So, food stamps are an agricultural subsidy. The reason they can buy junk food in the first place is because this is a hand out to corn syrup producers.
Good fucking luck taking on big ag with this idea, RFK Jr.
My understanding is that this move can only be appropriately considered through the lens of the aesthetics of maintaining an effective culture war.
Like the racially charged tirades against “welfare queens” of the past, this pretends to deal with income inequality on a level that blames the victim only, while doing nothing for the systemic factors that create and maintain junk food dependency.
It’s like a school or church entity attempting to deal with widespread sexual abuse by making and enforcing dress codes on potential victims.
It’s funny cause the US school lunch program is garbage food
Careful, they’ll ban that next
I was always told the democrats were going to ban junk food and raise my taxes. I voted for them anyways but here the republicans are going and doing it.
yeah but he’s doing it for poor people so it’s ok because fuck poor people
You say that but I keep fucking poor people and nobody ever gives me any governmental power… maybe I should try not being poor
Hitler was a bit of a health nut too, lots of anti smoking laws.
True, the old school fascists loved physical ideals. Trump I could see going for anti alcohol laws as he’s a teetotaler whose brother died to the bottle, but he’s an obese man addicted to McDonald’s.
Wow he was opposed to people breathing toxic gases??!
He didn’t think of them as people, so it all checks out.
This will do literally fucking nothing because food stamps don’t cover grocery bills for anybody. You always have to subsidize it.
They also don’t buy diapers, as per Marshall Mathers (2002).
It’s easy to talk about how people on food stamps should just cook healthy meals… when you have a house, with a kitchen, and a fridge, and aren’t working 3 jobs, and don’t have kids that are bombarded with ads for sugar coated sugar ………………………
It’s just another way to punish the poor.
No one can possibly have food sensitivities or allergies to common and cheap ingredients. Everyone is able to cook everything from scratch. Disability is just mind over matter. You just have to MAKE time and prioritize. You need to work more than one job? MAKE the time. Just sleep less. Not feeling well because of that? Well, I struggled too (in college, where I didn’t have many responsibilities and there was also an end date) so you can do it!
You just have to want it.
Signed, someone that was given all the speeches when I asked for help because I was broke and occasionally homeless. Makes you not want to ask for help any more.
Besides, a person of food stamps could be eating a healthy diet, but still simply want a treat once in a while without destroying their finances, because, it turns out, the poors sometimes want to enjoy things.
This is exactly it. People are outraged imagining that other people on food stamps are out eating lobster dinners every night and they cheer on the idea of adding all sorts of restrictions on what people are allowed to buy. It’s dehumanizing and it doesn’t actually solve any problems, it just creates new ones. Now people are at the store trying to figure out what they can afford because spaghetti is covered but spaghetti sauce is not and no one has time to make a fresh spaghetti sauce from scratch after working two jobs but some fuck thought it was funny to stick it to the poors and pass a bunch of complicated restrictions that make it a pain in the ass for everyone.
Least bad news from America in a week. Though if the junk food isn’t replaced with equal calories from healthy veggies, for the same amount of stamps, or however that works, it would be evil
if the junk food isn’t replaced with equal calories from healthy veggies, for the same amount of stamps
It won’t be. This just ignores the fact that one of the reasons junk food is popular is because it’s cheaper than ready-to-eat healthy food.
The actual problem: Many parts of America are food deserts where people do not have access to affordable nutritious food. This problem is exacerbated for those below the poverty line who may not have access to a vehicle.
But solving that problem is hard so it’s just way easier to make sure that poor people aren’t allowed to buy the food that is accessible to them. Making desperate people even more desperate… I’m sure that wont have any unintended consequences.
And much more readily available. Decent food can be hard to come by in some places.
Well, I have dozens of healthy food programs ideas but I guess shortage of ideas isn’t the problem.
From my experiences with junk food diet, you feel extremely bad on it and when you are in hard situation you probably need to be in prime brain fitness without junk food brain fog. Prolonged junk food feels like intoxication almost.
So I think providing such vitamins and micro-elements for cheap/free should be very important to overall strategy of pulling people out of poverty.
If such were provided then discontinuing junk food support would be a next logical step.
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But of course many much smarter people figured it all out ages ago already. What ‘
left’ solid folks fail at is they don’t immediately understand that empathy and good plan isn’t enough but you need marketing.In their honesty they often fail to see the appeal of the shallow and the allure of the superficial. All the skills alt right excels at.
They do not easily see or aren’t willing to, that you often need to trick or even lie or manipulate people to be in the position to do good things and/or to do them effectively on a big scale.
Yeah I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the left is so aware of the fact that we’re correct we sometimes forget to actually sell it. We’re a plain bottle of salicylic acid on the shelf next to a full display of the latest and greatest 100% genuine snake oil
The alt right rise is nothing else but a failure to sell a solution to the future obstacles. People aren’t fundamentally racist, stuck up or bigoted. They just buy the only thing that is left on the barren political market. The one that gives them hope. Even if it is only a cheap trick of some ‘patriotic’ demagogue.
There was once a time, very brief, when Elon Musk wasn’t a complete jackass. A brief time when people were watching rocket starts with awe that instilled hope in them. Hope in the vision of the better future. If we could rally people around this idea, that the future of humanity is bright, tolerant and abundant, that we can become something noble and beautiful, then that I believe would be a uniting force we need. Challenges, sure but worth solving because of what we can become if we succeed.
Climate scientists do not understand the reaction of average person when they tell them “We must lower our CO2 footprint”. The response is Why? It isn’t a question about what will happen but the question of motivation. People ask “What is the reward of solving it, what will I have from it?”. Of course scientists are pissed at such questions and throw a snarky answer.
What will an average person have from fighting climate change? You will have future of thriving great nature and an abundance of basic goods provided by it. You will experience unity that was achieved by solving great problems together. You will have plethora of technological wonders that come from focused collaboration of human beings. You will have a victory, not merely containment of defeat.
We won’t make America great again. We will make America greater than it ever was before.
Much as I hate Scott Adams now, there was a time when he wasn’t a complete jackass.
People aren’t fundamentally racist, stuck up or bigoted.
Yes, at least some of them are. Don’t be this naive. You could make the argument even that most of MAGA are EcOnOmiCalLy AnXIoUs but (trigger warning: Godwin’s Law) so were most nazis. SOME people really are like that.
There was once a time, very brief, when Elon Musk wasn’t a complete jackass. A brief time when people were watching rocket starts with awe that instilled hope in them.
That was called marketing and it sold a lot of Teslas. No one who will do a nazi salute is capable of delivering the utopia future you describe. Anyone who would do a nazi salute is definitively always a jackass.
Otherwise I agree and really do appreciate this kind of hopefulness. I really think what you’re saying is correct and important. It’s just, well, those two SLIGHT bits of contention… Sorry.
“And the poor shall not be allowed even the pleasure of sugary treats. Yea, they shall have their food stamps slashed for the sin of poverty.”
Book of Jebus, chapter 6, verses 3 and 4.
Seriously, though, it seems like everything these people do is just to inflict more suffering.
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Yeah. That’s their whole aim. Make sure more people are a poor as possible and as beaten down as possible. These are the same politicians that don’t want Walmart to pay their workers enough money to get off food stamps.
Is that you, Republican Jesus?
I’m sure this is the push they need to get that six figure job that they have avoided to do because they are lazy
How is he going to define this? Food is so processed that almost anything can be junk food.
It’s simple, just pay FDOGE(formerly the FDA) $100/mo and you can put a special blue checkmark on your food packaging to signify its not junk food.
Companies can buy checkmate subscriptions for $500,000 a month
Sorry, you’re right, I was way too low. But let’s be realistic it will be more like $420,690
As it applies only to food stamps, I guess that’s the goal.
They’ll fight those “welfare queens” (blegh) in court in order to not have to guarantee a minimum of survival.
Pasteurization is considered processing.
The problem is it’s probably a good idea to get people in deprivation to eat healthier. It’s also a reasonable claim that antidepressants are over prescribed.
However, if the alternative is unaffordable, the solution is just a punishment.
This is just a pretext to reduce food stamp payments. Conservatives have used this rhetoric since the 90s to attack food stamp payments. “Welfare queens are buying STEAK with your tax dollars!”
And the overwhelming majority of antidepressants are prescribed on a voluntary basis, eg the people taking them are choosing to do so because they feel there is not a more viable option for them. There is a whole essay on why this is the case but just some key points: therapy is really expensive (often a therapist costs almost as much as a psychiatrist except it’s a weekly visit instead of monthly), effective therapy requires a lot of active buy in and effort that people often don’t have the bandwidth required to contribute due to external factors like oppressive work or family life, therapy requires a time investment, stigma, etc. essentially overprescribing is a side effect of massive systemic issues
So do you address any of these systemic issues? Do you address any of the issues related to the western diet being loaded with sugar and other carbs, that we have huge swaths of residential areas with no proper grocery stores around throughout a great deal of the US, or that our environments are so structured around cars that we walk like 50 feet a week, etc?
Nah, just create more financial stress for poor people who eat like all of us (eg, like shit). Punitive approach 100% of the time!
How about increasing the amount of ebt funds for people who do not buy an excessive amount of empty calorie food and drink? Create a base amount of funds that everyone gets and increase the amount by 2.5% for every 25% of funds used that are dedicated to “healthy foods”. So if you buy only “healthy foods” you get an extra 10% of your ebt allotment, and if you buy nothing but junk then you aren’t penalized (unless of course you count not getting the reward, I guess). But this isn’t punitive so americans hate it
Or maybe make regulations that any grocery store that opens more that 20 stores is required to maintain at least 1 store per 20 in an underserved area that will not be profitable. Adjust the regulation actively of course so that whole foods doesn’t just become 800 separate stores to circumvent the regulation or whatever. But this means that corporations have to do something to enrich communities at the expense of constant profits so americans hate it
Or any of the obvious shit people have gone on about for ages. Nationalized health care, shorter work weeks with improved wages, workers getting equitable shares of companies, robust pensions, unions, etc. but americans are brain washed to think this is commie bullshit
They are correct about one part. The welfare queens, like Walmart and McDonald’s are absolutely buying steak and caviar with the money they save not paying their staff.
I wanted to float out there the argument that I’ve had some luck with, with Xtians.
“How many good people did Jesus want you to starve in order to make sure no one was having it “too good?” Because I feel like he just said to feed the poor, not to make sure they weren’t eating too well.”
everyone getting so serious over a worm joke i mean i appreciate it but worms 🪱 lol worms
True, but then you would have to increase the amount of money they are getting.
The reason why poor people eat less healthy is because that’s the food they can afford.
The healthy food is much more expensive.
parasites are mostly protien and reproductive organs. if you ever dissected a parasitic worms you will be able to see it has dozens of uteri or male gonads.
I need a new type of vote for when the post makes me sad
I can’t think of a quicker way to get rednecks to shoot in your general direction - take away their food stamp snackies.
???
Why isn’t our low-protein gruel wearing down his resistance?
So are they okay with healthier foods like steak, lobster, and avocado toast now?
So no fruit juice?
