Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

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temporal1
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by temporal1 »

Josh wrote:But since you love attacking whatever I say with [CITATION NEEDED], here’s one of many examples from a simple Google search:

https://lawstreetmedia.com/issues/law-a ... od-stamps/

They cite $50-$60 per $100 of face value.
street values, being illegal, are not documented in the same ways, for example, mike’s store is. however, your estimated numbers align with everything i’ve read -over-the-years- spanning lots of sources, on cashing out, or trading, benefits. it’s not a gov regulated practice. :P i’m thankful, no one has asked me, personally, to buy their benefits. it could happen.

one of the problems with today’s lawmakers is: they graduate from law school, then never leave their office cubicles. they end up passing some very strange laws.

evidently, any effective changes to SNAP/EBT, will need lots of input from the street level.
users, abusers, grocers, vendors, et al. this is not a problem that will be improved by paper-pushers.
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Most or all of this drama, humiliation, wasted taxpayer money could be spared -
with even modest attempt at presenting balanced facts from the start.


”We’re all just walking each other home.”
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by Bootstrap »

For the record, here is my first post in the thread. I think this is where I started out.
Bootstrap wrote:I think the arguments on both sides make sense, but it's easy for me to see this working really well or going badly wrong. A lot depends on how it's administered, and I agree with Ken that it's really important to build in protections so that the program really does get poor people the food they need and will actually eat.

I really wish the federal government would try this kind of thing as an experiment in one part of the country and see how it works out before replacing what we have entirely. Yes, I know this is a fantasy, neither party ever suggests this approach, but it's precisely the kind of thing we would have done in private industry back when I was involved in private industry. If it goes badly wrong, that will hurt a lot of people. If it's successful, it could help a lot of people.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by Bootstrap »

Josh wrote:But since you love attacking whatever I say with [CITATION NEEDED], here’s one of many examples from a simple Google search:

https://lawstreetmedia.com/issues/law-a ... od-stamps/

They cite $50-$60 per $100 of face value.


The reason that this matters to me is that I change my mind in light of facts, but I have to establish the facts first. It's not enough to hear a statistical claim, since 97.3462 percent of statistical claims on the Internet are made up on the spot.

I couldn't find that in the article. What I did find was this, which says it's a terrible idea to sell your food stamps because you would only get $50-$50 dollars if you sell $100 in food stamps.
For many, the main concern with the sale of food stamps is not that people are selling them but how much they are getting. Selling your food stamps is a terrible deal. The going rate for $100 worth of food stamps is between $50-60 dollars depending on what part of the country you are in. By selling your food stamps, you’re losing about half of your purchasing power. In some places, if the store owner is particularly friendly, it can be a little better, but generally, sellers take a loss.
Did I miss something? Was there another part of the article that said this? This is the closest I saw to an estimate of how widespread this is, but it wasn't specific enough to be able to verify your claim:
In 2012, the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General, which is in charge of prosecuting SNAP fraud, devoted half of its resources to combating SNAP fraud and abuse. This includes both fraud in collecting benefits when you shouldn’t as well as “trafficking,” the official term for selling food stamps. That year it investigated 15,000 stores and did 4,500 sting operations. Out of the 15,000 stores, 2,100 of were either shut down or sanctioned, meaning that 14 percent of the stores were punished. The 4,500 undercover investigations resulted in 342 convictions, about 0.75 percent.
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Josh
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by Josh »

Boot, what’s your point?

Everybody who knows anything about ebt knows you get 50 cents on the dollar. I can find more articles to cut and paste to prove it, but again, what’s the point, other than to engage in a personal attack against me?
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Wayne in Maine
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by Wayne in Maine »

Josh wrote:
Wayne in Maine wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:
We already do when it comes to alcohol.
The trick is to sell your food stamps (or get cash with your card) and buy your alcohol or cigarettes with cash.
Runs about 50¢ on the dollar.
That was the going rate for my neighbors (sellers and buyers) at the local "market" when I lived in Roxbury Mass. I doubt that rates have changed that much.
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by Wayne in Maine »

One small store in Portland Maine defrauded the government of $1.4 million dollars exchanging cash for SNAP transactions last year. I believe that by giving people food directly a lot of this fraud can be avoided.

Some Christian folks are critical of the idea of giving money to panhandlers, and suggest instead that you give food so that the panhandler won't spend the money on drugs or alcohol. Giving to whoever asks expecting nothing in return is a good practice for followers of Jesus, but it is a policy that is likely to lead to fraud and one I would not recommend to a secular government.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by Bootstrap »

Josh wrote:Boot, what’s your point?

Everybody who knows anything about ebt knows you get 50 cents on the dollar. I can find more articles to cut and paste to prove it, but again, what’s the point, other than to engage in a personal attack against me?
I'm mostly gathering data - what do we know about how much waste there is, and how sure are we that we know it? I thought you had claimed that 50-60% of SNAP spending is fraudulent and goes to alcohol and such, and that's not what this article is saying. I'm hearing a few people guess that it must be that high, but I suspect that's based on very little data.

Or perhaps I misunderstood what your were claiming? Were you simply saying that those people who do sell EBTs only get 50-60% of the face value? I find that less surprising, but I would have no idea what that value is, it's outside of my experience.

I don't usually know what I think until I start thinking, gathering data, understanding the lay of the land. Trying to find reliable statistics is not the same thing as attacking you. I'm not sure how else to try to understand what's going on.
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by RZehr »

Bootstrap wrote: I thought you had claimed that 50-60% of SNAP spending is fraudulent and goes to alcohol and such, and that's not what this article is saying. I'm hearing a few people guess that it must be that high, but I suspect that's based on very little data.
Who is saying that? I think what people are saying - at least me- is that the exchange rate is 50%. If person A has a card with $100 dollars on it they can sell it to person B for $50 cash.
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by GaryK »

RZehr wrote:
Bootstrap wrote: I thought you had claimed that 50-60% of SNAP spending is fraudulent and goes to alcohol and such, and that's not what this article is saying. I'm hearing a few people guess that it must be that high, but I suspect that's based on very little data.
Who is saying that? I think what people are saying - at least me- is that the exchange rate is 50%. If person A has a card with $100 dollars on it they can sell it to person B for $50 cash.
That's what I understood as well that Josh was saying. 50 cents on the dollar is what I've heard around our area.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump Budget Swaps Food Stamps for '100 Percent American' Food

Post by Bootstrap »

RZehr wrote:
Bootstrap wrote: I thought you had claimed that 50-60% of SNAP spending is fraudulent and goes to alcohol and such, and that's not what this article is saying. I'm hearing a few people guess that it must be that high, but I suspect that's based on very little data.
Who is saying that? I think what people are saying - at least me- is that the exchange rate is 50%. If person A has a card with $100 dollars on it they can sell it to person B for $50 cash.
OK, I had clearly misunderstood what people were saying. Sorry about that!
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