The Morality of Food Stamps

[00:00:13] With the threat of the food stamp program being temporarily halted for over 42 million Americans, I think it'd be useful to explore the morality of the program from a Catholic perspective, both from the individuals who receive its perspective and from the government handing it out. Perspective. That's what we talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I'm Eric Simmons, your host editor chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, I just want to encourage you to smash that like button. Subscribe the channel. And I haven't said it a lot lately, but I was reminded of this by a friend. [00:00:44] Don't hit the notification bell because you have a life outside the Internet. You don't need your phone telling you what to watch and what to do. Subscribe to the channel so you know when we post new things here. But I don't want to be one of those people who's like all creepy and like giving you notifications, your phone, oh, come watch me or something like that. That's just, I think that's weird. So don't hit the notification bell, but do subscribe and do. Actually I just realized the little gif I'm showing in the upper right of the screen right now has the little link hitting the notification bell. So act like that's not happening. I didn't even realize that until just now. Now. So. Okay. Also you can subscribe to our channel. I'm sorry, you can subscribe to our email news list. Just go to crisismagazine.com, put your email address and we'll send you our articles each morning. You also follow us on social media RIS mag. Okay, so one of the big news in related to the government shutdown is that it was revealed that the food stamp program could be halted starting on November 1st. [00:01:50] And one of the things that I think shocked a lot of people was when they found out over 40 million Americans receive food stamps. [00:01:59] And that's a lot of people. And so people were rightly somewhat shocked by that, a little bit freaking out. [00:02:05] And so people were talking about on social media about food stamp program, things like that. And I wanted to give one of my experiences with the food stamp program. Not directly, I've never received it, but just here, I'll put it up on the screen. I'll read it to you. [00:02:19] I just posted, when I was in the grad theology program at Francisca in the mid-90s, a fellow grad student who's married with children was on food stamps. [00:02:29] I was completely scandalized. Here was an able bodied man taking our money from the government just so he could get a theology degree. Shameful. [00:02:38] And what was interesting, this tweet went a little bit viral. And what was interesting is a lot of people very much thought, first of all, a number of people thought I was being sarcastic, that there's nothing shameful or scandalous about this. A lot of Catholics were like, what are you talking about? [00:02:56] I saw a lot of people say, maybe you should learn more from your theology degree. Why were you scandalized? This, why was this shameful that this guy was receiving food stamps? [00:03:05] And so it really got me thinking that, like, okay, I don't think Catholics are really thinking this through too much. I don't think a lot of people are really thinking this through too much about the food stamp program, the morality of accepting it and all the unintended consequences, things like that. [00:03:21] I mean, for example, so in the example I gave, this was a guy who was married and had a couple kids, he was getting a graduate degree, he was able bodied, me, he could get a job if he wanted to support his family. But he wanted, I think he was to be a youth minister. Maybe he was going to be a religious director for a pair or something like that. That's kind of what he wanted to do. Remember, this is Steubenville, 1990s. A lot of the theology people were like that. [00:03:47] And so he was studying theology. And so in order to do that, he couldn't support his family because he was in classes. So he was on food stamps. So they could, they could eat, his kids could eat. [00:03:58] And I just thought this was, I honestly thought it was sinful. I still think it was sinful. And I want to break down why I thought that and kind of talk about the food stamp program a little bit more. And like government programs, welfare programs in general. [00:04:11] I do think it's important that we make a couple of distinctions here though. [00:04:16] We need to make a few distinctions here. First off, there's the morality of accepting food stamps, of an individual accepting food stamps. [00:04:25] Number two is the morality of the government giving out food stamps. That's a separate issue. It's not the same thing. I saw a lot of people on X were confusing those two things. They were immediately jumping to, oh, you're a libertarian who's against government programs. That may be true, but that's not related to what I was saying here. That's not the same thing. So there's morality of accepting them, morality of giving them out, government giving them out. Also the usefulness. There's a debate of whether or not does this actually help the people it claims to help or could it harm them? Does it have unintended consequences? It harms other people? All those issues, I want to kind of break down those first. Let's be clear about what we're talking about here. [00:05:04] The food stamp program started in 1939 during the Great Depression. It was discontinued then in 1943, but it started back up. [00:05:13] John F. Kennedy in 1961 kind of started up a pilot program of it and in 1964 was passed the Food Stamp Act. It was actually called food stamps back then. [00:05:22] And the idea was this, here's how it was sold. At least the idea was it was to boost the agricultural economy by distributing surplus food while improving nutrition and combating hunger amongst low income families. [00:05:38] So what people were seeing was you have people who are poor In America, the 1930s and then also in the 60s, people are poor in America who can't afford to feed their family on one hand, on the other hand, we literally had a surplus of food being created by our farmers, by our, you know, by food producers in this country. [00:06:04] So people were like, what is, you know, how can we make those two things resolved so that the farmers get paid for all the food they may they produce and the poor, the low income people have enough food to survive. [00:06:20] So there, there's this food stamp program. [00:06:22] The government basically would pay the farmers for the surplus food and the, and the people, and the low income people would have it. That's, that is the sales pitch of it. And it's, it was considered a win win. It was actually pretty bipartisan support at the time. [00:06:38] Win win because it helps farmers, it helps the poor. So everybody's happy. In the first year, I think this is 1965, first full year, it had 500,000 recipients. So sort of pretty big, but nothing compared to now, now it's 80 times bigger. Is that right? 82 times 81 times bigger. Something like that. [00:06:58] Can't do math live on the podcast. Sorry about that. [00:07:03] It's evolved though, of course from its original intentions. And also anybody who pays attention to this stuff knows the intentions given for a government program are not necessarily why there's that government program. [00:07:19] And the, the, the goals it's trying, it claims it's trying to achieve are not necessarily the goals it actually will achieve. [00:07:28] And so that's the first thing. But also it evolved because all government programs evolve. The all government program programs grow bigger and they, they, they grow corrupt often and they, they, they just include a lot of things. They weren't that the original framers of that Bill, that law did not necessarily intend. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. [00:07:47] Now it's called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP. It was changed to that in 2008 because there was a stigma associated with food stamps. And let me just take an aside real quick. I think stigmas can be good. I think shame can be good because it keeps people from doing things that are being stigmatized. Obviously, this can be abused. It can be stigmatized. Good things. But there should be a certain stigma among men, particularly who can't support their family. [00:08:17] Now, obviously, there are situations when a man can't support his family through no fault of his own. Maybe he's disabled in some way, maybe something happens. We all know that's the case. Let's not find our one or two examples and say, oh, yeah, we have to then apply it to everybody. No, if a man is able to support his family and he's not doing it, he's on food stamps, I absolutely think he should be stigmatized because if you're able to support your family, you should support your family. You should not be receiving government assistance. We'll talk about that more in a minute. [00:08:48] But now, like I said, this evolving program, Snap is now called, serves about 42 million people, and it costs around $100 billion a year. [00:08:59] So this is clearly 42 million people compared to 500,000 the first year. I know our country's bigger, but still, that's a pretty big growth. Now, you could argue. [00:09:10] Well, that just shows how terrible our economy is. It just shows how difficult it is for people to support themselves. And there is some truth to that. Because, I mean, I've talked about this a lot. When I was. When I was doing my promotions for my book, Moral Money the Case for Bitcoin, I talked a lot about the difficulties of young people, particularly supporting themselves because of runaway inflation, you know, the money printing. [00:09:37] But things like the food stamp program actually encourage money printing. So we'll talk about that also in a minute. But so that. So first of all, that's. It's called SNAP now. 42 million people, $100 billion. [00:09:51] It's not really associated. Nobody even think. Nobody even knows that was originally associated with, like, surplus food, because that's not what it does anymore. Of course it's not. That's never. The truth is that was probably just a sales pitch in the early days to get support for it. It wasn't actually doing that ever. [00:10:10] But remember, originally it was like, you know, improved nutrition of these, of poor people by, you know, getting these farm products but now with Snap, you can buy you. I mean, if you look at my wife, this really bugs her. She talks about this a lot. [00:10:26] It's unbelievable. The crap you can buy with Snap with your food stamps. Junk food, candy, soda. I think 5% of all snap dollars goes to soda, like sugary drinks, which are terrible for you, you know, the processed crap. If we're really trying to improve the nutrition of lower income people, which is a lofty, noble sentiment, you sure ain't doing it with Snap. You could literally spend $200 Snap dollars at Walmart or wherever with just crap and come home with just crap. I mean, if you wanted to poison poor people, SNAP is actually a great way to do it. It's a great way to do it. [00:11:08] So like most government programs, the food stamp program has, you know, just evolved into this behemoth, awful program that does more harm than good. [00:11:21] So. But I want to talk a little bit about the morality that the example I gave and just in general because a lot of people were saying there's nothing wrong with that, that gentleman receiving food stamps in order to get grad program. Some were even claiming, hey, that's great, we're using government money to help foster theology. You know, that's base that we're. That were. That we're promote. That we're basically making the government promote, you know, Catholic theology. First of all, of course, note, a lot of people do this and they're not getting theology degrees from Franciscan University of Steubenville. [00:11:50] They're getting like, you know, women's studies degrees from some secular university or they're, you know, getting a grad degree, a law degree or something like that, which, you know, we have plenty of lawyers don't need any more. [00:12:01] So it's not just theology degrees. [00:12:04] But here's the thing. [00:12:07] If you. Okay, we also need to distinguish if you're truly unable to support your family, so like I said, some disability, something like that, and you've tried charities and that is not enough. If you can't get a job for whatever reason, you've worked your tail off to get a job. [00:12:26] I'm not saying it's immoral to receive food stamps. [00:12:31] I'm not saying it's immoral then. But we all know that's not 42 million people. There aren't 42 million people in that situation. [00:12:38] That's just ridiculous to think that. [00:12:41] I don't know what the number is, but sure ain't 42 million. Maybe it's at 500,000 from the original year. Maybe it's that number. [00:12:48] But people who are literally just cannot get jobs to support themselves as hard as they work, they have no charity that can help them. [00:12:56] Okay, I'm not going to say it's immoral for you to receive food stamps, but that's not what we're talking about here. [00:13:03] Basically, this gentleman just wanted to be. His life goal, I guess, was be a religious ed director at a parish. That's fine. I got nothing wrong with that. [00:13:17] But taking money from the taxpayers, my money, your money, in order to do that, but forcibly taking it too, because remember, we're talking about taxes. And even if it's not taxes, it's from money creation that's still stealing money from us. So taking money from us so that you can pursue your dream, that's just. That's immoral. I'm sorry. In fact, it's interesting, you know, to kind of finish up the story about this gentleman. [00:13:43] About a month later, I decided to quit the GRAB program because I was about to get married and I didn't want to fall into the situation he was in. I saw that, okay, as a grad student, I wouldn't be able to support my family, and so I just quit and I just got a job after we got married. And I did that for 12 years. And then I started going back into the grad program through distance ed, which was a lot cheaper. I paid for it myself with money I'd saved up over the years while raising a family. [00:14:16] And I eventually got the degree. It took me 17 years from the time I started till the time I finished to get my master's degree in theology at Franciscan. I'm probably the longest person ever to get a master's degree in theology at Steamville. It took me 17 years to do it from 1994 to 2011. [00:14:32] But that's because I just was like, I cannot justify taking money from the government, from food stamps in order to support my family, because I can't support them because I'm pursuing my dream to get a degree, a master's degree. I actually wanted to be a college professor at the time. That didn't work out again because simply I couldn't see a way to do it and support my family without getting some type of, you know, food stamps or something like that. I just didn't want to do that. I didn't feel that was right. I felt like my duty as a father, as a husband, was I have to first support my family. That's my primary obligation, not to do my dream job or whatever. [00:15:10] So I Just think that it really is sinful. [00:15:14] And why do I say it's sinful? Because I really think you're forcibly taking money. I know you're not the one, you holding the gun, but the fact is, if other people don't pay their taxes, somebody will come to their house eventually with a gun and throw them in jail if they don't pay their taxes. [00:15:28] And so that's the money you're using. And you're using it for a program that's intended to help low income people who are just struggling to survive. You're not struggling to survive. You decided, you consciously decided you wanted to get this degree in a field that you just, you like. [00:15:44] And I just, I'm sorry, I just don't think that's justifiable. Now, I heard the argument, I thought of the argument too. What about just accepting subsidized government loans for your education, which tons of people do. What about even attending a public college, which is subsidized by the government? In that sense, you are taking tax dollars to get a degree that you don't have to have. You could just get a job out of high school where you just simply decide you're going to, you know, work to support, you know, yourself and your family. [00:16:17] I want to say, in theory, I agree with you. [00:16:22] What I'm saying is I actually don't like those programs. Ideally, I think there should be no subsidized government loans. In fact, I think that's what's caused college. Here's the thing, it's always a cycle. Government programs are intended to help in one way. They make that industry worse, making a need for government programs more and more over time. [00:16:42] The reason college is so expensive today, one of the main reasons colleges expensive is because of subsidized government loans, student loans. If we didn't have those, if the government never got involved in that, remember the original intention of those stupid, the stupid, the student loans, government loans, was so more people could go to college. The problem is that then makes the cost of college go up. If you don't understand why that is, read a basic economics book. Just read basic economics, the book. [00:17:08] And so that basically then makes the cost go up. So more people need to get those government loans. So I'd say, yeah, no government loans. I'm completely against those for student loans. Also, I don't like public colleges. I don't think the government should be involved in these colleges. [00:17:26] I think it should be private colleges. And if that were the case, they'd be a lot cheaper because There'd be a lot more free market competition for your college dollars. [00:17:38] That being said, there is a difference from a morality standpoint, from the person receiving it, of a person who receives a student loan which was intended to help them go to college. The whole purpose of it, the reason it was voted in by electors. Now, I'm not 100% like, pro democracy here, but at the same time, the student loan program was instituted by elected officials for the purpose of helping people go to college, whereas the food stamp program was not instituted to help people pursue their graduate dreams or something like that. So, I mean, let's be honest, it's not the same thing. The morality of this is different because, like I said, the food stamp program was not intended so that somebody could get their Women's studies master's degree. [00:18:28] And so yet the student loan program was intended for that. [00:18:32] So I do think there's a difference in the morality. I really feel like people get weird when it comes to government money. They just. I mean, I think a lot of people don't know economics. They don't understand economics. [00:18:44] I think most people don't. But it's. It's very true when it comes to government money. And I was telling my wife about this, and she was just saying how it's like people literally believe there's like just a massive pile of money or gold or something sitting under the White House or under the Capitol building that the government just uses to pay off these things, so why not use it to help people buy their food or help people go to college or whatever the case may be? It's all just sitting there. It'd go to waste otherwise. That, of course, is not what's happening. They're taking money from you, they're taking money from me, or they're printing money, which takes money away from you and me. So spending power really is what it's taking from us. [00:19:22] And so. [00:19:23] But I just see so many people, and honestly, I don't want. You know, I don't really like to say this, but I'm going to. [00:19:30] I really believe priests in particular, we got to start teaching basic economics in our seminaries. I've seen too many priests who support these. These awful programs because they make you feel good. They sound good. Hey, we're helping the poor. We should do that. They don't have any concept of unintended consequences of the idea of, where does this money come from? [00:19:54] I once knew a priest who. [00:19:57] A family. [00:19:59] This was during the. Soon after the 2008 recession. A family was underwater with Their mortgage, they couldn't get out of it and they wanted to basically move, get another house, but their mortgage is more than their house was worth. This happened to a lot of people. [00:20:14] The priest actually counseled them to just leave, to just, they had an opportunity somewhere else to rent somewhere, to just leave and just abandon the loan. Because he was like, basically, you know, people are doing that, they have the ability to cover for that, stuff like that. [00:20:29] That's awful. That's immoral to say that you made an agreement, you signed a contract. [00:20:36] Unless the other side did something to violate that contract, you, you were obliged to pay that off. I don't care if it was a good loan, I don't care if you shouldn't have signed it. I don't care if you were like, you know, you were ignorant when you signed it. That's your fault. You gotta, you gotta, you know, take personal responsibility and follow that up. But I really felt like it was this, this terrible idea of economics and government, how governments work and things like that. [00:21:01] This is not even, this is something also, people are like, immediately think, oh, just because you're a libertarian, that's why you're saying this. [00:21:08] In the 1990s when this happened to me, this friend of mine, he wasn't really a friend, but a classmate who took the food stamps. And I was appalled by it. I wasn't even a libertarian at the time, and I'm not fully libertarian now, but I wasn't even libertarian leaning at the time. I didn't know what libertarianism was. If I had heard of that, I probably thought it was just kooky. This had nothing to do with libertarianism, had nothing to do with the morality of the government doing it, which I haven't even talked about yet today. [00:21:33] But I'm talking about the morality of the person receiving it. That's what I care about here and that's what I think people forget when they immediately want to go to the political part of it about like, okay, whether or not government should do this or not, what about our responsibility? My soul, I'm responsible for myself. My soul is how my judgment is going to be depending on my actions. I can't just say, well, the government allowed that, so I did it. No, I have to take personal responsibility for my actions. You, Yes, I can have certain political views and support this or support that, whatever, but I have to recognize, am I doing the right thing? And I think if you're able to, if you are able to have a job that supports your family, it's sinful to take food stamps, period, end of story. [00:22:18] If you're able to have to have a job that can support your family, it's sinful to take food stamps, period, end of story. [00:22:25] Now, now I want. Okay, so that's the kind of the personal morality part of it. But now what I want to talk about is the morality of the government offering it. Now, this, I will say my libertarian leanings do come into this some, but not completely. [00:22:41] We have to remember what's happening here. [00:22:45] The government is taking money from one group of people and they're giving it to another group of people. Now, you could argue that sometimes the government is justified to do that. I'm not even going to say that you're wrong. Like, I'm not like this hardcore libertarian so much that I'm like, government shouldn't exist. I'm like an anarchist or something like that. But, like, there is a Catholic argument to be made, no question about that. You know, in defense of just a general principle of governments taking in taxes and using it for the good of society, I'm not arguing that that alone is wrong. [00:23:20] What I am arguing, though, is that Catholics need to look very carefully at every single instance where the government takes money and uses it for something because they have to remember at its base what's happening. [00:23:32] People with guns are taking your money from you. That's what taxes are. Again, you can try to justify that and say for the common good. That's okay, fine, we can have that argument another time. What I'm saying, though, is because that's a fact, that's how taxes are collected, basically, we need to really look carefully every time we do that. It really needs to be for the common good. It really needs to help people if we're going to do it. [00:23:58] And the fact is, the idea of a institution, a group of people taking guns and, you know, threatening people with their, you know, freedom if they don't give money to help a guy get his graduate degree in theology because he can't afford to support his family while doing it so he can be a religious ed director someday. [00:24:19] I just think that's immoral. Likewise, if he's getting. For Catholics out there. You don't like my example? There's also example. How about the women's studies graduate student who's going to go on to be a professor and, you know, and poison young minds. Your money's paying for that. My money's paying for that by force. You can't do anything about it. [00:24:37] That's why I think we just need to be very, as Catholics under a secular government, we have to be very skeptical of what the government's doing with our money. [00:24:46] I'm not saying, again, I'm not saying government can never tax people and can never use the money for the common good. But simply what they're doing is they're taking money from, and here's the reality. They're taking money from a group of working people and they're giving it to a group of non working people. Now some of those non working people, yes, they are in sad situations, do no follow their own whatever, but a lot of them simply just don't want to do the work they need to do to support their family. And the hard working people who don't qualify for food stamps because they're hardworking and they support their families, they're having money taken from them. So what it does is especially for middle class, lower middle class, even some of the higher, you know, low income people, they're getting more taxes taken out, which is making their lives more of a struggle in order to help somebody get their women's studies major or their theology degree or something like that. That's what we always seem to forget when we, we focus on this is the problem. People just focus on the people receiving the, the money and they don't think at all about the people whose money it is that they've taken. [00:25:49] Maybe you've just made it harder for another family to support their family because the taxes they have to pay in order to help this person who's basically abusing the system. [00:25:58] It's important to remember this is not charity. We're talking about governments Supporting the poor is not charity ever. [00:26:06] Charity is voluntary. Charity is, I decide I want to give to the poor. I want to help them. And just to be clear, a Catholic will go to hell if he doesn't help the poor. Anybody will go to hell if they don't help the poor. You got to help the poor in some way. [00:26:20] Another thing is, is that the morality of this is that what we see happens with every government program, especially the bigger the government that's running it, like the federal government in this case is they have no way to distinguish who deserves it and who doesn't. They don't have any real good way. I should say they might put in some things that make it look like they do. But the fact is people are low income for a lot of different reasons. [00:26:42] You know, when you hear the pious platitudes of church leaders and you know, feel good Catholics and, and leftists, it's like every person who's low income is poor. It's all through no fault of their own. It's all just because of hard luck. [00:26:55] There are cases like that, but a lot of cases are not like that. It's just simply people being lazy, people not willing to work hard. You know, there are, there are plenty of cases like that too, but there's, we don't distinguish between them when it comes to these federal programs like the food stamp program. Yes, I know they have certain things in place, but they don't really keep that in mind. [00:27:19] Whereas a charity, a private charity can do a, that's on the boots, on the ground in the community. They can do a lot more to say, oh no, I'm not going to give, I'm not going to help you out because I know you could just get a job. You're just being lazy. Whereas then they see somebody who's in a real situation, like they got disabled or something like that, they're like, oh yeah, we're going to help you out because you need help. We need, you know, we, we do need help. We're going to give you that step up so that you can eventually take care of yourself. That's the other thing. A true charity, a good private charity, what it does, it's not try, it's not just giving handouts, it's helping people to self support themselves. Whereas government programs don't ever do that. They might claim to do that, but they're basically just making people dependent upon the government instead of being dependent, you know, trying to help themselves and support themselves, having personal responsibility. [00:28:09] But that's the problem with government programs. And it's a very, it's a moral hazard is what it is. People will end up not being as incentivized to work and support themselves because they know they have this safety net. [00:28:23] I'm not saying there should be no safety net, but a very large safety net causes a lot more problems than it solves. [00:28:30] And then finally, I just want to mention the usefulness of government programs like do they actually do what they claim to do? In this case, I would say no, because a great example of the unintended consequences of this, 42 million people getting food stamps to pay for their groceries automatically will make grocery prices go up, which causes more people to need food stamps to pay for their groceries. This is the cycle I was talking about. So it actually is making it so more people have to be dependent on the government. By giving out, being so free and giving out all this, all these funds all this welfare. [00:29:06] So grocery prices goes up. Everybody again, think about the lower middle class family who is trying to make ends meet. [00:29:16] Their grocery prices are increasing because of food stamps. They're not on food stamps themselves. They're doing everything right. They're the type of citizens we want, yet they have to pay more in groceries because of food stamps. [00:29:29] And I just think that is a, you know, a travesty. It's, it's not very useful, of course, like I said. Also it makes people very dependent. It incentivizes people not to work. [00:29:39] And also it stifles true charity. One of the reasons the problem is people say, oh, we need to have these government programs to help these people. [00:29:46] But the fact is they never can prove that charity wouldn't take care of them if government didn't step in. I personally believe that Americans are some of the most charitable people on earth. [00:29:58] And I think we would help people. I think private charities would actually receive much more help if there was no safety net given to them, given to the poor. Such a broad, large safety net, I should say, given to everybody, so many people by government programs. And so they'd be helped because you'd be helping people in your community, people you actually know, you know, their story, you know, about them losing their job unjustly or them being in, you know, getting in an accident where they can't work anymore or where the case. We see this happen all the time with the Gofundmes. When somebody has a true need, like, something happens to them, man, people just pile the money on, which is great. I love it. [00:30:40] And that's because people understand we're going to help somebody who really does deserve the help, but the guy who's just like, I don't really feel like working or I feel like, you know, pursuing my dream, living my best life and not supporting my own family. It's like, no, I'm not giving you a dime. Go get a job. [00:30:59] So I really think this is where Catholics, we need to step up and we need to be a bit different than the world. [00:31:04] We have to be much more willing to take personal responsibility. We have to be much more willing to understand that government programs are not charity. And just because they might make you feel good thinking about them does not mean they actually help the poor. They usually hurt. [00:31:19] You know, and for personally for accepting this stuff. [00:31:24] There's absolutely nothing wrong with accepting charity. That in fact, it's a beautiful thing. I always love it how when you offer something to a nun, a sister, they always accept it and they're never afraid to ask for charity because they know it actually helps other people to give them charity. So there's absolutely nothing wrong to accept charity from others. But a government program is not charity. It is wrong to basically shirk your own responsibilities in order to get money from other people by force, which is what you're doing in these situations. [00:31:56] You know, government welfare is not charity and shouldn't be treated like charity. And Catholics, we really need to step up and recognize that more. So. Okay, so that's what I'm going to talk about. That's all I'm going to talk about in this today. But I want to get to live chat. You might have noticed on the screen there is the live chat kind of live feed there on the lower right. We're experimenting with this. Our software now allows for this. Hopefully that that's useful, not too distracting. Let us know what you think about that. But I like to, you know, we highlight a few of the comments. I just want to bring that up. Patriot Pooh Bear says I'm back, my dudes. Okay, let's talk bitcoin, how it relates to this topic. Yeah, it does relate to this topic. I brought that. I did bring that up. My book, Borrow Money. Yes, I will pitch it the case for Bitcoin. Buy it today, you know, at my website, ericsammons.com or at Sophia Institute Press. [00:32:43] This is just one big example of money printing and taxes. I mean, to pay for all this stuff, the government has to print money which devalues and reduces our spending power. And so it's just a. It's a cycle. It harms, it harms the people who are furthest away from the money production, which is typically the lower class and the middle class. So things like food stamp programs I think does far more harm than it does good. Okay, Gus. TV123 says the wild thing is people can buy total junk with ebt, but which makes them obese, among other health issues. Then we also pay for the health care to treat it all bad for the poor and bad protectors. Amen, brother. That's exactly right. That's the thing is a lot of the poor are obese. Now, people who understand obesity knows that obesity isn't just simply a lack of will power and spending and eating too much. It's what you eat that matters a lot. And a lot of things you eat that are bad for you, they have addictive qualities that make you want to eat them more, which is what makes you obese. [00:33:42] And so when the food stamp program allows people to buy these terrible products. [00:33:48] That's why you see fat people in urban areas, poor people, even homeless people at times who are fat because they're eating junk. And honestly I have a lot of sympathy for them because I don't think they understand this and they're allowed to eat this. Heck, if you don't know anything about health foods, which a lot of, a lot of people don't, and you're allowed to buy coke rather than water, you're going to get Coke usually. [00:34:13] But that's what this is, something that program incentivizes. And so we like, like, like he said, we not only get them obese, we then pay for their health care, for the consequences of their obesity. It's just insane. [00:34:25] FEMALE Casey Rolls fan from Nebraska says a lot of people have noticed these TikTok videos. Ladies have their nails done, eyelashes, hair extensions, sometimes they have highlights. I don't actually know what you're referring to. I assume you're talking about people who are on these things. I mean the fact is, is like we have a real problem with how we understand the poor. Most people have this idea, they have this very kind of idealized view of the poor, that they're all hard luck people who are, they try, they got fired from their job and they're just trying so hard but just doesn't work out. There are cases like that. [00:34:58] So many of them has to do with, especially the homeless, has to do with mental illness, has to do with drugs. Drugs is such a huge part of this. [00:35:06] I'm not even saying this is their fault. I'm just saying this is the reality. But the food sense, remember, 42 million people, this is not homeless people. These people, most of them are living in homes. You may be lower class homes or the case may be they might even have jobs, but they don't have jobs that can pay for their food. Maybe through their own, maybe because they're trying, but they can't. They don't have education or maybe because they're not really working because they just live on the food stamps, basically. [00:35:31] So there's a lot of nuances here. And when we, and honestly, this is a frustrating thing to me. [00:35:36] When I read church documents and church leaders talk about the poor, they never ever seem to address the nuance of the difficulties in actually helping the true poor and not incentivizing people to act in improper ways. [00:35:51] Okay, let me see, what do we got here? Daniel Verney says the church ministries like St Vincent de Paul should be helping the poor. The government is Only fostering the victim mentality. Government inefficiency is doing a terrible job. Interestingly, I actually got an email earlier today from St. Vincent de Paul Society, like the president of or something like that, who is basically saying that the government needs to make sure the food stamp program does not shut down. Most of these government, I'm sorry, most of these charities that help the poor, they're very much in bed with the government. I'm not trying to rail on St. Vincent de Paul, they, they do great work in a lot of ways. But I am saying, especially on the higher up levels, they're very much in bed with the poor and that's not always their fault because this is another problem. [00:36:29] Helping the poor is very regulated in this country. It's not like you can just easily go set up a soup kitchen or set up, you know, a place to help people with work skills or whatever the case may be. There's a lot of government regulations that make it very difficult. You have to almost get in bed with the government in order to help the poor these days on any significant scale, which makes you then more supportive of these government programs that you work hand in hand with. So the whole thing is a mess, frankly. [00:36:57] Dave Earnhardt says I'm a senior citizen, receive a small pension and small income on my Social Security. I need the small amount again on my EBT card. I can survive without it for a while, but it helps. Yeah, I mean, maybe like I said, I'm not saying every single person who receives food stamps that it's immoral for them to do so or they shouldn't be doing so. I don't know your personal situation. [00:37:16] And it's very possible, like I said when I talked about my book Moral Money, when I was kind of talking about that a lot. [00:37:23] This economy is broken in a lot of ways and there's certain people on the edges, particularly the young and the old, who get squeezed out for reasons not their fault because of government involvement, frankly. And so I do think that that needs to be addressed. [00:37:38] So Gustv123 says. Now Eric, what is our best way to fulfill our duty to help the poor? Should we donate to society, the Vincent St. Vincent de Paul Society or something else? They used to donate to a large local food bank, but they started pushing rainbow stuff. This is a real challenge, a very. We have a duty to, to help the poor. How exactly we do this? Now I do think it, it varies from place to place, location, location, location, location. How you do it. I would say first of all, really focus on local. Focus on local. [00:38:09] The larger a, a charity or a government program gets the. The usually the more efficient it is, the less likely it is beyond the ground. Really subsidiary here is what counts. So really work hard to try to find a local place that helps the poor. Unfortunately, some of them, like this guy was saying, they've bought into the woke stuff, they start pushing trans stuff and rainbow stuff, stuff like that. But I do think there are some like here in my town there's a local soup kitchen which does, you know, does good work and you can volunteer for that. [00:38:38] And there's a local. What I really like is a local organization called CityLink which what it does is it trains people in job skills, lower income people. And I used to volunteer there. I had to stop when I took this job because I didn't have time for it. But like I would do mock interviews, help people, lower income people who had no training in this. [00:38:58] How do you interview? I'd interviewed a lot of people in my life so I kind of knew what to look for. And I'd help them, give them tips on, okay, we do a mock interview and then we give them advice. Okay, what you did. Okay, what you did wrong. And it's amazing. You know, my dad, he was a personnel director for a long time in a school district and so he had interviewed thousands of people. So when I graduated from high school, or even before, while I was in high school, he gave me a lot of tips on interviewing and I'm very thankful for that. A lot of people don't have that, especially lower income people, they just don't have those skills. And so this organization, it gives them the skills, it also trains them for certain types of jobs, like to become chefs and things like the auto mechanics. IT professionals gives them basically low or no cost training for that. So I mean, I think an organization like that is great because it's not just simply giving them money or something like that, it's helping them support themselves. So find there are places like that and I'd recommend you do the hard work to find that. But it's not easy. That's a big problem. It's not easy actually to help the poor in a real way that actually is tangible and helps them. [00:40:00] Okay, so that's it for today. Hopefully that was a good discussion for people. Until next time, everybody. God love you.