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Optional if self-sufficient, sure. I don't believe that the taxpayer should subsidize the unhealthy eating choices of a family of four that are all each 50-150lbs overweight. A working family should be able to afford healthy foods in reasonable portions on their own. "Government cheese" should probably be gruel. We'd have a much healthier population, and the economic benefits of the taxpayer not also subsidizing the healthcare of the obese later on would be substantial. Heart disease is our #1 population killer by miles, and it feels like we're all taking crazy pills about it.
And I say this as a guy who was once simultaneously 375lbs and poor. I made bad choices, and the healthy choices were a lot cheaper than the bad choices I was making by the virtue of sheer volume. Society should not have been responsible for me should I have needed assistance to maintain that lifestyle.
Your idea of is to limit the options of an already limited class by restricting their food choices/feeding them gruel? Considering the price of healthy food costs more, the limited options in food deserts, lack of time to cook for ppl working long hours, and everything else that affect poor ppl when it comes to food options your idea is to punish the poor instead of fixing the culture and systems that perpetuate the problem? Ppl don't even get that much money now on WIC.
Except that's what the government is suppose to do. If you fit the parameters for aid regardless of circumstances, you fucking get it. If 1 fat lazy slob gets aid for every 5 who really needs it, im fine with that.
Except what you think should be doesn't really matter when the reality is the opposite. This sounds like sound ass backwards right-wing libertarian bullshit.
ONlY pPl I ThINk DeSErve AiD sHOuld GEt iT
Only people who try to help themselves deserve help from others. Why should the government support someone's bad eating habit when they don't support someone's alcohol habit, or cocaine habit? My argument is not that people don't deserve subsidized help; my argument is that as a society, we should look at a mcdouble and see cocaine, not an apple. All I'm proposing is consistency.
If you step back from your "personal responsibility" argument and personal feelings, you'd see that all data points to the fact that eliminating means testing for safety net recipients always produces overall higher rates of success, leaves less people who need help to fall through the cracks, saves money for the government, is far more effective at helping people get back up on their own, and introduces no significant rise in fraud.
You're letting your feelings about how individuals "should" behave (a very subjective and culturally-driven standard) get in the way of what data and numbers from past large-scale experiments have shown us.
It's not about feelings, or fraud. It's about believing that the models everyone loves to cite don't accurately portray the complexities of reality. The reality is that even with record poverty and unemployment, we also have both record levels and record severities of obesity transcending generations.
Do any of those models account for the healthcare cost burdens of the willfully unhealthy as they transition into their elderly years? If so I'd genuinely like to see those models. In the research I've done, most models fall short of projecting long-term impacts and related costs. Yeah of course I can get behind supporting people out of bad situations with less oversight if the math works out. I just don't think the math works out when you actually account for long-term impacts of supporting bad habits.
Except those models are the best we have and are the result of long term research. Unless there's new data that says otherwise its stupid to use anything else.
Considering how health care system is already wrecked, bloated, and filled with wasteful spending it'd be smarter to fix that instead of cutting food programs because you think poor ppl are just lazy slobs
Unless you're a professional data scientist you're research doesn't amount to shit. Especially since you don't seem to factor in outside stimuli that creates shitty eating habits like affordability, adjacency to stores that sell healthy food, and the fact most of our food is filled with sugar for no damn reason.
I know all about stimuli that creates shitty eating habits. Source(anecdotally, sure): I was once 375lbs. I choose soylent as my primary nutrition because of how hard it is to eat healthily, cheaply, otherwise. I think others could benefit from an internal shift in perspective about what food is, and what food should be. When you discipline yourself to separate food into categories of fuel and pleasure, it's a lot simpler to find a sustainable balance. I still eat other things when I go out with friends or my wife but otherwise, we both mostly fuel ourselves with flavorless goup and are the healthiest we've ever been for it. Mentally, Physically, Emotionally, everything. At first it sucks to see ads for taco bell and whatever but by the time you've lost 150lbs and you feel the difference in your body, it's just not worth it. I'm not suggesting this lifestyle to anyone with reasonable portion control and health, I'm suggesting this lifestyle to anyone who chooses to pay too much to eat too much and could benefit from a change.
I'm actuality not quite sure about the healthcare system impacts, thought that's something you've now peeked my interest in. Will do more reading.
Re: obesity and poverty: the two are often inseparable in discussions such as this. We know that poorer communities are often food deserts, not because there a lack of restaurants/groceries, but because the availability of nutritious, affordable options is nonexistent (or extremely limited). If an individual has $100 to spend on food for the family, the unhealthy options will generally be preferred because they pack more bang for the buck in terms of caloric impact and ability to stretch the quantity, not to mention the time-savings factor which we can't ignore for individuals who may be balancing multiple jobs and family responsibilities.
Unironically, and not in the right-wing meme way: Change my mind. I think socratic exchanges in good faith are the best way to expose the flaws in one's arguments. I absolutely could be wrong, and honestly I would love to be wrong about this one. Bypassing bureaucracy to offer unconditional aid, and it actually having a net benefit, is easily the ideal solution. And either way, thank you for at least hearing out the argument in good faith.
My counter to "food deserts" is modern logistics. Soylent may not be the cheapest, but even in it's most expensive form (premixed, preflavored, individually bottled, and shipped via an online purchase) it's like $3.25/400kcal. Which sounds like a lot, but for people who need to lose weight, ~1600-2000kcal per day is $400/mo/person. That is very easily eclipsed by a largely fast food and freezer dinner diet. Yes it's a fair argument that soylent isn't a fair fight on strictly calories/dollar, but it is a fair fight on dollars/meal and dollars/good_nutrition. Plenty of poor families spend that or more with assistance on fast food and freezer dinners because it's cheap, convenient, and filling, but the same dollar could be spent on a healthy alternative at even it's least efficient form. The less convent and more efficient forms come around ~$1.50/400kcal and that would put a month's of calories at less than $200 per person. I would challenge someone to feed a person, even unhealthily, for less. Feeding the poor and hungry isn't an economics or logistics problem, it's a perspective and individual willpower problem.
I'm not a doctor at all, but for certain addictions, people can die from the withdrawls that occur if they just stop. I'd imagine in those cases rehab and treatment requires supporting the habit via the drug itself or a safer analog in order to keep the individual alive so that they are able to draw down and eventually quit whatever the source of their addiction is.
For example:
I would support programs that weaned people out of unhealthy eating habits, and ones that accommodate for special dietary needs (fiber, insulin, etc). That seems totally reasonable.