Unless you've been poor
You have no idea how expensive it is to be poor.
Everyone complaining about what people buy on SNAP, how they need to get off "relying on SNAP" and just need to learn how to manage their money better have zero idea what it is like to actually be poor.
Not struggling to keep your head afloat.
Poor.
And it really shows.
I have been poor.
I have lived in poor areas.
I know first hand how difficult it is to survive being poor.
So it infuriates me when entitled people try to tell the poor how to spend their money and live their lives as if providing taxes that help the poor entitle them to judge and become armchair financiers to the poor.
First things first:
WHEN YOU GIVE SOMEONE MONEY, YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO DETERMINE HOW THAT PERSON SPENDS IT.
PERIOD.
That money is no longer yours to determine what someone else does with it.
When you pay for groceries, you don't tell the cashier, "Now make sure this goes to providing more of the same things I just bought." The idea of that is stupid.
So is telling other people how to spend their money.
Stop it. You're being entitled and stupid. It's not your money.
Second, unless you've lived in poor areas, you haven't been exposed to the sticker shock at the grocery stores or any place that sells necessities.
Grocery stores in poor areas mark up the prices on milk, eggs, bread, and anything else essential. The difference between a poor area price of milk from a "normal" income area price of milk can be between a $2-$3 price difference with the "normal income area being cheaper. Convenience stores are already at a high mark up for the "convenience", which a lot of poor people also shop at because of food deserts, places grocery stores won't set up because of the fear of "crime". (An absolutely ridiculous reason to not provide a service to a community.)
The reason being are a couple reasons.
Poor people can't always afford transportation. Most, when they grocery shop, can only buy as much as they can carry and walk with and not have it spoil. This means that poor people are going to grocery and convenience stores more often, sometimes once a day. That gets costly and hard to budget properly, not to mention time consuming to have to walk back and forth every day just to eat.
Second, the reason for the higher costs in poor areas is because of SNAP. The government and states don't regulate grocery prices. So grocery stores in poor areas know they are going to more than likely be paid with SNAP. Because of that, they mark it up to make sure they are getting more profit. If the person works and gets SNAP, they can afford to pay a little out of their paycheck too, right? No, they fucking can't and the audacity to think they can is offensive. But this is what grocery stores do.
This is just one way that being poor is expensive.
John Cheese is an horrible person, but the thing is, this article is 100% correct about being poor.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/pantheon/2012/08/john-cheese-on-being-poor/
Before you judge people on SNAP, try understanding that every system in the US keeps people in poverty on purpose before you feel entitled to tell poor people how to spend their money, regardless of where it came from.
Everyone complaining about what people buy on SNAP, how they need to get off "relying on SNAP" and just need to learn how to manage their money better have zero idea what it is like to actually be poor.
Not struggling to keep your head afloat.
Poor.
And it really shows.
I have been poor.
I have lived in poor areas.
I know first hand how difficult it is to survive being poor.
So it infuriates me when entitled people try to tell the poor how to spend their money and live their lives as if providing taxes that help the poor entitle them to judge and become armchair financiers to the poor.
First things first:
WHEN YOU GIVE SOMEONE MONEY, YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO DETERMINE HOW THAT PERSON SPENDS IT.
PERIOD.
That money is no longer yours to determine what someone else does with it.
When you pay for groceries, you don't tell the cashier, "Now make sure this goes to providing more of the same things I just bought." The idea of that is stupid.
So is telling other people how to spend their money.
Stop it. You're being entitled and stupid. It's not your money.
Second, unless you've lived in poor areas, you haven't been exposed to the sticker shock at the grocery stores or any place that sells necessities.
Grocery stores in poor areas mark up the prices on milk, eggs, bread, and anything else essential. The difference between a poor area price of milk from a "normal" income area price of milk can be between a $2-$3 price difference with the "normal income area being cheaper. Convenience stores are already at a high mark up for the "convenience", which a lot of poor people also shop at because of food deserts, places grocery stores won't set up because of the fear of "crime". (An absolutely ridiculous reason to not provide a service to a community.)
The reason being are a couple reasons.
Poor people can't always afford transportation. Most, when they grocery shop, can only buy as much as they can carry and walk with and not have it spoil. This means that poor people are going to grocery and convenience stores more often, sometimes once a day. That gets costly and hard to budget properly, not to mention time consuming to have to walk back and forth every day just to eat.
Second, the reason for the higher costs in poor areas is because of SNAP. The government and states don't regulate grocery prices. So grocery stores in poor areas know they are going to more than likely be paid with SNAP. Because of that, they mark it up to make sure they are getting more profit. If the person works and gets SNAP, they can afford to pay a little out of their paycheck too, right? No, they fucking can't and the audacity to think they can is offensive. But this is what grocery stores do.
This is just one way that being poor is expensive.
John Cheese is an horrible person, but the thing is, this article is 100% correct about being poor.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/pantheon/2012/08/john-cheese-on-being-poor/
Before you judge people on SNAP, try understanding that every system in the US keeps people in poverty on purpose before you feel entitled to tell poor people how to spend their money, regardless of where it came from.
