Question to experts: Paying for food items with your EBT card
 

Just witnessed some woman paying for nothing but chocolate candy bars and cola drinks in organic(!) food store. How is this shit allowed? Items are overpriced and its not some nutrition food she needs to survive. WTF?

Ask at your local Bernie Sanders rally?

Free free free!

I don't know the details about any of this but... I think they only items they cannot buy is booze and smokes.

I really believe that any welfare needs to be very short term, no more than six months.

https://goo.gl/maps/oGkp719Bry42

That sign has been that way for years, drove my blood pressure up every time I went by it

they are being motivated to be lazy fucks...its your own fault you have this LOL...they should be able to buy rice and veggies IMO you swat 2 flies: on the one hand you cut costs drastically, on the other you solve the obesity problem and save billions in healthcare rape costs to the tax payer...

but then you will have 45 million people vote socialist in 4 years...

Most of your serb comrades are on ebt and live much better lives here than in beautiful poverty of motherland. :1orglaugh Perhaps theu lost their inheritance and have nothing to brag about. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh
BTW: This bitch was Paki. Gypsy too.

Wait for automatisation and robots to hit you, and your bubble economy to pop again, half the USA will be on food stamps...I will be taking in refugees from the USA raugh! Raugh!

Did they finally release "Back to the future" in Serbian theaters?
Come on Slobodan, robots? automation? :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh
I think you are more likely to be poisoned with arsenic by your grandchildren over inheritance and mud hut before any of this robot bs happens. :1orglaugh I bet you heard this very same story from your grandfather after his immigration petition to the US was turned down :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

They allow this as a favor to the store. Every product that they don't allow EBT to be used for costs stores money because they either have to take the time, effort, and money to program their checkout systems to discard non-EBT items or if it is a small store with just a register they have to ring things up differently and they run the risk of getting in trouble if they screw up. There is also the situation where if someone can't buy it with EBT they may not buy it at all.

At its core, EBT is a decent thing. Sure, there is a tiny bit of fraud and there are some people who use it for things they really shouldn't, but for the most part the people on it are using it properly and trying to stretch every dollar they can from it.

People shouldn't get their panties in a wad because some poor family is getting a few dollars a month to help them buy food. They should be pissed off at things like the US government is giving oil companies around $37 billion dollars a year in subsidies.

What about all of the waste of the expensive shit that no one else would buy if they couldn't do that with how it's set up?..
And how would they regulate what they can and can't buy?

This was Whole Foods Market type store. All she bought is organic sodas and candy bars.

Agreed, corporate welfare amounts for a crazy amount of tax payer waste.

I her case she is clearly taking advantage of the system. There will always be those people. A few months back I saw a woman at my local grocery store by $40 worth of prawns and steak with a food stamp card.

It is going to be nearly impossible to stop people like that unless they come up with a long, detailed list of things you can't buy which would likely be more of a pain in the ass than it is worth.

One obvious observation is that if it's possible to game the system, then EBT recipients are getting too much?

Imagine that if you have your shit together, you can survive on $100/month, you need to eat, so you need $100/month no matter what... so you get a $100/month EBT card, buy food with it, there is zero $$ left over to game the system in any way...

if you try to sell it, then obviously you won't have enough to buy food anymore, making selling it pointless? you try to buy candy bars at whole foods, then you won't have enough left over to buy real food, so obviously going to whole foods for candy bars isn't going to work either?

so the whole problem is that everyone is really getting $150, $50 more than the $100 needed to buy food, and that extra $50 can be used to "game the system", either by selling it, or buying frivolous goods?

When I was poor once, I used EBT...
Now I'm not poor, making close to 6 figures again and not allowed to use EBT anymore. It's good when you need it, but I agree that some stores shouldn't be allowed to accept it.

slippery slope this one :2 cents:

The EBT program allows people to buy any food items other than alcohol and tobacco that are not prepared foods. So candy, soda, chips, snacks, etc they can buy.. You would think they would want a meal but nope they want the sweets...

You survive on $100 a month for food? The fuck do you eat? Peanut butter sandwiches every night?

keyword was "imagine"... $100 was just used as an easy to understand number... but if it came down to it, I could live on it, anyone with some common sense could...

certainly wouldn't be much left over for chocolate bars from whole foods or some shady deal at a liquor store, but I wouldn't be walking around hungry for sure...

Here is the problem with this idea. In order to get EBT you have to prove that you have little or no income. The problem is that the EBT officials are swamped with people they are helping. They can't do a deep, detailed investigation so they do the best they can. The people that are gaming the system have income from other areas. A common scam is that one person applies for EBT and then they have other family members move in with them (or already living with them and they lie about it) who have some source of income so the EBT isn't as vital. Another is that they get EBT then hit up every food bank they can and get free food that way allowing them to use EBT to buy more luxury type items. It is going to be nearly impossible to stop people who are doing that. Also, the number of people doing that is tiny compared to the number of people using it properly.

Well said.

in the next 10 years this will happen:

1) self driving cars = 10 million US driving jobs goodbye, how much people do these 10mil people support?
2) delivery drones
3) automatic tellers = millions more jobs poof
4) technology is reaching the point of diminishing returns, the USA relies on being "High tech" but I really do not need a faster processor any more...will I care about 4K or 8K monitors?...144fps or 200fps...
5) your bubble will bobble...we all know the shit that you are in...
6) you will have hillary or trump for the next 10 years LOL

if 1 in 7 are on food stamps now I hazard a guess that in 10 years 1 in 4 will be on foody stamps...capitalism will have to become socialist and pay the people to keep quiet or them motherfuckers will vote socialist...

the most capitalist you become the more socialist you must be...

raugh raugh!

I stand corrected then.

I shouldn't be allowed for them to buy booze or smokes. And any store who violates that should get heavy fines. Make the stores who violate the rules pay to support the poor.

They likely aren't selling booze on EBT (although they could in which case they are pretty ballsy advertising it like that). I don't know about that one, but most liquor stores also sell ice, pop and sometimes snack foods which you can use EBT on.

Right.

The guy with the knife that is dripping blood didn't stab the guy down the block, he was slicing into a rare ribeye.

If you get caught selling booze or tobacco to people who pay for it with EBT you can lose your ability to take EBT for 3-5 years. There are also potentially some seriously steep fines.

Maybe this place was doing that, but, as I said before, it would be pretty ballsy to flat out advertise that. There are plenty of stores around here that have about 80% of the inventory being beer and tobacco then they also sell cold pop and snack foods and they all have stickers on their doors or signs that say they take EBT. It doesn't mean they are letting people buy booze with it.

ebt has a cash side. just atm and buy :2 cents::2 cents:

My understanding is that you can only use the cash option if you have cash in your account which would come from welfare.