New War 22 Billion yr, meanwhile $8.7 B Cut in Food Stamps causes Families to Lose $90 per month

[davidthegnome]

44. Something else to consider

The little store where I work stopped taking EBT cards (food stamps) on the 20th of this month. Apparently, the federal government is going to be charging about six hundred bucks a year to use the machines that swipe them. A good number of stores in the area would end up paying more to use the machines than what they get in profit, actually losing money on it. So a lot of the local ones will not be taking them anymore. This means, basically, that poor people will have to drive another ten miles or more to get into a bigger town with a bigger store. So they'll be spending more for gas (the ones that have cars and actually CAN make that trip) and now losing food money on top of that as well.

You're absolutely right that this is completely unacceptable. Particularly when you consider the price tag for this war effort, or the price of updating our nuclear weapons, building new ones and so on... a trillion here, a trillion there, eh, no big deal.

We can write our congress people, our senators, the white house... but ultimately, I don't think we'll have much success there.

One thing I've thought about though, is that if enough of us Americans who give a damn created our own fund, unattached to the government, and used it to fund our own food stamps program? Perhaps even build grocery stores with healthier food and drink, that, basically, if people earned under a certain level of income, they could go in and get food on credit, or buy it for a more reasonable price, or sign up for a program that would use donor money to buy them their groceries.

If the government is going to fuck us... well, maybe there's something we can do ourselves. Just a thought.