...and Doritos for my landwhales!
A short essay on food stamp reform
Dear L,
When your mom was a kid, her dad cheated on her mom. For the sake of their privacy, we’ll call her parents Dick and Jane.
The cheating was a train wreck in itself, but things spiraled out of control from there and they ended up getting a divorce. Her mom’s finances held together for a bit, but a “family friend” and fellow LDS churchgoer named Tom Madden (whoops: real name!) talked Jane into releasing Dick from child support. Tom said Dick couldn’t handle it. Tom said Dick needed a break. And Dick would pay them back when he could.
And that was the last Jane saw any child support from Dick.
She thus began working herself to death. Two jobs and no time with the kids. So my future wife became a latch-key kid. The bills became too much and Jane ended up losing the house. And eventually their cupboards went bare too.
It was at this point that Jane reached out for help to the government and got food stamps. The stamps lasted a few months, and she was so embarrassed to be on them that she spent what little money she had driving forty minutes away so nobody would see her using them.
I bring this up because, when I criticize the food stamp program, I’m not talking about people like this. I know there are good people in serious trouble, and I want them to have help when they need it. (In this country, where the medical system is so backward and stupidly priced that medical bankruptcy is one of the top reasons for losing a home, for now I’m also in favor of Medicaid).
What I have a problem with is that time I was in line at a grocery store, and a morbidly obese pair of women bought two heaping carts of garbage groceries. I mean Pepsi, Doritos, Hot Pockets — a whole mountain of pure Frankenfood. And then, when they realized they put too much in the carts, they held everybody back ten minutes picking which things they wanted to put back on the shelves. The cashier was getting desperate and started pointing out which items they could do without. He said “what about these salmon bites?” about one of the only nutritious items in the whole slew. “No,” she said back. “Those are for the dogs.”
Then they proceeded to pay for the whole thing with EBT. And it was well over $600.
All I’m saying is, there has to be a line. According to Senator Rand Paul, Federal spending on SNAP has more than doubled in the past five years and we all know many of the people don’t deserve it. And they certainly don’t need it. So in order to have a functioning, healthy, moral society, I propose that the following people should eat dirt.
Anybody who's under 6’2” and weighs more than 220 lbs. For obvious reasons.
Anybody who refuses to work for more than a year.
Anybody who has more than two living baby-daddies. Find a way to make the dads pay for it, and if they can’t, put the kids in an orphanage. And please sterilize the lady.
Anybody who moves to this country for any reason other than a refugee resettlement program. And the program, which requires mandatory participation (and adequate scoring) in an “English as a Second Language” class, should only last one year.
This would cover most of the abuses, but I propose that all food stamp programs should be eliminated at the federal level and resumed by the individual states. This would force states, who can’t print money, to actually budget — and thus to tailor policy according to their particular standards and means.
I propose that “anchor babies” would not allow any foreign citizen to collect food stamps on their behalf.
And finally, I propose that food stamps would be like the Women with Infants and Children program — that is, it would allow them to buy only staple items such as bread, milk, eggs, cheese, meat, beans, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and butter.
This being said, I have a good friend who sees things differently. He says healthy, childless adults can kick rocks, but he draws the line at kids. Simply put, he says that starving a kid because of bad parents is wrong. A policy which screws kids over worse in the long run.
First thing is, this is how we got the American ghetto in the first place. We said, “make kids and we’ll clean up after you.”
Once we created bad incentives, people realized it was cheaper to not get married. They found it was easier to not work. They decided hey, I’m not smart or good-looking or dignified enough to climb any social ladders. But they had a kid as a hostage. And you wouldn’t want poor little Timmy to starve, would you?
Our support of this mindset led to a breakdown in marriage. A lack of income became a dedicated lack of fathers. Chastity became seen as prudishness instead of prudence. A work ethic became naivete instead of a point of honor. Children became the means of slacking off instead of the means of working harder. And what followed was more children, born to the worst part of the gene pool imaginable, with zero reason or ability to climb out of the trash heap. We got rid of the dignity and the hope and were surprised to find we got rid of the love and the safety*.
(You can draw your own politically-incorrect conclusions: I’m using data from The Census Bureau, left-wing Politifact, and The Institute for Family Studies).
The plain truth is, it is never safe to make any group too secure by policy. Except in cases of disability, it's never safe to give them everything they need. In any system of welfare and government, somebody has to slip through the cracks or whole neighborhoods end up on crack. It is drowning itself, and the fear of it, which teaches people to swim.
The problem with our government today is, we prefer people who make problems over people who solve problems. And we value ourselves based not on whether we defend the best of us, but how far we make the best of us go for the worst.
Yours,
-J
P.S. A left-wing friend of mine (or as I like to call him, an idiot) took offense at my questioning of SNAP this week. What business do you have saying that immigrants should be able to support themselves? How dare you question whether anyone poor enough to get food stamps deserves them? And finally, my favorite, what would Jesus do in this case?
Aside from the fact that the whole point of political debate is asking whether people are getting what they deserve (see: “laws” and “cops”), I thought the last question was so funny that I ended up laughing.
That isn't because I think Jesus is a joke. And it isn’t because my friend doesn’t even believe in Jesus***. It’s because what my friend actually wanted me to do was make somebody else do what Jesus would do — effectively at the point of a gun.
I get tired of dealing with “what would Jesus do” from people who don’t know what Jesus said, or did, or why. But even more than this I get tired of hearing it from people who don’t know how.
As such, there are two directions you can go with the WWJD fool. First I would ask him, Who Would Jesus Tax? Mostly because He didn’t. And second, I would ask my friend to heal the blind — and then to please pull bread out of his ass.
*According to Politifact via the USDA, black Americans get a quarter of all food stamps, despite being 13% of the population. It’s no surprise they experience the worst rates of illegitimate childbirth, violence, and eat extreme quantities of garbage too. According to the Cato Institute,
A 2016 USDA study using point-of-sale data found that 23 percent of purchases by SNAP households were sugary drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar, which is generally called junk food. With SNAP purchases of more than $100 billion a year, that would mean more than $23 billion of junk food a year.
They continue,
A 2018 USDA study compared food purchases by SNAP households, lower‐income non-SNAP households, and higher‐income households. Compared to lower-income non-SNAP households, SNAP households “acquired 31 percent fewer total vegetables, 40 percent fewer dark green vegetables and beans, 24 percent fewer whole fruits, 20 percent fewer whole grains, and 27 percent fewer seafood and plant proteins for every 1,000 calories acquired.” The study concluded, “Compared to the SNAP‐nonparticipating subgroups, SNAP‐participating households purchased foods of lower quality overall.”
In other words, we’re paying to cripple the poor physically and spiritually. Then we’re paying to treat them with Medicaid and prisons.
**A question might be asked here. J, your policy on food stamps makes sense for most of American history. But is it safe, or kind, or sane, when AI is likely to replace millions of workers over the next decade? Shouldn’t we be prepared, in a bloodbath of lost opportunities, to increase the availability of food stamps?
There are actually two things I’d like to do to make sure good people don’t hit rock bottom. The first of these is making homes secure and affordable. To do this, I propose:
That no corporation or business should ever be able to own a home — period.
A business should be able to build homes and condominiums and such, but none of the units can be occupied until they’re sold.
That property taxes be eliminated. This will ensure that even without income, nobody can lose their home.
Individuals should be able to own two homes, tops, and yard space should be limited to a quarter acre on all new developments. Any homes owned beyond the limit of two should be taxed at an exorbitant rate. The rich can own vacation homes if they like, but if they do, they’re going to pay the neighbors well for it.
Massive tax-breaks should be given to all developers who build condos on top of businesses in town and city centers.
After homes are easy to get and keep, I’d like to see the food stamp program reformed and expanded, along the lines above, so food is available to any responsible citizen who needs it. And there should be public work available cleaning up the town and such, so that anyone can fit the “job” requirement at least temporarily — maybe up to six months of the year, if necessary.
***As somebody once said — I think it was Nick Freitas — Democrats quote the Constitution like atheists quote the Bible. That is, only to make you stick to it.
Loved this.