Like do our grocery essentials really differ enough to justify that everyone take their own car to a grocery store? Like I thought during the pandemic there should be centralized food deliveries, but in retrospect there should just be centralized food deliveries.
You know, food stamp benefits in the US could be a transformational welfare program in the way that social security was, if we simply extended them to all citizens with no strings attached.
You might think that grocery stores or food corps would object to this, but no. They get paid the same amount either way, in fact I would wager their sales would go up as food insecure people are suddenly able to stock their fridges better than ever, and the average person would probably get more of things like milk than they actually use.
For the working poor, stamps would effectively be a stimulus check. Every dollar they aren't spending on food can go somewhere more useful.
As for the wealthy, food stamps/EBT don't cover luxury items, so they can still buy whatever they like. Based on my own experience getting government food, a large number of people would simply choose never to use it as long as they have disposable income to buy something else (when I think of all the money I wasted on convenience store crap when I could have gotten something healthier for free...).
And from an economic sense, programs like food stamps are great Keynesian economic stabilizers, since people will rely on them more (and hence they will inject more government money into the economy) during recessions and less during booms. Frankly if we were serious about doing liberalism well we would structure every one of our social programs roughly in this fashion.
So yeah we should totally do this. But we won't.
I have heard that grocery corporations are actually why food stamps haven't been completely rolled back. If food stamps went away, people would basically be surviving via churches and other charitable organizations, who would absolutely not be purchasing through grocery stores. So they lobby against food stamp cuts.
As always, there's only reason we won't - If workers could refuse shitty minimum wage jobs and reliably know they could still eat/be housed, then almost all major companies would collapse very quickly.
Yes they can. It's a prepaid debit card. Rich people could load a cart full of fancy cheeses and charcuterie if they wanted (which is what I would do lol). You can even buy hot food like pizza or chicken with it in some states.
That's why it's such a good idea. Food is cheap as hell thanks to technology and the food supply in the US is basically state planned anyway. This would be a great way to boost budgets and let people buy nicer quality stuff as well, and increase demand for fresh produce. Just give people a stipend and open up more grocery stores if needed.