I'm not trying to imply that all homeless people are addicts (quite the contrary) but if I'm a crack addict and you give me money I'm not sure I'd be using it to save it up for buying a car one day.
I wouldn't assume that, since food stamps aren't particularly focussed on the homeless.
In fact, the original purpose of the food stamp program was clearing agricultural surpluses (hence why the program was created in the Department of Agriculture and not the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare where you would have expected it to be if it were a welfare program and not an ag industry support program); you originally had to purchase food stamps, and for every dollar you got $1 of unrestricted (but still only for food) stamps, and $0.50 of restrictes-to-items-deemed-to-be-in-surplus stamps.
The exact restrictions and mechanisms changed over time in subsequent iterations of the program (and it's hard to find a clear purpose for many changes because lots were compromises between competing visions with fundamentally opposed goals.)
Unprocessed trauma coping circuits (aka addiction) highjacks intelligence to get the dopamine trigger, it doesn’t nessesarily eliminate intelligence.
You don’t solve trauma with cash, but you also don’t make it worse and the benefits to others seem to be greater.
A regulated nervous system is a need, and if someone never developed that capability and doesn’t have awareness or resources to develop it as an adult, it’s actually a pretty logical move to use drugs.
This!! I am always a little disappointed to see so many people on HN talking about gov't programs as though they are some form of altruism. They (usually) are not.
SNAP/WIC/EBT (what people are referring to as food stamps, which I don't think exist anymore; the 'benefits' are managed and distributed via a card provided by JPMorgan last I read) is a corporate welfare program.
Every time there's political talk about cutting the 'food stamp' program, the lobbyists come out. Whose lobbyists? Kraft, Walmart, JPMorgan, et al. If you use your 'Googles' you should be able to find a few articles about what % of revenue the program(s) account for some of these programs. One year Kraft said it was something like 14% (I have this on paper somewhere in my archive, but the info's available on the interwebs). Because of this, these programs aren't going anywhere.
This is also why, when you look at the food stuffs provided to students via school breakfast and lunch programs, they're often crap. Food nutrition is not the goal, getting Vitamin $ to companies (and maybe a few small farmers) is.
Meats and grains are heavily subsidized by the USG, produce not so much. IIRC this goes back to the doing of Nixon's guy, Earl Butz.
I’ve seen a number of studies, reports, NGOs, etc. advocating for giving cash directly vs. inkind donations.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/5416096...
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/we...
https://www.vox.com/2016/1/23/10810978/cash-transfer-givedir...
Drug addicts make up a negligible percentage of people getting a helping hand. The statistics show this and it has been born out by the states that introduced drug testing for assistance recipients: they cost more to administer than the money saved by kicking people out of the assistance programs because the numbers are so tiny. Even in SF where it seems like all the crazy homeless people are strung out or tweaked, well, that's a sample problem: indeed many of the crazy ones are, but they are a minuscule, though highly visible, percentage of the people in need.
If you're struggling to make ends meet you don't have time to take drugs.
Whereas if you start out OK, become drug addled and fall out of the system, you probably by that time are too out of it to ask for help.
For example, food stamps may go to a family, where they are dealt with responsibly, in a way that money, which is very easy to grab and walk out to buy cigarettes with when things go badly, is not.
Obviously, it's not a full solution, and a cynical recipient could sell them, true... but we're not talking about individuals acting in isolation for purely selfish reasons; that's a contrived subset of the problem.
What's the alternative you're proposing?
Just hand out cash?
The research shows that people suffer severe difficulty in managing fiscal matters when under financial stress. It's the old 'why do people who are poor buy so many lottery tickets?'?
Money isn't the correct solution; and maybe food stamps aren't either... but they're a better solution, and don't think that's even in doubt.
...but if you have a different one, I'm happy to hear it.
Answer, all people buy lottery tickets at the same rate for tickets which might materially change their life. If you are rich, spending 20 bucks for a 1 in a million chance to win 10k is not going seem worthwhile.
The problem food stamps are solving is to keep a lid on the brow beating from taxpayers toward the poor. It is a mild form of punishment masquerading as help. It would be cheaper, easier, and more effective to just give cash (and because it would be cheaper, you could give more).
The main issue poor people have in managing money, is simply that they do not have enough.
Or if they inherit 50k, immediately go to Vegas and lose it all.
These are all real examples I've known personally.
The people you're describing exist but it's hard to imagine someone who is great with money staying poor for years and years, considering almost everyone in America moves between income quintiles during their life and most spend time at the top.
If free food is punishment please sign me up to be punished.
Also, I'm interested in the source for your lottery ticket info. It sounds fairly absurd in a world where many jackpots are over 5 million, which is enough to change almost anyone's life. I've never even heard of a lottery for 10k.
That is because you don't buy them I guess. Scratch tickets, poker machines, plus lots of small state lotteries that start at 5-10k and top out at maybe half a mill.
That's what we do in most (all? I can only find a handful of dated references to a program in the UK) parts of Europe. Seems to work fine.
It isn't really a comparable situation. Acting like it is doesn't do anything constructive for American problems.
Looking more at other countries is imho benelovant for the states.
Of course that's just another reason to implement universal healthcare, not to shame poor people with food stamps.
People in this discussion are saying "If you give cash to an addict, they will spend it on drugs." Well, most poor Americans have serious health issues. It is one of the things that makes them poor.
If you need medical care and you have to pay for it and it's very expensive, giving such a person money won't go to food. It will go to medical bills.
If you want to give Americans cash instead if food stamps, first you need to give them free medical care. We really need universal basic health care in the US.
I don't know very much about this topic and I'd love to see the research you're talking about. Are poor people worse at managing finances? Intuitively that sounds wrong to me, but intuition is usually useless in economics. Do food stamps result in better health outcomes than cash?