09-12-2019, 06:35 PM
John -- food is rarely the problem in America. It is real estate. SNAP can be easy to get, and I can live on what I once got. By avoiding the tempting junk foods I could instead have such goodies as strawberries and asparagus, and maybe have a steak once a week. Of course that is a truly healthy portion of steak -- about the size of a deck of cards. (I am on disability for age and Asperger's, and I am trying to get off disability... but I live where the jobs are a poor match).
If you wonder why SNAP is so easy to get, it is because entities such as Kroger, Wal*Mart, Dollar General, IGA, Meijer, Aldi, and Albertson's prefer that people get food on SNAP cards than that they shoplift. Besides, people on SNAP often buy high-mark-up chips, pastries, sodas, and highly-processed foods.
In the First World, the critical shortage is in real estate. If you live where the opportunities are, you get the privilege of paying as much as 70% of your income in rent. Such leaves little room for much indulgence. Let us put it this way: it is easier to make money as a landlord leasing to software engineers who create many of the technological wonders of our times than it is to become a software engineer. One cannot inherit a job as a software engineer, but one can inherit rental properties if born into the right family.
If you wonder why SNAP is so easy to get, it is because entities such as Kroger, Wal*Mart, Dollar General, IGA, Meijer, Aldi, and Albertson's prefer that people get food on SNAP cards than that they shoplift. Besides, people on SNAP often buy high-mark-up chips, pastries, sodas, and highly-processed foods.
In the First World, the critical shortage is in real estate. If you live where the opportunities are, you get the privilege of paying as much as 70% of your income in rent. Such leaves little room for much indulgence. Let us put it this way: it is easier to make money as a landlord leasing to software engineers who create many of the technological wonders of our times than it is to become a software engineer. One cannot inherit a job as a software engineer, but one can inherit rental properties if born into the right family.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
