"As a practicing Catholic, my faith informs this issue," claims Cartwright. "I am guided by a moral vision of how we must treat the most vulnerable members of our society."
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Can You Eat on $4.50 a Day?
"As a practicing Catholic, my faith informs this issue," claims Cartwright. "I am guided by a moral vision of how we must treat the most vulnerable members of our society."
19 comments:
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Whether a SNAP recipient or not, a lot of people do eat on $4.50 a day, or even less. Doing it right involves a lot of pasta, rice, beans, and other inexpensive staples, plus cooking them all at home. And thinking/planning ahead. It's not fun, but it's doable.
ReplyDeleteThe alternative is eating unhealthy, usually high-fructose corn syrup laden, processed crap and running short before month's end. Which far too many people unfortunately do.
I hope Cartwright follows through with this. It's quite a lesson of what many of his constituents deal with on a daily basis.
I have a friend who regularly fed both herself and her four children on $5 per day. It involved lots of rice and making everything from scratch.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Mr Cartwright could try living on the minimum wage next. Then he could ask his fellow house members to do the same. Then give up their lavish perks, pay and pensions and live like the rest of us in the private sector. Then they could turn those savings over to the most vulnerable.
ReplyDeleteAlways easy to be generous with other peoples money
Scott Armstrong
Bernie,I have my mothers "War Ration Book Four.from The U.S.Office of Price Administration . The reason I have it is because my Grandparents did not consume everything they could have during WW2. I see FRAUD on a regular day. I mean what SNAP will pay for. Example,Last summer at Walmart food store Horry County S.C I observed two over weight consumers filling two basket pushcarts with stuff I would not even consider spending on my family ,box foods, ready made frozen ice drinks crab legs and out comes the SNAP CARD and into a GMC Yukon XL that costs half as much as we paid for our house on Cattell Street!Now what was going on here? I preach to my own family that bottled water costs me $762.00 a year at the present rate after tax income and this is why the poor stay poor. Rules are needed in this program.
ReplyDeleteperhaps what is needed is a new jobs program - have a different indigent person act as caddy for the President each time he plays golf - thousands of new jobs created.
ReplyDeleteThe real challenge would be "Can you eat HEALTHY on $4.50 a day?"
ReplyDeleteYet, his Catholic faith says it's cool to abort the most vulnerable and experiment on their remains. What an evil ghoul.
ReplyDeleteMatt knows the best poverty program is to head off the little bastards of our over-breeding communities before they can get hungry. Get rid of kids you can't feed for $4.50 a day. Problem solved.
ReplyDeleteThe SNAP pro9gram is broken. It would honestly be cheaper for the government to contract with stores for an approved food list of basic staples and nothing else.
ReplyDeleteAs long as it is easy and no hassle, why get off?
And I am a liber5al Democrat. Yes, please, jobs too!
SNAP is stimulus and stimulus creates jobs. Problem solved.
ReplyDeleteNancy Pelosi
For those commenting about bad food choices, Walmart, etc, I suggest checking out "Food Stamps: Follow the Money". This online investigative journalism effort is rather eyeopening.
ReplyDelete"The point here is that banks that administer SNAP have a vested interest in keeping SNAP enrollments high and makers of junk foods have a vested interest in making sure that there are no restrictions on use of benefits."
Overview: http://www.foodpolitics.com/2012/06/who-benefits-most-from-food-stamps-follow-the-money/
Full text: http://www.eatdrinkpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/FoodStampsFollowtheMoneySimon.pdf
I agree there are recipients that push the limits of others' patience and then some. But the big "winners" in the food stamp program are huge corporations who lobby and reap huge welfare benefits (while outsourcing good paying jobs and shirking paying taxes, no less) on the taxpayers dime much, much more so than the ppl who eat junk.
Yes, I agree with Poster 4;52- However may I add that the junk food kills of the people that consume it at a high rate and the intermediary fix costs the tax payers again, MILLIONS One 18 yr. old over weight female of a disadvantaged background costs the tax payers over 1 million dollars before she dies off of diabetic and heart problems. The way to stay this revolving development would be education with personal economic strings attached. Now think about how any many of these people in this country fit this description.
ReplyDeletefrigging catholics - richest church in the world - if they really cared they would feed the poor and give them birth control
ReplyDeleteOr let people take personal responsibility for themselves.
ReplyDeleteYes, we all want a safety net to help people through temporary rough spots. But the safety net has become a hammock.
We feed "the poor" to the point that they have an obesity problem, then give free health care so they don't have to face the consequences of their decisions.
But all the government "help" they are given actually ends up enslaving them to a life of dependency. And all supposedly in the name of compassion.
The 8:59 comment was in response to 7:05, not the bigot at 8:58
ReplyDeleteHouse votes to cut SNAP 2B dollars.
ReplyDeleteI would hope that somebody in the agriculture or nutrition sections of the hierarchy would help with tech sector .Now ,I don't pretend to know anything about tech sector but if Zappo's can get me sneakers here from Vegas UPS in 20 hrs., somebody can control what is fed to America's poor children with what is allowed with bar codes,and incentives.Target; Sugar and fat foods ,any bar code with 45% plus fat factor, cholesterol,ect.-Somebody at NIKE ---Note; no over weights at NIKE and they play at work as a work out--they could get it right and market it properly ,making 'COOL " TO BE HEALTHY ,I do not think any one on this site would ever want any child to not have enough to eat. The trick is to get the mothers of those children to understand that proper foods are more important than lottery tickets , Newports or big screens . A PRIVATE MARKET can fix it. Not Washington not Harrisburg.
ReplyDeleteEating healthy and responsibly on 4.50 a day is a Pipe Dream!!!!
ReplyDelete@Anon 4:33PM
ReplyDeleteSorry, you're WRONG. I do it, every single day. For those hit hard by the recession, it's a necessity.
But it does take some education, dedication, and the ability to actually cook. And those things are sadly lacking in a whole lot of people it seems.
BTW, for those that say they don't have "time" to cook: You do. You just need to learn how. A lot of perfectly delicious and nutritious stuff can be whipped out in less actual time than your (unhealthy) microwave takes to ruin food. Toss some rice, veggies, and some beans or chicken in a oven-proof dish, season it, cover, throw it in the oven or toaster oven, and it's dinner. Tons of time to do other things while it's cooking for that 45 minutes or so.
If you can't think ahead or wait 45 minutes to eat good food on the cheap, well, I can't help you and it says a lot about what the real problem is.