I can't remember if I wrote an article on this or not, but I'm going to now, tell me if you've heard this before.
I'm so completely pro free food for everyone, and here's why.
Important Definitions:
"Free food" --not processed food, a better term would be free produce allotments. Fruit, Vegetables, Milk and Grains (not flour, just grains).
"consumption" --I don't mean $ amounts per say, but some sort of veggie credit system that doesn't equate to dollars. Something like 279lbs of fruit per year, or 146lbs of grain, or 428 lbs of vegetables per person.
"Paid for by the government" -- The tax money should be given to the food distributors who sold it to the end user and traced back to valid transactions with food producers/aggregates. Therefore, if they buy 500 corn at $.1/head from farmer dan last month and 1000 corn at $.2/head from farmer jill, they sell 1200 to this food program and can apply 1k to the 1000 they bought from jill and 200 to that they bought from dan. --the difference they make could cover their distribution expenses and they could still sell the other produce at normal price for profit.
"revolving monthly system" -- The alotment doesn't carry over to the next month, you either use it or lose it.
I think people should be given free produce allotments based on a national average for the previous year of consumption.
Even if it was 50% of annual consumption, and it was given to EVERYONE, I think that would be perfectly fine, not affect the economy negatively, not discriminate, and not encourage people to stop working and would probably resolve the American hunger dilemma and improve national health.
Do away with food stamps.
It would work on a revolving monthly system, so they couldn't carry it over.
Why I think it would work
They couldn't spend this money on fast food or other goods.
They couldn't spend it on boxed/processed foods.
They could not easily trade it, because everyone they could trade with easily, already has it.
Produce eventually goes old so they can't horde it.
Starving children can use it.
It would encourage people to eat healthier.
The money goes back through the economy chain, meaning more farmers have an incentive to produce food providing jobs. The distributor gets a job as well.
This isn't a huge impact on the economy--we would be taking a product that litterally everyone uses and give it to them for free--unlike health insurance which is the right but not the obligation to collect on a claim under specific circumstances that will likely never happen. Produce is consumed daily by everyone unless they only eat out.
People who don't normally go to the grocer would do so and might find other things to buy with the money they saved by buying produce.
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