Hipsters on Food Stamps

[Guest SUNTZU]

Hipsters on food stamps - Pinched: Tales from an Economic Downturn - Salon.com

In the John Waters-esque sector of northwest Baltimore -- equal parts kitschy, sketchy, artsy and weird -- Gerry Mak and Sarah Magida sauntered through a small ethnic market stocked with Japanese eggplant, mint chutney and fresh turmeric. After gathering ingredients for that evening's dinner, they walked to the cash register and awaited their moments of truth.

"I have $80 bucks left!" Magida said. "I'm so happy!"

"I have $12," Mak said with a frown.

The two friends weren't tabulating the cash in their wallets but what remained of the monthly allotment on their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program debit cards, the official new term for what are still known colloquially as food stamps.

Magida, a 30-year-old art school graduate, had been installing museum exhibits for a living until the recession caused arts funding -- and her usual gigs -- to dry up. She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she's used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away.

"I'm eating better than I ever have before," she told me. "Even with food stamps, it's not like I'm living large, but it helps."

Mak, 31, grew up in Westchester, graduated from the University of Chicago and toiled in publishing in New York during his 20s before moving to Baltimore last year with a meager part-time blogging job and prospects for little else. About half of his friends in Baltimore have been getting food stamps since the economy toppled, so he decided to give it a try; to his delight, he qualified for $200 a month.

"I'm sort of a foodie, and I'm not going to do the 'living off ramen' thing," he said, fondly remembering a recent meal he'd prepared of roasted rabbit with butter, tarragon and sweet potatoes. "I used to think that you could only get processed food and government cheese on food stamps, but it's great that you can get anything."

Think of it as the effect of a grinding recession crossed with the epicurean tastes of young people as obsessed with food as previous generations were with music and sex. Faced with lingering unemployment, 20- and 30-somethings with college degrees and foodie standards are shaking off old taboos about who should get government assistance and discovering that government benefits can indeed be used for just about anything edible, including wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese.

Food policy experts and human resource administrators are quick to point out that the overwhelming majority of the record 38 million Americans now using food stamps are their traditional recipients: the working poor, the elderly and single parents on welfare.

But they also note that recent changes made to the program as part of last year's stimulus package, which relaxed the restrictions on able-bodied adults without dependents to collect food stamps, have made some young singles around the country eligible for the first time.

"There are many 20-somethings from educated families who go through a period of unemployment and live very frugally, maybe even technically in poverty, who now qualify," said Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University who has written extensively about food stamp usage and policy.

MORE AT LINK...

Be sure to read the "A Hipster on Food Stamps Responds" article.

http://www.salon.com/life/pinched/2010/03/17/hipster_food_stamp_response/index.html/index.html

Basically, you're racist and they can't afford healthcare so the government needs to help.

[Smith]

".... and I'm not going to do the Ramen thing!" How beneath him. The thought process is so perverted I don't know where to start.

[Guest HvyMtl]

[insert Face Palm Picture Here]

Sigh. This is so wrong on so many levels.

[mikegideon]

".... and I'm not going to do the Ramen thing!" How beneath him. The thought process is so perverted I don't know where to start.

I tend to agree, but if they're spending their $150-200/mo at Whole Foods (we call it Whole Paycheck), they're not eating alot.

[Mike.357]

I would not be surpised in the least if they sold off some of their "food stamps" for cash to buy alcohol, cigarettes and other whatnots.

[JAB]

Man, this really burns me. I am in my late thirties. I have a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Anthropology from UTK. Yeah, I was young at the time, was the first person from my family to ever go to college and wanted to do something I enjoyed. Well, you might imagine that there aren't a lot of jobs in those specific fields in the Knoxville area. So, have I said, "Well, there are no jobs in my field so I guess I'll just have to go on food stamps?" No. I found jobs in other fields.

My wife and I both recently got Masters Degrees in Human Resource Development (also known as Human Performance Improvement) which was a pretty strong field until the economy tanked - training and development is among the first departments that most companies cut. So, have we both just thrown our hands up and gone on the dole because there are no jobs in our field, locally, that pay enough? No, we kept the jobs we had.

I am a bit of a 'foodie', myself. I don't shop at Earth Fare or Fresh Market all that often, though - especially since the downturn in the economy and the seeming rise in everything but my paycheck.

These people are supposedly 'creative'. If they were really that creative they could make 'interesting' meals out of ingredients from the regular grocery, not spend their foodstamps on ingredients that many of us can't regularly afford despite working full-time jobs. Of course, if they were really all that damned creative then they'd find ways to apply their knowledge, skills and creativity to jobs in other fields. Heck, even if it sounded like they were trying to find jobs in other fields but had been unsuccessful and so were getting food stamps it wouldn't bother me - but it sounds like they just decided that anything other than what they want to do is out of the question.

People who truly need assistance should be able to get it. People who apparently aren't even looking for work are a different story.

I would not be surpised in the least if they sold off some of their "food stamps" for cash to buy alcohol, cigarettes and other whatnots.

Way back in High School and the first couple years of college, when I worked at a grocery store, they were still issuing paper food stamps (I always thought they looked like Monopoly money.) I remember one woman, in particular, who had five or six kids. She'd come in once or twice a week and she'd give every one of those kids a $1 food stamp and let them buy one piece of candy, each. As $1 was the lowest denomination for food stamps, they each got back coins (real money) as change. Their mother would then collect up all the change from them and use it to pay for her cigarettes and/or beer.

Edited April 1, 2010 by JAB

[Guest jackdm3]

If this type is like the Memphis type, they won't be using them for long-lasting deoderant.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

I saw someone come in Kroger, get in the Hoveround vehicle and cart back to the cash register a case of bottled water and pays with food stamps. I broke out laughing right next to her. The cashier looked puzzled. When the woman left the line, got out of the Hoveround and walked out with the case of water, the cashier finally got it.

[Guest jackdm3]

Didn't know stamps were tied to disability. I'm missing out.

[macville]

This really pisses me off. My wife works her butt off to cut coupons and shop sales so we can save alot of money. Here are a bunch of people who can't adapt to the changing world and they just expect to live off ME because I pay my taxes on everything.

You know, until about a hundred years ago, these kind of people just died because they were too lazy to work. Now they live to a fat old age. The worse part is people who truly need the help fall into the cracks because jerks like these people exploit the system.

Don't we have some MRE's from WWII we can give these people?

Matthew

[Guest SUNTZU]

This really pisses me off. My wife works her butt off to cut coupons and shop sales so we can save alot of money. Here are a bunch of people who can't adapt to the changing world and they just expect to live off ME because I pay my taxes on everything.

You know, until about a hundred years ago, these kind of people just died because they were too lazy to work. Now they live to a fat old age. The worse part is people who truly need the help fall into the cracks because jerks like these people exploit the system.

Don't we have some MRE's from WWII we can give these people?

Matthew

And they vote.

[Hgunner]

And they vote.

And there in lies a major problem.

[Guest Synghyn]

No kidding, that is the problem, the whole of the problem.

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.", - Alexis de Tocqueville (in "Democracy in America"

The liberals have figured out that if the pander to the lowest common denominator, they win not only votes, but more and more votes as more and more people grow up (or immigrate, legally or not) with these welfare bribes in place. The nanny state doesn't help us, it weakens us, and worsens with every generation.

For my whole life, unemployment insurance has been frowned on with my family and the people I grew up with. Unemployment, food stamps, welfare were a sometimes needed, but always at best embarrassing predicament to find yourself in. Now they exist, and I'd even say that is a good thing to an extent, but in my opinion it stops being a good thing as soon as people stop being embarrassed to be on the dole. If you lose your job and need to feed your family, you do what you have to do, you take the handout. But you should be not ashamed necessarily, some times circumstances are what they are, but embarrassed is a perfectly normal reaction to me. I've only been unfortunate enough to need unemployment for a short period, a long time ago. But I busted my butt finding a new job, and took a crappy one just so I could keep looking myself in the face in the mirror every morning. That keeps folks from living on the dole, and again, it's only my opinion, but the way it should be. If your really screwed, well that's why you've payed for unemployment insurance, so you take what you need to take, but that's it.

I'm gonna get on a real ramble, so I'm just gonna stop there, sorry about the mini rant.

On a brighter note, another article from the same website. If ya can't laugh at this jackass, hang it up, yer sense of humor is gone!

Does air conditioning make people vote Republican?

I blame A/C for the decline of the labor movement and for decimating the Midwest's population. Mostly, I blame it for the election of George W. Bush.

By Edward McClelland

Does air conditioning make people vote Republican? - Energy - Salon.com

Later y'all

Syn

[Hgunner]

I didn't see any complaint about central heat....

[mcurrier]

Don't we have some MRE's from WWII we can give these people?

Matthew

Some hardtack from the civil war maybe.

[RobD]

Wow, what a friggen joke. My wife and I both work full time to feed, cloth, and shelter our 3 kids. We have had some amazingly tough times before, and have allways busted our butts to get out of them. We cut coupons, very very rarley go out to eat and enjoy ourselves and make the best fun we can.

I hear about people like this and it makes my blood boil.

Makes me wanna shake these people and yell "Get a friggen Job Losser"

[Guest SUNTZU]

Wow, what a friggen joke. My wife and I both work full time to feed, cloth, and shelter our 3 kids. We have had some amazingly tough times before, and have allways busted our butts to get out of them. We cut coupons, very very rarley go out to eat and enjoy ourselves and make the best fun we can.

I hear about people like this and it makes my blood boil.

Makes me wanna shake these people and yell "Get a friggen Job Losser"

Nice avatar.

[Guest mikedwood]

And they vote.

And breed....

[Guest Catdaddy]

And we pay for their kids and/or abortions, too.

[jonlisha]

I lived on food-stamps once, we didn't abuse the system, we made big pots of homemade chili and ate countless packs of noodles, we never bough name brand anything it was always save or best value.

In my opinion food-stamps should be limited to certain types of food, just the basics like meat, milk, bread, fruits/veggies, and a few snack foods, everything else should be payed for out of your pocket. See i have met people here in east TN that will spend $100 on food from food-stamps, then give it to someone for about $60 cash or $80 worth in pills/weed/meth/alcohol.

You know we would save the taxpayers so much money if to get food-stamps you had to have a mandatory drug test every 6 months, imagine the good it would do.

[strickj]

I lived on food-stamps once, we didn't abuse the system, we made big pots of homemade chili and ate countless packs of noodles, we never bough name brand anything it was always save or best value.

In my opinion food-stamps should be limited to certain types of food, just the basics like meat, milk, bread, fruits/veggies, and a few snack foods, everything else should be payed for out of your pocket. See i have met people here in east TN that will spend $100 on food from food-stamps, then give it to someone for about $60 cash or $80 worth in pills/weed/meth/alcohol.

You know we would save the taxpayers so much money if to get food-stamps you had to have a mandatory drug test every 6 months, imagine the good it would do.

There are some restrictions on them.

Don't remember all of them since it's been years since I worked grocery, but I do remember deli foods and pre-prep foods are not allowed.

That said, I also remember seeing people get 'cash back' from their cards.

Not change, but an actual cash allowance.

Now, the ironic thing is the ones that would get 'cash back' would always use the money to buy deli cooked food and beer.... then drive home in their Cadi with leather

[R1100R]

Wait till you go to a Commissary (Grocery Store) on a military installation and the

first thing you see is a WIC or Food Stamp Office with the young soldiers going in

with their families.

That when stories like the OP's really piss me off.

[Guest SUNTZU]

I've seen people take steak orders from bar patrons and would buy the meat on their food stamps and then sell them for half the sticker value in cash to the people who ordered it.

[StPatrick]

I deleted the post... lets not quote it. - Daniel

[sOAPBOX]

Grunt,

TGO is a searchable forum for non-members (meaning everyone with internet access, such as Adam Dread or the VPC). I think many would agree with you that public entitlements are out of hand, but your comments above paint us all (members of a pro-gun pro-2A site) with a very broad brush. Recent events with the tea-partiers and the bile slung their way via the MSM illustrates the reason we shouldn't make such comments.

I'm no moderator, and can't tell you what you can or can not say here. I'd just ask you, as a fellow member, to remember that any comments posted on this site can and will be used against gun owners if they become politically useful to the opposition.

Thanks!

Patrick

[/sOAPBOX]

Edited April 3, 2010 by Daniel

[macville]

Thinking about this more today, what really irks me is that these people are not "uneducated" (no college education) like miners or many factory workers. These are people who went to college, got a degree (not necessarily in something that was worthwhile though), and now are leeching off me. These are people who SHOULD be smart enough to figure out how to make a living-even if it's not in their "field of study." I know many people who have VERY usable degrees (not art history and other crap like that) who can't find a job, so they have gotten jobs in other fields for the time being. And hey, if you can't find a job in anything where you currently live...MOVE!

Americans has lost their entire ingenuity in regards to making opportunities for themselves. Oh I lost my job? Well, I'll just collect gov money (MY MONEY) until the market comes back and companies rehire. The problem is....these companies aren't rehiring! The jobs lost are gone. If people think they are going to come back, they are in a dream world. But that's the view from people who don't run a business and understand what it takes to build such a business up and keep it running. We need to encourage people to either start their gray matter or leave us. This country WAS great at one point because people worked hard for their dreams and made things happen without waiting for others to do it for them.

Matthew