Originally Posted By: Art_in_FL
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.


I worked grocery when I was in college in the 90's so 15 years ago.
I still see if, before we moved we were in an older area of town, I used to find paper food stamps that they would toss out their car window, I wanted to get those and call up the.gov office and tell them so and so apparently doesn't need them since they are throwing them in our yard. That was just over a couple years ago before we moved. Our city is apparently behind the times. We had the houses around us rented out through the government section 8 program. Watched the 50" tv, big stereo, come in from rent a center. Watched the nurse come weekly yo check on the younger kids, watched the social workers come every couple weeks to check on the older kids, watched the church vans bring them food once a week then saw most of that food in their trashcan unopened the next trash day.
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