asses living off your taxes. Coming up with workable solutions to their situation is not so easy.
Your argument that stimulating the food industry might not translate into a more stimulated overall economy - which is what we care about - is a good one. It might be enough on its own to make stimulus-through-food-stamps a bad idea.
Your we-don't-want-to-be-promoting-obesity point rests on the connection between people who are obese and people who are on food stamps. I accept the connection between being poor and being obese and I obviously accept the connection between being poor and being on food stamps. If the poor people who are on food stamps are like poor people generally, then I think your point is a good one. But I'm not so sure. In my mind it's plausible that the subset of poor people who are on food stamps are less obese - perhaps even much less obese - than poor people as a whole. Do you have any research on this connection?
Megan,
You invoke research concluding that obese people are obese because they're hungrier than the skinny ones. I'm curious if and how does that research explain the recent huge spike in obesity rates in the U.S. Is this because the hungry ones couldn't afford to buy the quantities of food they are consuming now--or did some people just get a hell of a lot hungrier since the late 80s?
Liberalrob,
Have you read the comments you are replying to? Mixner is saying there is no problem that requires a solution, especially from the government. All he has written is that the claim, that healthier food is outside the means of food stamp recipients, is bogus. He also pointed out that eating unhealthy food, or being resistant to dietary change is not limited to the poor- or, in other words, the culture, time factors, and genes applies to rich and poor Americans alike. No where have I seen him advocate the positions you inferred above, like restricting the use of food stamps to healthy food, or even to reduce the amounts spent on food stamps.
My point being, it seems like $5 per person, per day is plenty of money for food.
Your (not shown) point abt frozen vegetables is well taken.
My general point still remains, though: healthy food in poorer neighborhoods is noticably more expensive than in richer neighborhoods. This isn't a point about Mom-and-Pops either. The grocery we had the eye-opening experience in was a national chain which shall remain unnamed.
Something else might have a bearing on the issue. If existing people in a (poor) neighborhood do not buy healthier food (for whatever reason), healthier food would be more expensive there, and newer residents who wanted healthier alternative would probably not find it. A sort of a network effect. Normally, if there is enough demand for healthy alternatives, some other chain would probably start. However, in an urban environment, this might be precluded by high rents / zoning etc.
Brandon Berg:
"I agree that it's no one's business but yours how you spend your money. But when the government takes money from taxpayers and gives it to the poor, I think the taxpayers do have a right to demand that it be used responsibly. The general argument against paternalism doesn't apply to people who have already demonstrated, by applying for government aid, that they are in fact not capable of taking care of themselves."
I worry that this will get mixed into political decisions. A lot of my concern about social welfare programs is that they often make a lot of strange decisions based on political considerations. What is nice about a cash transfer is that we don't need to forge a consensus decision about what is a responsible decision and wonder if a low level administrator will enforce the spirit of this decision.
I think it was Milton Freidman who noted that the cost of providing social assistance had become $40,000 per capita and gave up -- suggesting that maybe we should just transfer the money directly.
Government assistance is a very complex problem (and if people have suggestions I would love to hear them) especially among the chronically poor. You have perverse incentives, the presence of a large population of mentally ill people and serious structural problems.
But I have a general concern about imposing value systems on people. Exactly how to deal with dysfunctional behavior within this -- I honestly don't know. Ideas?
Liberalrob:
It's real easy to sit back and be indignant at all the lazy, fat poor people sitting on their asses living off your taxes. Coming up with workable solutions to their situation is not so easy.
One solution might be to return to the system of in-kind aid--i.e., instead of giving the poor food stamps, the government could just give them food.
Given that the left generally tends to be quite hostile to school vouchers, I assume that you'd be happy to replace food vouchers with truly socialized provision of food.
In fact, most of the standard arguments against school vouchers apply equally well to food vouchers. If the poor can't be trusted to choose schools for their children, they can't be trusted to choose foods for them. Food vouchers destroyed the government food distribution system that once once our nation's pride and joy. And I'd bet against long odds that there are some poor Jews buying kosher foods with their food stamps. That's a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
Megan,
Please stop writing about the poor.
You should write about what you know.
"Working on the front lines," handing out soup or WTF you did, doesn't remotely qualify you to speak on the life of a poor person.
Did you ever think the poor may buy unhealthy foods because they lack education on nutrition?
If you knew anything about food stamps or the poor, you would know that it they can be, and are, converted to cash quite easily which makes your main idea of giving them cash moot.
"instead of giving the poor food stamps, the government could just give them food."
I'm not against food stamps, just that I think an increase in food stamp money is unwarranted. The government shouldn't be a nanny state where they try to guarantee that we all eat healthy diets. Food stamps also are likely a cheaper way to get food into the poor's hands, since food distribution through stores already has a functioning infrastructure. If the government was to try and do this themselves, we'd be wasting a ton of money.
The reasons for the US obesity rates? Well, exercise rates have fallen dramatically. Not that people used to go to the gym more, but that more people had physical jobs. We also had less modern appliances to take the work out of tasks. I think it's more that we're burning less calories per day than we used to, less that we're consuming a lot more calories. The poor are probably less likely to have the time, energy or money to spend it on exercise.
liberalrob,
You might try responding to what I actually write, instead of making up statements and positions I never expressed, attributing them to me, and then responding to those false statements.
gerontion,
I have not disputed that junk food is, at least sometimes, cheaper than healthy food per calorie. That's not the point. The point is that the poor tend to overconsume calories, just like Americans in general, and could substitute healthy foods for part of all of their diet without raising their total food costs.
At even a regular grocery store, the prices of staples--fruits and vegetables, milk, cheese, eggs, bread, grains, canned goods, etc.--are low. Especially if you take advantage of weekly specials, seasonal price variations and coupons.
but as of 2003, the researchers on the subject I spoke to agreed that the problem in poor communities was not an insufficient quantity of food, or that it was not possible to compose a balanced diet out of what the poor were spending on food; it was that the poor were choosing unhealthy foods over healthy ones.
I can't speak for the urban poor but where I live the problem with "choice" is "a lack therof". In rural America many poor get there foodstuffs from a Mom & Pop store where there is limited selection. In a store of chips, 2 choice of processed meat and "the Dew" a healthy diet choice is hard to find. Fresh fruit, yogurt and low cal doesn't exist. One should not assume that every corner of the USA has the same food to choose from. Add to that the lack of relable transportation to town and its not hard to see why the poor have bad eating habits.
Megan, I suggest you actually try living the life of a person on food stamps before writing your comments. Have you ever been into one of the grocery stores in the poorer districts? Have you seen the absolutely terrible quality of vegetables and fruit? Also, may I point out to those who immediately state: "buy frozen!" that the following conditions may hold: 1) no or very few frozen vegetables, 2) lack of car, requiring individual to use public transportation, 3) intermittent supply of electricity to apartment because individual has problems paying electric bill. So the individual has the possibility of stocking up on "good" food which will then be wasted.
Joseph Delaney:
What is nice about a cash transfer is that we don't need to forge a consensus decision about what is a responsible decision and wonder if a low level administrator will enforce the spirit of this decision.
Fair enough. I'm not convinced that you're wrong on practical grounds--I'm just pointing out that the general anti-paternalist argument doesn't apply here. The government has no business telling us how to spend our own money, but it's not, in principle, wrong for the government to try to make sure taxpayer money is spent responsibly.
That said, it may well be a bad idea in practice. I don't know. I don't think the government makes better decisions about the average Joe's life than the average Joe does, which is one reason I'm not a socialist. But the typical welfare recipient is not the average Joe--being on the dole is almost certainly correlated with a tendency to make bad decisions.
I don't know whether the typical welfare recipient or the government makes better decisions about the typical welfare recipient's life, or--more importantly--about the lives of the typical welfare recipient's children.
Megan McArdle: "Brooks, read what I wrote. To some extent, the food stamps will substitute for other things, but they are very imperfectly fungible."
We will remember that you made this argument the next time you trot out the chestnut about income inequality being a figment of the collective imagination because "you need to look at total compensation."
Medical benefits in particular are not only not only "very imperfectly fungible" but also largely without substitutes, incredibly wasteful in the aggregate, subject to Wiemar-era inflation rates and disappointingly correlated with actual life expectancy figures.
At least food stamps will buy food.
"Greg Mankiw (taking a break from "My So-Called Life") pointed out recently that food stamps are not a good tool with which to manage aggregate demand because it cannot really be used symmetrically."
His argument is just silly, totally unworthy of his general wherewithal and judgment.
The two situations are not symmetrical--an overheated economy is banging against the limits of its own capacity; an underheated economy is not.
So the measures that are appropriate for each situation are not (or need not be) symmetrical. More:
http://trueconservative.typepad.com/trueconservative/2008/01/mankiw-goes-off.html
Have you ever been into one of the grocery stores in the poorer districts? Have you seen the absolutely terrible quality of vegetables and fruit?
Depends on the specific district. Seattle's Chinatown is not a particularly nice neighborhood. But it's the place to go for cheap vegetables, because Chinese immigrants buy a lot of vegetables. If vegetables are scarce in other poor neighborhoods, it's because people in those neighborhoods don't buy them.
As someone pointed out above, there are network effects--so if one poor person wants to buy vegetables, he has to take the bus to another neighborhood. But if many people in his neighborhood wanted to buy vegetables, stores in the area would supply them. So ultimately it's still a metter of preferences, at least in the aggregate.
Apologies, my rant above refers to "INCREASED income inequalities," not income inequalities per se.
How about beer stamps? Beer stamps, I would think, would translate pretty well into cash.
In Mixner's defense, I'll say that I was just at Whole Foods, and was able to buy myself some smoked salmon and a salad for about $10. Add in a dollar for some whole wheat bread and I can have two meals for $5.50. That's no more than the price of two meals at McDonald's.
And that's from one of the more expensive markets. Trader Joe's is even cheaper. For four dollars there one can get 8 sushi rolls with soy sauce, ginger and mustard--enough for a tasty and nutritious meal.
So, this business about being to poor to buy healthy food is a canard, and has little to with the central question about whether food stamps are a sensible tool for fiscal policy.
I have to say though that I'm rather partial to Henrys suggestion of beer stamps. Better still: beer and whiskey stamps. If the government wants to subsidize my consumption, I'll get some Sierra Nevada and Highland Park right now. That should do wonders for the economy, according to many here.
Until I read this thread, I didn't realize how weird I was by eating an orange this morning.
Lots of comments on this one! I haven't read through them all. But the issue for me (as a researcher who has focused on "food deserts" in poor, urban areas) is that fresh produce is not available in urban centers. There are no grocery stores in these areas, because grocery stores have (uncorrectly, the data shows) decided that they could not be profitable in these areas.
When all you have to eat are prepackaged foods and fast food, it's hard to eat healthy. The obesity argument thus seems to me to be an argument FOR food stamps, rather than against them.
Reading this post, I think it comes down to this: poor people buy food I don't like, so even though they'd likely spend these rebates immediately (which is the point of the program), they shouldn't get them.
Megan, you constantly surprise me with your callousness and elitist belief in how the world works. It must be nice to be able to afford these beliefs, having come from a supportive and obviously at least moderately successful family. I wonder how your life would have turned out had you not had the opportunity for private school / elitist university?
You remind me of a friend who claimed to be SO libertarian, and who believed everyone is responsible for himself and should count on no one for help... His parents were both professors at UPenn, to which he went to free (obviously, because professors' children deserve a free ride). I really think it boils down to "I've got mine, and f&$k everyone else". I hope you never find yourself on the other side. But you have access to the power structure, so no worries, right?
I have to say that it is nearly shocking how inexpensive Trader Joe's often is. You can feed an entire family of moderete size pretty healthily from that retailer on about $10 a day, or perhaps even less. Whole grain pasta at .69 cents a pound, low sodium marinara for .99, a pound of frozen broccoli for .99, and other bargains have been pleasant surprises.
I say let's give Trader Joe's tax credits to open outlets in low income neighborhoods!
Anonymous-lurker, it apparently escaped you that Megan advocated simply giving the poor money, if it was believed that lending them greater assistance was a desirable policy, for whatever reason. That seem to be more sensible to me as well, since the one thing the state does with some degree of competence is cut checks/deposit funds.
Dalton, is it more expensive for an urban retailer in one of these food deserts to stock frozen vegetables or fruits, than the junk that I have seen in their freezers? Or are they perhaps rationally responding to consumer demand?
Will,
I wouldn't say that Megan actually advocated giving money to the poor. Sure, she has a throwaway line at the end mentioning that, but no real advocacy there. And let's face it, Megan's not really a help-out-the-poor kind of gal. No, she's a libertarian. Those poor people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, just like Megan did... Except that Megan's bootstraps were purchased by her parents because she had to walk to the bus stop on her way to her private school, and we can't let her little feet get cold, can we?
I'll admit that directing snark at Megan is a little unfair. And honestly, I don't begrudge her growing up in a successful family which was able to care for her. I just wish people with privilege (and privilege need not require a BMW to drive to school) realized that not everyone else had the same opportunities.
Megan's problem in this post is typical of almost all her other posts. This elitist attitude that well, maybe those poor people should just make better decisions. Maybe it's a bit more complex than that?
I find it interesting that Dems justify what they call a "stimulus", which you'd think was designed to get the economy growing and creating jobs, as though it were a welfare program, designed to help the poor.
While the latter is a perfectly fine objective, there's no reason to believe that the programs that would best do one also best do the other.
Of course, it's pretty sad that the Fed Chair and the Reps are singing from the same hymnal...
Until I read this thread, I didn't realize how weird I was by eating an orange this morning.
This exposes a certain kind of cognitive dissonance I've been getting from this thread.
Bananas are 69 cents / pound. But that's pricey compared to the lowly cabbage. And what about plantains? Except for sweet corn in the summer, how much cheaper can starch get than plantains?
As far as stimulus packages go, since it's too late for the package to do anything anyway, why not bump up the food stamps? In other words, if the politicians have to do something to feel good, let them do this.
Geez, Megan, I'm sorry but that ranks as one of the lamer posts that you've blessed us with. Unworthy of your fine mind. It (combined with your follow-up posts) is digressive, obfuscatory, wildly anecdotal, and barely touches the central issue of fiscal stimulus.
Point by point:
1) The poor don't need more food.
The point of a temporary food-stamp bump is not to provide more food; it's to stimulate demand. If it also helps out the subset that does need more food, or lets all food-stamp recipients buy somewhat better food, in aggregate (perhaps reducing obesity), that's just a bonus.
But (acceding to your digression) c'mon: a three- or six-month bump in food-stamp benefits is not going to have any even vaguely significant effect on obesity among the poor, in either direction.
2) Food stamps only imperfectly translate into increased cash income, meaning that the poor will spend . . . more money on food.
And spending more money on food will increase demand. Which is the goal. (Not increasing "cash income.") Another digression.
3) If the increase in food stamps takes the form of expanded eligibility, rather than larger grants, the administrative issues and public outreach will delay your stimulus until well after it is no longer needed.
Agreed. Should just push a button (figurative speech) and add money to the existing debit cards. This is one of the best arguments *for* this method of fiscal stimulus. *Very* little friction or delay in the system. Straw man.
4) (it's hard to say how much) of the food stamp spending will simply draw down perishable stocks rather than generating new economic activity.
Well duh. Producer and consumer elasticity means it's not a steel rod. But the limited research we have shows that $1 in increased food-stamp benefits yields $1.73 in increased demand over the next year--more effective than any other fiscal stimulus measure.
>>Eventually this will probably generate more economic activity, but probably well after your stimulus is needed.
This statement is *less true* for food stamps than for any other fiscal stimulus measure. And see recent Krugman on timing of fed cuts vis-a-vis unemployment and NBER "recessions."
5) The economy doesn't need a food sector more distorted by daft government programs than it already is.
Agreed, wholeheartedly. But a short, sharp bump would have limited distortionary effects, because it would not affect expectations. And when it comes to government programs causing distortions in the food market, the food-stamp program is *not* the first thing you think of. It's agricultural subsidies, whose pernicious effects make food stamps looks like the tooth fairy. Red herring.
>If you want to give money to the poor, give it to them.
Helicopter drops targeted by income are extremely difficult to implement. When there's a system in place to do that targeting, effectively and efficiently, why not use it?
>Even if they spend it all on drugs, it will hardly be much worse than spending it all on increasing their already astronomical obesity rates.
Agreed. Either way, it increases aggregate demand.
Demand-induced employment can take pressure off the Fed, which is already starting to feel the looming and inexorable power of the numeral zero (or, more accurately, has some reasonable probability of feeling that looming constraint sometime this year). A diversified portfolio of stimulus measures can make the best tool in the toolbelt (monetary policy) more effective and flexible, arguably counterbalancing or outweighing the undeniable inflationary effects of fiscal stimulus.
Thanks for listening,
Steve
Jesus Fucking Christ, what a stupid twit you are.
The Atlantic pays for this drivel? Good Lord *choke*!
1) The poor don't need more education. Stupidity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get education (because they don't have an address), education insufficiency is not.
2) Education only imperfectly translates into increased cash income, meaning that the poor will work ... mainly to earn a living.
5) The economy doesn't need a pool of cheap labor more distorted by daft government programs than it already is. If you want to give money to the poor, give it to them. Even if they spend it all on drugs, it will hardly be much worse than spending it all on increasing their already astronomical studpidity rates.
Did you really write, "The poor don't need more food"? Really? You really wrote that?
Do you think you'll ever regret having written that? Do you think it might come back to haunt you at some point? Do you think you'll ever shake the Marie Antoinette stigma?
Are you a caricature of a cartoon of a sheltered 13-year-old upper-middle class self-proclaimed "libertarian"? Because that's what it looks like from here.
Actually, lurker, I believe Megan has always been an advocate of a straightforward guaranteed income policy. I tend to agree. If poverty is a real problem, and for some it no doubt is, the best policy is to guarantee a sufficient income to all, and be done with it, as opposed to trying to direct what the income is used for.
No, ed, as long as many of the poor in the U.S. tend to be as heavy as they are now, I doubt Megan will ever regret having written that. Heavy people don't need more calories, as much as it confounds your perceptions of the world.
I overcame my laziness and searched my hard drive to find the source for the $1.73 figure. A July 2004 analysis (PDF) by Moody's Economy.com of Bush economic policies—notably the 2001 stimulus measures.
http://www.economy.com/dismal/economycom_bushfiscalpolicy.pdf
(Crossposted here, with some further commentary): http://trueconservative.typepad.com/trueconservative/2008/01/food-stamps-as.html)
That was Hayek's position and preference, a guaranteed minimum income for all. It's odd that we never hear more about that from people who revere Hayek. And let's not single out the poor. Americans from all sectors of society are obese when compared to other nations.
Lets just call the poor in Amerika what they are: human cockroaches. When you want to rid your house of an infestation of roaches you hide the poison in the food. Even the lowly roach won't come along and eat poison just because you put it in front of him. You gotta trick em!
What a sad, sorry bunch of intellectual circle jerks we are all here to even respond to such blogged drivel...
Why did "let them eat cake" immediately come tomind after reading this?
Some facts, do what you will them (or never call an economist when you need a doctor):
- Nearly 12.6 million households (11%) in the United States were "food insecure" at times during 2005, meaning they were without the resources to feed themselves enough or were unable for economic reasons to purchase healthful foods, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
- When children live in food-insecure households, their health status may be impaired, making them less able to resist illness and more likely to become hospitalized (Casey PH et al. J Nutr. 2004;134[6]:1432-1438). Also, poverty and its associated poor nutrition can increase risks of stunting, inadequate cognitive stimulation, iodine deficiency, and iron deficiency anemia (Walker SP et al. Lancet. 2007;369[9556]:145-157)
- Food insecurity also has been linked to overweight and obesity, particularly among women (Townsend MS et al. J Nutr. 2001;131[6]:1738-1745; Wilde PE and Peterman JN. J Nutr. 2006;136[5]:1395-1400). This apparent paradox may be explained by the fact that high-calorie, processed foods often are less expensive than fresh, perishable foods such as fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products.
- [F]ood insecurity has been associated with type 2 diabetes (Seligman HK et al. J Gen Intern Med. 2007;22[7]:1018-1023).
And there are plenty more where that came from. All you have to do is Google "food insecurity".
Not that anyone actually cares about facts or research anymore anymore- unless it fits their agenda. Which everyone seems to have one of these days.
Jeebus, Megan, how could you be so callous to advocate letting the poor starve to death in the cold if we don't let you and other snobbish elites direct every aspect of the poor's diet!
Shaman, do you also stand on street corners, ranting without regard to what anyone has communicated to you?
Taking this out of order:
I don't know how to say this without being rude, but I'm going to guess you have subpar reading skills. Not trying to be rude; just telling it like it is. You understand.
And no, actually I can probably out-poor anybody here. No electricity. No running water. No heat for warmth or cooking except for various stoves and fireplaces. Wood was all hand-cut without the benefit of power tools. 90% of all food eaten was hand grown. At least 90%. Store-bought food was 'flour', 'sugar', 'coffee' 'oatmeal' with some processed food for an occasional treat. Next time, think before you post.
You might try reading what I wrote again . . . slowly. To the contrary, I am pointing out that 'stupid' food choices often turn out not to be so 'stupid' after all.
Because, you see - and I will say this slowly - there is more to the Wednesday dinner than 'just buying healthy, nutricious food.' The food itself is but one component to consider. Also under consideration easy availability, convenience, prep time, etc. Factoring all those in is the way to answer these types of questions, not just looking at one small input.
As I said, I have some data around here that suggests the best correlator is convenience; it turns out that the most readily-available, easiest to prepare and easiest to keep food _also_ happens to be the fattiest, empiest, most processed food there is. My (rather simple) regression model that the primary factor of the above was 'convenience', as in ease and length of prep. It is possible to make a palatable, even tasty dinner , for example, from rather cheap starter ingredients. But to make those dinners takes time - what Mom used to do in the 50's and 60's in one and a half or two hours (a not unusual length of time) now takes on the order of twenty minutes or less - deep-fried pizza rolls, or some sort of microwaved concoction bought whole from the store. And trust me, a lot of people have more important things to do with their time than 'slave over a hot stove' for a couple of hours every day.
Viewed in this sense, the cheapest, queasiest alternative is the 'rational' choice.
As I've already pointed out.
The idiocy (and ignorance) of this post is stunning.
The maximum food stamp benefit for 2007-08 for a family of four provides $1.50 per meal per person, or $4.50 per day per person. That is up $.05 per person per meal over 2006-07. However, food prices for the staples (eggs, bread, chicken, etc.) tracked by the BLS for CPI are up 22% over last year. An immediate increase in FS benefits is needed just to keep up with rapidly inflating food prices.
In addition, since only 65% of individuals who qualify for food stamps actually participate in the program, what proof do you have that obesity is in fact directly tied to food stamps? Why not WIC, with its high-fat (milk, cheese, peanut butter) or poverty-level wages? Can you cite studies which correlate obesity to food stamp program participation? What of the studies which correlate obesity to sedentary behavior? Are middle class kids who sit in front of their flat screen TVs and X-Boxes less likely to be fat than kids from FS-participating families? I think a lot more thought needs to go into this, before you assert that someone with a FS benefit of $1.50 per meal couldn't use the extra quarter.
let me give you 2 scenario for foodstamp recipent's. first a family of an active duty member of the military can be eligable for foodstamps. Gee thats nice someone can go out and fight and protect your rights and your safty, but until they make it higher in ranks, they may have to result to applying for foodstamps and WIC. Now think about someone protecting your rights to even have this debate, is considered to make at or below the poverty level. (until you are able to climb up the rankings for more pay). second scenerio. Single mom of 3 kids is disabled in a car accident with an illegal alien who has no car insurance or driver's license. She has to apply for social security and food stamps to be able to provide for her children,because she can't sue the person that hit her -he has been deported. Now with the 2.3% increase for social security, her foodstamps have decreased. because any money you bring home is counted against your foodstamp benefits. Do you think you could provide for 3 kids,(rent utilities school fees clothing laundry soap ect)on 145 dollars for foodstamps and 600 dollars a month in social security benefits? In both cases-military member and disabled mom,have to turn to food pantries to supplement their food supply. I don't know about you,but I would feel compeled to increase their foodstamps.
Brooke, I dunno about you, but I'd prefer to give the single mom an adequate widow's stipend, and let her spend the money as she fits, or put the ner'-do-well father on a hard labor chain gang until he saw fit to support his kids, or to convince said mom to not bear children for multiple ne'r do well fathers, before such a situation arose, and failing that, chaining the ne'r do wells together on the road crew.
Yeah, it really sucks to be a single parent of multiple kids. Sometimes it can't be helped. Sometimes it can, and when it can, it is advisable to make sure the party or parties most responsible for putting children in that unfortunate situation be made to bear an extremely heavy price for doing so. If more guys knew that the cost of fathering children could be extremely high, I suspect they would be more careful about impregnating women.
You said:
"meaning they were without the resources to feed themselves enough or were unable for economic reasons to purchase healthful foods"
Then the definition of food insecurity by the USDA:
"eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and their food intake was reduced at times during the year because the household lacked money"
Their further studies on food insecurity of families with children, say that in most cases the result was not hunger. Only in 0.6% of houses does this happen to the children. The most common method of dealing with food insecurity was eating low cost foods and reducing diet variety.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/fanrr34/fanrr34-13/fanrr34-13.pdf
This issue has been blown way out of proportion. The fact remains that hunger is not a problem in the US, especially for children.
McE,
Nearly 12.6 million households (11%) in the United States were "food insecure" at times during 2005, meaning they were without the resources to feed themselves enough or were unable for economic reasons to purchase healthful foods, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Sorry, but this is meaningless. As defined, a household could count as "food insecure" if a household member skipped only a single meal over the course of a year.
See this chart, compiled using data from the Census Bureau. Among all households, only 1.8% reported they "sometimes" had insufficent food over the previous 4 months, and only 0.4% reported they "often" had insufficient food.
Fascinating - McArdle has fled the field and everyone else is now busily name-calling or else bidding for the right to be the most authentically poor of all. Happy days indeed... now, what about those foodstamps?
Replicate the WIC program:
It pretty much rations exactly what they can buy and what time periods they can buy it in. Two quarts of Orange Juice - no Orange Drink or Orange Soda allowed and don't even think about Grapefruit... Government knows best.
Oh, and pay for gym memberships for the poor. That'll spend the money, now. No refunds.
Now that we've whipped obesity and fiscal stimulus, what's the next problem?
This apparent paradox may be explained by the fact that high-calorie, processed foods often are less expensive than fresh, perishable foods such as fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products.
I just looked up a few prices online at my local big-chain grocery store. Not even a discount store you understand, just a regular one.
12 large eggs: $2.79
5 pounds of potatoes: $2.99
A gallon of fat-free milk: $3.00
6 ounce can of tuna: $0.79
Chicken Drumsticks or Thighs: $1.29/pound
16 ounce noodles: $1.33
Apples: $1.50/pound
Bananas: $0.33 each
And this is before factoring in additional savings from weekly specials, store loyalty cards, or coupons.
JordanT: "in most cases the result was not hunger. Only in 0.6% of houses does this happen to the children."
Oh, so it only happens in maybe 600,000 households. Feh. Or if that means ".6% of households receiving food stamps" (12 mil.), it's about 70,000 households. Double feh.
>hunger is not a problem in the US, especially for children.
You're right. Those numbers are trivial, beneath consideration. We should just can the whole program. Shiftless good-for-nothings, anyway. What have they done recently to make my pie bigger?
No, of course not, who does? The Internet is all about just spouting off at random, didn't you know that?
The discussion is in the context of using food stamps as a financial stimulus for the poor. We are talking about the poor. So when Mixner comes in here and starts pontificating about how laziness and cultural backwardness are major contributors to poor food choices, in that context, he's going after the poor. When Mixner says
I don't see how that's some high-minded, general comment about all Americans rich and poor alike. He's specifically talking about the poor. The word "poor" is right there, in black and white.
I am responding to what Mixner wrote. If he wanted to write something else, he should have.
If 11,930,000 households manage to avoid food insecurity for their children while on food stamps, then it's not unreasonable to think that the remaining 70,000 do, indeed, have shiftless good-for-nothing parents.
Actually, if you're not feeding your kids regardless of your food stamp status, then shiftless good-for-nothing isn't a bad label for you.
"You're right. Those numbers are trivial, beneath consideration. We should just can the whole program. Shiftless good-for-nothings, anyway. What have they done recently to make my pie bigger?"
I haven't advocated getting rid of the program, more that it seems to be currently working since so few have reported being hungry. This doesn't mean they are always hungry, just that they have reported being hungry due to lack of food funds one or more times in a year. 0.6% is pretty damn good and I don't think any government program will improve this much. Since the amount of money is adequate the solution of throwing more money at it probably won't work.
liberalrob,
So when Mixner comes in here and starts pontificating about how laziness and cultural backwardness are major contributors to poor food choices, ...
I didn't say either of those things. You're again making up statements and falsely attributing to them. I can only assume you keep doing this because you have no serious response to what I actually write.
No, Rob, you are not. Try this quote from Mixner:
He did not call it "cultural backwardness" or "laziness"- you did that, but then blamed him. What he wrote is that food choices are influenced by taste, culture, convenience, and genes. If you are going to disagree with him, then actually take issue with what he wrote rather than some strawmen you have created.
Ok, I see Mixner is still around to defend himself.
OK, this has just gotten silly. I quoted your post TWICE, it's right there in black and white, and you still deny you said it. How is a "big obstacle" not the same as a "major contributor"? How can you continue to deny what you wrote?
Then why don't you just ignore me? Do you really need the ego boost of arguing with someone you don't respect? You made your point, I made mine, let's move on. If you want to engage me, do it and deal with it. If I've taken you out of context then explain how I've done that. I don't see it. I made what I thought was a serious response. If you don't see it that way, tough noogies.
liberalrob,
No, it is not silly. I didn't attribute the cause to either "laziness" or "cultural backwardness." You are simply lying. You have repeatedly lied about what I have written. Stop lying.
When someone says "convenience" is a "big obstacle," the implication is that people are valuing convenience over extra work. I.e., they are lazy.
When someone says "culture" is a "big obstacle," the implication is that the speaker's culture is NOT such an obstacle. I.e., the speaker's culture is superior in relation to the issue at hand. Otherwise, what is their basis for that statement?
When someone says "genes" are "maybe" a "big obstacle," well, you work it out.
Sigh...
If the distance is a big obstacle to me walking rather than driving to work- does that mean I am lazy? If I say culture is a big obtacle to my eating grasshoppers, does that mean that I consider my culture superior? If genes are a big obstacle to my NBA career, what does that mean to you?
To make the idea more explicit, I might point out that spending 2 hours cooking a healthy dinner for two might be considered stupid by some people who say that ordering a pizza saves two hours, but unless that someone actually writes that spending two hours cooking is stupid, I wouldn't just assume the meaning. This is where you have crossed the line.
Megan's problem in this post is typical of almost all her other posts. This elitist attitude that well, maybe those poor people should just make better decisions. Maybe it's a bit more complex than that?
Maybe it is...or maybe she correctly called out a significant problem among lower income commmunities, and charges of elitism are merely a round-about way of denying the consequent.
Somewhere in between "Poor people are e~e~e~vil and should bear responsibility for their actions!" and "Poor people are victims who couldn't help what they are!" is where poor people actually are, and any properly-structured anti-poverty measure needs to account for that reality, not the convenient political fictions.
But when the government takes money from taxpayers and gives it to the poor, I think the taxpayers do have a right to demand that it be used responsibly.
As opposed to giving it to the rich or to corporations who can do whatever they fucking like - 'cause they're rich!
The general argument against paternalism doesn't apply to people who have already demonstrated, by applying for government aid, that they are in fact not capable of taking care of themselves.
Why do you hate Corporate America? Don't be hating on airlines, banks, savings and loans, insurance companies, defense contractors, medical organizations, pharmaceuticals, oil companies, Halliburton, etc?
Don't be hating on...savings and loans
Yeah, man, It's a total waste of time to hate on things that don't exist.
Hey Megan, take the Food Stamp Challenge and show everyone how its done!
http://foodstampchallenge.typepad.com/
I'm sure those poor fat slobs would appreciate a demonstration in sensible eating on $20 a week.
"Thomas, as I say, if the poor need money, give them money."
I never said that. Food is like a necessity to live. We don't owe the poor money, but basic survival needs like food and medicine are just humane. I'm thinking as a human who was poor, not an economist.
"Giving them food is pointless and undignified"
In your opinion. Personally I find giving money more pointless and undignified. It also is unlikely to change anything in their lives, but it has the added "bonus" of being even less concerned on the matter. Some poor people are clueless or addicted and may buy useless things before food. The ones that aren't by necessities like food so what's the difference in actually getting the necessities?
If anything I'd go for getting rid of welfare entirely and keeping food stamps than the other way round.
Again though I'm a bleeding-heart Christian conservative who only got a B at economics.
It's a total waste of time to hate on things that don't exist ... anymore.
I forgot the auto industry, electricity producers/suppliers, natural gas, WalMart ($1 billion), AgriBusiness/farms/ranching, professional sports teams (ever heard of stadiums?), food industry, high tech sector, housing builders and other real estate, higher education institutions, oil (can you ever really mention oil too often?), Blackwater, etc.
Yes, let's worry what some poor person is going to do with $300.
Hey, what ever happened to discussion of food stamps as a method of fiscal stimulus?
Isn't that where this all started? Megan?
Are we just avoiding that discussion because what's really being objected to has nothing to do with fiscal stimulus or the very sensible use of food stamps as one arrow in that quiver?
BTW, the arguments here about no (serious) hunger problem in America are pretty convincing. Not a data set I've explored much.
Isn't a lot of the obesity in the poor caused by them trying not to be poor anymore? We are talking about people with multiple bad jobs here. Buying fresh food and preparing it can take a lot of time or just seem like far too much effort when you have come home from your second job and have to deal with children. Food stamps probably will have little effect on nutrition in these cases because these people just don't have enough time and energy to do what is best food-wise.
By the way, is it even possible to use food stamps for restaurants? I had the impression that you couldn't and so I don't know why people are even mentioning McD's.
Yes, Adam, this is pretty much what I found. The shorter version is that the cost of any given meal is not solely determined by by the cost of the food. Other costs in food prep have to be accounted for as well.
I'm amazed that this point gets reiterated over and over and over, but no one on the right - despite supposedly being such self-admitted dab hands at economics - seems to think this really matters much.
So if 'the poor' or 'the working poor' or what have you have an obesity rate higher than the national norm, what is the explanation for this? I'm curious about this, because we've had several wights say most definitely that they are not blaming 'culture' or personal sloth, or any of a number of defects in morals or character usually attributed to the poor. So what is their explanation?
Wow, its almost like this hasnt been written about in 500 books, including some nonfiction NY Times Bestsellers, and Megan HASNT READ ANY OF THEM. OR DONE ANY RESEARCH AT ALL.
Brian,
Yes, I realize that the gift certificate (coupon) idea would be tough to achieve politically for exactly the reason you describe, although perhaps not tougher than stimulus consisting only of wealth transfer to the poor/lower-income (via transfer payments or payroll tax rebates), which would be more effective and efficient than what we're going to end up with.
Brooksfoe,
Re: "I think the gift certificate idea is a very good one. I think it ought to be restricted to the lower end of the income spectrum...The problem with gift certificates for rich people is that they may lie in a drawer for 6 months"
Thanks. I disagree, though. The main advantage of the idea is to get the same degree of stimulus as we'd get from getting money into the hands of lower-income / poor people without increase the amount of wealth transfer from all other taxpayers to those people.
--------------------------
STOLEN IDEA ??
Incidentially, did this Bloomberg columnist steal my idea? http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aW43d2y5N2DA&refer=home Or is it just not as original as I thought, but I hadn't seen it anywhere prior to my posting it on a few economics blogs, and then that column appears today. Hmmm.
Brian, Brooksfoe, ALL,
I also thought of something perhaps even better:
Almost all STATES have a sales tax (which generally excludes some necessities like food and prescription drugs, thus fitting my general concept of encouraging INCREMENTAL immediate spending). What if the Federal Government coordinated and subsidized a brief (few month), temporary reduction in STATE sales taxes (like the tax holiday weeks we have here in NY)? (States without a sales tax could receive some form of compensation to keep it fair.)
This isn't an article from The Onion?
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Brooksfoe,
Also, yes, some of the gift certificates (coupons) would go unused (mainly those going to high income / high wealth folks) but that "slippage" (to use a marketing term for rebates that go unused) could be factored into decisions on the total amount and on the amount of each coupon, and would actually make this tool more efficient in terms of stimulus per dollar lost to the Treasure.
This isn't an article from The Onion?
Just what I was thinking.
This HAS to be a joke. And it's not a new joke - It's a dog-earred, worn out, cliche of a joke. Doesn't Mona Charen write this column about every year or so? And she's terrible.
This is proof that even the most uneducated person can blog! It's impossible to eat healthy food on a food stamp budget. The healthy stuff is far too expensive. You can purchase a sack of potatoes for a couple of bucks, and eat all week. Or, you can buy a head of lettuce and eat for a day ... and still be hungry.
If you want thin poor people, then give them more money so they can buy better food. It's really not rocket science.
BAC
I live between Fairway and Zabar's. I recently visited a friend at 151 and Amsterdam and tried to grab a carton of 1% lowfat milk. I went to 5 different delis between the subway and his apartment, and when I opened the one I finally found, I realized that it had expired a week earlier. People in that neighborhood cannot buy lowfat milk.
When stores switched to computer scanners, they started calculating which items are not allowed. I suspect that in the olden days, cashiers would let toilet paper and dishwashing soap slip by and just make poor people pay cash for the beer. That was probably a good thing.
People in that neighborhood cannot buy lowfat milk.
That's because people in that neighborhood don't buy it when stores stock it. Note that the one you could find was expired--i.e., it had sat on the shelf without being purchased for quite some time.
Which is probably to their credit--whole milk is much better.
Well Yancey, in the immortal words of Steve Martin, "excuuuuuuuuse me!" I didn't see your little line nor do I consider it a valid one. Instead I see a lot of attempted redefining of context in order to try to save face for a silly set of statements. Mixner's statement about culture was NOT in the context of eating grasshoppers, it was in the context of food choices of the poor. Convenience was not being discussed in terms of commuting, it was being discussed in terms of food preparation. Your framing may be accurate in your contexts, but it was (charitably) inapt in the context of the topic at hand. So I pointed out that I felt that way.
Meanwhile, the world and discussion have moved on.
Wow, this discussion just confirms my opinion that the vast majority of people are ignorant and prejudiced and think all us poor people don't deserve to have the food we DO have,and actually have too much, let alone could be trusted with more money for it.
Let me preface his with some info:I am from a 3 person, working poor family, who used to be among the middle class.Due to economic factors out of my control, and due to the lousy economy I find myself fast approaching fifty and not making it finacially, tho my husband works 40 hours a week at minimum wage and I am disabled,*trying to get SSI, which is unneccisarily hard* and supporting a grown daughter, also disabled.We qualify for no help except foodstamps, and without them, we'd not have ANY food.It is not a fun existance , *just so you people who think we're sitting around gobbling cheetos and soda and laughing about how we are scamming the taxpayers know.It sucks.*
Our foodstamp balance for the month is $240.00, which tho stated as "suplimentary", is the actual amount we have for food, period( like most of us on FS's.). We pay the bills with the money we make, never spend any on luxeries,like renting movies,going out to dinner(even fast food is rare)clothing etc.We have an old computer and the internet, due to our local telephone compay having cheap internet service, which is our ONLY luxery, and it costs $20 a month.
I appreciate the argument that we could use more MONEY, especially since we have none to spare for car repairs etc, but not because we are all fat and would just stuff our pie holes with more cheap bad food if we got more FS so we shouldn't get any help there.The more $ we have to help with food, the more we have to use for the things we need, and even, maybe sometimes those lovely things which stimulate the economy.Can't afford gas when we need food, so we take the bus instead,which doesn't help the economy much, does it?Can't go buy ipods and cell phones and new cars because we need miney for meds and car insurance and meds and doctor bills we have to pay ourselves with no insurance.So it is a vicious circle we're caught in down here at the bottom of the economic food chain.
Perhaps the "gift" certificates could help, but I don't care about buying luxery items when I need important things,( car repairs,medications,house repairs, cuz yes, we actually own our own home and need many things fixed we can't afford now) so those would be largely useless.
We used to be among the great majority who could spend frivolously but we fell off that track and here we sit,yes, overweight, and poor, unable
( NOT unwilling)to eat healthier food all the time, and many of us working poor are in this same state, we're increasingly not people who have lined up for handouts our whole lives.
My husband worked 18 yrs on a good well paying job and payed plenty of taxes, so we aren't just fat, lazy, stupid bums as many of you like to characterize us as.
The notion that us poor fat bastards are just too damn dumb to know how to spend our guv'ment handouts in ways many of you deem most appropriate is not just anger inducing, it's actually sickening to me.
Talk about out of touch with reality!
How narrow minded and ignorant many of you are.
As someone else here pointed out, fresh veggies and fruit and good cuts of meat etc cost more,perish sooner, and have to be replenished more, so for part of the month we buy healthier foods,yes, but near the end, those frozen things are all we have to eat.Fresh healthy food DOES cost more. NO,I'd rather not have tater tot casserole, but it makes the last of the pantry and freezer stock edible.
I buy only chicken breast meat whenever possible,eat lots of salads and veggies, do not deep fry anything, and try and eat as healthy as I can.
I make sure to check every grocery store in my area's ads to plan the best use of the money each month. I have noticed stores tend to make the best sales around the third week or so, and I can't help thinking it's a deliberate attempt to make us use the food stamps we get at the first part of the month go less far so we have to spend real money on food that we need for other things near the end of the month.
That might"help" the economy, but it also helps ensure that homelessness can be just one missed day of work away from us.And lastly...
why should anyone care what someone else weighs?
The obesity/poor argument is just a way to justify your own hatefull prejudices, and is the last acceptable open discrimination.
From what I can see, it's you two parent middle and upper class working familys with lots of income to spare who eat all that fast food, too lazy to make dinners for your familys who are also a fast growing segment of us fat americans. Your kids are getting just as fat as the poor ones, and even some of the non obese kids have terribley unhealthy diets.Maybe YOU should lose some income for making such poor choices, hmm?
How about we raise YOUR taxes so you can't afford that happy meal/bucket of kfc/taco bell dinners you feed your familys several times a week.
Your costing your insurance companys money on health care related to diets more than I am.
liberalrob,
You assigned a characterization to his statements that was completely unwarranted by the either the statements themselves or the context in which they were made. In fact, the other examples I gave you demonstrate this since their contexts are equivalent to those at hand.
To summarize, you were claiming that Mixner was calling poor people lazy and culturally backwards, something that he did not write, and to know he was implying this, you would have to be a mindreader, which I assume you are not.
""In Mixner's defense, I'll say that I was just at Whole Foods, and was able to buy myself some smoked salmon and a salad for about $10. Add in a dollar for some whole wheat bread and I can have two meals for $5.50. That's no more than the price of two meals at McDonald's.
And that's from one of the more expensive markets. Trader Joe's is even cheaper. For four dollars there one can get 8 sushi rolls with soy sauce, ginger and mustard--enough for a tasty and nutritious meal.
So, this business about being to poor to buy healthy food is a canard, and has little to with the central question about whether food stamps are a sensible tool for fiscal policy.
I have to say though that I'm rather partial to Henrys suggestion of beer stamps. Better still: beer and whiskey stamps. If the government wants to subsidize my consumption, I'll get some Sierra Nevada and Highland Park right now. That should do wonders for the economy, according to many here.""
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What is the point of this? The posts pointing out what the average person on food stamp assistance is expected to eat on for ONE DAY is $5.00 per person PER DAY for all 3 meals most ppl eat. So spending your wad on one meal of smoked salmon,and artisan bread and special, premade salads for $5.50 and patting yourself smugly on the back for it shows that you rich elitist idiots aren't any more responsible with your cash than those nasty poor ppl,are you?Why not make your own salad and save some dough?
And gosh, you can eat SUSHI for about that same amount too, aren't you special?Still, thats (I'll try and say it slooowly)
ONE.MEAL.NOT.3.
And thats NOT getting 3 meals out of your fiver, is it smarty pants?
And the beer stamps, har de har, thats such a knee slapper!
Cuz only those poor ppl are alcoholics, right?
Injecting that into the argument is showing the barely concealed disgust you have for ppl less fortunate than your own fine self, and it makes you seem even more of an ass than your ignorant shopping tips do.
Not much is really known about obesity causes although everyone has a pet theory. Here is mine: the poor don't have to starve themselves to look younger than they are to keep their jobs like the rich do. Let's think outside the box once in awhile!
Not much is really known about obesity causes although everyone has a pet theory. Here is mine: the poor don't have to starve themselves to look younger than they are to keep their jobs like the rich do. Let's think outside the box once in awhile!
As someone who loves economics, I often find the arguments on this blog too frustrating to even consider. Therefore, I usually stay away. (And I'm not a member of any particular school of thought -- I'm merely pragmatic.)
But this comment takes the cake:
>Even if they spend it all on drugs, it will hardly be much worse than spending it all on increasing their already astronomical obesity rates.
Ok, other comments expressed here also take the cake.
I don't have the desire to analyze these comments right here. I just feel compelled to join the mob and say, this doesn't even make sense! It's straight forward arrogance!!! And I find it entirely bizarre that this is written on a page owned by The Atlantic! Where, oh where, are the editors that are responsible for this? Did someone slip in the back door?
Tall ugly women belong in the circus.
fatandpoor,
Re: "Perhaps the "gift" certificates could help, but I don't care about buying luxery items when I need important things,( car repairs,medications,house repairs, cuz yes, we actually own our own home and need many things fixed we can't afford now) so those would be largely useless."
No, not "useless" if the objective is stimulus, as opposed to wealth redistribution.
I got yer "stimulus" package right here.
"No, not "useless" if the objective is stimulus, as opposed to wealth redistribution"
The argument here was centered around giving the poor more money to spend on food so they can stimulate the economy too by buying all the consumer goods they can vs just giving them money, hoping they'd spend it right off, thus stimulating the economy.
Someone of course had to add the prejudicial remark that was the better way "even if they spent that on drugs"certainly shows the real opinions of many of you have towards poor people.
Poor=fat=drug users seems to be the leap in logic many people take for granted.
Both sides of this argument have alot of biased, insulting prejudiced qualifications attached to them,and it certainly showed the bias and ignorance of many many people.
You dislike us, we get that.
Even some well meaning people said some damn condesending things, like poor people can't make good decisions about healthy food because we lack the ability to reason, or read labels, or make informed decisions aparently, simply by virtue of being poor.
And since the way we ARE heading into that economic "stimulis" is BY WAY of wealth redistribution however you do it, my informing you on what it is like to actually BE poor right now in america was an attempt to enlighten you and is central to this argument.
Probably foolish to bother, I admit.
My argument, as one of the people effected by this, is that money for frivolous things would not neccasarily be helping me, while giving me more money to spend on food so I could free my OWN money to spend on that stuff is more logical for myself AND the economy. And certainly the other struggling americans being labeled and abused here should have a voice in this discussion too.
But I also know for a fact that, if we are given gift certificates to buy those goodies with, you will be behind me in the grocery store, while I pay for my meager groceries with food stamps, you'll see an ipod in my purse,and wrinkle your noses in disgust,because as you suspected, us poor, fat, americans you dislike so much shouldn't be using food stamps if we"can afford" things like ipods.
So we poor folks lose either way.
fatandpoor,
Please don't mistake my point for a lack of sensitivity. My point is simply that if our objective is stimulus, then getting more money to the poor is a means to that end, not an end in itself, and that my gift certificate idea perhaps could achieve the same degree and efficiency of stimulus as a stimulus focused on transfering more wealth to the poor, while also being more politically achievable (because it would be more acceptable to the middle class -- the folks who comprise the most votes for the politicians deciding on the form of stimulus). If you want to make a case for increased wealth transfer to the poor -- whether temporary to cope with an economic downturn or permanently -- you are certainly free to do so, but you have to make that argument on other grounds than effectiveness and efficiency of stimulus if I'm presenting you with an alternative of equal effectiveness and efficiencty (unless, of course, you dispute that premise of equivalence, which does not seem to be the argument you are raising). ok?
so... my two cents, as a person who currently recieves food stamps (which i will lose whenever SSI and SSDI kick in)
been on food stamps for ten months
i have lost 14lbs.
why? probably because, with food stamps, it did NOT make sense to go to wendys or mcdonalds for my food. when i didnt get food stamps, and had MAYBE $3 a day, a double cheeseburger was a great dinner. now, i have a much wider choice. i do eat a lot of cereal - but cereal, at least, has the virtue of being fortified. and tasty.
i have no clue what im going to do when the SSI and SSDI come in - $800/month is NOT enough to live on, when the rent is $500, basic bills almost $200, plus car insurance and gas and...
not to mention, that who internet issue.
looks like, to save money, i may be back at fast food. which, as much as it pisses me off, IS cheaper in the short run.
You are an intolerant, ignorant, digusting piece of shit.
Brooks: I think my point was meant to be that helping the poor to participate in stimulating the economy by actually helping with the things that prevent them from doing so, mainly food being so expensive, is a better way to achive that economic growth aim, long term fix or not.
I understand the concept of the stimulous package.
Tho I could appreciate the money to buy a new decent television, or an ipod, or cell phone,helping me put BETTER quality food on my table by increasing my food stamps is still a better choice,all the way around IMO.
I eat healthier, making my heath improve,etc, and freeing money to spend on other things.
But if this issue is being discussed at all, as a food stamp recipient, I think it is important to have people like myself and the poster directly before me here weigh in, since we ARE the people being discussed here in quite rude and prejudiced ways.Many of the posters here seem mearly ignorant,if well meaning, but quite a few also have a real nasty attitude rarely allowed to be so freely expressed as it is here.I am heartened to see many posters express digust for the arrogant attitude of some posts.
The bare bones of this is supossed to be the economic stimulous package, yes, but it was presented by the author from the first sentance with the issue of how the poor cannot be trusted to not abuse any method it is presented to us in anyway, so cash may be the best bet.
That perhaps SOME of us poor overweight childlike creatures might actually stumble into a mall with that money clutched in our grubby fists, and spend it on consumer goods deemed appropriate by the middle and upperclasses who help achive this with their tax money instead of that booze and crack us poor folk all use,or to super size our McDonalds meals.
( And tho grudgingly conceeded to us, as brooks made a good point about,about how the middle class voters percieve any handouts to the poor and their effect upon the decison makers.)
But from the first sentence in this blog, the author declares that she has decided how she thinks that the rebates should be used for economic stimulis, based on her idea that the poor A) have enough food, based on how fat we are,because if we're overweight we surely have TOO much food in fact, and B) since we are all fat anyway, more food would just give us incentive to stuff our fat faces even more.
So giving us cash, tho it may be risky, is better and she even tries to dignify that barely concealed rasict bs by assuring us that she has, in fact actually VISTED the homes of said poor folk, where they confirmed all her stereotyped prejudices by gleefully frying up chicken necks, even tho they obviously could have had something less unhealthy.* Rolls eyes*This seems to be her basis to declare all of us on FS do just that, so we shouldn't have any more food.
I feel like there is also a very nasty undertone of rasicim involved in the mix here, barely being concealed, which isn't socialy acceptable to actually give voice to,but because being poor and overweight is disliked by everyone, it's fair game to be ignorant and unashamedly prejudiced about us while supposedly expresing your opinions about the economy.
We have been declared unable to understand basic
nutritional needs, thus unable to make decisions for ourselves, so others must decide whats best for us.
We are the only "class" of people who others feel shameless about openly disliking anymore.
In order to justify the statements made by the original author, we are all lumped together under the umbrella of "poor and fat" and declared to be the intelectual equivelant of some sort of blissfully sloppy and stupid children who will always make bad choices when left to our own devises, because we lack the basic intellectual capacities to do otherwise.
Our extra weight was even declared to be a moral shortcoming by someone here.
Our personal weight struggles are dimissed as choices we embrace rather than fight, because you can't get away with outright showing how much some of you really loathe the poor, so I feel like it's clouded by the weight issue to disguise it.
And tho the racial issue is thinly veiled, clearly some of you mean by "cultural" choices in relation to eating habits,that ethnic and racial origins contribute heavily to being on public assistance and unable to understand nutritional information, don't you?
Dearest Frau McArdle:
As a veteran, who was once homeless, let me just give you a BIG F*** Y**! I hope to God you don't think of yourself as a Christian. Thank God my life has turned around and I own my own home but, believe me, the social safety net is needed and, thanks to Herr Bush and friends, doesn't BEGIN to really offer a HAND UP to those who need it.
The real agenda of the right is to turn our beloved America into a THIRD WORLD nation!
Its time to roll out Madame Guillotine!
I agree that food stamps may not be the *best* way to pass out this money. Personally, I don't think this "economic stimulus package" is going to stimulate a damn thing for us and is all going to wind up in Chinese pockets via WalMart.
I read your comments, so don't berate me as illiterate...I also read other posts, and your replies.
But the fact remains that you keep returning to a base concept: poor people don't need more food. And you could not be more wrong.
There *is* an issue with price, and with the fact that cheap food is, well, cheaply made. And convenience is a factor. Statistics are notoriously unreliable on this subject; one could produce studies to prove almost any point at all on this subject.
However poor you may have once been (and, yes, I've been that poor, too), your comments have shown you have lost touch with what it's actually like.
You are not being attacked for your feelings on an economic stimulus package. You are being attacked for tasteless delivery that attacks people who do not deserve it. You, madam, are either profoundly stupid or irredeemably insane.
A famous quote you shoudl keep in mind from another person who did not particularly feel that the hungry needed fed:
"Let them eat cake."
You remember what happened to her, yes?
i think that every body should have a chans
i think that every body should have a chans
Food stamps can only be spent on milk, beans, rice, and cereal. None of these foods are fattening.
So, article is full of it.
Unity ‘08 Malkin-McArdle!
Want to see our shoes?
Food stamps offer best stimulus - study
Moody's study suggests extending unemployment benefits, increasing food stamps fastest ways to stimulate economy.
As Congress and the White House consider a $150 billion stimulus package that includes tax rebates and tax incentives for business, a report released Tuesday suggests that other methods would do a better job of infusing money into the flagging economy and doing it fast.
[...]
The report found that "some provide a lot of bang for the buck to the economy. Others ... don't," said economist Mark Zandi.
In findings echoed by other economists and studies, he said the study shows the fastest way to infuse money into the economy is through expanding the food-stamp program. For every dollar spent on that program $1.73 is generated throughout the economy, he said. "If someone who is literally living paycheck to paycheck gets an extra dollar, it's very likely that they will spend that dollar immediately on whatever they need - groceries, to pay the telephone bill, to pay the electric bill," he said.
Tracking that single dollar spent through the economic chain shows what economists call the ripple effect, Zandi said. For example, that dollar spent at the grocery store in turn helps to pay the salaries of the grocery clerks, pays the truckers who haul the food and produce cross-country, and finally goes to the farmer who grows the crops.
Jesus Christ, you're like a walking, talking stereotype ("yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra dry skim milk cappuccino," according to your profile). Have you ever taken the 1 train seven or eight stops up from your Upper West Side existence?
It's pretty easy to talk to real people who have to make difficult spending choices with their EBT cards. If you would deign to bring your Mahnolos into a real bodega, maybe you wouldn't propagate such ignorant and harmful misconceptions.
The nutritional options available to poor Americans are awful, and of course food stamps won't solve that by themselves, but it seems that you have nothing constructive to contribute to the discussion. Instead, you prefer to offer up snarky prejudices on your blog for smug right-leaning liberals.
I used to deal with people like you when I worked at the Barnes & Noble on 82nd St. -- in fact, you probably talked down to me personally while ordering a trendy book by some pro-war liberal darling like Brzezinski or Al Franken. I honestly can't imagine why the world would be worse off if you all got run over by a big truck.
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Everyone here is talking about the poor obese people. My mom only gets 500.00 on social security and that is what she pays for rent at the low income senior building where she lives.
It does not leave her anything to go to the grocery store to buy anything with. . Luckily she gets boxed and canned food brought in,because she is low income, but it did not cover any fruits or fresh vegetables or meat. The only dairy she got was when there were some left over pint milk containers after the lunches, which are like school lunches for which they pay 2.50. The 100.00 she will be getting now a month , will allow her to get milk, yogurt, and fresh fruits and vegetables.
The senior citizens in the senior living homes, who do not make enough on social security need to be able to get food.
"Even if they spend it all on drugs, it will hardly be much worse than spending it all on increasing their already astronomical obesity rates."
This?
Is hideously elitist and nasty.
Much like the author, I'm guessing.
First, Gottleib, then Charlotte Allen in the WaPo, now this.
Where's the obligatory "It was just satire; I was only joking; don't you know how to take a joke; jeez, you poor people are so sensitive"?
I'll wait.
And one more thing -
It's rich people, NOT poor people, that spend the most on illegal drugs.
Why? Why, because you need money to buy them. Bless your heart.
Just to state some facts, my neighbor receives $600 dollars a month SSD and $40 in food stamps. After paying rent and utilities, He ends up eating a lot of spaghetti. Now that the farmers are planting corn because of great prices they get selling it, the price of wheat has more than doubled. What left rice? If he spent $5 a day for food he would lucky to buy a pair of shoes. At least the food stamps are buying mostly American goods.
After I left home my mother received food stamps for herself, my stepdad, my brother and sister. My step dad works but they live in a small town so minimum wage jobs saturate the job market and nothing else is available. I would say their monthly take home income was less than 700 and he was working full-time. They supplemented that with the 250 dollars a month in food stamps. Since it took his income to cover bills, they had 250 dollars for food every month. I would say that clearly averages out to be less than $5 dollars a day per person for food and canned vegetables, pasta, and ravioli are much cheaper than fresh veggies and lean cuts of meat. My mother is a pretty smart shopper and she would buy bulk packs of meat and freeze them but toward the end of the month even that was gone. During the summer they are lucky enough to grow fresh vegetables and she freezes these as well, but not everyone has the luxury of space to do that.
SO, before you judge think about this. $150 dollars a month/$5 dollars a day for an adult seems like more than enough to some of you but is it? It certainly doesn't afford the luxuries of buying fresh fruit every week. The next time you go to the store, look at what you spend. If you really want to understand the poor then try spending $200 dollars a month on groceries and force yourself to spend NO MORE. I am guessing your food choices would be much different than they are right now. My family of 3 spends 150 a week on groceries because we buy fresh fruits and veggies, good bread, and lean meats and we shop where we can find the best prices. I don't believe we could do it and we DO NOT overeat, are at a healthy weight, and try not to eat out very often.
Please remember that many people who receive food stamps are disabled. Having a physical disability can bring weight issues because of the inability to exercise. Some of them might be awaiting the two years that it takes the corrupted Social Security System to award their disability benefit. Many have died waiting. Some went from responsible, hard working people to homeless and poverty stricken because they had the audacity to develop a paralyzing illness. I don't think allowing them some basic food and drink is too much to ask while they are being held hostage by the broken system and country that has abandoned them. Is it really?
Clearly a large number of the critics of the food stamp program have never actually lived in conditions which necessitate the program.
I'm a 19 year old full time college student and my mother and brother rely on the food stamp program. Without this program, they would literally not be able to afford food.
A little background:
My mother is mentally ill and cognitively impaired. She suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, severe depression, and minor brain damage caused by incorrectly administered Electroconvulsive therapy.
My brother is 16, and my parents share join custody of him. They switch off every two weeks.
Between child support and social security, my mother recieves $10,000 per year to live off of. After paying rent, the cost of which is mitigated through a great program known as Section-8, and her bills(power/phone/HEAT), she is left with a marginal amount of money for her own use. I'm currently living at home for the summer. This month she has $20 to split between gas for her car, which is extremely fuel inefficient, and whatever else may arise. In the winter she often lets bills pile up in favor of paying for heat, as Vermont winters are frigid.
She receives a base of $75 per person in food stamps. She receives around $38 per month for my brother, as he spends half his time at her house, the full $75 for herself, and a small amount($20?) for me, as I'm only at home during college vacations. That comes out to $133 per month in food stamps. She has $20 in discretionary spending this month.
To the critics of this program: try growing up in that household and then get back to me. As another insight as to why the poor purchase food that is unhealthy: unhealthy food tends to taste better than healthy food. Potato chips vs celery. When you have no pleasures in your life, no luxuries, you're damn well going to pick the food that tastes better.
I also have a major criticism of this program. So long as I live at my mom's house while I'm not at college, I cannot feasibly get a job. If I were to get a job, my mother would loose her food stamps because there would be a "provider" in the household. I'm exploring alternate possibilities, but without a job, I don't even know if I'll be able to afford to continue my college education. I'm literally playing it by ear right now - there is no better option. I'll know whether or not I'll return to college in a few weeks, when I get my new financial aid letter.
How are the poor supposed to rise from poverty if they can't afford an education?
I know this is rocket science for those of you who base their decisions on emotion instead of logic, you don't give food stamps to fat people period, end of story. If high calorie foods are cheaper than low calorie foods, they can eat smaller/fewer portions of those "cheap high calorie foods" instead of demanding more $$ from the taxpayer.
Now for those of you who advocate an increase in food stamps as an economic stimulus package, you probably have a good logical point. Maybe they can help stimulate the economy, but don't argue that fat people are hungry and need more food stamps. It's illogical.
Here is a person with a much more "colorful" opinion on this topic, he gives these fat people a good smackdown.
http://www.arthurshall.com/x_food_stamps.shtml
Ok You may have opend your self for a law suit buy lumping the poor and obese into one catagory, I am on food stamps and I weigh in at 125- 130...
You have doe Racial Profiling and where do you get your facts?
1 soem not all, Obese have a thyroyd issue.
there are even rich peopel that are obese.
Have you looked at congress lately?
its time to do away withthe elitist view and get down to soemthing more seriouse, like how to eliminate Fiat currencey.
Yes the Unconventionl truth fiat Currencey.
As a single mother of 2 children who just lost her job, I had to go the food stamp route. I think it’s hard for a lot of people to use it. But for some people comes pretty easily... Some of the comments on here are pretty harsh and cold. Sometimes you have to go with the cheaper fatting things because it stretches for that month. I tried the healthy route and was spending 2 to 3 times more a month. I hope you are never in a situation where you have to use it. Everyone is too quick to judge, but I think we need to concentrate on what we can do to help others and be less judgmental. When I had a good paying job I was more than willing to donate or help those in need. Yes, I’m now on the other end. (I thought it would never happen to me!!) So, think before you speak because it could be YOU some day.
As a single mother of 2 children who just lost her job, I had to go the food stamp route. I think it’s hard for a lot of people to use it. But for some people comes pretty easily... Some of the comments on here are pretty harsh and cold. Sometimes you have to go with the cheaper fatting things because it stretches for that month. I tried the healthy route and was spending 2 to 3 times more a month. I hope you are never in a situation where you have to use it. Everyone is too quick to judge, but I think we need to concentrate on what we can do to help others and be less judgmental. When I had a good paying job I was more than willing to donate or help those in need. Yes, I’m now on the other end. (I thought it would never happen to me!!) So, think before you speak because it could be YOU some day.
I guess that because I get food stamps is the reason my d*** is so Fat and obese!!!