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Today’s Watercooler comes from a comment on reddit posted by "fgrty". The comment was for a New York Times article about how the use of Food Stamps has been on the rise in recent years:
I have an idea. Let’s expect people to get food insurance if they want to eat in times of need, instead of giving them food stamps. They can buy food insurance from private, for-profit companies. Those companies can deny benefits for misstatements on their food insurance applications, regardless of how minor the misstatement, whether it was done with fraudulent intent, or how long ago the application was taken.
We’ll rely on the food insurance companies’ discretion as to what foods they cover at what percentage rate of prevailing market prices, which is part of the insurance coverage, but which is never actually disclosed to the people buying food insurance, even though it amounts to a substantial portion of the insurance contract and significantly affects the utility of the insurance to the purchaser.
The whole thing will be implemented through a big bureaucratic claims process, with some food insurers refusing to provide benefits unless you get your food at the company store. And, get this, any time the food insurance company refuses to cover someone’s food, that person’s only effective recourse is to take the insurance company to court, a process that takes months or years and does not in any way ensure useful contractual enforcement to someone who needs to eat RIGHT NOW. Who’s with me on this?
I must admit that I was over halfway through the comment before I picked up on the sarcasm. Quite clever, indeed. What’s on your mind tonight?
8 Comments
Hiya, Jimmy.
Don’t know ya, but two in a row must mean something.
Hiya boy-o.
Watercooler means, and what’s on your mind means a touchy feely free for all, yes?
PS, My son James is named after Grampa Jimmy, so you’ve already got my heart.
You are correct, demi. Watercooler is the closest thing we have here to an open mike. Glad you could join us and say hello!
Well…gosh…glad to be here.
So, is this a new thingy? New to me, anyway.
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That’s some fascinating reading you linked to, tw3k – I’d just like to know exactly why you posted it here?
Food stamps are something I encounter sometimes in line at the grocery, and that it is now becoming a refuge of former working people just makes me ill. We should do better than that. Glad that Krugman is saying we need to bring a program of providing jobs to work on our decaying infrastructure, something the WPA did once when we were in this kind of a crisis in the 30′s/
see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/opinion/30krugman.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1259579727-M2Q8JHV5P2wxUW/IYQWRlA
Absolutely, Ruth. The problem will never be solved until we figure out how to have enough jobs for everybody. But I still think we need to feed people who are hungry as we work on the jobs issue. In fact, if we’re realistic about it, we’ll understand that there will always be some hungry people no matter how good our economy is. Even Jesus said something like that. We need the safety net and the mechanism to pull folks back up to their feet from the safety net.
It’s a bit horrifying that there’s a need to remind anyone that charity is part of a good person’s way to living a good life. The moral climate the wingnuts have advanced is one of Dickensian darkness, unworthy of human beings.
And I saw a few of Ayn Rand’s books displayed at the local Hastings on a table of Must Reads for adolescent readers. I think it’s in order that a letter to management will be off to Hastings corporate offices shortly.