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by kube-system 7 days ago
Moving the goalpost? Every household has expenses other than food.

People who resort to theft don't allocate the theft proportionally to each of their expense categories. They do it based on opportunity. If you're $50 short at the end of the month, you can't retroactively take it out of the rent check you sent at the beginning of the month.

> "mother stealing food from a chain store" is what people far removed from poverty think poor people do.

Rich neighborhoods don't lock up the baby formula.

1 comments

Reminds me of seeing posts from my local police department where baby formula was being stolen -- in quantity -- not by mothers, but by garden-variety criminal dudes, who resell it because it's valuable. It's also, believe it or not, a popular choice as the inactive ingredient to cut drugs.

The Internet commenters who cheer "Yeah, mama, you stick it to Grocery Chain! Feed them babies!" really want this narrative to be true, but it just isn't.

Actual poor moms with hungry babies and kids have entire government programs dedicated to help them that are easy to get, called WIC and SNAP.

I'm well aware that people with drug issues exist -- that doesn't mean that there are zero poor people who struggle to afford food.

SNAP and WIC are great but there are gaps (and they are getting bigger as congress has further restricted them and this administration have started dismantling them administratively)