Lawmakers Find $21 a Week Doesn't Buy a Lot of Groceries

[UGAalum94]

I don't know that for sure, but it seems to me that we've been in need of reviewing how the gov't subsidizes food for low income people for a while.

In previous, less sedentary days, (when kids would have been involved in active play, teenagers in manual labor, and adults in manual labor plus maybe walking more for transportation), school lunches and food stamps and WIC funds were all set up to guarantee a lot of calories. High fat foods were an easy way to do that.

Now, we live very differently, and our big problem isn't starvation as much as obesity and nutritionally empty calories. It seems like "they" have started to review this with school lunches, so maybe, they will follow through with food stamps and other forms of food aid.

About politics, here's the thing as I see it: I think it's possible to conclude that the government is never going to successfully make everything equal. The societies that have made economic equality the most important government function haven't, in my opinion, worked out that well. On some level, you have to try to take care of all people, but you can't ever make it so good for people who can't or don't work that not working becomes as attractive as working. We have a moral duty to our fellow man, but the government may be the least effective and most destructive way to deliver on that duty.

So, maybe the government keeps you from starving, and if you will stay off drugs and avoid violence and take your medicine for mental illness, should help you find basic shelter. Maybe the gov't should provide basic preventative care, so we cut down on the expenses for emergency services later. But we can't really set up a system where the gov't provides everything for everyone or the whole thing will go under. And we can't keep treating people who continually make destructive decisions as if they aren't responsible for those decisions because what they do hurts other people. Kevin sounds mean spirited in these debates, but some of the rest of you seem downright delusional about what the gov't can actually do for people.