Food Stamps

[ShortTemperHatesStupidity]

ladylabyrinth-
you had me at the pitch... LoL

lehk-
good thinking. I can't believe politicians who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (well beyond what some of them should be making) hadn't thought of that sooner. It really is brilliant!

ruffledbird-
you make a good point here. Lets take for example the Home Depot CEO who recently resigned/got fired (who the hell knows what really happened there). He made off with something like 260 million dollars in severance pay which is funny because:
*he was only in that position for a few years
*the company was worse off when he left than it was when he started

I love the brainstorms that come out of these threads sometimes!

[NightAngel]

MRE's have come a long way over the years. Honestly, I remember the way they were- EWWW!!!
Now they don't taste much different than a lot of the pre- packaged food you can pick up at the grocery store. Okay, still not quite as good but definately not too bad either.

My Aunt has been in the military for a large part of my life. I remember several times when we've been needy and she'd come by with a few grocery bags of MRE's for us.

[cpux]

I'll admit, in my time as a cashier I came across very little, if any, foodstamp system abuse.

However, what I did encounter a lot was that the cards were very unreliable. After a mere few months, the magnetic stripe would wear out and wouldn't go through on the machine. For a time, this was a minor inconvenience, as we could just punch in the card number, and all would be set.

Then, corporate decided to disable the number punch feature for whatever reason, so anyone with a cruddy card was essentially screwed, and management would have a hell of a time talking with the customer, corporate, and the foodstamp authority trying to resolve the problem.

[toomanycalls1]

Clothes and car

With clothes people are wearing you have to realize with adults they might have had a nice job and such and could afford those clothes at that time.

Same thing with cars.

If my husband and I were to have to go on food stamps tomorrow we'd have nice clothes and nice cars because before whatever disaster befell us happened we had them. Of course we'd sell one of the cars to help with the bills but we'd still need one.

The one thing that bugged me always though was people that would not get a job because they could get unemployment.

When I worked at a call center I worked with people that did not have that attitude. They took jobs that in some cases were beneath their education level etc because it put food on the table and paid the rent. And because it was 24/7 they could work a shift convenient to go on interviews. Many worked something like 12-8:30 which left mornings free for interviews.

It does get me sometimes when I hear young people who work with me talking about having trouble making ends meet when they have fancy cell phones, drive fancy cars and have a fancy wardrobe. And talk about having a big screen TV.

Maybe it's just me but when I was that age I drove a used car had a basic wardrobe and no cell phone. And a 20 inch TV my mom gave me as an apartment warming present. Because that's what I could afford.

[Daskinor]

They are pretty damn nasty, but there are people who swear by them. I like ration-pack honey tubes though LOL

I am one of those weirdos who like MREs. I even import french, German and Russian MREs. The French ones are the yummiest. And I always get a stack of the new ones when I go in for my weekends. Meatloaf and Rice and Chicken are my favorites. I like to get my hands on the curry chicken ones when I can, however MREs can be very regional so we don't get them in much.

[NightAngel]

With clothes people are wearing you have to realize with adults they might have had a nice job and such and could afford those clothes at that time.

True that.

Just a few years ago my hubby and I, together, made about $85,000 a year. His job bringing most of that. When the company laid off 100,000 employees he was one of them.

We were suddenly excessively poor and owned really nice stuff.

[starla671]

I'm a single mother of two who gets no child support(I can't find the bastard), and I have a crappy low paying waitress job. I also get food stamps and my kids have medicaid.

The stamps have helped us out a great deal. I try to shop for bargains and get the stuff that we need, but I do get chips and soda for my kids, as well as other snacks. It's not like I'm buying ribeye's everyday or something like that. People who do abuse the system make it harder for those who need it to get help.

I'm thankful for the help that I do get and the Medicaid. I can't afford health insurance for myself, but at least my kids are covered if they get sick or hurt. WIC is a wonderful program too. I don't know what I would have done without that!