Fox News Very Sad People Aren't Yelling At People On Food Stamps (More)

Here are Fox News' Martha MacCallum and Charles Payne talking about the horror of people getting food stamps. They note that despite the "so-called recovery," there are still a lot of people unemployed, and a lot of people getting food stamps! (They do not mention that the top 1% continue to make out like bandits, but that is OK because those people EARN IT.) Mr. Payne has some serious thoughts about what would make Food Stamps less attractive to people: Add some stigma! And maybe end all that valet parking for people with EBT cards, too. Let them park their Welfare Cadillacs themselves!

Payne pulls out of his ass an interesting example of how Food Stamps and other assistance serve as a disincentive to anyone ever getting a job, citing a hypothetical California worker who might turn down a raise in salary from $44,000 to $50,000 because then they would no longer qualify for food stamps. As it happens, we have California's eligibility guidelines right here, and we have to say that Mr. Payne knows nothing of their work. Someone making $44K a year would have to have six people in their household and be the sole income for their family -- this strikes us as a slightly atyptical food stamp family, particularly given that CA's minimum wage is a whopping $8 an hour. But, yes, we need to do something to stop these damned statistical outliers from even being possible.

Payne's other suggestion to improve matters is to bring back some stigma to getting food stamps. He doesn't actually explain how, although we're sure an ideal solution would be to get rid of EBT cards, which limit a user to being sneered at and lectured by grocery store employees. Or at the very least, EBT cards should be as publicly shameful as the old paper food stamps -- maybe they could set off an announcement on a store's loudspeaker system: "Taker at Register 5." Because the real reason people are poor is because it's just such a goddamn picnic now.

[ MediaMatters ]