SNAP Creates Illness

Atheism Ruining Faith

Nebraska has this organization called OpenSky which is an organization basically pushing socialist economics. As you likely have heard there are concens about “cuts” to Medicare/Medicaid as well as SNAP which is Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. As to SNAP, OpenSky took an idiotic position (https://www.openskypolicy.org/openskylights-focus-on-nebraska-fiscal-policy-6-6-25/) in defending the program.

Let me very, very blunt. Government should do absolutely nothing for poor people, except in the absolutely most dire of circumstance. While leftists focus on hunger, many see obesity as the largest problem and the concern is growing (https://onlinedegrees.kent.edu/college-of-public-health/community/public-health-concerns).

Yet, here is what bothers me about all of these government programs. They never force people to confront their bad food management. At the same time, government is acting as a proxy to good moral judgement. The saying is very clear: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Government never teaches people to “fish” with food management. It merely writes a check.

Let me give you a very simplistic example. Like snacks, such as popcorn? Add a microwave and you probably have a very lazy addiction to microwave popcorn and pay a high price for it, but the convenience and laziness overrides such concerns, does it not?

How about popping your own popcorn and using olive or advocato oil to do so? Far cheaper and healthier as you have a better idea of what is going into the popcorn.

Oh but that is too much time for lazy people, especially those who do not want to work. In fact, they do not want to deal with a microwave when immediate self-gratification in bag is possible. Enter in the individual snack bag full of process ingredients.

The jar of popcorn kernals gives you the best bang for your buck and you can control how you can cook it by popping with olive or advocato oil as I do. Yet SNAP will let you buy any of these, resulting in higher costs and this is the precise problem with the vast majority of such programs imposed upon taxpayers.

Yet there is another diabolical problem. These programs attempt to take moral conscience and have it serviced by proxy, and government is the proxy and does a costly effort in being a proxy. This is why I oppose the vast majority of these programs.

If you want to do the moral and right thing, take what food you have and merely ask them if they want your food or know someone of need of such food. You may be surprised at what interactions you receive and you may make friends along the way. This is what it means to have faith in the humanity God created. This is what community is about, and government cannot foster it. Instead, government fosters illness and atheism.