Why not give the poor food?

If giving them food stamps is such a great idea, why not give them the food you say they are unable to purchase, and turning them fat: produce, whole grains, lean meats, etc.

When you think of actually lining people up to hand them a big bag of quinoa and a chicken breast, the stupidity of this program seems fairly self evident (or at least, I hope it does). How happy would you be to get a chicken breast and a bag of quinoa? Not very. Maybe you wanted chicken breasts tonight, but probably you didn't. And you definitely didn't want quinoa. No, you didn't. Stop lying.

Most poor people, if they had access to more money to spend on food, would not buy a lower-calorie, higher fiber diet laden with fruits and vegetables. We know this because almost no one in America eats that kind of diet; it is almost exclusively the province of a certain substrate of the upper middle class. Poor people, given more money to buy food, might upgrade their calorie consumption, but they would not eat like a corporate lawyer from the Upper West Side.

And this is not a moral judgement. Being thin, eating little, having a high fiber diet--the fact that so many people think I am judging the poor reflects their own belief that there is some sort of important moral content to one's weight or calorie consumption. There isn't.

But the only reason to give people food, rather than cash that they might, if they desired, use to buy food, is that they are starving and need food right away. The poor in America are not starving. They do not need food right away. They certainly don't need you telling them that they can have $45 a month, but only if they promise to spend it all on vegetables. They have enough problems without having to contend with well-meaning bureaucrats trying to raise them.

Now, I assume that most people will concede that the poor are not starving, but at the same time say that living on the food budget implied by food stamps is pretty miserable. Indeed it is--though please, don't tax me with the bloody food stamp challenge, because first of all, I've already done it for an article I never sold, and second of all, the average food stamp grant is not what people actually live on; it's a budgetary supplement, not a food budget.

I am sympathetic to this argument. But that doesn't mean I want to increase food stamps, for the same reason that I don't want to actually give people food: many of the people I give the food, or the food stamps to, would rather have the cash to spend on something else. If peoples' incomes are inadequate to the bare minimum needed for decency in modern America, then I am in favor of topping up their incomes. But food stamp programs are stupid at the best of times, and in a population that has clearly reached and surpassed caloric sufficiency, they are ludicrous.

There are two possibilities with food stamps:

1) They are entirely fungible, so that every dollar of food stamps frees up a dollar to be spent on something else. This makes the program good stimulus, but perfectly idiotic social policy.

2) They are not perfectly fungible, so that at least some of the increase has to actually be spent on food. Many people who would rather spend the money on something else are forced to buy food, and many of those people are probably obese.

Food stamps continue not because they're great for the poor, but because they're terrific for the farm lobby. If you want to give stimulus money to the poor, increase the EITC, welfare grants, disability, or unemployment insurance. (I'm on the record as being in favor of the former, against the latter). But for God's sake, can't we all agree that food stamps are a program whose time has gone?

Comments

That second paragraph was the funniest thing I've read all day! Well done Megan.

Posted by CT | January 25, 2008 5:18 PM

"And this is not a moral judgement. Being thin, eating little, having a high fiber diet--the fact that so many people think I am judging the poor reflects their own belief that there is some sort of important moral content to one's weight or calorie consumption. There isn't."

This is a rather good point, actually. There is a default assumption (implicit even in the way that we talk about food) in modern North American culture that seems to attach moral weight to eating habits. In that sense, obesity is almost seen (intuitively) as a moral failing and thus worthy of scorn.

Even economists talk about it as an issue with a high discount rate (people are discounting future benefits of being thin for the short term satisfaction of an ice cream sundae). If you then link a high discount rate to poor economic outcomes then this gives an avenue to make obesity discrimination seem rational.

I am pretty sure that "moral subtext" to the obesity interferes with constructive debate on improvements in our diet and lifestyle. The trend towards higher body fat percentages is across the entire North American population and seems pretty dramatic so the situation does seem more complex than "some people eat poorly".

Posted by Joseph Delaney | January 25, 2008 5:40 PM

It isnt idiotic policy, because people who get food stamps are almost uniformly poor, and will spend almost all the extra income they get. They may well spend it on things that dont seem like a good idea, but they will spend it on things that seem like a good idea to them.
That accomplishes the stimulus policy objective of increasing spending, and also increases their well-being. Not bad for a government policy.

Posted by MikeB | January 25, 2008 5:56 PM

Hard as it is to believe, thre are those who like quinoa. Here's a great recipe for quinoa.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/12245

The vegetarians I know love this recipe because it tastes great and has a lot of great vegetable protein.

Not that this addressed the real point of your post...

Posted by Jack | January 25, 2008 6:06 PM

I disagree with what seems to be the current concept of giving people handouts. I don't want them to be pleasant, convenient, or dignified. I want the government to give people enough to survive and to have a possibility of becoming self-sufficient. I don't want to make sure that someone who is broke has a comfortable home and plenty of food and money to spend on hobbies. I want to make sure he doesn't starve to death or freeze to death. I would like to give him enough food and/or shelter to remain healthy and help him find a place to shower and get some clean clothes so that he can find a job and get off the dole.

For the truly disabled or those who are helpless or can't work, I want to give more to, as no incentive will change their situation. Though many disabled can do productive work, given the chance.

Giving them money is one possibility. It's certainly simpler, though if you means test, that becomes complicated. Giving out food and other in-kind charity obviously has logistical problems.

My concept for a good welfare system is a sort of hotel for the homeless where basic rooms are available and simple, healthy food is served. I wouldn't means test but I also would not allow tenants to modify or upgrade their room. Tenants would have access to the cafeteria, a shower, a place to do laundry, and some sort of phone or internet.

I realize that this might be difficult to implement and would also have to be carefully watched for problems with crime.

I believe that the current obesity epidemic is at least partially caused by a combination of appetite/metabolism and the abundance of high-calorie processed foods that are easy and fast to make and that taste really good. While a lot of prepared food isn't gourmet, a lot of it tastes pretty good and can be ready in 10-15 minutes or less. That's very compelling even for someone with money but who works a full day and has two kids. I'd rather spend the time playing with my kids than cooking a meal. Though as they get older, they can cook with me.

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | January 25, 2008 6:06 PM

For a more substantive, if short, response: great post. I couldn't agree more.

Posted by Jack | January 25, 2008 6:08 PM

I think you are confusing, somewhat, the people we give food stamps to, and the people whom we are trying to benefit. Mostly, the people we are trying to benefit are the children of the stamp recipients. We want them to eat. The parents might well choose vodka, or a boom box, or gasoline. Pretty new frock. But if they can't, then they will buy food with the stamps and share it with their children.

They are not going to make the choices I approve of if their choices are unconstrained. I am paying for it, and I want to constrain their choices.

Posted by dave.s. | January 25, 2008 6:13 PM

My father was a very creative guy with a lot of crazy ideas.
One was to give away free food in place of much of the welfare system. Every grocery store would have a corner with free soybeans, nonfat dry milk, and one or two other things available for anybody to take. Nobody goes hungry, and the administrative costs are close to zero.

Posted by peter | January 25, 2008 6:24 PM

For a long, long time, to be poor was to be on the edge of starvation. Even today, in other parts of the world, to be poor is to have extremely limited food at least part of the year.

Having grown up with that awareness, people make the obvious assumption that the "poor" in America are in the same boat. And, for politicians, the case works -- because it plays to an emotional level, if not a factual one. The reality that the poor in America have living standards which would be well into the upper middle class in a lot of other countries never enters peoples' heads.

(That this is one reason that people will risk their lives to come here, even illegally, similarly doesn't occur to a lot of people. Their default assumption is that most of the rest of the world is just like here. A little exotic scenery, perhaps. A lower standard of living, equivalent to the difference between Florida and rural Wyoming, perhaps. But really not all that different. Ah, ignorance!)

Posted by wj | January 25, 2008 6:37 PM

From an general economic viewpoint it's certainly true that $100 in cash money is more valuable than a certificate for $100 that an only be spent on certain things.

On the other hand, it's not all that uncommon for people who are chronically short on money to actually seek out the equivalent of food stamps -- money that they know they can only spend on necessities, and won't lose track of or fritter away on something else.

I got a lecture on this very topic from a guy who took someone else up on an offer of a $25 gift card for Circuit City. I thought he was misunderstanding the offer as an offer of a free card, but no, he needed a new printer, and for him it was worth the effort of turning $25 cash into $25 that could only be spent at Circuit City to make sure that he wouldn't spend the money on something else. He and his friends do that sort of thing all the time.

It's like, well, if you've ever suffered from depression, or any similar disorder that saps your will and energy, you'll know that it comes and goes. There are high-functioning and low-functioning days. The sort of thing I described above is a way of using high-functioning time to impose limits that will be difficult to break when low-function sets in.

Now, I don't know that it's best for the government to impose this sort of thing on people, instead of them just setting it up for themselves. But still, it's seems to me like it's not an entirely daft idea.

Posted by Avram | January 25, 2008 6:49 PM

I agree with Earnest Iconoclast, dave.s. and peter and would just like to combine their posts and say this: if we accept Megan’s premise that somehow we are obligated to provide the poor with the means to ensure that they don’t starve, then let’s provide them with healthy and nutritious food instead of either food stamps or income supplements.

To answer Megan’s question, would I like a diet of just chicken breasts and whateverthehellquinoais? Probably not, but as I’m the one working and paying for my own meals, I get to decide what I’m going to eat. If I were still living at home with my parents or living in the home of strangers getting my meals and board for free, I wouldn’t expect to be able to dictate to them what they will and not provide for my benefit.

Posted by Thorley Winston | January 25, 2008 7:05 PM

When I was a teenager, (a long, long time ago if my calendar is right...) I worked as a bag-boy at a small rural grocery store.

A lot of our customers used food stamps. Two particular memories of food stamp users stand out in my mind. The first, was a line of gaunt, hollow-eyed children lined up each with a dollar food stamp and a piece of hard candy. Change for food stamps is (or at least was) given in regular money. Each child gave his or her change to their father and then he would buy beer. There was nothing anyone could do about it and the father was completely shameless about it.

Even when buying food, people using food stamps tended to buy steaks and pop and junk food and be out of them by mid-month.

The other memory was of a woman who bought her groceries with food stamps and started crying in the parking lot because she was so ashamed to have to use them. He husband had cancer and they had exhausted all their other resources. The cashiers had been pretty rude to her because using them was considered a moral failure (and food stamp users like the man in the first example reinforced that opinion on a daily basis.)

WICA (or what ever the acronym is...I can't remember anymore...the woman and children vouchers that let women buy milk and formula and baby food) program seemed to do its job pretty well though.

Posted by Troy Johnson | January 25, 2008 7:24 PM

More food stamps won't increase spending. Neither will tax rebates or any other deficit spending.

If the money has to be borrowed (and we assume it isn't borrowed from the tooth fairy) -- how is the borrowed money stimulating the economy.

Didn't an equal amount of money have to be saved in order for us to borrow it?

'Boosting aggregate demand,' 'injecting new money into the economy,' 'increasing total spending' -- can we please stop pretending that this makes any sense?

Posted by RobB | January 25, 2008 7:42 PM

Isn't there some secondary market in food stamps? I.e., poor people can sell them, in exchange for cash or other goods, to some illegal intermediary, who presumably extracts profit from the transaction.

Posted by Tom T. | January 25, 2008 8:39 PM

In response to Tom T.--
There certainly used to be before food stamps were given out in electronic card form. I well remember my mom buying food stamps from a neighborhood woman for 50 or 75 cents on the dollar. Now that food stamp recipients get an EBT card, I assume that it is much more difficult to cheat the system.

Posted by jlf | January 25, 2008 9:05 PM

Some of the state WIC agencies, including my own, do give out actual food, although most use vouchers that can only be spent at the WIC store.

Posted by Atlee Breland | January 26, 2008 12:28 AM

I am pretty sure that any program that does not actually force the poor to buy food will invariably lead to the young members of some families going without food.

And the easiest way to convert your food card into cash is to take a shopping list of what your dollar enabled friends want. You buy it, then sell it to them at cut rate.

The ultimate solution is to create non-military MRE's for the poor. The government should contract out to a company that can make tasty, healthy yet filling prepared meals that get stocked in local markets or can be ordered online.

And in order to get your other cash benefits, you would be required to turn in the bar codes on your purchased meals.

This way:

1) Your friends with cash who would be happy to buy your box of Fruit Loops at half price can't, because all you can purchase is your healthy government sponsered MRE fare, thus reducing fraud.
2) You are less likely to trade or sell the MRE because you need the huge bar code on the bottom of the specially designed food package, creating an incentive to keep the food inhouse since your other benefits depend on it.
3) Health is improved as you delve into government sponsored boneless/skinless humanely killed chicken with cous cous and green beens.
4) Anyway caught selling or buying MRE's without food card or license would get fined $500, payable over two years.

Posted by Finn | January 26, 2008 3:16 AM

I am pretty sure that any program that does not actually force the poor to buy food will invariably lead to the young members of some families going without food.

Yeah.

This has been a ridiculous debate. The food stamp issue originally came up because experts at CBO pointed out that, empirically, the best way for the federal government to get cash into the consumer economy as an anti-recessionary stimulus was raising food stamp grants. Megan then objected that poor people in America don't need more food, which has nothing to do with the question of whether increasing food stamp grants is an effective fiscal stimulus. Others retorted that in fact poor people in America may need more or better food, and now we've gotten to the point where Megan is arguing that the food stamps program itself is a bad program and should be replaced by cash grants.

This final argument seems to have a lot of hurdles to overcome, itself. To the extent that poor people in America aren't undernourished, to what extent is that because of food stamps? If food stamps were replaced by cash grants, how much of the cash would then be spent on all the social bads to which poor people are especially vulnerable -- gambling, substance abuse, fraud, one's abusive boyfriend maxing it out, et. al.? Wouldn't we quickly be again wondering whether we could end hunger in America by giving poor people some form of cash they could only spend on food?

Posted by brooksfoe | January 26, 2008 7:37 AM

More food stamps won't increase spending.

Gee, who should I trust -- the CBO figures, estimates and projections; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; or RobB? Hm, hm, so hard to decide.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 26, 2008 7:41 AM

I am pretty sure that any program that does not actually force the poor to buy food will invariably lead to the young members of some families going without food.

The most maltreated children are generally taken into care, so this argument implicitly assumes that there is a fairly large number of Americans who would rather starve their own children than spend less on drugs, alcohol etc on themselves.

I have seen a lot of anti-American claims over the last few years, but nothing to match that.

Posted by ad | January 26, 2008 10:41 AM

this argument implicitly assumes that there is a fairly large number of Americans who would rather starve their own children than spend less on drugs, alcohol etc on themselves.

A lot of teachers in low-income neighborhoods report kids coming to school hungry. Poor parents are under tremendous stress: they have to hold down full-time minimum-wage jobs and deal with an immense variety of bureaucratic concerns. If they're single parents it's harder. When the groceries run out before the next paycheck comes, kids can go hungry.

I have seen a lot of anti-American claims over the last few years, but nothing to match that.

Don't be absurd. Recognizing the existence of human fallibility in America as elsewhere on Earth is not "anti-American". If I note that a lot of Americans cheat on their spouses, that's not "anti-American" either. In Vietnam and in Africa I've seen plenty of families with well-fed parents and hungry kids. What makes you think Americans are intrinsically better than anyone else?

Posted by brooksfoe | January 26, 2008 10:53 AM

The most maltreated children are generally taken into care, so this argument implicitly assumes that there is a fairly large number of Americans who would rather starve their own children than spend less on drugs, alcohol etc on themselves.

The fact that the government schools are now being told that they have to serve breakfast as well as lunch suggests that it may not be that there may in fact be a problem with the money we are spending on food stamps not ultimately being used to feed the children in the families of food stamp recipients. Whether that’s because the stamps were being sold on a secondary market for things like drugs and alcohol is another matter.

Posted by Thorley Winston | January 26, 2008 11:03 AM

AD@10:41am:

Recognizing reality is not anti-American and my statement about "the poor" is further modified by the word "some families." So it's very obvious that I am talking about some poor families.

If I say, "some wealthy people do drugs", would that be anti-American, or even false? Of course not.

And close reading of people's actual statements helps us to avoid absurd responses.

To say, "the most maltreated children are generally taken into care" defies any sort of truth, proof, or specificity. These most maltreated childred are found how? Taken into care where? And by whom? The loving state? The loving foster care system? Loving gnomes who restore children to a rosy cheaked hue via carefully balanced meals (because gnomes don't take foodstamps and trade the goods for gin and juice)?

Where is this magic place where the most maltreated children are taken in, and does the name of that land begin with La?

If certain people make infantile, uneducated or immoral decisions in nearly every aspect of life (like dropping out of school, not holding a job, using money to eat out or buy clothes for clubbing, not giving up drinking or drugs), then how are they likely to show absolute responsibility in the one area of food stamps and how they are used?

Thus, to the extent one is hoping to make sure the children of certain poor families have food in the living room instead of cigarettes or clubbing clothes for mom, then food stamps are the reasonable compromise.

Posted by Finn | January 26, 2008 12:58 PM

"a certain substrate of the upper middle class"? I think you mean "a small subset" or something like that -- the word "substrate" has many meanings, discipline-specific variants on the basic "underlying layer" one, but they all seem absurd in this context.

Posted by Alex Martelli | January 26, 2008 3:52 PM

The fact that the government schools are now being told that they have to serve breakfast as well as lunch suggests that it may not be that there may in fact be a problem with the money we are spending on food stamps not ultimately being used to feed the children in the families of food stamp recipients.

Yer grammar's givin' me whiplash, dude.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | January 26, 2008 3:53 PM

Brooksfoe -

If it increases spending, the money must come from somewhere. Where does the money come from?

(To be clear we're talking about aggregate demand, not gov't spending, which obviously would go up).

Posted by RobB | January 26, 2008 3:57 PM

Yes, there really are parents who would rather buy drugs and alcohol than feed their children.

When I was a kid my parents would take in wards of the state (my mom wanting to save all the poor kids) to provide them with temporary homes after the kids had been taken away from their genetic parents. I met some of the genetic parents. This disabused me of romantic notions about the poor. I met junkies. I met mentally ill moms. Of course I didn't meet the absent dads who wouldn't contribute anything to feeding their kids.

Since my list of romantic illusions gets shorter every year I'm left with politically incorrect remedies for the poor: Give them birth control in exchange for food. Offer them cash in exchange for Norplant or permanent sterilization. The junkies ought to get this offer first and Barbara Harris is doing a great thing by offering junkies money in exchange for Norplant and tubes tied.

Posted by Randall Parker | January 26, 2008 5:17 PM

Brooksfoe:

"If food stamps were replaced by cash grants, how much of the cash would then be spent on all the social bads to which poor people are especially vulnerable -- gambling, substance abuse, fraud, one's abusive boyfriend maxing it out, et. al.?"

I find your thinking so interesting. You seem to agree that many poor people are poor because they make bad choices. Yet you are in favor to programs to save them from their own bad decision making.

I find that interesting - as most liberals I know - won't admit that poor choices are a large part of what keeps poor people poor.

Posted by jmo | January 26, 2008 6:31 PM

Brooksfoe:

"If food stamps were replaced by cash grants, how much of the cash would then be spent on all the social bads to which poor people are especially vulnerable -- gambling, substance abuse, fraud, one's abusive boyfriend maxing it out, et. al.?"

I find your thinking so interesting. You seem to agree that many poor people are poor because they make bad choices. Yet you are in favor to programs to save them from their own bad decision making.

I find that interesting - as most liberals I know - won't admit that poor choices are a large part of what keeps poor people poor.

Posted by jmo | January 26, 2008 6:32 PM

though please, don't tax me with the bloody food stamp challenge, because first of all, I've already done it for an article I never sold

Oh, do share whatever you wrote up for it.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 27, 2008 1:59 AM

jmo:

Yes, absolutely, people's poverty often results from a lack of those characteristics which might make them rich. I don't actually believe that many liberals don't think that gambling addiction, chronic irresponsibility, alcoholism and drug abuse, low schooling, hostility to authority, lax attitudes towards parenting, and so forth are not important factors in the cycle of poverty.

But I think there are two strong factors which differentiate liberal and conservative responses to the problem of poverty. The first is a question of moral exceptionalism: to what extent do you believe you are truly responsible for having escaped poverty? I feel, in my own case, I'm probably about 25% responsible for not being poor, at most. That's part of what makes me a liberal: I just don't think that if I'd been born poor, I would have been likely to escape poverty, and I don't think I have any right to hold others' failure to do so over their heads.

The second is an issue of pragmatic effectiveness. Liberals take the goal of eliminating or minimizing poverty as a given, and are unlikely to raise objections to methods of achieving that goal on the grounds that they violate some deontological tenet. Liberals are comfortable with a high degree of philosophical mess; we believe that, humans being messy animals cobbled together out of a lot of different instincts and cognitive capacities, messy solutions are probably more suited to the beast than philosophically elegant ones. To some extent, the reason I respond impatiently to the way Megan McArdle argues the food stamps issue is that she's overly wedded to a market purist vision of utility. She believes, along with almost every other B-school grad I've ever met, that "distorted" is a synonym for "bad". Liberals think that's the distortion. We think it's possible to distort markets to the good. A system that distorts markets by increasing the propensity of the poor to buy food, particularly healthy food, does not seem to me at first glance to be such a terrible awful old-fashioned screwed-up thing.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 27, 2008 11:42 AM

Brookfoe,

As a former adict, I know that people only change, when they have no other choice but to change. In your system - when people who chose to engage in "gambling addiction, chronic irresponsibility, alcoholism and drug abuse, low schooling, hostility to authority, lax attitudes towards parenting, and so forth" are supported by the state - how are we going to ever force those people into leading more productive lives?

I also feel that no matter what you are taught, and how poorly you are raised, you are respondible for your actions. If you are raised to hate jews, or gays, or blacks, the fact that you were raised that way holds no weight with me. Similarly, if you were rasied to not value education, and be actively hostile to it, in my mind, you are responsible for those belifes.

Posted by Jmo | January 27, 2008 7:14 PM

It's funny that the programs we continue to use to help the less fortunate invariably involve someone in government deciding the best uses of other people's money. God forbid poor people are given one check to cover their food, housing, and medical expenses and are left to their own devices to allocate that money. Anymore, I'm sure it makes much more sense to have different government departments administer every single different form of aid.

You say there's no moral imperative to weight and calorie consumption, but that certainly seems like that's the road we're headed down.

Posted by Garrett J | January 28, 2008 12:38 AM

Apparently no one is old enough except moi to remember "commodities"...surplus food given directly to the poor in the late '60s, early '70s, such a bricks of cheese, oatmeal, etc.

Posted by Jennymoose | January 28, 2008 2:29 PM

Some of you people are totally clueless!!! I am on food stamps and the amount of money that I get each month is not enough to buy anything other than food these days. Every thing else is so extremely expensive so that leaves very little for extravagant goods... Come on now, Please you all - get real. I don't waste one penny of mine or any of my other money. It takes every penny I can rake and scrape to pay all of my basic bills, gas to work. The government is so far behind that my allotment is so little that I can't afford to buy vegetables and fruit. Vegetables and fruit are the most expensive items at the store besides milk and cereal. With the money that I receive, and I budget out every penney, it just don't buy anything. If you are reading this and you haven't felt the crunch that this cock a mamey political system we have has helped create for the american people then you need to climb back into where ever you have been because it is really, really bad out here. It takes four times what it did two years ago to fill my gas tank up and I drive an economy car. I can't afford these big ole gas guzzlers like 90% of america does. I hope every damn one of you gas guzzlers feel the crunch so bad that you will be forced to have give up your Iraqi SUV guzzling low mileaged vehicles that are a nuisance in the road. Who can see when those things are out and about. Then and only then when you have to sacrifice everything you have to just get by then you will know what it is like to be on food stamps and have to struggle. It sure isn't anything that I am proud about or excited about. The amounts are so low for most that if it weren't for completely doing without the majority of people, food or no food wouldn't fool with the bull sh_t that they put you through. I hope none of you ever have to apply because you have no money, I mean no money whatsoever to buy food because people are too cheap to pay wages enough to take care of their workers. The rich only care enough to keep getting richer and the poor can just go to he_l as far as they are concerned. Oh yes, they still give out cheese and other can goods at certain times of the month but I have never been told by anyone to go and get any and probaly wouldn't because you would have to spend $25.00 in gas to get $10.00 worth of food - and probaly fattening food at that. Thanks but no thanks. I want fresh fruit and vegetables but I can't afford those. Oh well, who cares anyway, RIGHT???

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Posted by JKO | June 29, 2008 6:42 PM