SNAP benefits ( gentally)

rambot said:

you ACTUALLY believe that's true and are not smart enough to just do it.

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Or he's just more ethical and doesn't feel its right to live off his neighbors. Unlike far too many poor people who have been incentivized to stay living off their neighbors instead of bettering themselves.

rjs330 said:

Its common sense. Let's just say that someone is making $20 an hour. They live in an apartment that costs 1500 a month. Then they marry someone who is making $24 an hour. They just d I bled their income and the cost to one for the apartment has just dropped in half.

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Getting a roommate does the same thing to one’s housing expenses.

rjs330 said:

Irs not rocket science. In this case it's a priven fact all over, no matter how you slice it that marriage will help you be more financially secure as long as you have two responsible adults.

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If it’s not rocket science, why do you have such a hard time grasping it?

Again, the financial stability of marriage is a product of marriage selecting for people who are financially stable, not a product of the relationship:

rjs330 said:

Its common sense. Let's just say that someone is making $20 an hour. They live in an apartment that costs 1500 a month. Then they marry someone who is making $24 an hour. They just d I bled their income and the cost to one for the apartment has just dropped in half. Irs not rocket science. In this case it's a priven fact all over, no matter how you slice it that marriage will help you be more financially secure as long as you have two responsible adults.

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iluvatar5150 said:

Getting a roommate does the same thing to one’s housing expenses.

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Or, if a couple doesn't want to get married, they can just "live in sin." Same benefits all around, and you don't have to commit to anything.

-- A2SG, seems an ideal solution....

iluvatar5150 said:

Getting a roommate does the same thing to one’s housing expenses.

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I love it when people want to focus in yhe minutiae instead of focusing on the larger point. I could have written a very long dissertation to avoid a post loke yours, but I though, nah, he'll get the point. I guess I was wrong.

iluvatar5150 said:

Again, the financial stability of marriage is a product of marriage selecting for people who are financially stable, not a product of the relationship:

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Nope it a product of the relationship. Been there done that, seen it over and over in everyone I have ever met. Its been that way forever. And there are psychological reasons for it because you are no longer just trying to work for yourself.

rambot said:

Grrr!!!! How frustrating it just be for you to see (rereads post...) children not starving.

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I have just decided to ignore you on this topic. You just canr help but be disingenuous about what people say and assign the worst of intentions upon people.

rjs330 said:

I love it when people want to focus in yhe minutiae instead of focusing on the larger point. I could have written a very long dissertation to avoid a post loke yours, but I though, nah, he'll get the point. I guess I was wrong.

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What larger point of yours did I miss?

linux.poet said:

I’m on SNAP definitely and still can’t buy the hot rotisserie chicken though, except when there is a state disaster like wildfires and then the food stamps magically decide to cover my Costco chicken purchase. True story.

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Disasters increase funding, urgency, and are impermanent, which is why it’s easier to make tweaks like that.

linux.poet said:

Somehow all this disappears in a state emergency. Also, this makes zero sense, because if what you were saying were true, I would not be able to buy any store branded product ever. Right now I can walk into Sprouts or Jimbo’s and buy a cold deli sandwich prepared on site with my SNAP card. I can buy bread and desserts from Costco or Sprouts that have no brand name on them. I can buy Kirkland Signature vitamin water on my EBT card just fine. This reasoning is totally not working for SNAP purchases.

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Because all of those are products sold by a store, which (according to the program) means it’s different than a good sold after a preparation and thus a service and not a product.

And you’re misunderstanding; I think it’s dumb too. I think you should get a chicken. I think it’s a good value, generally healthy-ish, and versatile which is all the metrics even the haters use to validate purchases. Beyond that, I think it provides solutions to barriers like not having a place or means to cook. If we were talking to 18 year old me and this was accessible to her, she’s totally buying one every week. I’m breaking it down, eating it as is for a few days, boiling the bones with onion skins and butts, getting broth, then using the broth in next week’s chicken to make chicken and rice or, if I have flour, making a pot pie filling and putting it in pasta, bread, or eating as is. Or I’m making chicken tacos. Ir chicken soup.

That would have been a gamechanger back in the day.

linux.poet said:

It’s Kirkland Signature (Costco) chicken and Sprouts branded chicken sold in bags I’m talking about here. The brand is totally on the packaging. I have every reason to believe that Costco has a chicken farm somewhere where they raise the birds. It’s an arbitrary rule having to do with the food’s temperature.

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Yes, their brand is on the packaging, but only about 30% (on average depending on demand… It’s higher during some months than others… It’s only 10% in November and January) of their rotisserie chickens are from their processing plant. The rest are from Foster Farms and/or Tyson, which cuts into profits. And on super high demand times, they use internal inventory to meet demand, which they want to avoid at all costs as it leads to an immediate loss in profit.

The temperature rule is arbitrary, but you’re misunderstanding how. They want to filter out ready-made foods that are meant to be eaten immediately, on impulse, from the regular Snap programs. Your soup bars, your chicken wing bars, hot pizzas, etc etc. They want you to buy meals for later, not for now and with grocery stores covered by Snap offering the right now meals, they had to invent a way to weed them out. Hence, the temperature rule. If it’s hot, it’s meant to be enjoyed in the moment, in-site, but if it’s cold, it can be enjoyed whenever. Today, tomorrow, whatever. It initially was going to be the benchmark of excluding anything packaged on site, but that would have impacted meat and deli departments who slice their own lunch meat for sale. So they went for the dumb temperature thing.

Not only was the rule arbitrary, it accidentally covered things they never meant to have covered (deli sandwiches) and excluded things generally accepted as being good buys (rotisserie chicken).

So we are clear, I’m not saying I agree with the rule. I think it’s a stupid rule and that you should have access to prepared food like chicken, sandwiches, the wing bars, etc at the grocery store via snap. I’m just explaining how the rule came to be and why it is how it is.

linux.poet said:

Never mind the fact that the temperature actually has some utility if you’re inviting your car dwelling friends to lunch using your Costco membership, which is something I’ve actually done. Haul some lettuce, tomato, etc, and some paper plates in with a real knife and cutlery in a small cooler, buy a chicken at the Costco and chop it up in the food court area to serve to the group, $5 feeds everybody.

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Another reason it’s disallowed as it’s meant to feed yourself repeatedly, not friends who aren’t on Snap.

Again, genuinely don’t care that you do, just stating the logic.

linux.poet said:

Okay. My brother is paying for the Costco membership for both of us, but technically he’s on SNAP too these days as he’s between jobs. Maybe my friends can look into it when they get their own memberships as well.

This might partly explain why they let my creative use of the food court go, I thought they just wanted to sell chickens and weren’t mad because I was a customer. But yeah, they have cases of green olives and vitamin water and other stuff that I’ve used to contain my mental health symptoms over the years, so it’s actually a good place for the rest of us to shop.

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That is a combination of apathy and Robin Hood morality on the part of the employees. They’re not paid enough to count olives so they don’t care if you take them despite not being a customer. But also, they’re likely identifying a need another had and a means in which to satisfy it without impacting their jobs, so they do. Costco as a corporation tends to overlook more stuff than the other clubs because they get that means people in your situation identify them as a safe place to shop so you prioritize visiting there over other places. The incremental losses they take are calculated loss leaders, like Thanksgiving turkeys are during November. Grocery stores know people tend to shop for their whole Thanksgiving meal wherever they buy their turkey, so they sell the turkey as a loss to get you in the door, hoping you’ll buy everything else so they can make up the difference (and something insane, like 92% do, though it’s been a while since checked that statistic).

linux.poet said:

(The reason I got the impression Costco was bougousie is because a big part of their business model is selling overpriced TVs and sheds to the ignorant upper middle class on their way to the paper towels and water cases in the back.)

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Those are also calculated products that actually lower prices for other things in the stores. TVs especially. Lots of them are made for/only available at the clubs, meaning their production costs are crazy low even if it’s a brand-name item, which means their cost to buy them are super low, which means they can offer less than market value and still have a profit margin that’s as large as what Best Buy and other at-market value places get. It’s honestly kind of smart and super interesting. During Christmas and majors sporting events, they can cut into those margins pretty deep a before suffering a loss, knowing people will come through the door to buy other gifts with better margins and/or buy their party foods and holiday meals there. It’s the benefit of a loss leader without taking a loss.

The one I remember was Sam’s contracted with Sony of Panasonic or whenever to produce a TV and said it’s final sale price point would be X, but they wanted their purchase price to be Y so their margin would be Z, and if they did so they’d buy enough to supply all their stores. Sony took one of their generic cheapo TVs, gave it less features and used worse components, met the requirements Sams required, and completed the deal. They even did a “Sams exclusive!” packaging.

In the end, people were buying worse-than-generic at low-end Sony prices because they inferred “only at Sam’s!” exclusivity to mean quality when the actual message “literally nobody else would accept a TV this shoddy at even at generic price.” It also means they could mark it down to generic prices, have it be a deal that people thought was too good to be true, but still clear double the margin of a generic, sustaining the less-than industry average margins on things like rotisserie chicken. Costco does the same.

Chesterton said:

a car that's newer and fancier than mine.

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Is this a jealousy thing?

rjs330 said:

You realize you just made our point for us. If I want a better car I have to work for it. If I want a weave of my dreams I have to work for it. I dont ask.my neighbor to pay my car payment for me.

If I did I would.expect that my neighbor wouldn't want to let me buy whatever I wanted. And then I wouldnt expect my neighbor to pay my car payment so I can get a tattoo. Thats taking advantage of people. Are you seriously advocating for people to take advantage of others?
I thought you were big on ethics.

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The difference is you’re looking at their car, saying yours is worse, and thus they don’t deserve food. Not that you should work harder to get a better car because somebody you feel beneath you has a better car than yours. You’re thinking your total ignorance on how snap is calculated and the assumptions you’re making about what they spend in other areas of their life somehow represents fact.

When they calculate benefits, they look at income, expenses, people in the household, and intangibles (disability, job market, medical need) to determine what you can get. Using nice round numbers because it’s 6:30a and I’m bad at head math, yet don’t care enough to track down a pen and paper to explain this to you, but say you make $100 a month to on a household that has two adults and a child. Snap benefits say it actually costs $200 a month to support a household if they size, so they agree you qualify.

Then they look at your expenses. They say that housing for your area should be 30% of your income, so $30 at your level, or $60 at threshold. Car? That should be 10%, so $10 and $20 respectively. General life expenses like utilities, bills, debts, whatever at 20%, so $20 and $40. Food? 15%, so $15 and $30. Other that can’t be captured by those categories, essentials but one-time payments like school fees, home or car repairs, or savings, 10% or $10 and $20. If there’s an essential but extraordinary expense, special schooling, special medical care lime in home nursing, they build that in too. Then they build in a fudge factor, because housing in your area is more expensive than average, your commute is longer because you live where it’s cheaper and so your gas prices are higher, let’s say that’s 5%, or $5/10.

That means, using their algorithm, they think out of $100 you make, is the reasonable expenditures you should have is $85-90 and a the minimum to survive is $185-190. They calculate the amount you make, the difference between the minimum, and the minimum, and arrive at what you get. If you are expected to spend $15 and you need $30, it’s reasonable to assume you’ll get in the area of $10-15 to make up the difference, maybe a little more if you have another factor, like a baby and higher than average expenses for home items like diapers, or special medical needs.

You act like they sit down, factor an applicants bills, say “I see you want to spend 50% of your income on a car… Better give you more grocery money, then!” Or “you spend double what you make to live in a mansion, so we will cover 100% of your groceries so you can stay in your mansion.” Or “hey, Rjs? We hate that guy! Here, we will pay you way more than you need in groceries so you can have a better car than him, because seriously, he’s the worst.”

If they look at your finances and see you are overpaying in an area of your life, maybe, MAYBE they’ll allot you a bit extra for 90 days to scale down your spending to meet sustainable ratios, but we’re talking an extra 3-5% for 90 days, not an extra 200% for 10 years. If you’re spending your 10% on your car or less, they don’t care if it’s a beater or a Beamer, just that you’ve made a great choice in your spending. That’s literally the only thing they care. If you’re spending more, they’ll say “you’re not spending what you should on your car, so you want your Snap administrator to help you find a better option? Because in 3 months, you’re going to be in a bad way.” And when 3 months you show up and have that same car, they’ll say “we warned you, guess your car is getting repoed because we aren’t giving you more, even though you now can’t work because you can’t drive. We’ll recalculate in a year, but don’t expect much because we offered to help and you said no.”

You know what else they don’t do? They don’t say “Congrats! You got benefits, so now scrub off all your tattoos, take out your weave, wear this poor person costume, and practice your Oliver Twist impersonation because you only get your benefits if you cosplay destitute.” They say “so you have a ton of tattoos, that must have cost a lot, hope you learned your lesson because if you didn’t, you don’t get more money.” Or “your expenses are within their ratios, good job,” and give zero cares about your weave because you were in budget.

Besides which, do you even know what a weave costs? Are you such an expert in makeup, hair, and fashion that you can look at a woman and see what it cost to be put together that day? You can look at her and say “That eye liner is clearly Haus Labs, the weave clearly virgin human hair, that haircut clearly from the high end hair place on 5th, and the color? That’s fire engine red, a shade only available from Viori, which means it’s a salon job that cost big bucks.” Because experience has taught me that the average man has zero knowledge about such things and couldn’t tell you if my liner was Haus or house paint, if my color was salon or it was boxed. My husband knows because he cleans up after me, and drag queens seem to clock Haus brand because they use it… But seeing as you’re not my husband and reasonably sure you’re not a drag performer, unless you’re buying enough women’s hair pieces and makeup to know baseline cost, I doubt you really have any idea at all, just like you don’t know about their car.

I think you just say “they have a better car than me, better makeup than I do, better hair than I do, they’re doing better than me, they need to be punished for having what I don’t” as opposed to saying “man, I wish I had Haus eyeliner and a better weave, what can I do to better myself and get it?” which is the rational thought, I might add, especially since you look at kids without enough food and people who need food stamps and think they should have worked harder to get it. If you think they should work harder for a need like food, the least you can do is work harder for your want of a weave, nice makeup, and a better car.

I’m super big on ethics, you’re right. Difference between you and I is that in the pursuit of determining what is and isn’t ethical, I learn about the topic, then determine the ethics based off of my knowledge on the topic. You gauge how much you like something or how much it irritates you we determine morality proportionally to your outrage. I don’t use the terms “this bothers me,” “I’m jealous,” and then conclude with “and making me mad is immoral thus they’re being unethical.”

Larniavc said:

Is this a jealousy thing?

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It's a rhetoric thing.

rjs330 said:

Unethical people dont care if you work hard.

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Nobody but you cares about how hard you work. It has nothing to do with ethics. Because how hard you work is arbitrary, subjective, dependent on skill set, and generally a pointless thing to ponder. I’m a very hard worker. I will make more working less hard than a barista, a job which I find very difficult. Despite me finding my job easy, I’m sure plenty of people find it hard.

Fun getting to know you information, pointless in deciding anything that matters.

rjs330 said:

They spend all their time trying to figure out how to ripp off their neighbors. Meanwhile the ethical people are just going to work everyday.

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I only work an average of 40ish hours a week, so definitely not all of my time. If somebody is working “all of their time” figuring out how to get money easily, it sounds like they’re actually working pretty hard and taking the difficult route, seeing I work a fraction of “all my time” and come away with a 6-digit salary when you factor in how much I make being a wife.

rjs330 said:

Yes I am aware. And that is what we have been talking about. An unwillingness to work.

You and so many on the left must be corrected iver and iver again. I dont know if its a mental block or what it is.
We on the right are NOT against helping the poor. We UNDERSTAND that there are those who cannot work for various reasons that are not their fault. NO ONE is saying that we shouldn't help them. So please STOP insinuating or saying we are. Its disingenuous at best to make that claim.

We care about everyone including our fellow citizens who are paying for these things out of their hard earned money. It should be spent WISELY. Thats also a scriptural value by the way. Conservatives are extremely generous with their money. We WANT to help the needy as much as any liberal does. But we also do not want to take money from others unwisely. Forcing your fellow citizens to pay for things should come with a serious outlook of "is this necessary and wise". And I'm telling you its often not necessary or wise. And by the way that goes for a lot of things the government spends our money on. So please stop being disingenuous about what we are saying. If you accuse us again of not wanting to help poor people and won't be responding to you anymore on this subject. You would be proving that you dont care if you are being disingenuous and misrepresenting our position.


If you are unwilling to work you should not eat. IF we are going to use scripture to determine how a government should operate we have to use ALL OF IT. Picking and choosing what you want enforced by government is a violation of scripture. You are to take all of it, not just what you want to see.

Shame on you or anyone who uses scripture as a club to try and enforce government action. Without using all of it. Its no different than trying to use scripture to outlaw homosexuality or adultery. And then turning around and saying we should not use scripture to enforce the helping of the poor through taxpayer money.

I will tell you what I told another poster.
I will support the use if taxpayer money to help the poor under any circumstance if you will agree to outlaw homosexuality, a adultery abortion, lying etc. Would you support that?



Thats irrelevant. Just because 44% of SNAP recipients work doeant mean they should be getting snap. I mean we seriously could make up any number we wanted to say everyone who make under $80000 gets SNAP. Then we could say, well obviously its a probelm because 80% of workers on on SNAP.

No we have GREATLY increased the number of people on snap by artificial means and not because they really need it.
I dont appreciate it at all. Its written from a social agenda rather that a actual Biblical exigesis. How do I know. There's a little statement that is made that says volumes.

"There are those who want to work but have a hard time finding a job that lines up with their skills and desires."

That tells me immediately that writer has an agenda and a predisposed position they are trying to create.

As a Bible scholar I don't appreciate that. I won't go into all of his points to point out his errors and failures of application. Although I could. Suffice it to say, there are far too many believers, left and right who wish to use scriptures for their own agenda rather than for what it actually says.

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Agreed. We want to help the needy, not enable the greedy.

Sportsballfan said:

Defending people using taxpayer money on garbage food is just contributing to the anti-SNAP sentiment.

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I fail to see that as a sufficient reason to further control peoples choices.

Tropical Wilds said:

Did you think about this before you said it? Like, even a little? Because I feel like if you sat down and thought about this comment… Really thought about it… You’d realize you just said something crazy awkward with your outside voice when it probably should have just been an inside thought you held onto for just yourself.

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"Address only the content of the post and not the poster."

JosephZ said:

Imagine you’re a kid at school and it's lunchtime. Your friends are all eating cookies and doughnuts that their mom packed in their lunch. Meanwhile, you’re stuck with carrot sticks and apple slices because your mom can't buy treats with SNAP. How would you feel in that situation? Would it make you feel sad? Humiliated? Denying low-income families the ability to buy junk food with SNAP goes beyond looking at only the health benefits of doing so.

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As a young boy I did notice other kids at school who had the latest snacks that we couldn't afford. I grew up poor, but mom always made sure we had a snack in with our lunches. Sometimes it was an apple, sometimes it was a Little Debbie snack, if we could afford them. (At home we didn't eat snacks. We had a dessert or treat on rare occasion. If anything, the snack in the lunch was a treat.)

The same thing happened with clothes. I was wearing bell bottoms long after they were out of style and being laughed at, because mom went to Goodwill to get our clothes. I was wearing second hand clothes and cheap no-name plastic soled shoes that were so uncomfortable. Other kids were wearing the latest fashion items like parachute pants and high top shoes.

I would play at my friends' houses and they would have the latest video games (Atari at the time), and full Star Wars collections. I had none of that. The things others had were just things. I had things too, they just weren't the latest and greatest.

I appreciated what I had, and it instilled values that I would've otherwise lacked, like humility and meekness. I learned how to save money and eat right. The knowledge that I learned as a boy is knowledge I am still applying today in my adult life. If I hadn't had the hardships and lessons, I may well have grown up to be a different person entirely, and I don't think I would've liked that person.

Carrot sticks and apple slices are good for you. Cookies and doughnuts are not. There is no redeeming value in feeding your kids junk food in their school lunches.

Oompa Loompa said:

I would rather not get a divorce so Uncle Sam can be my ex wife's sugar daddy.

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But...the unimaginable riches!!

dogs4thewin said:

with the whole mess with SNAP benefits should there be anything food wise that cannot be purchased? How strict should it be?

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Anything that’s not edible or is a drug like alcohol should be excluded. The rest is up to the individual what they wish to use their SNAP money for. If they want to feed their kids nothing but cookies and soda, that’s on them. Not my business to tell someone else how to buy for their household.

rjs330 said:

Just because 44% of SNAP recipients work doeant mean they should be getting snap.

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There are strict guidlines in place that determine who qualifies for SNAP. If someone is receiving SNAP, it means they have met those guidlines.

rjs330 said:

No we have GREATLY increased the number of people on snap by artificial means and not because they really need it.

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These are the people who receive SNAP:

In FY 2023, four in five (79%) SNAP households included either a child (39%), an elderly individual (20%), or a nonelderly individual with a disability (10). These households contained 88% of all SNAP participants and received 83% of all SNAP benefits.

Most SNAP benefits go to the poorest households.

• Most SNAP households lived in poverty. Seventy-three percent had a gross monthly income at or below 100% of the poverty level.
• Eighty-six percent of all SNAP benefits go to households with gross monthly income at or below the poverty level and 51% of benefits go to those with gross monthly income at or below 50% of the poverty level.
• The average SNAP household received a monthly benefit of $332. That’s $177 per person based on the average SNAP household size of 1.9 people.
• Households with children received a larger average monthly benefit of $574 due to the larger average household size of 3.3 people. The average benefit per person for these households was $174.

Households that have income and/or assets have to meet the following requirements:

Gross monthly income — that is, household income before any of the program’s deductions are applied — generally must be at or below 130 percent of the poverty line. For a family of three, the poverty line used to calculate SNAP benefits in federal fiscal year 2026 is $2,221 a month. Thus, 130 percent of the poverty line for a three-person family is $2,888 a month, or about $34,656 a year. The poverty level is higher for bigger families and lower for smaller families.

Net income, or household income after deductions are applied, must be at or below the poverty line.

Assets must fall below certain limits: households without a member who is aged 60 or older or has a disability must have assets of $3,000 or less; households with such a member must have assets of $4,500 or less.


I'm going to take the example of a family of three whose parent(s) work and have an income of $34,656 a year and then deduct expenses based on what the averages are in my area.

$2,888 per month Income.

$1,200 rent (Two bedroom home or apartment)
$ 689 Tax witholdings ($346 federal @ a 12% tax rate, $220 FICA, $123 State)
$ 150 Household expenses (Car maintenance, cleaning products, toiletries, clothing, school supplies, etc.)
$ 133 Electric
$ 88 Gas for home heating and cooking
$ 80 Gas for car
$ 81 Water/Sewer/Trash
$ 60 Phone
$ 58 Car insurance (One car, liability only with no points on driving record)
$ 30 Basic internet

$2,569 Total monthly expenses

This leaves $319 a month for food if everything runs smoothly for this family; meaning no emergencies, appliance/car breakdowns, etc.

$319 a month comes to just $10.63 a day for this family of three to eat on. That is less than half of what is needed to have a basic nutritious diet according to the USDA Thrifty Food Plan which would require more than $700 a month.

Around 72% of eligible working-poor households receive SNAP benefits, so when you hear that 42 million people in the US receive SNAP, the actual number would be even higher if everyone eligible to receive them would apply for benefits.

As for the number of people receiving SNAP increasing, the numbers were higher between 2011 and 2017 than they are today. 2013 was the year with the highest number of people receiving SNAP, when an average of 47.6 million people received benefits every month.

dogs4thewin said:

what about the fact that the N in SNAP says otherwise? It was not meant to help people buy junk food.

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I don’t care. Worry about what you buy for your household. Don’t worry about what I buy for mine. Why is it any of your business what I buy for groceries?