Originally Posted By: Eugene
I've seen my share of those , load up a cart and when their bill was more than the amount of food stamps they had they would put everything back but the junk food. Some would offer $5-10 in food stamps in exchange for $4 to us pushing carts in from the lot in case so they could buy cigarettes (and get mad at me when I wouldn't take them on their offer).
I got paid weekly and allocated $20 to groceries our of my $100 per week take home pay, I got lunch at school and at work sat and Sunday when I worked 8 hours so that had to do breakfast and dinner for a week. I'd get the $0.19 loaf of bread, the $0.99 eggs, $0.99 gallon of OJ, $0.79 imitation pop tarts, cans of soup or such that was on sale. It was almost a game to see how far I could stretch that budget.


I find it interesting that the indicators seem to say this experience comes from what sounds like 20 years ago. When was the last time there was "$0.19 loaf of bread, the $0.99 eggs, $0.99 gallon of OJ, $0.79 imitation pop tarts"?

It also has to be pointed out that the foodstamp program stopped issuing paper coupons in 2004 and the coupons themselves were non-redeemable as of June 17 2009. I haven't seen a coupon in better than four years. The debit cards are far harder to convert to cash.

Of course the foodstamp program is a subsidy for the poor and a backdoor minimum wage. Wages have remained static for most of forty years even as the cost of living has gone up. The simple fact is that you can work sixty hours a week and not make enough even minimally support a family.