So what happens when the Federal government can’t issue Nov Food Stamps?

[Anonymous]

Here in the south land, we are busy stocking up our food pantries to try and meet the demand.

I wish our politicians could resolve this issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something, something..society is 3 meals away from a revolution. It probably won’t be pretty.

Where is Oprah (& her money) when you really need her?

Probably living in another country by now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Here in the south land, we are busy stocking up our food pantries to try and meet the demand.

I wish our politicians could resolve this issue.

USDA has enough reserve to keep SNAP going longer but the Trump administration is making the choice to cut people off. Just as the House and Senate Republicans are making the choice to not negotiate or find any resolution to solve this. Just as Mike Johnson is not calling the House into session to properly fund the government through next year, because even if the CR were passed, it only authorizes funding a few weeks to November 21st, after which we would be in another shutdown.

[Anonymous]

No presided er has ever threatened to withhold SNAP benefits in a shutdown. Not even Trump in the 35 day shutdown in 2019.

And they quietly changed their own shutdown guidance in recent weeks, reversing course on the SNAP benefits.

[Anonymous]

Why are we still debating whether poor people are poor because they work fewer hours when PP’s gotcha on this point was that people in the lowest income stratum work a grand total of… wait for it… four hours less per week than people in the highest stratum.

Oh, if only those poors would work an extra half hour a day! Then they’d all be UMC and we could abolish SNAP!

Absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are we still debating whether poor people are poor because they work fewer hours when PP’s gotcha on this point was that people in the lowest income stratum work a grand total of… wait for it… four hours less per week than people in the highest stratum.

Oh, if only those poors would work an extra half hour a day! Then they’d all be UMC and we could abolish SNAP!

Absurd.

People seem to have lost the plot but I think the original argument was over whether poor people have time to cook or not.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:At food pantries, people snap up the fresh produce when it is available. The claim that people choose to eat junk is in part false and in part true due to generational poverty and people tending to follow patterns. The programs around SNAP have been working to fix those root problems and now they are gone. You have no idea how hard it was, and how much effort and lobbying it took to get people to be able to use their snap benefits at a farm market. It wasn’t allowed at all until very recently. When it was allowed farmers invented the mobile farm truck to get the food into neighborhoods that don’t have those markets.

The food pantry I volunteer in has most of the fresh foods left behind and not taken. Meat and dairy will go- but fresh fruits and vegetables are not taken by most

That’s because we’re all addicted to cheap junk food laden with salt, sugar and fat. And lower income people even more so given this sh*t is cheaper and easier to access than fresh fruits and veggies.

Let me see. Apple of dubious freshness that counts as an item in my total and provides 60 calories, or a bag of biscuits that will survive the end times and nets 1,000 calories. Which one should I choose for my hungry kids?

Except most people on food stamps aren’t short on calories. They’d be better off taking the apples. Even if not peek freshness for raw eating, make some applesauce, bake into something, can them. Tons you can do with apples, especially in the fall when the food pantry is quite literally overflowing with them. No one takes the vegetables either, just saying

Again, you ignore the reality that these folks are short on kitchen equipment, storage space, and TIME.

Why do people accept that the poor have less time? They spend fewer hours a week working than higher income households. That’s in large part why they are poor.

Do you have a source for this other than your ass? A lot of people living in poverty are cobbling together multiple part time jobs. A lot of people living in poverty work a full time job that pays poverty wages. Part of WalMart's onboarding process for new employees is filling out public assistance paperwork.

Now, why do they have less time? Again, cobbling together multiple part time jobs. Traveling on poorly funded public transit. Walking. Having a smaller living space, requiring them to shop more frequently. There are a multitude of reasons low income people struggle with having less time. They do not have the money to pay for convenience like you or me.

They generally aren't sitting around doing nothing all day twiddling their thumbs and eating junk food like so many of you imagine. The welfare queen image you have in your mind was racist propaganda. It's not real.

You can get it from the Current Population Survey. Here’s someone doing the cross tabs in 22: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-actual-working-hours-of-different-income-levels/" target="_new" rel="nofollow"> https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-actual-working-hours-of-different-income-levels/

Lowest 10% work 42.2 hours while highest work 46.6.

You can of course run your own cross tabs if you like.

So where did all of you who thought they worked more get your data?

Pretty sure 42 hours a week is full time. You insinuated there was some huge discrepancy in hours worked for poor people. You cited a source showing that isn't true, and still doubled down. Why do you hate poor people?

You seem stuck on stupid. The working poor putting in 42 or more hours a week, or working 2 and 3 jobs typically DO NOT have full time jobs. Their employers hire them part time, 32 hours or less, so they can screw them out of benefits. Those employees then have to go out and get a second job. Your first mistake was assuming "full time" which implies benefits and everything else.

Your ignorance, arrogance and privilege is showing. For me it was a lived experience. For several years I worked days painting houses and staining decks, nights as a gas station attendant, and weekends and holidays working at a restaurant. It was literally nothing but work and sleep, until I could save enough to escape that life.

[Anonymous]

MAGA believes that ending SNAP will lead to lower prices at the grocery store.

Are they really this stupid? They must have a coach or something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MAGA believes that ending SNAP will lead to lower prices at the grocery store.

Are they really this stupid? They must have a coach or something.

Why is the MAGA justification for any decision always result in hurting someone else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MAGA believes that ending SNAP will lead to lower prices at the grocery store.

Are they really this stupid? They must have a coach or something.

Groceries would cost less if 40 million Americans didn't each as much is....an argument.

[Anonymous]

From Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman's newsletter today. It's a long thoughtful post with a lot of data and I don't want to copy too much of his content in the below for reasons of copyright, but have excerpted some of his 4 points.

The Hunger Games Begin
While in in the check-out line, I often see some patrons, typically elderly and/or disabled, paying with EBT cards. EBT cards are the way the government delivers food aid under the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. SNAP has become a crucial part of America’s social safety net, with more than 40 million Americans relying on those EBT cards to put food on the table.

And unless the government shutdown ends this week, which seems basically impossible, federal support for SNAP will be cut off this Saturday.

Here are four things you should know about the imminent hunger games.

1) This is a political decision — specifically, a Republican decision

Despite the government shutdown, the SNAP program isn’t out of money. In fact, it has $5 billion in contingency funds, intended as a reserve to be tapped in emergencies. And if the imminent cutoff of crucial food aid for 40 million people isn’t an emergency, what is? The Department of Agriculture, which runs the program, also has the ability to maintain funding for a while by shifting other funds around. But Donald Trump has — quite possibly illegally — told the department not to tap those funds.

Furthermore, the Republican majority in the Senate could maintain aid by waiving the filibuster on this issue. They have done this on other issues — for example, to roll back California’s electric vehicle standard. Furthermore, passing legislation to keep food aid flowing would require that Mike Johnson, the speaker, call the House back into session – something which he refuses to do.
2) The pain from lost food aid will, if anything, hurt Republican voters worse than Democrats
Consider, for example, Owsley County in Kentucky. The county is 96 percent white, and last year it cast 88 percent of its votes for Trump. Also, 37 percent of residents are on SNAP.
3) Despite what Republicans believe, SNAP recipients aren’t malingerers.
That myth is punctured by a quick look at who gets SNAP. The fact is, the great majority of SNAP recipients can’t work: 40 percent are children; 18 percent are elderly; 11 percent are disabled. Furthermore, a majority of recipients who are capable of working do work. They are the working poor: their jobs just don’t pay enough, or offer sufficiently stable employment, to make ends meet without aid.
4) Food stamps are an investment in the future. We have overwhelming empirical, statistical evidence that SNAP, by improving the lives of young children, is an extraordinarily effective way of investing in the future.Children whose families received SNAP benefits grew up to become healthier, more productive adults than children whose families didn’t receive benefits. Spending money to help families with children is an extremely high-return investment in the nation’s future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No presided er has ever threatened to withhold SNAP benefits in a shutdown. Not even Trump in the 35 day shutdown in 2019.

And they quietly changed their own shutdown guidance in recent weeks, reversing course on the SNAP benefits.

This is the most important point in the whole thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Food Stamps (SNAP benefits) can’t be paid out if Congress does not appropriate funds for November.

What will happen if 40+ million people don’t get food stamps about 10 days from now? Total monthly benefits are just under $8 billlion.

Ask Mikey.
He’s in charge of the House.

The House has been abandoned and now occupied by MAGA squatters.

[Anonymous]

Pretty sure 42 hours a week is full time. You insinuated there was some huge discrepancy in hours worked for poor people. You cited a source showing that isn't true, and still doubled down. Why do you hate poor people?

You seem stuck on stupid. The working poor putting in 42 or more hours a week, or working 2 and 3 jobs typically DO NOT have full time jobs. Their employers hire them part time, 32 hours or less, so they can screw them out of benefits. Those employees then have to go out and get a second job. Your first mistake was assuming "full time" which implies benefits and everything else.

Your ignorance, arrogance and privilege is showing. For me it was a lived experience. For several years I worked days painting houses and staining decks, nights as a gas station attendant, and weekends and holidays working at a restaurant. It was literally nothing but work and sleep, until I could save enough to escape that life.



Same. Suddenly single mother, hungry teen. I worked one 50 hour a week childcare gig, no OT, weekends cleaning houses, cooking, or more childcare. I did cook, I had to, and so did the teenager. Lots of time at the food bank, but no SNAP because I was just above the threshold with the main job. One day off a month, 70 hour weeks, physical labor at an older age. Sick all the time.

If my hourly had been just a few dollars less, I would have had SNAP and been grateful, believe me. And when the food bank had a treat or ready made food, we were so grateful. Until you've worked like this, desperate to stay housed, you've no clue what you are talking about.

Also, cooking is a skill, and who is teaching it? I was lucky - i know what to do with a chicken, a handful of vegetables and a few cups of rice. I also had a kitchen, something many people don't even have.

Attacking people over the semantics of what and how they eat when they are in base survival mode is despicable.

[Anonymous]

Apologies, the quote didn't work correctly, but I was replying to the PP with the multiple jobs.