Still, $4.60 a day? Even when shopping steep sales and eating vegan, I'm not sure they could make that work. Oranges and apples are sometimes (like right now) less than a dollar a pound, but generally they cost between a dollar and two dollars a pound. Nuts and seeds are up over $10 a pound. And if they want to buy processed foods like pasta, the quality will be no different than they could get elsewhere for much less money.
I think the amount of Link card (the payment mechanism for SNAP in IL) use we see at WF is actually the byproduct of fraud or wastefulness. I remember in the 90's, in an inner-city property complex that one of my friend's parents owned, that food stamps (which were much more like food cash than pre-loaded cards) were traded amongst residents and other community members for either drugs or cash. I assume that, at the top of the line in those transactions, some well-off group of people ended up with several times the monthly allotment for SNAP and would just spend it like a typical price-insensitive rich person.
I'm not sure that's even possible now, but what I've found with government programs is that no matter the lengths they go to to insulate themselves from fraud, that in the face of creative people who are incentivised to cheat the system, it never seems to be enough to actually protect themselves.
I think the amount of Link card (the payment mechanism for SNAP in IL) use we see at WF is actually the byproduct of fraud or wastefulness. I remember in the 90's, in an inner-city property complex that one of my friend's parents owned, that food stamps (which were much more like food cash than pre-loaded cards) were traded amongst residents and other community members for either drugs or cash. I assume that, at the top of the line in those transactions, some well-off group of people ended up with several times the monthly allotment for SNAP and would just spend it like a typical price-insensitive rich person.
I'm not sure that's even possible now, but what I've found with government programs is that no matter the lengths they go to to insulate themselves from fraud, that in the face of creative people who are incentivised to cheat the system, it never seems to be enough to actually protect themselves.