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GOVERNMENT AS MARKETING
No Soda For Poors
The current push to eliminate soda from SNAP benefits isn’t for anyone’s benefit except Big Food and Beverage companies
There’s been a recent flurry of right-wing politicians and influencers calling for soda to be banned for purchase by people who use SNAP benefits, more commonly called “Food Stamps.”
This seems like a clear case of a marketing campaign and consumer ripoff concealed as contempt for poor people.
Left-wing influencers say that SNAP recipients, aka poor people, should be allowed to purchase foods and beverages of their choice with their benefits, while right-wingers say that “the taxpayer dollar shouldn’t pay for non-essentials for aid recipients.”
The lone libertarian representative, ultra right-winger Thomas Massie, joined in on the chorus. Libertarians believe in their personal rights above all else. In this case, Massie believes that taxpayers should have a “say” in how recipients spend “their” tax dollars. Ordinarily, one might think that libertarians would say that people should be able to buy anything they want with their money. But Massie apparently doesn’t consider SNAP benefits to belong to the individual recipient, but rather to the “taxpayer.”
