Living on Food Stamps for a week
 

Newark Mayor Booker To Live On Food Stamps For A Week Beginning Tuesday « CBS New York

This is a link to a story on Mayor Booker of Newark NJ who has taken a pledge to live on food stamps for a week starting this Tuesday. His allowance for each meal is $1.40.

It may be interesting to those of us who are so fortunate to follow and see how he does and what he can afford to eat for that sort of money. This is certainly the right time of the year to find out how the other half lives and to remember that our local food pantries help to feed so many people in need!

The other HALF should not be on Food Stamps. Actually it is about 50 Million people growing way out of control this last 4 years.,

Isn't the idea of food stamps to "supplement" your food budget?

I feel for the people truly in need and would do anything to help them. But I don't feel for able bodied people who can work and who live off the system.

Now it takes the Wisdom of Solomon to figure out what to do about this problem, but it is a problem.

And I guess the term " truly in need" is different for many of us. I didn't answer on another thread about my memory of early Christmas. I remember getting one gift and that gift was a coloring book and crayons that had some pictures colored in it. I guess we were poor, but it never seemed we were. we had a home and food and heat and love. Never had steak until I was out of the house. We are colored by our own experiences.

I don't know the answer but I feel bad for folks who truly need help and mad at folks too lazy to do for themselves.

:popcorn:

Couldn't agree more. And I think that is villagerjack meant when he said that HALF the people shouldn't be on them.
When he states that 50 million people are receiving Food Stamps, I don't know if that means there are 50 million people including family members of those who receive them or 50 million families. Either way, it represents a very large number of people. 50 million is approximately one out of every six of us. I have a hard time believing that one sixth of the people in this country need food stamps.

That's a step in the right direction to be able to walk in others' shoes. I believe this is a significant thing for a politician to do. Not sure how much though he can really understand how the other people live just from a week on food stamps knowing that he can get off them with a phone call or in just a few days time.

Like I said, food stamps are supposed to supplement your food budget not be your entire budget for food for a month.

This sounds like the same argument that people make when they say that you can't feed a family of four on minimum wage.

Are there people on food stamps and other forms of welfare who job the system? Absolutely! Are there millionaires and billionaires who benefit from tax loopholes, offshore accounts, subsidies, and other government gifts? Absolutely! It seems to be the nature of many people to take whatever they can get, no matter what their economic status. By the way, which of the two categories I mention cost the American system the most?

Do you try to find exemptions when you fill out your taxes?

My dear newly graduated and happily employed granddaughter called to say that she had to work three days of three weekends this month and that she would be paid time and a half and that she would have to pay 25% to the government. I said ...are you bragging or complaining? Be grateful that you have a job and that you can pay taxes. However.... she is beginning to shift over a bit in her philosophy.

At least the CEOs are employed and heavens they may have worked a lot and made a lot of sacrifices to get to that position. Nothing...NOTHING is either completely right or wrong.

But if you are lazy you are lazy.

I do take the exemptions I am due, but I still pay a far higher percentage of my income in taxes than most wealthy people do.

Lazy and greedy are both character flaws IMO.

I have lived on a food stamp budget when my husband was in college. However we had NO food stamp programs then. It was our money that we scraped up for food. We didn't have a telephone, cable TV, cell phone, computer and often walked because we didn't have gas money for our one car. We lived in a two room house which was NOT government subsidized. Oh, and there were NO student loans or Pell grants then. We didn't download to our iPod, go to movies or much of anything else. Did we think someone was supposed to provide these things for us? NO! Did we work hard and become successful? YES!

Good for you! We did pretty much the same when I was in college and when I was teaching and coaching we actually qualified for (but did not use) reduced lunches for our kids. I know a lady who my wife and I have helped from time to time, who is on food stamps. She has MS which requires expensive treatments on a regular basis, she tries to work, but because of her condition often misses and thus has been fired. Her husband works hard but makes little more than minimum wage and they are raising his three kids from a previous marriage. Her daughter, who we gave a laptop computer, was last year valedictorian at the local high school and is currently working and making all As at a community college where she is on scholarship. Another typical welfare family I guess.

I hope that they are a typical welfare family but many are not. I have a niece who won't take a promotion because she will lose food stamps. She and her husband go to college, have 3 children. They lived in subsidized housing, get grants for school, receive food stamps and pay no income tax. They do however get back 12,000 dollars per year in earned income credit. They have been doing this for 9 years now. They have 2 cars, 3 TVs, cable TV, iPhones, and the children have all of the computer game players. Last year they used the money they got back from IRS to take a cruise.

How do we sort out these people? I don't know but it is becoming a larger problem each year.

Not sure if it is that easy. Other things might come into play for those not working. The US has a very good governmental system compared with many other governments around the world but it is very far from perfect. We still have innocent people in prison for instance for any number of reasons some of these though are the corruption, incompetence and/or laziness of people who are working. We may have people who are not mentally ill stuck in mental hospitals for the same reason as the innocent in prison.

Other countries probably have many more innocent people in prison and/or "troublemakers" for the powerful in mental hospitals where they do not belong.