Reply #23: I see a lot of food-stamp users at our grocery

[spinbaby]

I don't think they're called food stamps anymore--not sure what the program is called but it involves a card. I notice that the users of these cards are almost invariably young women with children. The store I frequent is a unionized grocery store (Giant Eagle) that tends to have higher prices than other local stores but tends to paradoxically also have a lot of food-program users. This mystified me until I got a chance to talk to a young woman who shopped there using the program (she has a toddler, a part-time job, and a husband who delivers pizzas). She said she likes to shop at the Giant Eagle because it's the only store in town that doesn't make her feel bad for using the food program. She didn't go into specifics about what the other stores did to make her feel bad, but even at the bottom of the ladder, people want to be treated with respect.

I'd rather that a few people abuse the system without being caught than people go hungry.