4 ms·

I have a few issues with this article. One is that basing "they could buy x amount at so and so store" is meaningless because when you are poor you don't tend

by huxley 10y ago

I have a few issues with this article. One is that basing "they could buy x amount at so and so store" is meaningless because when you are poor you don't tend to arbitrage for lower prices, you buy when you're out. Not to mention that poor neighbourhoods have fewer supermarkets in number and are less likely to offer sales. But more egregious, the Walmart cited is in a shopping district with a Costco and a HomeDepot in San Leandro which is not in an especially poor area. [1] Non-SNAP families paying 7.1% for soda is a meaningless comparison since generally these families have much bigger food budgets than SNAP families so it's not unreasonable to see that figure be lower. Also non-SNAP families have access to more supermarkets and ones with sales. And 9.3% of $256 is $23.80 per month or about $0.80 a day. This is not an abusive amount of expense for a family, yes, it would be nice to offer incentives for better food, but this will be just an excuse to do more poor bashing. [1] http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/10/14/san-francisco-oakland-poverty-map http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/10/14/san-francisc... Update: ninja edit to add part of a sentence

cheald 10y ago
> and 9.3% of $256 is $23.80 per month or about $0.80 a day. This is not an abusive amount of expense for a family I feel like this is a bit of gymnastics of the numbers. When you recast the number as "only $23.80/month" what happens is that you mentally recontextualize that around your own budget, in which $23.80 is probably negligible. For a family on SNAP, the whole point is that $23.80 is not negligible. If you have problems with hunger and under-nutrition due to lack of income, $23.80 can go a very long way. Percentages are an appropriate way to discuss the issue in this case, because they more appropriately encapsulate the opportunity costs of such spending.
- huxley 10y ago
  Hahaha ... people pay for groceries with dollars not percentages, the math I did is simple and plain enough that you may be overdoing the generosity in describing it as gymnastics. On the contrary, I feel it is the use of percentages that obscures the truth and allows blame to be reassigned. The poor aren't on the sort of budget or living in circumstances that allow for much weighing of opportunity costs. $23.80 for a person might go some distance on a food budget, but for a family of 3 it is less than 32 cents per person per day. If you can make that stretch "a very long way", you're a better budgeter than anyone I've ever met and could have given my mother lessons when we had to struggle to make ends meet (thankfully for not very long). I urge you to try to shop with $23.80 in a poor neighborhood's supermarket, corner store or bodega. Best of luck with the stretching. Update: the true figure for the soda budget is 5.44% or closer to $13.93/month, the discrepancy caused by the Times author including juices in with sweetened soda.
  - cheald 10y ago
    Well, I live in a major metropolitan area so I have access to things like Walmart, but I can (and do) buy 20lb of rice for around $8, 20lb of potatoes for around $8, and 5 dozen eggs for $6.50. That's an awful lot of calories (7k from potatoes, 12k from the rice, 4.7k from the eggs), with good carbohydrate, fat, and protein availability - about 4 days worth for a family of 3 eating at 2k calories/day/each - for around $22-$23, and it's going to leave you a lot more full than $23 worth of soda and juice. If you want to go for straight caloric juicing then you just replace some potatoes with vegetable oil in the budget and cook extensively with it. A gallon costs ~$6 and contains a whopping 31,000 calories, and fattier foods tend to leave you feeling more full. I've spent a significant portion of my adult life stretching my grocery budget, and while I'm fortunate enough to not have to do so by necessity right now, I've learned that it's very possible to eat well for a fraction of what most people expect. You're very right that $23.80 isn't a whole lot for a family of 3, which rather reinforces the accusation that always underlies this kind of article - that that $23.80, which is so meager, represents a significant chunk of the low-income family's already-meager grocery spending power, which already isn't enough, and is being spent on liquid sugar rather than more nutritious alternatives. To suggest that it doesn't matter in the budgeting because it's a small number just handwaves away the fact that these families are already struggling to buy enough food. For the record: I'm of the opinion that we should let people buy whatever they please with their SNAP benefits and seek to offer education to those on SNAP about how to spend their entitlements in the most cost- and nutrition-effective ways. Nobody likes feeling hungry. Some people are going to make poor decisions about how they spend those funds, but it's a fool's errand to try to police that.
ejlangev 10y ago
Definitely reads as poor bashing to me. Here's a response from a University of Minnesota professor: https://www.facebook.com/joe.soss/posts/10209924428939404 https://www.facebook.com/joe.soss/posts/10209924428939404. I think the original article doesn't even link to the real study (https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPFoodsTypicallyPurchased.pdf https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPFoodsTy...).
- huxley 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing that Facebook post, it makes the case far better than I did. The professor makes it clear that the conclusions of the study are totally ignored by the NYTimes author and the figures are not only cherrypicked but misquoted. Apparently the percentage for soda is actually 5.44% not 9.3% (the bigger figure includes juices and other sweetened beverages). Attacking SNAP families for wastefulness strikes me as one of the sleaziest ways of trying to solve the problem of sweetened soda overconsumption.
DrScump 10y ago
you don't tend to arbitrage for lower prices Are you kidding? I grew up relatively poor, and we watched for sales all the time -- one needs to more aggressively pursue sales / lower prices, as long as the savings exceed the travel cost / value of time. Perhaps you meant that the poor won't have the same ability to stock up on sale items because they can't front the cash, but that's different from saying they don't pursue the lowest price available for everyday needs. Besides, Grocery Outlet gets some cool things that the top-tier stores don't even carry. ;)

by huxley 10y ago

cheald 10y ago

> and 9.3% of $256 is $23.80 per month or about $0.80 a day. This is not an abusive amount of expense for a family I feel like this is a bit of gymnastics of the numbers. When you recast the number as "only $23.80/month" what happens is that you mentally recontextualize that around your own budget, in which $23.80 is probably negligible. For a family on SNAP, the whole point is that $23.80 is not negligible. If you have problems with hunger and under-nutrition due to lack of income, $23.80 can go a very long way. Percentages are an appropriate way to discuss the issue in this case, because they more appropriately encapsulate the opportunity costs of such spending.

huxley 10y ago
Hahaha ... people pay for groceries with dollars not percentages, the math I did is simple and plain enough that you may be overdoing the generosity in describing it as gymnastics. On the contrary, I feel it is the use of percentages that obscures the truth and allows blame to be reassigned. The poor aren't on the sort of budget or living in circumstances that allow for much weighing of opportunity costs. $23.80 for a person might go some distance on a food budget, but for a family of 3 it is less than 32 cents per person per day. If you can make that stretch "a very long way", you're a better budgeter than anyone I've ever met and could have given my mother lessons when we had to struggle to make ends meet (thankfully for not very long). I urge you to try to shop with $23.80 in a poor neighborhood's supermarket, corner store or bodega. Best of luck with the stretching. Update: the true figure for the soda budget is 5.44% or closer to $13.93/month, the discrepancy caused by the Times author including juices in with sweetened soda.
- cheald 10y ago
  Well, I live in a major metropolitan area so I have access to things like Walmart, but I can (and do) buy 20lb of rice for around $8, 20lb of potatoes for around $8, and 5 dozen eggs for $6.50. That's an awful lot of calories (7k from potatoes, 12k from the rice, 4.7k from the eggs), with good carbohydrate, fat, and protein availability - about 4 days worth for a family of 3 eating at 2k calories/day/each - for around $22-$23, and it's going to leave you a lot more full than $23 worth of soda and juice. If you want to go for straight caloric juicing then you just replace some potatoes with vegetable oil in the budget and cook extensively with it. A gallon costs ~$6 and contains a whopping 31,000 calories, and fattier foods tend to leave you feeling more full. I've spent a significant portion of my adult life stretching my grocery budget, and while I'm fortunate enough to not have to do so by necessity right now, I've learned that it's very possible to eat well for a fraction of what most people expect. You're very right that $23.80 isn't a whole lot for a family of 3, which rather reinforces the accusation that always underlies this kind of article - that that $23.80, which is so meager, represents a significant chunk of the low-income family's already-meager grocery spending power, which already isn't enough, and is being spent on liquid sugar rather than more nutritious alternatives. To suggest that it doesn't matter in the budgeting because it's a small number just handwaves away the fact that these families are already struggling to buy enough food. For the record: I'm of the opinion that we should let people buy whatever they please with their SNAP benefits and seek to offer education to those on SNAP about how to spend their entitlements in the most cost- and nutrition-effective ways. Nobody likes feeling hungry. Some people are going to make poor decisions about how they spend those funds, but it's a fool's errand to try to police that.

ejlangev 10y ago

Definitely reads as poor bashing to me. Here's a response from a University of Minnesota professor: https://www.facebook.com/joe.soss/posts/10209924428939404 https://www.facebook.com/joe.soss/posts/10209924428939404. I think the original article doesn't even link to the real study (https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPFoodsTypicallyPurchased.pdf https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPFoodsTy...).

huxley 10y ago
Thanks for sharing that Facebook post, it makes the case far better than I did. The professor makes it clear that the conclusions of the study are totally ignored by the NYTimes author and the figures are not only cherrypicked but misquoted. Apparently the percentage for soda is actually 5.44% not 9.3% (the bigger figure includes juices and other sweetened beverages). Attacking SNAP families for wastefulness strikes me as one of the sleaziest ways of trying to solve the problem of sweetened soda overconsumption.

DrScump 10y ago

you don't tend to arbitrage for lower prices Are you kidding? I grew up relatively poor, and we watched for sales all the time -- one needs to more aggressively pursue sales / lower prices, as long as the savings exceed the travel cost / value of time. Perhaps you meant that the poor won't have the same ability to stock up on sale items because they can't front the cash, but that's different from saying they don't pursue the lowest price available for everyday needs. Besides, Grocery Outlet gets some cool things that the top-tier stores don't even carry. ;)