this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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Until we get UBI saddly we should. Theres only so much money for these programs. Anyone who wastes it is then stealing from someone who really needs it.
There’s not an infinite money pot everyone on food stamps gets access to while they’re on it. If you’re given $100 for the month and spend $10 of it on a cake, you don’t get extra to make up for it. You just have to budget the remainder differently. You don’t become less eligible for SNAP because you wanted a cake, and it doesn’t take money from anyone else’s SNAP account. The answer to funding shortfalls is returning the tax rate for the megarich to reasonable levels, not squeezing the poor even harder.
If a person is eligible for food stamps, then it’s paternalistic as hell to cordon off huge swathes of the supermarket from them because it doesn’t match some ideal picture of what you should eat for every single meal—something I would bet 90% of the people in this thread also don’t live up to.
If you’ve never been on food stamps or WIC in a place that polices food choices like that then you genuinely have no idea what a nightmare it makes weekly shopping, because there’s no such thing as a way to implement ‘common sense restrictions’ on what types of foods poor people are allowed to buy without overlooking some dietary need that some people have.
Theres not an infinite pool of money so of course then people should not be wasting it on candy chips and energy drinks. Its not squeezing poor people by not allowing it to be wasted. And i come from a family who used food stamps, and my mother still is so i know. I still bitch at her for wasting it when she has to then get me or my grandfather to buy food for the rest of the month.
I agree completely that snap and wic are needed in the current environment of this god forsaken country. But just giving out 500 dollars a month to spend on anything that isnt hot and fresh doesnt teach people how to spend wisely.
Im not sorry that most people poor and rich are rather stupid, people on government benefits should be restricted on wasting money provided by taxes the same as rich people should be held accountable to pay their fair share.
Consider also: the purpose of SNAP isn’t to ‘fix’ people who are ‘spending wrong.’ It’s to feed people. Thinking the government should enforce the dietary choices of the poor is fucknut crazy.