Why is it so hard for the left to look around and see we have it pretty good here?
(media.patriots.win)
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Here's a perspective from someone who was dirt poor. What you said is a misconception. The poor are eating the wrong things because food stamps are finite and those wrong things lead to terrible places, including obesity.
You get around $200 for a family of three per month (obviously varied by area). A current food budget for a healthy family of three is around $200 per week. This means you cover the staples - proteins and fresh vegetables for most meals with some carbs scattered to and fro.
To get away with most of your groceries for the month costing 1/4 of that, you are eating almost exclusively carbs. Beans, noodles, and that sort of thing. With that sort of diet comes poor nutrition and further binging on carbs to try and feed the persistent internal knock from the body asking for proper vitamins and minerals.
Poor people are fat because the government decided to pay them just enough to buy the worst possible foods - foods that leave them in a permanent state of poor nutrition with the highest energy content possible.
They make poor choices with the money they’re given. I used to deliver pizzas and the first weekend of every month, after the food stamps were sold to others for cash, we spent so much time delivering $50+ orders to the hood.
I also worked at a liquor store near there and let me tell you the amount spent on hennessey and newports was astounding.
Government assistance is wasted and exploited on a massive scale by nearly every recipient
That people make poor choices I don't dispute, but they also don't have the option to make better choices. The choice is "terrible or shitty". Not "terrible and help you get back on your feet."
The reason the government wastes so much money is because the government designed the system specifically to keep poor people just fucked enough that they give up and vote in their new master, same as the old master.
Back when I was poor, the first bit of advice I was always given was to "stop going to Starbucks everyday". The first time I was given that particular pearl of wisdom, I'd had Starbucks precisely once in my life and some coworker had brought it to work.
You want people to not be poor but fat? Provide useful tools to get back on their feet that isn't guided by government and industry to keep a perpetual anf viable underclass of serfs.
I don't accept that the government is responsible for feeding the poor in the first place. So to place the responsibility on the government for these people eating poorly seems very misplaced to say the least. If they are eating poorly it's because they aren't paying for better food themselves.
Next, People in other parts of the world live on less than $2 per day. Rice, beans, ramen, etc... is really cheap. Frozen vegetables are also very cheap.
It's not just a matter of money because if it was you could eat healthy for very cheap.
It really comes down to self control and convenience. Some people are more likely to take the instant gratification of junk food that tastes better than the more healthy bowl of boiled beans they have to make themselves. And I think people who already have that mindset are more likely to make the choices that keep them in poverty.
On the flip side someone who thinks long term, has self control, and will deny themselves instant gratification is the kind of person more likely to eat healthy, and also the kind of person more likely to escape poverty through those habits.
I don't support welfare, either. But blaming the individual for the government engineering them into sheeple is a bit like saying "I don't vote because it doesn't matter" followed by "It's not my fault because I didn't vote".
Your government is, on the one hand, teaching people exclusively how to fail through public education and on the other, giving them just enough money to fail with and need more reliance on the state. Do some escape this? Yes, through family support and dedication. Oh, right.... Guess what those third and fourth hands have been sabotaging for the last 80 years?
Inaction led here and now constant action with actual understanding of the root causes is required to get us back to where we came from and not "well, they are just stupid people not willing to do anything, so we should do nothing."
As for the junk food versus healthy food, that's middle class - maybe "lower" middle class. I'm talking the actual poor.
I guess I'm just not understanding how if you fail it's the governments fault and not your own.
It seems like you're saying people have no agency and no responsibility for their own situation, their own opportunities, and even their own diet, and it all just boils down to they fail or succeed based solely on what the government gives them, or doesn't give them.
Sorry, but you haven't demonstrated the assertion that the government is responsible for all of the bad outcomes in people's lives.
My position is that the people themselves are responsible for improving their own lot in life, and whether or not you need or receive welfare in the process should not be a deciding factor for someone who's success minded.
And that's a big thing too.. Having a mind for success.. Some people are just fucking losers and always will be. The kind of people who win the lottery and then go broke 3 years later. There's no amount of engineering society to make someone like that not be a fuck up. And you can't look at people who are just natural fuck ups and say they are that way because the government trained it into them. Nah dude... Some people are just natural fuck ups and you need to account for them in your worldview.
So, why didn't you support yourself at 1 year old? Do you say you needed knowledge and training? I'd say you did....probably motor skills, too.
Now, what if all of your knowledge comes from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? Do you suddenly feel like you can be a great individual?
Abandoning people and acting like they should just be automatically able to ignore the core teachings they've been given all their life is why everyone 16 to 29 thinks they can solve the world's problems and give us Venezuela and California over and over again.
If it's not your problem, who's problem is it for everyone that doesn't know how to be an individual?
We either defeat socialism or we just let it hide for a few years.
theres also the fact, that being working poor at minimum wage going overtime constantly to get extra cash or hopping between jobs,
you are very lucky to make a healthy lunch. it may seem like a poor choice to spend $5 a day out of your paycheck on shitty fast food, but its literally on the way and you can eat it while driving or just grab some shit off a shelf if you're in retail and call it lunch quick so you dont have much time away from work.
and on food stamps:
the real people selling food stamps ain't buying pizza -- theyre buying drugs. the reason you see the orders to the hood is their dealers are buying the pizza with all the excess money.
most people use their food stamps if they get them unless they're on the street as a drug addict. but its basically a pittance for most reasonable situations. You only really get a lot if you're basically a single mom with a bunch of kids.
even as a single guy with min wage or no job, not even enough money to pay taxes, you barely get anything in food stamps.
however, as a poor person -- knowing how to hit up all the food banks and donation services u are eligible for in you're community can keep you pretty close to well fed if you can scrape by enough for the fresh essentials, or whatever is spoiled/rotten you get for free. so if you can get rides, you can definitely eat well enough combined on not much of a budget if you plan well.
so you shouldnt really be scraping the bottom of the barrel to eat in this country, currently. if you make it your business to find where you can get food in your county you definitely can eat.
but again, you're right. it leads to terrible, carb and preservative laden diets on all fronts. and theres the fact junk food is cheaper than actual food. although -- fun fact -- since most people getting food stamps barely get like $25 a month if that, thats another reason you see people wasting it on snacks. to them its literally potato chip money because its not enough to supplement shit.
Im not joking, ive qualified for like $15 a month in food stamps for ages. i just never took it because its worthless.