A reader quotes Yglesias:
“Why give poor people grocery vouchers when it would be simpler, easier, cheaper, and more helpful to give them money instead?” What a ridiculous question with an obvious answer: Cash is fungible. It can be used to buy anything, and not just the car repairs Yglesias suggests might be more helpful to some. Cash can be used to buy drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and a host of other things that government assistance should not be supporting the use of.
In fact, the major reason the USDA switched the program from paper scrip to the SNAP debit card system is to prevent the kind of fraud in which retailers were accepting food stamps for purchases of alcohol and tobacco. The modern grocery scanner automatically prevents non-SNAP eligible products from being charged to card, so it now requires a complicated work-around (ringing up a six-pack of beer as a six-pack of iced tea, for instance) to get a non-eligible product paid for with SNAP benefits.
If Yglesias wants the government to help with other typical household items (non-food groceries or repairs), he should be advocating for a return to a more generous welfare program, not making benefits intended for food capable of fraud and abuse.
Another reader:
I support SNAP as the best way to get food to kids. I stand behind the SNAP recipients in the grocery line so I know them in my rural area. I also stand behind some of them while they are buying lottery tickets. SNAP keeps our taxpayer dollars buying food for kids, and fewer cigarettes and lottery tickets for their parents. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But Yglesias is living in a dream world if he thinks SNAP is so generous that you could eat so cheaply that you could save enough money for anything substantial beyond, perhaps, a new microwave.
The Dish 