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> 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 t

by 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.

by cheald 10y ago

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.