Box of Food in Lieu of SNAP

LittleDucky

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 11:16 am

watergirl wrote:

Who says she doesnt think chinuch is important? Its a personal choice to spend thousands a year on yeshiva tuition. Many chose to homeschool. Or coop school. Or
send to public and teach kodesh at home. Good grief.

Exactly. THIS. There are Frum yidden around the world who don’t go to Yeshiva day school but are shomer Torah and mitzvos, can daven, learn, and do everything necessary to live a kosher life. I know many. I know one family they went to PS for a few years and had tutors on Sunday. Or another family did the same but homeschooled instead of PS. Nice Frum families.
Your kids couldn’t eat the main dish at school but there are drinks, fresh uncut fruit and vegetables and possibly even those fruit cups. Will save a lot of money- books, transportation, snacks... besides tuition.

watergirl

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 11:32 am

chaylizi wrote:

I don’t consider sending my kids to private school for a Torah education a choice. Neither does my community. That’s why they heavily subsidize 75% of the student body. You said it was a choice. What should my conclusion have been?

WOW. You can assume that she doesnt live in your community. You can assume she home schools. You can assume she has to send to public and teach kodesh herself because she has not another penny to spare and the tuition committee turned her down. You can assume a million other things. But you chose to assume she isn't frum. Because she said tuition is a choice. So she isnt frum. Or that she is, but doesnt think chinuch is important.

I just gave you a few conclusions you could have or should have come to.

Last edited by watergirl on Wed, Feb 14 2018, 11:34 am; edited 1 time in total

SixOfWands

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 11:34 am

chaylizi wrote:

Yes, I completely understand that you don't see it as a choice.

But we're in a discussion about whether people who receive food stamps should be circumscribed as to what items they may purchase, with people arguing that it is outrageous that SNAP recipients are permitted to expend $5 to purchase supplies to make a birthday cake, and that the government should strictly forbid such expenditures.

I therefore raised the question of what other expenditures the government should micromanage in order to allow people to qualify for SNAP. Should the government provide a subsidy of hundreds of dollars a month to people who have the funds to send their children to private school, even at a reduced rate? If that money were to be spent on food, would the family even need SNAP? And if you don't want the government to micromanage at that level, why do you want it to do so at other levels?

And even if we, as Orthodox women, care about your children's chinuch, why should or would the average American?

Fox

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 12:21 pm

marina wrote:

Do you have anything to really prove that people were better off before the New Deal? That dying of hunger in the streets is somehow less destructive than being on foodstamps for a while?

Or is this your own personal view?

Come now, I certainly don't consider myself opposed to government safety nets, but concern over how governmental incentives and disincentives affect poverty is not the same thing as advocating that the poor be left to die in the streets.

And if you want to use the New Deal as your milestone, it would be better to examine the role of the Federal Reserve, since the New Deal was a stimulus response to the Great Depression.

The fact is that we know a lot about preventing poverty and/or lessening its impact on children. For starters, get married. Less than 10 percent of two-parent families with children are poor. By contrast, 37 percent of single-mother families with children are poor.

In fact, growing up with their biological parents has more of an effect on children's success than race, income, quality of schools, neighborhood, or any of the typical things we would think of as advantages/disadvantages.

Now, does that mean you've done your kids a huge disservice if you are divorced? Not necessarily. Kids who were born while their parents were married have significant statistical advantages over kids born to single mothers.

Yet in the U.S., approximately 40 percent of all births are to unmarried women. In Britain, the rate is 47 percent.

Obviously, this is not a direct result of government safety nets, but it is fair to ask when safety nets become safety hammocks -- keeping people in stasis where they're not doing well but aren't uncomfortable enough to make changes.

All of this is in Charles Murray's books, and like other statisticians, his basic conclusion is that if you finish high school and don't have children until you're married, your chances of being poor are nil. However, apparently the "wealthy and powerful" at Middlebury College didn't want this message being disseminated to the masses.

chaylizi

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 12:26 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

Fair enough

chaylizi

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 12:29 pm

watergirl wrote:

I in no way assumed that. Please see SixofWands response as a description of what I consider a reasoned argument in response to my post.

marina

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 12:45 pm

Fox wrote:

Concerns about how the government's programming affects poverty are most certainly justified. I was responding to a poster who was categorically opposed to them because they are destructive. So yes, if she's going to use that term, I'd like to see what she's comparing it to. A society where there are no programs like before welfare and snap? Or a society where the programs are run differently? Maybe she has a good argument and will come back and share it.

For example, she could have said I am opposed to programs that discourage birth control because statistics show that single parenthood leads to poverty, sort of like your position. That would have been a better argument than saying all welfare programs are destructive.

marina

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 12:49 pm

Fox wrote:

As for the above "get married" solution, I don't know that correlation equals causation or that the way to fix this is to encourage marriage. Maybe the way to fix it is to encourage birth control or to improve state child support collection systems. I feel like forcing marriage on people who wouldn't otherwise be married could cause a lot of unintended consequences, not all of them good.

trixx

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 1:45 pm

Those of you praising wic

When pregnant wic gave me like 8 bottles of milk, one dozen eggs and only $11 worth of vegetables. There's no physical way I can consume that much milk. And the eggs were finished within a few days. The veggies come out to maybe 3 frozen bags, a bunch of cans (so not healthy) or a handful of fresh produce. And let's not forget the full size peanut butter jar monthly, when one takes months to finish if you're eating a recommended serving daily.

Wic is helpful but it's definitely not a model of proper nutrition and I can't see how snap would work like that.

Fox

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 1:49 pm

marina wrote:

It's not that we want necessarily want people to get married; it's that we want them not to have children when they're single. So the question is, how do we disincentivize childbearing outside of marriage?

This is where the safety net versus the safety hammock becomes murky. None of us wants children to go hungry just because their mothers were stupid or their birth control failed. That said, a 40 percent illegitimacy rate is not the result of inadequate access to birth control.

I don't follow the research closely, but I know that a number of years ago, there were a number of programs that actually paid low-income women not to become pregnant. What was crazy was that the amounts were actually pretty small, too. Of course, there was a moral outcry that women were being manipulated, and the money eventually dried up.

All of this just brings us back to the fact that we rarely want to do the things that actually reduce poverty or other social problems. We would prefer to manage problems rather than solve them, particularly if they involve unpleasant realities.

nylon

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 2:02 pm

LittleDucky wrote:

Again, I said categories of food to be picked from. Chicken or beef for example is Ok. Duck or lobster not. WIC doesn't give a price amount. They say 1 gallon of milk (but don’t allow organic. They do allow lactose free if you have an allergy). Even if you buy from fancy supermarket A you still get the same gallon of milk. Why can’t it be the same idea? With your benefits you get X in cash to spend on anything else but you also get coupons for A, B, C.
The idea of snap is that it is SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION. It was never designed to be their sole source of food. It is also supposed to be nutritious.

but that's silly. What if you live in coastal Maine and lobster is cheap? Why hamstring people like that? They can decide between chicken and beef and fish.

A friend of mine grew up poor, out west. Most of their meat was hunted and they had a big garden. Cash (or food stamps when they got them) was used for things they couldn't grow or hunt, so what they bought was sometimes strange. We're not equipped to make all the personal calls. The USDA works out how much you could expect to spend given a set diet (you can find it for yourself if you like) and gives you that amount of money.

And poor families DO deserve the occasional treat. Poor parents say yes to a can of soda or a candy bar because they have to say no to new iPads and sneakers.

33055

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 2:18 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

Just curious where you live that imposes a specific library tax, as opposed to funding libraries from the general budget. I've never paid a library tax, and google only gave me links to libraries providing free tax help.

Nor have I ever heard that people who use libraries are entitled to free admissions to NYC attractions. I go to the library every week or so. Where do I sign up?

I live in NYS. My last house in a different county also had separate library taxes. The taxes are not collected separately, but tax payers vote on a budget and the cost of the public library is broken down.

The Monsey library opted out of the Regional library system; although, courtesies are still extended. Sometimes the courtesies at other libraries are minimal.

There are many abuses and waste at the library IMO. But no one is asking my opinion.

No one is asking me if I want to pay for other families to go to attractions. There are multiple passes to get into the different attractions for free. One could argue that it is cultural, but what isn't?

LittleDucky

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 4:22 pm

nylon wrote:

If we have a federal program then it has to be based on a national average. Shrimp, lobster etc are super expensive on the National level. I am not saying a set box will work. I am saying there should be limits on what can be purchased. Why should tax dollars go towards steak, soda, and other luxuries? How hard is that to differentiate? And above I said half their amount should be required in certain areas (with choices still but within guidelines like vegetables/fruit, whole grains, beans etc and the rest to spend on foods that they choose.

People deserve treats but does your neighbor have to pay for it?? I don’t buy new IPads or fancy sneakers for my kids. I buy what is affordable. Are you saying everyone deserves to eat steak or even red meat once a month?

alis_al_kulana

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 4:36 pm

I don't get what the whole fight is about. This proposal still allows half the money provided to be discretionary. It's not like they're taking away the entire benefit.

Being aware of a few sad stories of children on programs going hungry. Their parents used food when it was provided as food. But coupons and the like are too easy to cash out for drugs.

Yes. You can sell cans of goods. But not on the same scale, and you're more likely to just eat food that is already there.

Republicans aren't saying to replace all the discretionary money. They just want to ensure at least a fraction of it is actually used for food.

I don't think this is aimed at the frum community. It is aimed at people who have high rates of child neglect.

Many impoverished in non jewish world are mentally ill, and sadly it often affects their kids

SixOfWands

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 4:47 pm

LittleDucky wrote:

I'm not saying that anyone deserves to eat anything in particular.

But a person who elects to treat himself to lobster once a month doesn't receive any more SNAP benefits that the one who eats whatever you think that poor folk should eat.

Maybe Jimmy eats rice and beans for lunch and dinner 4 days a week, and switches off to vegetarian split pea soup the other days, just so he can afford steak once or twice a month. Why should that bother you? He's not getting any more money than Matilda, who buys chicken legs on sale three times a week, and ground meat another couple of days. They just choose to spend it differently. (This, btw, is the exact argument I make in terms of school scholarships. You make X, you pay Y. You choose to live frugally and go on exotic vacations? Enjoy. You bought a house with a huge mortgage and can't afford Y? Too bad for you.)

Given that the funds provided by the government are the same, its really just perception. You think that poor people should appear properly poor and downtrodden in order to merit assistance. Even if it doesn't cost a dime for them to appear otherwise.