In case anybody missed it, I’m a Libertarian. Now, RJ Keller got me started and of course, it doesn’t take much to push me over the edge some days. In Maine, where she lives, apparently, people on state assistance get to purchase alcohol and tobacco with their state-granted funds, so she’s a wee bit pissy about this. I would be too, because in 2000, I was pissy enough about what I was seeing as a weekend graveyard cashier at a grocery store to write the following to my congress-critter:
CAUTION: It’s long and way ranty. Because I do not believe any such systems can/will be abolished, I have come up with some complex solutions, even though I am well aware gummint is not into solutions.
My part time job is working graveyards at a grocery store on weekends. I check out people all the time who use food stamps. Before working there, I had a fuzzy sense of exactly what food stamps were used for, since it wasn’t something I thought a whole lot about. My only up-close-and-personal experience with food stamps happened to be that my best friend, single, with two children, used them. She was always very careful to buy cheap, whole foods, fresh produce, and the ingredients to make bread, as she makes it more cheaply than buying bread. Naïve me. I thought everybody was as frugal with their benefits as my friend.
You should see the crap people buy on food stamps! Not only do they buy pre-packaged, expensive junk food, expensive cuts of meat, shrimp and lobster, but then they turn around and buy whole cartons of cigarettes and lots of booze with cash. They buy tons of dog food for dogs that could eat your HOUSE and still be hungry an hour later—with cash! If they can’t afford to buy their own food, where do they get the cash for this stuff???
Anyway, I realize that it would be a futile effort to try to abolish the system altogether, so I would like to propose some reforms that would be the first step in the incremental abolition of food stamps. They are as follows:
1. Mandatory periodic drug and alcohol testing. I don’t have a problem with people who drink, but I sure do have a problem with people who drink on MY dime.
2. Limitations on the use of the food stamp credit card.
a. No usage between midnight and 6am (this is to discourage late-night trips to the store for a brownie mix, candy bars, and a case of Coke)
b. Use limited to once in every 24-hour period
c. No cash transactions during same trip through the check out line (this is to discourage cash beer, cigarette, and animal food sales; granted, this would be the hardest idea to enforce).
3. Limitations on food selections. Users would be required to shop from a list of approved foods (a la WIC). There would be no paperwork like WIC, but a food stamp transaction would require the user to scan his food stamp card before checking out. The grocer’s UPC scanners would be required to be programmed to provide a fail-safe for the approved foods. As a concession to the grocer-as-policeman, the food stamp recipients would be required to work for the grocer free of charge by the state to do the data entry required to make this possible (BONUS: JOB TRAINING!). The following requirements would have to be reflected in the approved foods list.
a. Whole foods only (which mean that users would have to GASP COOK)
b. No shellfish, lobster, or other expensive cuts of meat; if a user buys chicken, he will have to buy it whole and learn to cut it up himself; no boneless, butterflied chicken breasts @ $2.99/lb when whole chickens are $.99/lb
c. No junk food, convenience foods, prepackaged lunches, soda pop, potato chips, cookies, specialty foods, box cereal, ice cream, pop tarts, TV dinners, bottled water, etc.
d. Store-brand canned food only; no name brands.
e. Minimum percentage of total monthly benefits spend on fresh produce (say, 10%; if a user’s monthly benefit is $200, he should be required to buy $20 in produce).
f. Inexpensive cooking spices should be allowed.
g. Toilet paper, cleaning products, and feminine hygiene products should be allowed, but again at the discretion of the state.
Now, I realize that this will require more bureaucracy to regulate, but I have three thoughts on this:
1. Government loves more bureaucracy; they should be very happy that their jobs will be secure,
2. If I have to help pay for the crap these people buy to eat, and there’s no hope of getting the food stamps abolished, then we should have the right to regulate the hell out of it, and
3. If the users refuse to work a regular job, then they should have to work to get their food (the food I’m paying for) home.
I guess what I’m most angry about is not so much that people get food, and cigarettes and booze and dog food on my dime, but that they’re so damn smug about it. You wouldn’t believe the arrogance of these people; their attitudes are nearly regal, as if they are special for being able to get their food for free while I, the chump who has to work two jobs (to pay my self-employment taxes, actually) waits on them.
Now, if you’ve never worked as a cashier at a place that takes EBT (aka food stamps), you really may not get the level of anger here, or why it exists. I’ll tell you why:
It’s the attitude.
AND
Charity should be voluntary, not mandatory. Taking money out of my pocket to give to those the state deems worthy takes away my choices and is, in effect, legalized theft. It deprives me of my freedom and it deprives those I would have given to.
The USA has the highest percentage of charitable giving in the world, and that is in spite of what is wrested by force from our paychecks by the gummint to give to someone else. In the article Why are Americans so generous?, one point came through loud and clear to me:
“Most people think Americans are generous because we are rich. However, the truth is that we are rich, in significant part, because we are generous. Generosity is not a luxury in this country. It is a cultural norm.”
Can you imagine what we’d give if we had that money back?
A friend of mine just emailed me one of your articles from a while back. I read that one a few more. Really enjoy your blog. Thanks
You’re libertarian only about your own liberties? So when you become Supreme Emperor, all luxuries, diet, and vices will be legislated? Fair enough. But when I’m the Supreme Emperor, those who comment on others’ grocery carts will be put in the village stocks and taunted for buying small-size condoms and extra-strong mouthwash. So which of us is really more (or less) libertarian?
*waits with great anticipation*
Depends on who’s paying the bill.
Now, if you’ve never worked as a cashier at a place that takes EBT (aka food stamps), you really may not get the level of anger here, or why it exists. I’ll tell you why:
It’s the attitude.
BINGO!!
That’s what burns my britches more than just about anything.
I think I’d agree with all of your rant with this exception:
“b. Use limited to once in every 24-hour period”
Only because we’ve got several different markets around here that take food stamps with cheaper prices on different items (for example, one store is the place we all go to buy mean in bulk, the other has inexpensive bread, the other cheap milk, etc).
Totally agreed. I’m Libertarian too. I’m a little on the anarcho-libertarian side of the fence. Basically I grudgingly accept that we have to have government, because human beings are lamers and for some reason feel compelled to be controlled by a larger entity. All human beings are masochists. I’ve never met one who wasn’t one in one stripe or flavor.
And the income tax is also theft. That law was never actually properly ratified. But who cares, the government is like the Mafia. Everything they do, they do by force and threat. If someone hasn’t been harmed by the government, it’s only because they’ve been obedient.
Rather than have income tax, we should have an escalating range of taxes associated with given products purchased. Basic necessities of life like food and gasoline for your car, would have far lower taxes than say cigarettes or alcohol, or Big screen plasma flat screens.
If you have the money to buy luxuries, you have the money to be taxed for that choice. But money shouldn’t be taxed before it’s even in your pocket, IMO.
RfP: If MoJo was running the world, there wouldn’t BE a food stamp program. She’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, and like most libertarians, when forced to choose between HER liberties, and someone else’s she’s going to go with hers most likely.
Especially when the other person is being so smug and neener neener about it.
Dude agrees with all of Mojo’s rant except #2. Mind you, Dude felt this way long before meeting Mojo, as Dude was a C-store manager for 20 years…way back when there were paper food stamps. Boy did people get pissed at me when they would use 2 paper $1 food stamps for a candy bar @ 1.05 and I refused to sell them a tall-boy with their 95 cents change. If they didn’t show they had other money, NO SALE!!!
hahahahaha Dude cracks me up talking about himself in the third person.
Dude,
Kel remembers paper food stamps, too, and used to do the same thing you did with regards to the change.
I got that. However, I disagree that attitude has any relevance to how social programs should be planned or approved. In part because that aspect of the rant sounds like you expect gratitude, and that seems like entirely the wrong footing for the whole transaction. Much like the guy I heard yell at a park ranger, “I pay your salary, so don’t tell me I can’t have a campfire”. No, Taxpayer A doesn’t directly pay Taxpayer B’s salary or food bill; nor, even if that were the case, should it grant A any moral authority over B. That’s infantilizing as well as illogical.
I also think #2 is extremely nanny-state-like, and I have trouble reconciling it with the claim to being libertarian.
Re: gratitude
I don’t expect gratitude. Not at all. I don’t expect humility. I don’t expect anything but common courtesy.
More than once, an EBT-card user sneered at me (with no provocation) and said something to the effect of, “If you were smart me like me, you wouldn’t be stuck on graveyard shift at the grocery store.”
Well, now, that’s true. It does. And it’s no more nanny than anything else we do (e.g., WIC). Of course, I just want to get rid of it altogether, but my only thought with #2 was to make the beneficiary think about what he had to buy before casually using the card.
I wanted there to be a little effort on the beneficiary’s part as to how and when to spend that money.
It’s very difficult watching a pack of apparently healthy 20-something people come in at 3 o’clock in the morning to buy brownie mix and Coke, ice cream and expensive frozen pizza for the party they’ve informed you that they’re having, pay for it on EBT, and then sneer at you for being a chump.
Yeah, I was angry. I’m not as angry as I was then because I don’t work in a grocery store anymore, but it was maddening. Not a week went by I wasn’t insulted or sneered at for working a menial job (a second job, at that), with me standing there thinking about my checkbook and what *I* could afford to buy that week, and be treated that way.
All I can say is “You go, Woman!” I liked all your suggestions. I vary between a libertarian and a liberal democrat, although I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I know this sounds queer and condescending, but I like the way you and RfP can have a dialogue about a subject you disagree on without deteriorating into infantile name calling. I start off intelligent and mature, but too often drop into “Yo Mama wears army boots” type comments. So non productive.
I respect RfP’s opinions and her thoughtfulness and her scholarship. I’ve read her comments across Romancelandia and have agreed more often than not. Well, actually, I’ve never disagreed with her and I don’t even think I’m doing that now.
I needed to clarify that #2 because obviously more than one person (including Dude) didn’t see my reasoning for it. I still haven’t fully clarified, but I will.
It’s traditional, I believe. The Dude abides.
That may be. However, I’d rather put the social engineering toward getting that program to supplement income rather than replace it, rather than on potentially punitive measures. Some people abuse the system; that can’t be completely prevented. There are also people who get off a late shift and need to pick up milk near the bus stop; I’d rather adjust the rules and resources to favor them. Of course that shift in emphasis is easy for me to espouse, not being on the receiving end of the attitude you describe.
Libertarians come in lefty and righty varieties, so that combination is plausible. (The Big Smart Thing about http://www.politicalcompass.org is that it puts politics in 4 dimensions, not simply left/right. Perhaps you’re “Libertarian Left” on their chart.)
Hard to say, as neither of us is inclined to fight about it 😉
Thank you, MoJo. I don’t often comment on political rants–it’s such an energy sink–but I thought you could take some snot and dissent. Being able to trust each other not to flip out or assume the worst is gold, and it’s what makes these conversations work.
Agreed. *If* we’re going to social engineer things, I’d like it to be with a purpose in mind, which is to get the beneficiary to a point where he/she can support himself.
Part of my issue (in general) is that benefits received are predicated on the beneficiary not having any (or much) other income. If the beneficiary works, s/he may not earn above X amount before s/he’s cut off from the benefits. This does not help *anybody*. It only guarantees that the person be stuck in exactly the same position (extreme poverty) whether he works or not.
The goal of help should be to get the person solidly back on his feet with regard to the basic necessities of life and a job to maintain those before taking away benefits, then…take them away.
Side note: I love Habitat for Humanity. I love Jimmy Carter for doing what he’s done for Habitat for Humanity. It’s a private program that invests in people who want to invest in themselves, and that’s what it should be all about.
Hey…it’s Chad. It sounds like you and Tim might agree on some things – I still laugh about how he called me a communist that one year at Christmas.
I agree with probably all of your “tweeks” to the Food Stamp program. I would go along with them. For me, the point has become all government programs will have unintended consequences. People will take advantage. I would rather live in a country that provides support for people that need a hand up even if that means that some people take advantage. However, this is far from the ideal.
It’s interesting what the Big Banks did with our taxpayer dollars – they in effect took their “food stamps” and went to Vegas. This is where I don’t understand using the “it’s unjust to take from those who have” argument. In the grand scheme of things the poor on food stamps make bad purchases – sometimes intentionally “screwing” us out of what? 50 dollars? The greed of some of the rich in this country have sent the entire world economy into a tailspin. Why are we so concerned that the poor steal from us, but allow Wall Street’s robber barons to continue to plunder the country?
IMO, some people don’t actually grasp the underlying principles of which they speak. It sounds alike on the surface, but the comprehension isn’t really there, ya know? And there are, of course, some people I just don’t want representing my viewpoint, especially AT me.
That’s predicated on the idea that those who have came by it honestly. I know I didn’t make that clear, but it’s a very complex issue to me.
I’m no more in favor of “corporate welfare” than anybody else, but I’m also not in favor of heavy regulation. Regulation requires subsidy; one hand giveth and one hand taketh away.
I also think that “greed” is used as a knee-jerk negative buzzword that really doesn’t mean anything anymore. Define greed. Is it people who have money and thus, make more by default, or is it people who steal? They aren’t the same.
That’s true. However, it was the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 that got the ball rolling. And YES the banks took it and ran with it. That’s on them.
The rant I posted was just me, someone who took a a part-time graveyard grocery store clerk job to pay my taxes (as in, on April 15, I owed). Yeah, it was a pretty bitter pill to swallow.