Why are food stamps such a bad thing?

[SheilaT]

17. I'm old enough to remember before food stamps, when

there was a program to get surplus food to needy families. I think it was originally designed to take care of certain specific food surpluses. At some point someone must have said, "Wouldn't it be better to simply give poor people a kind of stipend they can spend pretty much as they like?" and so food stamps were born.

I'm not sure if it started with Reagan, but he was certainly the champion of the notion that most who get welfare or food stamps are undeserving cheaters. Most undeserving cheaters I've known are much higher up on the food chain. People who retire from the military, then get a government job they retire from, making full use of every benefit that goes with those and look down their noses at the "undeserving poor."

I've been fairly poor a couple of times in my life. Never homeless, never seriously hungry. But poor enough that I constantly marvel at how much I have. I have often, even in relatively affluent times, thought about what I'd do if my personal financial situation crashed. (One is that I'd get a job at a restaurant or a fast food place to get at least one meal a day.) I'm where I am NOT because I'm a better person, but because I've gotten breaks, even had advantages, that many others don't.