Because every dollar spent one way is not spent another. The current food stamps program is highly effective because it just gives people a debit card that can only be spent on food. Giving people special credits that can only be spent where it will enrich certain assholes because you think enriching those assholes will be a valuable second order effect is fundamentally stupid.
If you think people don’t have enough money for food give it to them directly. If you think we should subsidize farmers even more than we already do then do so.
There is no universe where it’s easier to directly get to farmers or adjacent farmers markets then it is to get to the grocery store. There are tons of grocery stores located near people whereas farmers are generally far from most people the majority of which live in urban and suburban environments far from farmers
86% live in urban or suburban environments whilst 14% live in rural areas.
One might suggest taxing highly processed food to subsidize less processed food and setting standards for different sized stores as far as how much floor space must be devoted to various categories of food.
How is it more efficient to get a major subset of the community to grocery stores then to distribute the groceries to the communities that don’t have access?
Its worked where tried, there is no reason we can’t scale it more.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Food stamps is about 100B per year we have never moved that much physical food for anything but a massive massive overhead. There is every reason to believe we can’t scale it up without massive overhead because its a massive endeavor that existing supply chains are already handling. It would be comparatively trivial to give recipients a boost in money to buy fresh produce from existing grocery stores.
Because every dollar spent one way is not spent another. The current food stamps program is highly effective because it just gives people a debit card that can only be spent on food. Giving people special credits that can only be spent where it will enrich certain assholes because you think enriching those assholes will be a valuable second order effect is fundamentally stupid.
If you think people don’t have enough money for food give it to them directly. If you think we should subsidize farmers even more than we already do then do so.
I think a lot of people have trouble getting access to food and bringing food to them can provide a lot of nutritional value.
And yeah, I would rather the assholes who own the dollar stores not get the food stamps for stuff that barely qualifies as food.
Also, you can increase the dollars spent, just like Republicans have decreased it. I want people to thrive, not just survive.
There is no universe where it’s easier to directly get to farmers or adjacent farmers markets then it is to get to the grocery store. There are tons of grocery stores located near people whereas farmers are generally far from most people the majority of which live in urban and suburban environments far from farmers
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/
86% live in urban or suburban environments whilst 14% live in rural areas.
One might suggest taxing highly processed food to subsidize less processed food and setting standards for different sized stores as far as how much floor space must be devoted to various categories of food.
How is it more efficient to get a major subset of the community to grocery stores then to distribute the groceries to the communities that don’t have access?
Its worked where tried, there is no reason we can’t scale it more.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Food stamps is about 100B per year we have never moved that much physical food for anything but a massive massive overhead. There is every reason to believe we can’t scale it up without massive overhead because its a massive endeavor that existing supply chains are already handling. It would be comparatively trivial to give recipients a boost in money to buy fresh produce from existing grocery stores.