Although my first reaction was "ugh...", this kind of makes sense. There's probably a lot of people on SNAP benefits who have family commitments and time constraints where they need someone to deliver food. Just because your on SNAP doesn't mean you should be a 2nd class citizen.
Of course, those who hate any type of government aid will have a field day with this. Such is political discourse today.
Its not free nor is it low cost. The bill is paid by the taxpayer and costs are very high hence why food delivery is correctly perceived as a luxury.
Large companies vacuuming up benefits is the rule not exception hence why its a bad idea to create blank check situations. To give an example many of you may* sympathise with, look at military contracts. Its structured as costs plus so these contractors are incentived to increase the costs to increase their profit. This would be upside down in a free market where your heavily incentived to decrease costs.
P.S. "fixed income mobility impaired" Sirs you have outdone yourselves with the euphemisms this time.
When they're providing the desired result (food) for a reasonable sum, it's most likely fine. After all, if Walmart charged SNAP cards more for bread or whatever, we should be up in arms.
I think the core of the issue is "level of luxury", for lack of better phrase. In the spectrum of "richness" (not to equate with income) people range between "cannot afford proper food" and "can afford anything".
The debate centers around where on that scale you put "needs government assistance" and "food deliveries". If you put the former above the latter, then it sounds merely as discretionary expenditure. However, if you put the latter above the former, then this becomes "luxury on government money".
Essentially "are food deliveries to be considered luxury, beyond the level of government assistance?". This type of debate pops up quite often when attributable public expenditure is considered.
The thing is you can use Uber Eats because it’s generally very expensive/time-consuming/otherwise arduous to get to a grocery store once a week. Or you can use Uber Eats because it’s easier than getting off the couch. Can’t really distinguish between the two use cases.
The whole idea behind food stamps, in the first place, is that poor people are irresponsible ragamuffins who cannot be trusted with actual money. Stamps are a form of money with embarrassing use restrictions attached.
If you accept that it's okay to give people this kind benefit, then you have to accept the debatability of the question of whether food delivery is in scope of that benefit or not.
I'm on the side of giving people a benefit without the condescending dictation of how it may be used, like whether for food delivery or not. Therefore, logically, I must be in favor of giving them actual money.
If they buy cigarettes instead of baby formula, that's their decision.
If there are mobility/disability considerations, then I agree that provisions for that make sense. Otherwise, the whole point of SNAP is for the funds to go exactly where it's needed and nowhere else: feeding people. Some may argue that having the food come to you instead of going to the food is a separate service and outside of its scope.
We live in the most wealthiest nation in the world. You have illegal aliens coming here with no wealth and no access to welfare who manage to not only survive but also send money back to their families.
Giving people with crippling financial education/management problems and worse access to luxuries via welfare checks is to put it politely (so that señor Dang wont ban-ish me) very silly.
Its like giving free clean needles to addicts (oh wait), you're explicitly enabling and implicitly encouraging their dysfunction.
I'm not a huge fan of welfare in its current form but if we are gonna do this and by this I mean steal money from the best capital allocators in society and give it to those that can't help themselves, at the very least it should come with a lot strings attached:
1. Heavily discourage dysfunction with penalties.
2. Heavily encourage KPIs such as reduced discretionary spending and improved efficiency.
I can dive deeper into what would strings look like here but I think you guys get the gist of it. Giving checks to these people without any strings, is in my opinion the worst of both worlds. You're giving them just enough comfort to continue suffering in their current station in life.
P.S. If you don't think instant fast-food/grocery delivery is not a luxury, to put it politely (I really don't want to) I'm of the respectful* opinion that you might wrong here.
Also if you think these people who are on welfare are mostly normal hard working expedient enterprising people who just happened to get a bad hand. Again I have politely* with all due respect* disagree.
I grew up around poor people all my life, in India, in the UK and finally America. Almost always its their own doing. Almost always its people who can't help themselves.
This is not usual false virtue signalling privilege checking either, when I say grew up around I mean family, neighbours, friends. People I lived with, people I grew up with and hanged around with.
Its always either people who fall under these categories or people who have never interacted with the former that come up with these postmodern notions and utopian solutions.
There are a lot of people who use government assistance responsibly. There is also a lot of people who abuse the system. But SNAP and other benefits are 1.9% of our Federal budget, so I'm not going to sweat too much about waste/fraud/abuse.
We need to fix the inequalities that remove hardworking middle class values from our society. That's the real problem. Until that happens, I'm not going to demand anyone suffer or go hungry (even if there is fraud in the system).
I say this not because I'm trying to virtue signal. I say it because its just such a tiny amount of money and not worth fighting over.
Also, FWIW, I live in NYC. I see people use SNAP benefits to buy the stupidest things. Its frustrating but the alternative just seems a lot worse.
I don't disagree but it should proportional with strings attached.
In a civilised society nobody should starve to death or die because they can't afford healthcare.
But neither of these things should come without any strings. These people only exist because we fortunately live in a society where most of the rough edges are nerfed out.
That doesn't mean we should be accepting or normalising this. It should be frowned upon and be something not to be proud of.
Something like:
You are poor.
Your living off other people.
You provide less than zero value to society.
However, heres a path to redemption: If you commit to XYZ we will assist you in your journey to becoming worthy of participating in civilised society.
If you chose to not commit then society reserves the right to forsake you.
P.S. Lol I know this post is going to get downvoted to oblivion probably even flagged. Deep down you guys know I'm right but you'd rather live in a world with compounding dysfunction than accept uncomfortable truths.
You come across as a bit of a dick, but I do think you have a solid point. I'm glad you didn't get flagged.
Someone else mentioned food stamps being 'this way' and I wanted to add an anecdote of my own.
At one point in my life, I worked as mini-mart clerk. I was broke but not concerned about it enough to get benefits. I saw tons of people come in with EBT cards and buy products with minimal nutritional value, stuff that seemed like a 'splurge' to me. I was buying bags of potatoes supplemented with vegetables and crap cuts of meat. I still don't understand it. My dollar just went so much further with bags of produce that I couldn't understand why people kept at it.
To this day, I don't know why they don't swap SNAP for some sort of government run food pantry that has bags of rice, potatoes, low tier cheese, frozen meat, frozen vegetables and basic hygiene supplies etc. Hell, put it on the open market. Government owns and operates the properties, supply is a low bid contract, but the winner gets a couple of years of guaranteed volume purchases assuming basic quality checks are passed.
Not a great selection, but subsidized, solid nutrition, guaranteed availability etc. Your SNAP bucks are only redeemable on prem. and a portion of your balance can be spent for delivery once per week? You want crap calories or variety of diet, then you earn it yourself, but the basics are always covered.
I'd vote for that and happily spend my tax dollars on it. I'd also be happy to rely on it if things ever came back to that.
Its a little backhanded but I will take the compliment. :)
I relate to your experience a lot, I've got so many similar stories!
Funnily enough we have very similar ideas on how to handle welfare (atleast when it comes to food). I also just think the food should be prepared and distributed on prem via religious institutions.
Thats the only model I've seen which is at least somewhat fraud resistant. For example, India is a notoriously low trust society where getting fast food is like rolling the dice with food poisoning but not with temples. You can get free healthy food from most religious institutions, nobody (ish) will mess god.
Some of the best food I had during my time in India is from the church. I've never had food from hindu temples but I hear its the same. I know when travelling, the guides would always tell us to eat from brahmin (hindu version of orthodox jews) restaurants.
I'm tempted to say this should be extended to non profits too but in my experience non profits are like an opposite perpetual motion device designed to increase accelerate world entropy.
This is probably where our similarities end. I believe this model should apple to all forms of welfare and entitlements. All of it (incl Social Security & Medicare) should be scrapped and replaced with an essentials program.
This is basically what I was suggesting in the OP with the "if you commit to xyz, we will assist you". I think we should get very creative with XYZ too. community services comes to top of mind. It all comes down to the basic idea that none of this is free so it shouldn't be free for the recipients either.
Same goes for student loans, I think the program should be scrapped entirely and replaced with a different program where the money is a lump sum instead of a loan. The catch is military service or civil service. Maybe an reimagined form of USACE and a reimagined apprenticeship concept.
P.S.
The coming across as a dick part is because you guys (HN) are the most smug self righteous group of people I've ever interacted with (South Park Smug Alert) and it messes with my autism because you guys are smart so you do the 1+1=2 thing yet when it comes to certain areas you just choose to completely shut off that part.
I mean we have service oriented architectures, separation of concerns, domain driven design, incentives, KPIs, resiliency, efficiency etc but when it comes to the real life (where it matters more since the non linear complexity) you guys are like lets scrap all of that and build the tower of babel, a big federal monolith which will be managed by either ladies/studs from HR/marketing (AOC, Greg Casar) or 80 year old MBA/Lawyer (Pelosi, Biden) types who are "not good with technology". Utopia Baby!
I mean how can a city of the smartest people in the world also think legalising petty crime and enabling public degeneracy & indecency is a great idea.
I actually agree with you regarding the welfare essentials program, at least as far as you've described it. We would likely have some disagreement about what constitutes essentials, especially with healthcare, and I don't think the religious solution is scalable across an entire country without a theocratic government but we're in the same general camp.
There is also the cost/benefit calculus of welfare programs, where paying off some segment of society to just 'ride it out' may be more financially efficient in the long term then dealing with social unrest and decay of the commons that comes from doing nothing. I agree we need a caveat system though, since impinging further on personal freedom seems like a net loss. Free basic nutrition, if you abide by X. Education funds, if you abide by Y, healthcare if you maintain certain lifestyle choices etc.
Regarding the post script and the 'you guys' label, I'm pretty far removed from the buzzword culture described. Not sure how far this goes, but there seems to be a pretty large philosophical divide between software engineers and the traditional engineering fields.
Supposedly we live in a world of compounding wealth rather than dysfunction, or so I am told, though I agree it seems a bit hard to believe.
If we want to be start talking about uncomfortable truths, then I always think of all the other "productive" work these people could do - robbing homes/cars, kidnapping peoples' children for ransom, selling black market goods/drugs, etc... The things I might be inclined to take up if I was repeatedly told I wasn't fit for society. The police sure don't seem all that interested in working anymore either, so it may be the case that crime does pay after all.
How many more shop liftings, car thefts, sons/daughters killed over a wallet do you think it takes before these thugs get hunted and put down like rabid dogs?
Beneath the thin layer of tolerance and civility lies a level of barbarity most of us can't even fathom. This is coming from somebody who studies this stuff (history) as a hobby and even I wont be able to make sense of it.
For some reason, we are fed this idea of post history. The idea that, we are somehow fundamentally different to our ancestors who bashed peoples head in with a rock and called it a normal Tuesday.
We are still the same, there is just a tiny little sliver of civility. If you want to take that away, be my guest. This is what I think about every time I see a video of a shop owner get beaten to an inch of his/her life or I see some crazy left leaning political thing. I don't fear that stuff, I fear the counter reaction. I fear what comes next, thats when things get really ugly, like the stuff you read in the history books..
Unrelated:
Please don't ban-ish me señor Dang. While it may leave a bad taste in some peoples mouths, this comment offers very interesting philosophical and socio-economic insights that are directly related to their previous comment and the OP.
So tired of this notion that poor people have no morals.
Someone who is capable of kidnapping a child for ransom is seriously fucked up. Paying that person off with welfare so they don't "have" to resort to heinous crimes, as if that's the default, is unconscionable.
The moral reasoning behind kidnapping is: no one gets hurt, these rich people just have to live in the same conditions we do everyday for a week or two, then their parents will pay out of pocket change more money than we can make in our entire lives.
That logic isn’t really true, but it’s what kidnappers tell themselves.
I'm sympathetic to your comment but I do think he has a point, it seems both of you guys are speaking past each other.
I think modern society is quick to cast criminality as either circumstantial or biological.
There is a non zero percentage of the population that are sociopaths and psychopaths with a top percentile disagreeableness trait yet most of these people are fully integrated functioning members of society.
Although their might be predispositions, I think its moral narratives that turn an otherwise "normal" person into criminality.
This goes back to your point, we should not be empathising of excusing those among us who have missed the mark with their moral narratives and downstream actions that follow.
Your viewpoint appears to stem from a place of privilege and lacks consideration for the broader social and ethical responsibilities we all in the "civilized society" should share to be really civilized.
Yes having a job almost guarantees a positive contribution to society.
Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of modern humanity, without it we'll still be share cropping for feudal lords (if we are lucky).
Sweatshops pull millions out of dire poverty. Nobody willingly works at sweatshops out of an abundance of options.
Tobacco hires millions of people and makes a huge impact to world wide productivity. Its an extremely powerful stimulant (& nootropic) that arguably fuelled the industrial revolution.
Planned Obsolescence creates millions of jobs and increases product accessibility to the under privileged.
Arms manufacturing prevents permanent global conflicts and bloodshed. You don't attack an adversary may be able put up a formidable defence. Pre 20th century world was full of permanent conflicts enabled by technology/weaponry asymmetry.
Maybe you forgot include positive impacts of all these things before subtracting the negatives. It appears, every example you just gave is a net positive to society on balance.
While some industries may create jobs initially, they often do so at the expense of exploiting vulnerable populations and perpetuating systemic poverty and inequality. Take planned obsolescence, for example. While products might be cheaper upfront, they break down quickly, costing consumers more in the long run and wasting resources.
Fossil fuels and sweatshops might offer employment, but they frequently exploit workers and contribute to ongoing poverty. Additionally, the tobacco industry and arms manufacturing has caused countless deaths and health issues.
None of those examples is a net positive to society. But you'll choose not to see that, I'm sure.
Its not that your claims are false, they appear to be mostly correct. My original point was that its a net positive despite those negatives.
It comes down to Chesterton's Fence which basically suggests we shouldn't get rid of something until we have some idea of why it was put there to start with.
It used to be really ugly. Exploitation, slavery, tyranny and worse were the norm. The only business in town was survival where both the price and churn was high. Señor Dang wont let me truly express myself here so I suggest you do your own research because its really hard put in short polite words how bad things used to be.
Compounding entropy is the default for human affairs. Everything you see around is so precious and fickle, all of it was hard fought and won over generations.
While we should strive to continually improve our bargain with nature, the ideas you and your kin share will bring about the end of modern civilisation as we know it.
You guys don't just want to make incremental change, you want root control over the system to rm -rf inequality, poverty, racism, xenophobia.. When in reality these are crucial underpinnings of civilisation.
There is no equality between me and Usain bolt. John Carmack has probably forgotten more about programming then I know. This is where it ties back to Chestertons Fence, you can't just rm -rf stuff you don't understand.
John Carmack talents are exploitive and is making feel very not equal (Victim™). The NBA is the most racist organisation in America for hiring 73% blacks whilst only 13% of America is black. The nation state experiment (borders) is by definition xenophobic.
The biggest perpetuator of systemic poverty and inequality is collectivism. Its inflation. Its embedded growth obligations. Its byzantine regulations. I suggest you look into the Cantillon effect, IMF & World Bank Expolitation by Alex Gladstein etc.
> we shouldn't get rid of something until we have some idea of why it was put there to start with
Right, Chesterton's Fence doesn't mean we shouldn't change, but that we should understand before doing so. And we do understand, which is why there's a push for change.
> I suggest you do your own research
I did, I know. I also know that these things could be back again, and soon.
> so precious and fickle, all of it was hard fought and won over generations
“When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.
That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
> the ideas you and your kin share will bring about the end of modern civilisation as we know it
We're already over the edge, and instead of trying to slow down our fall, we're accelerating even faster.
> inequality, poverty, racism, xenophobia.. When in reality these are crucial underpinnings of civilisation
These aren't necessary components for a society to thrive and progress. It's crucial to differentiate between describing what has often occurred in history and prescribing what ought to be or what is ethically right for the future.
> You guys don't just want to make incremental change, you want root control over the system
> The biggest perpetuator of systemic poverty and inequality is collectivism. Its inflation. Its embedded growth obligations. Its byzantine regulations. I suggest you look into the Cantillon effect, IMF & World Bank Expolitation by Alex Gladstein etc.
Do you really believe these kinds of problems can be solved by incremental change?
I live and breathe that Steve Jobs quote. The difference between that and what you guys have in mind is the difference between Falcon 9 and the vaccine mandates.
You want root access (sudo, rm -rf). You want to re-organise society (bueno) from the top-down (no bueno). You want to steal from Peter and give to David.
This is not ok even if your diagnosis was correct but its not. We are not zooming towards apocalypse nor do we live in a world with never seen levels of suffering, exploitation and destitution.
For the first time in our history we have the leverage to effect change at a planetary scale. You have to realise this is really weird, we were under natures tyranny just like chimpanzees (like yesterday). It will naturally take a second for us to adjust to this new reality as caretakers of the planet.
That said we are already adjusting and most of these predictions/articles are just apocalypse porn. If you take the UNs worse predictions, we are taking about a lot of oceanfront property, a bunch islands and low lying nations going under water over the span of a century from now.
Thats not apocalypse, its a trade off where the alternative is not a green utopia but rather Mad Max (tech isnt ready, infra isn't ready, would have to force people through communism a.k.a root access = Mad Max).
Inequality is a fundamental pillar of life itself. The guy that fills up grocery store shelves should be worth 300-400 times less than Elon Musk (IMO even less). Without win/win games that value the best players, modern civilisation = dead.
A nation (natality) is a people with a shared values within defined borders. By definition, you have to be xenophobic to those who are antithetical to those values and borders. If you are not, then by default they win (at your expense). I gotta be careful here because Señor Dang wont like the "targeted" examples I wanna give (use your imagination).
There are a lot of comments about Uber's markups etc. The accurate comparison is not to Walmart or other large grocer. Often those do not serve urban or rural communities well, primarily due to inaccessibility to the poor. (Think about how many communities live outside of walking distance or off transit from a real grocery store.)
The compare to consider is the markup and selection at e.g. a gas station or convenience store, where people increasingly buy food. Those places are known for high prices and low value. It's entirely possible that ordering via Uber Eats/Instacart is a better deal for folks on food aid. And selection is certainly better, relevant to the set of folks who like to shame poor people for the food they eat.
The entire point of this is that you can use UberEats to buy a $6 pack of 8 hot dogs instead of a single hot dog for $2 at the gas station, if you want hot dogs.
When the hell did hot dogs start coming in 5 packs? And at my local grocer a pack would be less than $3 for some commodity hotdogs. A premium (if you can call a hotdog that) option is less than $6.58.
For comparison, here are the numbers I found in UberEats: 1 pack of 8 bun-length Bar-S hot dogs, $1.59. Total delivered with tax etc. $7.03. The delivery fee is $2.49, which obviously amortizes across more items.
Also, unlike the gas station, this store sells fresh produce.
Switching this to a conversation about taxis is an interesting diversion, but a diversion nonetheless. That said, currently an Uber to my grocery store, which is almost exactly a mile away is running at $9.97 each way. (Taxis are unreliable here.)
Spending $20 on transport to get access to lower in-store fees, but the math is more complicated as Uber Eats doesn't use a flat % markup on items.
> Those places are known for high prices and low value.
Bad prices, selection and awful service.
Someone recently wrote a Mastodon comment about encouraging corner stores to improve the walkability of neighborhoods. I swiftly put that nonsense in its place.
I grew up in Atlanta and you could see it in quite a number of places around town, thought it's a very subtle thing. You'd be driving past an apartment complex in a poorer neighborhood. At first it doesn't look any different but look closer at the stores around that neighborhood.
It's usually going to be a mix of gas stations, fast food joints, dollar stores and maybe a Kroger (forget Walmart or Publix, they only serve the nicer parts of town with a few exceptions). Other than the Kroger, there's really no other options for fresh food, and if you live >1 mile from the Kroger then it's going to be challenge to walk there.
Often times a food desert seems hidden to someone in a car, you drive along and see some gas stations then down the road you see a Kroger or another grocery store. While to you in a car it's just "the store is down the street", to someone walking the store might as well not be there.
And the problem with fixing food deserts is that fresh produce is much lower margin than other items in the store. A full sized grocery store can handle that and keep produce as a loss leader but a place like Dollar General simply cannot afford to keep produce on the shelf unless they price it higher in which case it becomes unaffordable for the people that need it most.
Yeah, I do kinda agree. I've barely ever seen an actual grocery store in downtown Birmingham so I would understand it being hard to walk there, but the only guy I've ever met who doesn't own a car is some guy I play games with who lives out in rural Washington and he never really found it difficult to get food.
I think another factor that I agree with is the lack of fresh produce especially in ghettos, in rural areas I think if it's difficult for you to get food you should really consider growing your own. Sure it's a bit of work, but you learn a lot and the Internet is a great source of information for gardening and recipes.
+1 for Atlanta. South of Five Points Station in Atlanta is practically one giant food desert, and it gets worse to further you go towards the airport. If you want to really see a stark difference between the rich and poor, take a bus from MARTA's Five Points Station through Virginia Highlands, then take another bus ride from Five Points to the airport. It's like two different cities, one with grocery stores, green lawns, and nice cars, and blown up buildings, trash, no grocery stores, and poverty.
Yes, almost 40M people live in food deserts in the US. [1] In rural areas, that means being >10mi away from the nearest supermarket or grocery store. For urban areas, the limit is 1 mile since many low-income residents don't have cars.
Looking at things like that link you attached, I assume the people writing about these places have never been or lived there. How is this number even tracked? You could go on down to Pike County and ask the folks there if they live in a "low-income and low-access area" and they'd probably tell you they eat deer. Even in low-income and high-crime areas around Birmingham I don't think anyone would say it's difficult to get food.
I don't know man, I trust the people who spend their careers studying these things over your hypothetical anecdotes. Do you have actual numbers, or are you just guessing?
Let's say I think NY sucks but I've never been there, I have exact numbers and papers that add to this viewpoint, but still never been there. Do you trust my opinion?
Oh, so you actually know the people that work at the AECF and whether they've actually visited these places? Your entire point is "eh, feels wrong". Ok dude.
I was born and raised in a place where the nearest grocery store was ~30 miles away. The median annual household income in 2000 was <$30k. My senior class in high school consistent of 32 people. I literally visited the homes of classmates who had dirt floors and no running water.
People who live in those areas have access to automobiles. Most of them have at least one operable vehicle per family; those that don't cooperate with friends, family, and neighbors to get what they need. To this day I regularly pick up hitchhikers when I'm driving through the area.
I think the real argument here is that the term "food desert" seems much more extreme than the experience actually is. None of those people are going hungry because they can't get to the grocery store. The few that are going hungry, are going hungry because they're so strung out on drugs that they aren't capable of planning ahead even 24 hours.
In other words, the lack of easy access to resources isn't the issue - it's the relatively large number of adults in poverty who are in that situation because of their own behavior. Whether they're capable of changing that behavior isn't the point here - they would be in a similar situation even if they were literally next door to a grocery store.
You're possibly in a food desert and unaware. If any of your neighbors live more than a mile or two from a grocery store (not a convenience store), you are in a food desert. The definition involves being able to get to a grocery store on foot or public transit.
That’s an unreasonably strict definition. Most people in the US and many other countries don’t walk to a grocery store even if it’s within a mile or two or accessible by public transit. They drive because it’s easier to haul groceries that way. Once you’re driving it’s not a big deal if the grocery store is within 1 mile or 5 miles.
I don’t understand what the purpose of the “food desert” definition is if it’s so strict as to include huge numbers of people for whom it doesn’t matter.
This feels like the kind of buzzword that an organization dreams up to make their work sound extra important while undermining the true problem by diluting it too broadly.
You are literally imagining the saddest person in the entire world that has every single difficulty imaginable preventing them from getting food. Are they a disabled veteran who's blind, can't speak and has autism too? None of those people exist here, not in singlewides, duplexes, apartments or living in their relatives basements. There are more people living in their car than people without cars where I live in Alabama close to places where get bored and live off the grid. Do you live in a rural area?
> You are literally imagining the saddest person in the entire world that has every single difficulty imaginable preventing them from getting food.
No, I am not. I am relating to the people around me in rural Texas.
> Are they a disabled veteran who's blind, can't speak and has autism too?
Why are you so dismissive and condescending about your fellow people's problems?
> None of those people exist here, not in singlewides, duplexes, apartments or living in their relatives basements.
When life puts you in their shoes then I hope the people around you won't think you don't exist. Or, if they do, then I hope your awful opinion of them will change.
> There are more people living in their car than people without cars where I live in Alabama
I suspect that you don't get out much. There are many roads and many homes. Have you visited every single one?
> Do you live in a rural area?
I do. I live in rural Texas. I can look out of my window and see cattle and horses. My yard is larger than many suburban neighborhood parks. My nearest neighbor is a 10 minute walk away. My nearest grocery store is 15 miles.
> If you can't afford to fuel the car, more often than not you can't afford to own one either.
Perhaps. Or perhaps you afforded the purchase of the car years ago. Your situation has changed since then and now you have a car that you can no longer afford to maintain.
“one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas”
The initial idea was urban areas are often mostly served by small convenience stores with high markups and few choices. However, being able to walk or use public transport can both work it’s really more a question of effort not distance.
One mile is pretty darn low, even for suburban. I’m technically not in a food desert because there is a grocery store a block away. But if it were to explode, I’d suddenly be in a desert because the next grocery store (Walmart) is 1.2 miles away at the end of a nice bike path.
I don’t even know if a grocery store’s customers can fit within a one mile radius circle without urban density.
I’m urban by census definitions though I certainly don’t look it. I’m also not really rural in spite of living on several acres in a town with a few thousand people. Certainly I couldn’t walk or take transit to a grocery store at all reasonably. But I’d laugh if you told me I lived in a food desert.
I also couldn’t reasonably live where I am at all without a car or regular assistance.
There is some fast and loose with "urban" and "rural" - most people consider New York to be Urban, Los Angeles to be Urban, and anywhere outside of the suburbs to be rural - but the census counts anything as urban that is "populated": To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or have a population of at least 5,000.
Many people would consider small towns "rural" but if the town is small enough, it can be an entirely "walkable" "urban" area - because there's a walmart, a gas station, and a hospital, all in a town that is less than a mile across.
Yeah. My town has a population of 7,000 and is within an hour of Boston. I also have a Christmas tree farm on one side and an apple orchard and horse farm on the other. 75 acres in all and probably over 100 acres when you add some conservation land. Not what most people consider urban.
But we don’t have a meaningful commercial area at all in the town.
And I’m not walking anywhere except recreationally in the woods.
Nearly everybody is getting the definition of "food desert" wrong. It varies somewhat depending on who is defining it but for non-rural areas it is generally along the lines of a low income area with no sources of affordable healthy food within walking distance or reasonably affordable public transit distance and most people don't have other good transportation options.
Places where nearly everyone has a working car and can generally afford gas, whether rural or not, generally won't be food deserts unless stores selling affordable healthy food are all pretty far away.
If the convenience store across the street from my city apartment that has bananas, onions, garlic, and a wide assortment of frozen, canned, and dehydrated food doesn't count, the rural local general store likely also doesn't count.
Walking 1.2 miles down a bike path is also easier than 0.8 miles through urban areas without sidewalks.
It seems clear the default was chosen to use round numbers, be easy to calculate, and make the issue seem more important. Stricter criteria mean fewer people fall into the category, but it also means those people have more significance challenges.
Deciding that a mile is low is a top-down analysis. But if you've ever walked a mile to a store to buy groceries, you'll quickly conclude that much further is not really a viable foot journey to buy groceries.
But nobody is walking in a suburban town. This definition makes basically all suburbs a food dessert, even though the grocery store is only a few minutes from most people's house.
I guess YMMV on this one. When I drive through suburbs, there are always people walking there. Watch especially how the staff arrives at your suburban stores & restaurants.
Okay, to be more pedantic - the vast vast majority of people living in suburbs have access to a car and do not consider a 2 mile drive to the grocery store an inconvenience. To say these people live in a food dessert is silly.
You are very clever to point out that people can actually walk around in a suburb, doesn't change the point.
> the vast vast majority of people living in suburbs
This conversation is by definition about people living on the margins. Similarly, the "vast vast majority" of people do not qualify for SNAP.
Pointing out that most people don't live on the margins is clever, but not particularly relevant, in a discussion about people who live at the very edge of society.
Food deserts are more about human health than people living on the margins. Easy access to healthy food doesn’t guarantee people will eat it, but it dramatically increases the odds. If the closest and most convenient place to buy food is a grocery store then it’s a moot point.
I suspect that food deserts are also an attempt to explain certain health issues in certain areas, but I'm not entirely convinced that "adding grocery stores" will solve those issues.
In other words, we have two things, and want to make one the cause of the other, but that's not entirely clear. Maybe the grocery stores die in areas where the population doesn't frequent grocery stores for whatever reason, or maybe people don't frequent grocery stores because they died, or maybe a mix of both.
Solving isn’t the only possibility, adding grocery stores may improve things without actually fixing things. A 54.3% obesity rate is horrific even if it’s better than a 53.7% one.
In public policy the question is generally if something has a measurable impact, and if that impact is worth the investment. Multiple small but very cheap improvements may be better than large but extremely expensive ones.
The problem is the definition of "urban or suburban". The census classifies any town of 5000 (!!!) people or more as urban.
I live in a small town of more than 5000 people, so it's technically urban. It takes me 5 minutes to get to the grocery store, but it's technically more than a mile so I am in a food dressert even though I have easy access to fresh produce.
I'm 2 miles to the nearest convenience store and 5 miles from the grocery store I choose to go to and I do not consider that to be a "food desert", it's just a drive down the road. It is quite easy to grow your own produce to eat, and kids want to do it now because it reminds them of Minecraft.
Yeah, 2 miles is ~80 minutes round trip on foot for a healthy person. 5 miles is over 3 hours round trip on foot, carrying groceries back. This is not accessible.
If a person is poor enough to qualify for food stamps, is it reasonable to expect them to have enough land and resources (fertilizer, etc.) to grow enough food for a family, while also earning a living? Should that be the only option?
Finally, of the group of people who do not have reliable access to cars, the poor are a significant portion. "Just jump in your car and drive down the road" is not an option for millions of Americans.
But yes, if you are relatively well-off, there's no such thing as a food desert. If you have a few tens of acres of land, a tractor, and car, even being 50 or 100 miles from a store is not a problem. SNAP isn't for those people.
Sure, but nobody does that because you're clearly doing something wrong or have done something wrong if you live in a rural area with zero access to a car and nobody who could give you a ride. Counties with rural areas provide public transportation for these people. If you're literally on the brink of starvation, I don't think growing tomatoes is that hard.
Well, 5 miles down the road makes it not a food desert, so there we go.
I suspect this is targeted more at urban areas - in NYC there are a ton of neighborhoods where the local grocery store options are limited to bodegas, most of which carry primarily or entirely processed and pre-packaged foods. Nothing wrong with that inherently, but lack of access to fresh produce and meats makes it more difficult for families to eat healthy.
Many of those neighborhoods are gentrifying, or near neighborhoods that are, and the higher income folks that move in can afford to have someone instacart or uber eats better quality groceries from a few neighborhoods over, an option not available to people on EBT.
For Uber it makes sense because the physical distance is likely not substantial, which allows the economics to work for the drivers, particularly if they can do it on an e-bike or scooter. In rural areas I would be concerned that the round-trip drive times are less appealing - I've already seen a lot of discussion on the dasher subreddit about how rural restaurant delivery is less preferable because of distance and a perception that tipping is not good relative to the effort required.
There are relatively few full-blown grocery stores in cities and the US often seems to mostly lack the scaled-down markets (eg Tesco’s) that are in between a convenience store and a full-fledged supermarket that exist in many urban areas.
When I visit Cambridge in MA the only real options seem to be a few Whole Foods and a couple Trader Joe’s scattered around and some specialty markets. (May be some other options here and there.)
> Well, 5 miles down the road makes it not a food desert, so there we go.
Not true. Unless you live in a truly rural town with less than 5000 people, you are counted as "urban" and any more than 1 mile from a grocery store is a food dessert.
I am 5 minutes from a grocery store and technically in a food dessert. Its silly.
From the University of Alabama Institute for Human Right, "Food Insecurity in Birmingham, AL" [1]:
> In Alabama alone, close to two million residents live in a food desert, and almost 150,000 of them live in Birmingham. This accounts for 69% of the city’s total population. A 2019 update also found that there is at least one area that is identified as a food desert in each of Birmingham’s nine City Council Districts.
The University of Alabama's Innovation for Rural Alabama site has some information on food deserts in rural Alabama [2].
Seems like parts of America are devolving into this. A Wal-Mart or Target move in, crush competition, become the sole source in a radius. Then, they get overwhelmed by crime and close (or close for other reasons) and now the walkable or reasonable bus able distance to the next store is very far.
Food Deserts are typically defined as 10 or more miles from a grocery; but where no public transportation infrastructure exists, are practically much more compact.
Anecdotally, in a ~ suburban Alabama county, I have family that was 7 miles from a grocery until dollar general came in about 5 years ago.
One question I don’t see explicitly mentioned in the article is what’s covered. Eligible food items are presumably covered but what about delivery fees?
IMO they should be waived. Companies shouldn’t be charging fees for access to SNAP benefits. Otherwise it becomes a taxpayer-funded Uber Eats coupon to drive profits via fees that would otherwise not be present.
That's my initial take, but then I started thinking about all of the costs associated with owning/borrowing a car, particularly in lower income areas that are often food deserts. Or the time (and job/childcare) issues of taking public transit when in a food desert.
I don't really buy this scenario where everyone on food stamps are unable to go to a grocery store. And if that is really true, subsidizing uber with tax dollars is not the solution.
The obvious question: How much will the markup/fee be?
If it's affordable this could change the lives of people without cars, but I fear it will be expensive, because UberEats currently is, and because Uber generally seems more interested in making a profit than in providing a public service.
for everybody commenting - it's obvious that given the restrictions of food stamps you cannot use them to pay for delivery, you can however use them to pay for the food that was delivered.
health benefits can be used for delivery.
this is also made reasonably clear in the article (could have been better)
Or hey, some cash you have around.
on edit: for people who are technical the interest here is almost mainly huh, yeah they separate out the invoicing of the food from the delivery and you pay for the delivery with the health benefits if you have them and you pay for the food with the stamps if you have them.
I wonder if Uber Eats could offer an option that takes longer but the fee is lower, by waiting until there are multiple deliveries they can do at the same time. Basically Uber Pool for groceries.
Is anybody familiar with Uber Eats and willing to explain some relevant details? For example, is Uber setting the grocery prices here, or are the stores setting the prices?
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to allow people to use their food benefits however they want, so long as Uber is not extracting additional rent from the USG by hiking grocery prices through their platform.
I expect them to profit; that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking whether the grocery prices themselves are dictated by Uber, and not just the delivery and other charges.
At least in the case of restaurants, markups come from the stores; it can vary widely from place to place. Uber takes a cut, so they either let it cut into their profits and make it up on the extra volume, or they mark it up to compensate.
“Food stamps” is the colloquial term in the US for the part of our social security net that provides supplemental benefits for food. The actual programs are WIC, SNAP, TANF, and a few others. They generally work through payment cards these days, not printed stamps.
America makes a lot of food and has the capacity to make more than we do. Food is not a scarce resource, we could give it away for free to every citizen with only small changes to the five-year central plan (the Farm Bill).
Awkward program that makes no sense, food stamps actively encourage you to not get a job. My sister and her husband had a 1 year old and were given food stamps, but were revoked after her husband had got a job and they told them this beforehand. People who can afford food get food stamps to buy junk food because anything but alcoholic beverages at a grocery store can be bought on food stamps, so you can quite literally get candy and energy drinks with food stamps.
> My sister and her husband had a 1 year old and were given food stamps, but were revoked after her husband had got a job and they told them this beforehand.
> anything but alcoholic beverages at a grocery store can be bought on food stamps
This is similarly untrue. SNAP forbids hot prepared food, which means that super-cheap $5 Costco chicken isn't an option, and folks in shelters without cooking facilities may struggle to find useful choices.
WIC is substantially more painful; only certain approved products can be purchased, and it's very specific; an 8oz container of something might be covered, but when the manufacturer cuts it down to 7.6oz it's no longer purchasable.
My family received this benefit when my father broke his leg and was unable to work. It was amazing and me and little sisters didn't starve for the several months when we had no money.
An acquaintance of our family is on the program and sells her card to buy heroin. She begs for food from shelters for her kids because 'the government isn't helping her'
It's the same program. Feel free to cherry pick which story above fits your narrative, they are both true.
Used for good and used for bad. I never said food stamps should be taken away and people should starve, I said the program should be modified to handle abuse better. You shouldn't be able to buy candy and soda with food stamps, you should be able to get premade food like those chickens from Costco. Disappoined? Get a job.
> My family received this benefit when my father broke his leg and was unable to work. It was amazing and me and little sisters didn't starve for the several months when we had no money.
This is tackling the problem from the wrong side. Breaking a leg and being unable to work should not keep youe employer (or your medical insurance) from paying your salary. You know, like in most developed countries (except the US). People should be able to afford being sick, even for extended periods, with full salary (okay, it drops to around 70% after 12 weeks or so)
Given the fact that "food stamps", as posted in another comment, is a colloquial term, this is absolutely not true. WIC, for instance, gives you a slip of paper with a specific list of the foods and amounts of those foods that you can buy. This is often limited to things like milk, cereal, eggs, baby formula, etc.
WIC and friends are funded by the feds but implemented by the states, and those on the programs know what can be bought where.
Ask any grocery clerk; it’s very common to see someone use SNAP to buy the listed items and then immediately afterwards spend their cash on the other things. Funds are fungible, after all.
All of which isn’t really a big deal, tbh. However the program is so large and the hoverment abandoning the purchasing power they could have if they dictated more the “buyables” is a regret. They could have “WIC” stamps on foods that are not only healthy but actively good, low in sugars, etc.
Right - I was that grocery clerk at another point in my life. The cashier processing the WIC purchases, specifically. That's why I take issue with such generalizations about abuse of the program. Yes, your own funds are used to purchase the foods not listed on your WIC check, but I saw many people come through who used it to make "good" purchases. Sure, maybe they weren't the pinnacle of health, but at least it looked like they were trying, as opposed to the stereotype of wasting it on junk food and alcohol.
> Ask any grocery clerk; it’s very common to see someone use SNAP to buy the listed items and then immediately afterwards spend their cash on the other things. Funds are fungible, after all.
Why is this at all surprising? SNAP doesn't cover anything non-food, like cleaning supplies; people still need toilet paper and soap.
It's called "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program". "Supplemental" seems to perfectly describe that behavior.
Food stamps and SNAP should just be blanket available to anyone who bothers asking, even bill gates. Or at least make it a “once on, can’t lose for X years” type of thing, and when lost it peters out instead of a hard cutoff.
The ease of losing the bennies and the annoyance of handling it is bunk.
Here, I can be sick for 6 consecutive weeks and still get my full salary (and 70%-90% of my full salary for up to like a year). I get money from the state when I'm unemployed (as long as I'm actively trying to find new employment). And if I have kids, I get additional money from the state (couple hundred euro per month per kid).
We simply don't have any need for things like Food Stamps here...
So yeah, sorry if I'm "out of touch" with the backwater ways of the US of A ;-)
Of course, those who hate any type of government aid will have a field day with this. Such is political discourse today.