By James Bovard
The government “shutdown” and the so-called threat to the food stamp program may be abated for now, but we need to understand why this program has metastasized in recent years. James Bovard tells us why.
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84 sats \ 8 replies \ @freetx 13h
Call me cynical or cold-hearted, but I actually have trouble believing the US has a problem of people starving.
But it does seem like we definitely have an obesity problem.
Knowing the govt they will now start handing out GLP-1 pills to the very same people who get SNAP.
Gov never fails...create the problem and solve it and the same time.
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148 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 12h
There's more of a food quality problem than a quantity problem. Lots of states have started restricting the kinds of things that can be purchased with food stamps, like soda and candy.
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54 sats \ 4 replies \ @freetx 12h
So true, but ultimately thats a people problem. People could be using SNAP to buy healthy food to cook at home, instead they buy prepacked crap / snacks / soda.
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52 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 12h
restricting choice is a necessary consequence of public money
that's why, during the Obamacare debate, I didn't like it when republicans called bureaucrats deciding on healthcare choices as "death panels". If you're gonna be throwing public money around, which the healthcare system already does, you need a non-price form of rationing
ideally, the solution would be to get public money out of as many markets as possible. If that's not possible, then you have to restrict the things that the public money can be used on, sadly.
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70 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 12h
Unless you move towards pure cash transfers, as many economists seem to favor
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49 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 12h
i actually don't favor that, reason being that I don't think that within a democratic society, there is any credible commitment to let people suffer the consequence of their own bad choices. Thus, cash transfers will never work as a substitute for in-kind transfers. I think it's a sad state of affairs, but I think it is the state of affairs.
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123 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 12h
I agree. To me this is actually the strongest reason not to reform towards UBI, which might otherwise be more efficient.
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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 12h
This is what happens with public money.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @SHA256man 9h
Ozempic => Oh Zombie, eeek!
all those demon drugs have demonic-sounding names too;
#1279063
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