My local farmers’ market accepts EBT thusly: Recipients use their cards at the main office to buy poker chips, which are accepted by all the vendors, who turn them in to the office for reimbursement at the end of the day. (It is a pretty big market though; the smaller ones don’t even have anything like a main office.)
There even used to be a (State? Federal?) program to match EBT monies by 50% at farmers’ markets, so you’d get $15 worth of chips for $10. This was to encourage recipients to buy fresh food instead of the convenience store junk many people in poor neighborhood “food deserts” have to subsist on. Yet judging by the demographics I see at market (and it’s not one of the fancy upscale ones) you may be right about the lack of buy-in. I suspect it’s largely cultural; if you’re raised eating nothing but fast food and TV dinners, the idea of trying to turn turnips and kale into palatable sustenance is probably alien to you.
No, no! That would be class warfare. The rich killing the poor(preferably by somewhat indirect means in most cases) is just the natural order of things; and is so obviously self evident as to require no justification whatsoever. The reverse, however, would be an unparalleled atrocity. As we have seen, even saying mildly unkind things about them is pretty much the same as sending them to death camps. Raising their taxes would be worse than that; and killing them on an informal basis worse still.
If that seems illogical, try inhaling deeply from a cable TV signal cable until the words start to blend together.
I think this is the intent, actually. More subsidies for large corporations and chain grocery stores (although, I think my market also accepts EBT… I’ll have to see when I go today - it’s an indoor, permanent farmer’s market, that has a wide variety of fresh foods from around the world, plus lots of stuff they make in house).
Me too. It makes more economically, social, and ecological sense to be able to spend money on a CSA, but as long as multinationals have the ears of congress/local governments, that’s likely not going to happen, without an organized campaign to change it.
It’s a wonderful idea, though, for a number of reasons.
