Houngan
3658
Ignorant question, does SNAP have any restrictions on type of purchase among the same basic foodstuff? I.e. is it restricted to generic or house-brands? It would be fairly shitty for a wealthy person to be on SNAP, for obvious reasons, but one gatekeeper might be that they couldn’t buy prestige brands with it.
Yup, pretty much.
What a weird argument against it. “I had 0 AGI…you wouldn’t want me or the richest men in America to take it too, right?” Yeah, that’s fine. You do realize the amount and restrictions that are given, right?
And it’s not like you’re not already taking every deduction and loophole you’re already entitled to.
Again, if I could only make one change to SNAP, it would be to make it more generous. Second change would be to make it fully fungible. Third change would be to extend its reach to more people.
Timex
3661
If snap had no limit on who could use it, I would definitely use it, and I buy almost exclusively fresh produce and meat, which it definitely covers.
How much more should SNAP be?
Right now max SNAP benefit is $835/month or just under $10K for a family of 4 and average is $638/month. It is not designed to eliminate all the family food expense but to rather cap at 30% of their income. 38 million people are SNAP or 11.5% population which is almost exactly the poverty percentage of the country, and precisely the number of people that
Feeding America program
Hunger in America | Feeding America say are food insecure.
Food banks and food pantries are far more cost efficient way of feeding, people because they collect food from farms, stores, and restaurants that otherwise would have gone to waste and they almost never do any form of means- testing. While I’m sure millions of folks of skipped meals during this pandemic, poor folks in the US look nothing like the poor folks in South Sudan or Yemen.
I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean.
ShivaX
3664
I honestly don’t care that much at the end of the day tbh, but asking if anyone owns any Household goods or personal effects that’s over $500 is some BS in my book.
I suspect real estate and the like is a better indication than grandma’s wedding ring or whatever.
In most states if you have any income at all your food stamps go to like $10 a month anyway, even if the “income” is from disability.
But really if well-off people want to buy a couple steaks with ill-gotten food stamps every month, it just puts money back in the economy at the end of the day. I’m willing to have a thousand of those if it means a million get enough to not go hungry.
I think the mistake folks are making is assuming if you have a burial plot or a $500 TV, you are ineligible. The eligibility system is complicated and I don’t pretend to understand all of it and of course it varies by state, but generally assets only count if they could be easily liquidate, like savings account, to buy food, hurt your eligibitity…
SNAP seems to me to be pretty well targeted, even if the questions are excessive at times.
It also has low level of abuse, Google says something about 1%. I am sure that Reagan era welfare queen buying steaks with food stamps, while driving Cadillac have cause the rules to tighten.
My friend volunteer at the food bank this week. He said it was still very busy, but what really caught his attention is the two folks who came by in late model high end Lexus. I said well maybe they were leased and they lost job, maybe they really needed the help. On the other hand, I can’t blame my friend for wondering how many people are abusing their charity while driving 50K+ cars.
That’s not even close to reality. I quoted the average benefit.
I don’t get what’s the problem with filling out the form?
Were there actually such people?
ShivaX
3667
I know a couple people on SS Disability. One gets $12 a month. The other gets $15 I think.
Before he got disability it was like $200 something. Of course he couldn’t pay rent, so he had to trade most of that for cash to not die.
It’s more that the point of a lot of the questions are to deny you things.
“Oh you own anything? Well, then you can sell it and come back to us.”
Stuff like refrigerators tend to cost more than $500.
Then again, SNAP is usually handled by states isn’t it?
Here’s Iowa rules:
To be fair, Iowa is fucking horrible.
Don’t go having enough money to survive an emergency now, or we’ll cut you off.
The system is a trap, imo. You can almost never get out of it. You’re poor, but if you ever start to be not-poor-enough we’ll cut off all the benefits that let you be not-poor. Now you’re poor again. Spend several months trying to get those benefits you lost back. Or just buy something shiny once in a while and keep under the threshold forever.
I see nothing about refrigerators, it is money in a checking account, it certainly could be used for food.
Yes you could buy something new, or you could just put some money in the cookie jar in the pantry, and no one would be the wiser. It is generally not a binary thing it is a reduction of benefits if you earn more, and sometimes with assets. A single mom with two infants, and medical condition is a different financial condition than one with two teenagers who is working and making 20K . They both are eligible for SNAP, Child Tax credit, and probably section 8 housing subsidy. But the one making $20k, has less needs than one making $0, why wouldn’t they get less money?
Similarly, the couple that lost their tourism jobs as a hotel manager, and catering manager, and who’ve have been hired back and are making >$100K don’t need SNAP anymore.
(to be clear, I neither know, neither want to know for sanity reasons, the target of each program over there; this is a generalization)
Kinda both, pettiness on the latter leads to pettiness on the former. Which isn’t the same as not doing anything.
Agreed that you need data, and you need some means testing; but there was a paper floating around a week ago that I didn’t even bother to think of keeping it because, I mean, anyone who cares has read many personal stories about how getting a job was worse for them economically, or the wealth of an entirely estranged family (don’t think that was America) or a bunch of other stupid things (that, as ShivaX points out, is a poverty trap). That cost more than increasing the limits and investigating less stuff that won’t then matter.
To what exactly is why you need the data, not to know that this is inhumane.
ShivaX
3670
And rent and car payments and emergencies.
Don’t save enough to fix your car if it breaks down because you could use that money for food.
Oh your car broke down, sucks to be you.
I mean if you’re willing to do a little fraud and hope no one robs you, I guess the system works fine?
Sure, but the system is set up to prevent either of them changing. They’ll both probably be fine-ish.
And both probably be there forever.
Edit: And I’m more than willing to admit this is a personal thing to me and I might not be 100% unbiased about it.
But just today my mother, the Arch-Republican (pre-Trump/Reagan GOP that is) was bitching about these exact things.
Because the realities on the ground are that it sucks. It sucks for real people and hypotheticals ignore it.
“What if some thing happens where someone who doesn’t deserve it gets something?!?!”
I just don’t care. Let them if it means the guy with no fucking legs can not starve or freeze to death.
(Yes, he’s a real person I know)
Even those dangerous examples, well, Bezos & co would just stock a bit more in Panama while the Fed created a little more, but the real economy would be exactly the same; the temporarily unemployed manager could be taxed back in the end of the year.
You may not care, but reality has to set in at some point—whether there is an economic limit or a political limit, there are limits to what social welfare programs can deliver. Substantial fraud will hurt those who need it most because there is less going to the neediest, as it is not a bottomless well. Some degree of inefficiency/fraud/misallocation will occur in any social program, but that isn’t a basis to throw away all attempts at reducing those things. At the end of the day, that will just end up reducing at least the political will to support and expand such programs.
The presumption being asking stupid questions prevents fraud.
Hence my question above about whether the critique here is about enforcing means testing, at all, or about (presumably) bad means testing.
ShivaX
3675
But it is the basis for destroying the entire system.
“Someone got a thing they probably shouldn’t have.”
“Well, lets make sure no one ever gets that thing then.”
Unless it’s like, say, tanking the world economy, then don’t change anything and it’ll work itself out.
Yes, this is exactly how Reagan weaponized the welfare queen argument. That was bullshit, but that isn’t proof that means testing is, per se, something that should be done. From a policy standpoint, I think a means requirement is perfectly rationale for a welfare program. Heck, I’d argue (as Strollen has above) that removing means requirements is a pretty bad idea.
ShivaX
3677
I’m not saying all means testing is terrible.
I’m saying the current system is. There are incentives to never improve your lot.
“Having $2000 in the bank,” is a bad thing. If you do that, we’ll take away things until you use that $2001.
Owning something worth over $500 is also bad.
Then something happens and you need money and people fire back with “guess you should’ve saved some money for a rainy day”. Only saving money for a rainy day meant basically burning it in a pit in the back yard, so you might as well buy a new TV because otherwise that money is lost anyway.
The system incentivizes to never improve. Improvement is punished. Frugality is bad. Save $100 a month for 2 years? Penalized. Waste $100 a month on lottery tickets? Pat on the head, good job, your benefits are safe.
