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Comment by tuututututu | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to make food stamps automatic for everyone. It makes pretty good sense to me. Everyone who has a driver's license or is enrolled in school or is registered to vote gets food stamps. The most hateful southern baptists in my family who are still screaming about Obama's death panels can still agree that donating to food banks is a good idea. I can understand people who say "I don't want to pay higher taxes to support other people." I think that's a shitty philosophy, but I can understand where they're coming from. But if we make food stamps universal, then those people get the benefit they're paying taxes for and some of them will stop complaining. It ensure a basic level of public health and removes the stigma from receiving and using food stamps.

After we take care of that and instill the idea in everyone's mind that automating the basic necessities is good for everyone, we can work on housing, healthcare, and higher education.

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Why is food different from roads? Schools? Police? Fire departments? Have these people ever made an insurance claim? Set foot in a state/national park? Cashed a stimulus check? etc.

My point is, someone saying "I don't want to pay higher taxes to support other people" has already lost the plot. They are already receiving benefits paid for by someone else. If they weren't already convinced that this is a good thing, they're either not paying attention (in which case, why would they start now?), or care more about keeping poor people suffering than improving their own lot in life (which, in my experience, is more likely).

I have seen people complain about paying taxes for schools when they don't have kids, and all your other examples go back to the taxpayer in some way. Food stamps are like the school one, they don't go back to the taxpayer - they're paying without getting anything back, hence complaining.

GP's idea might be a decent way to sidestep that - at the very least it's tighter in scope so the negative effects would be limited.

> The most hateful southern baptists in my family who are still screaming about Obama's death panels can still agree that donating to food banks is a good idea.

I expect they would argue that a) they don’t agree that being required to donate is a good idea and b) the food bank can turn people away if they’re not deserving and has its own stigma, which are both part of the goal

Make them transferable and I agree. If I get the food stamps and can easily transfer them to my adult kids, that would be great. Yes, it would probably mean drug dealers will take food stamps, but whatever.

As pointed out by others, supermarkets will then raise their prices to grab that extra money. Happens every time you subsidise something.

This is something I've been on board with for ages. Just give everyone a SNAP card, homeless person to Bill gates.

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