Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing.–Oscar Wilde
It’s been a couple of weeks, so first a brief recap: in the first entry, I looked the recent article on Salon about “hipsters” using food stamps to purchase luxury foods, which was maddeningly imprecise about the employment and financial circumstances of newly-qualified food stamp recipients and what they’re actually buying, as opposed to merely sauntering past. Relying almost exclusively on anecdotal evidence and rumor, the original article seemed designed primarily to build on popular stereotypes about “hipsters” and elicit outrage about this potentially-apocryphal trend in food stamp use.
In less than a week, the article attracted nearly 500 comments (Salon closed it down at 473). I didn’t read all of them, partially because a few themes emerge pretty quickly and they all start to sound the same. Here are the primary camps:
1. Outraged sheeple—a lot of people were completely sold on the veracity of the trend and responded exactly the way the article primes them to, i.e. how dare people who receive food stamps shop at Whole Foods, purchase gourmet or exotic ingredients, or ever buy anything more expensive or pleasurable than the bare minimum required to ensure their survival. This camp is split between people who object only to food stamps being spent on non-“essential” foods and people who apparently believe that people receiving public assistance should not be able to purchase anything that might be construed as a “luxury,” even with their own money.
2. Better than Doritos—another group of people who believed the story thought it was a good thing, at least as long the food they’re eating is healthier. This was frequently accompanied by the suggestion that eating “better” food would prevent them from getting fat and becoming a drain on the health care system. Virtually no one defended the purchase of “premium” foods on the grounds that they might be more pleasurable than whatever kind of gruel or cabbage soup might be the cheapest way to fulfill your nutritional needs.
3. Critics of the article and the sheeple—a number of people brought up the work requirement for food stamps (which has been temporarily lifted in most states by the emergency relief act). Others noted that people qualify for some set monthly allotment of food stamps so it’s not like they get more assistance if they choose to purchase expensive things. This was often expressed as a hope that this article or the idea of hipsters taking unfair advantage of the public food assistance wouldn’t be used as political leverage against food stamp programs or welfare in general.
4. Critics of welfare qua welfare—a lot of people who commented on the article seemed less concerned about what people are buying with food stamps than the fact that anyone who might be described as a “hipster” would qualify in the first place:
My issue lies with the fact that young, healthy, educated people are receiving government assistance in the first place. Rather than sully their precious hipster cred with some dreaded, uncool job such as waiting tables or manning the counter at Borders, these spoiled, art-damaged infants decide to go on food stamps. –SadieG
I belong to the third camp, which is basically what the first entry covered. I’ll look at the first two responses in more depth some other time. In this entry, I look at the misconceptions and anxieties expressed by this last group of comments and explain why some people find the idea of educated, young people being the recipients of food stamps—whether they’re using them to buy ramen or rabbit—so very infuriating.
Choosing to Be Poor
One of the main factors in this flavor of outrage is the mistaken assumption I discussed in the first entry that people have to be unemployed to receive food stamps. What seems to rankle the welfare critics is their belief that that young, able-bodied, educated people must be unemployed by choice and thus responsible for their poverty. SadieG was far from alone on this:
These are able-bodied 20/30-somethings with education. Granted, the job market is extremely weak but I have a hard time believing these people truly exhausted their options. Did they look into fast-food, janitorial services, retail? Those types of jobs have lots of turnover, so there's almost always something available. Did they look into picking up a trade? I would say the chances are No - these type of jobs don't fit into their self-image as an artist or whatever. So, even though this is a situation of their own making - they're expecting the government to subsidize their lifestyle. And its all being paid for by people who actually bite the bullet and work at jobs they don't necessarily love do what they do in order to support themselves and their families and not be a burden to society. Yeah, its pretty appalling. –CBFE
I don't like that food stamps and unemployment are so readily handed out to people who are arguably unemployed or underemployed by choice for years at a time. –ohthatkate
It amazes me that people can insist on saying they would never do anything they consider "beneath" them, that is never some kind of job that is not "art related", and therefore status-y, but still have no problem taking charity handouts. These people need to either find a way to make a living or face reality. –Luccianna
Maybe a degree in post feminist analysis of Sumerian Temple Prostitutes wasn't such a wise choice after all. —Senator Neptune
The author of the original article didn’t actually specify whether the people she interviewed were unemployed, and none of the people she interviewed said anything about refusing jobs that were “beneath them.” However, her anecdotes certainly implied that this trend was largely driven by
unemployed artists and people with humanities degrees. For many readers, the anecdotes clearly spoke louder than the dismal unemployment statistics she mentions or the fact taking a low-wage job you might be overqualified for wouldn’t actually disqualify you from receiving food stamps.
As the original article notes, unemployment rose by 176% between 2006 and 2009 for college-educated people between the ages of 20 and 24. The biggest caveat attached to the recent economic “recovery” has been the persisting unemployment disproportionately affecting young people. Increasingly, even for people with college degrees, unemployment or underemployment isn’t a choice right now.
But even setting the reality of the job market aside, let’s take this brand of outrage to its logical conclusion: if it’s wrong for people with college degrees (or certain kinds of college degrees) to get food stamps, then presumably, that should be added to the list of disqualifying factors. In light of the specific ire directed at the arts and humanities, the exclusion could be limited to graduates with degrees in the actual analog of Senator Neptune’s “post feminist analysis of Sumerian Temple Prostitutes.” It wouldn’t even be difficult to enforce—I’m sure the administrators of the program could check for applicants’ degree history just as easily as they can verify that senior citizens in the program have no more than $2,000 in assets, and there wouldn’t even need to be a debate about what counts—states could just use the CIP codes for the “humanities” assigned by the U.S. government.
Based on that system, a low-income college graduate who majored in something like math, astronomy, or sociology could still get supplementary nutritional assistance, but one who majored in history, linguistics, or philosophy would be out of luck. Would that really make any more sense or better fulfill the goals of the Food Stamp program? Are people who study art history and end up working minimum wage jobs any more culpable for their poverty than sociology majors? Should the government really deny assistance to people with the naïveté or gumption to major in poetry writing, but extend benefits to journalism majors who chose to ignore the fact that the profession they were training for was in the middle of a precipitous decline?
Especially in the current economic climate, no one is guaranteed a job—let alone one that pays more than poverty wages—regardless of how much education they have and what kind. Aside from unfairly punishing people whose particular interests or talents might not have been well-served by one of the sciences or a pre-professional program, this kind of policy might well discourage people from finishing their degree if they don’t have guaranteed employment. College drop-outs would at least still have a safety net. It might also discourage students who don’t come from wealthy backgrounds from majoring in English or History.
The primary faulty assumption these comments seem to rely on is that if you have a degree, you should be able to get a job, and if you can’t, you have done something wrong—gotten the wrong degree, been unwilling to accept menial or low-paying work, failed to consider all your options, etc. And therefore, taxpayer dollars shouldn’t go towards making your life even marginally more tolerable. Read more




Just like HFCS, agave nectar is produced by breaking down a plant-based polymer into its constituent sugars. In the case of agave, the relevant molecule is 



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