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USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

thehill.com

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Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#41

Post by baby_souffle »

Shank wrote: post #15

I have a friend with life circumstances that are complicated and she survives on SNAP. Every move like this is detrimental and jeopardizes the ability for her to stay alive. I do not understand or fathom why this program is run in such a cruel, uncaring way. I’m sure there is fraud, but there are many people with permanent disabilities and other things going on who don’t have the capacity to “just reapply” without si…

> I do not understand or fathom why this program is run in such a cruel, uncaring way.

The cruelty is the point; inflict trauma so the opinion of the government and the traumatized individual only worsens.

It makes the "do we need this? Seems like nobody likes it and I bet my company could do it cheaper and better..." conversations a lot easier

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#42

Post by kelseyfrog »

Difwif wrote: post #28
qgin wrote: post #16

Anyone who has ever worked on any sort of sales funnel knows: every time you ask someone to take an additional action, you lose people. Ask everybody to reapply, you'll end up with fewer people. You can say that's evidence of previous fraud, but it's largely just going to be people who didn't make it through the additional friction.

[removed]

It doesn't pass the sniff test. If they "know" 186,000 people are deceased who are receiving benefits, then they can simply stop disbursements to those accounts. It doesn't require any action from those who are alive.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#43

Post by chomp »

Difwif wrote: post #28
qgin wrote: post #16

Anyone who has ever worked on any sort of sales funnel knows: every time you ask someone to take an additional action, you lose people. Ask everybody to reapply, you'll end up with fewer people. You can say that's evidence of previous fraud, but it's largely just going to be people who didn't make it through the additional friction.

[removed]

Maybe go try to meet some truly poor people and understand their story. It might provide you enough context for this discussion.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#44

Post by baby_souffle »

Difwif wrote: post #28
qgin wrote: post #16

Anyone who has ever worked on any sort of sales funnel knows: every time you ask someone to take an additional action, you lose people. Ask everybody to reapply, you'll end up with fewer people. You can say that's evidence of previous fraud, but it's largely just going to be people who didn't make it through the additional friction.

[removed]

> Hate this argument so much. You lose people in your sales funnel because they didn't actually care all that much about the product to justify the extra effort.

On more than one occasion I've been the primary decision maker for a technology choice that was going to be worth tens of thousands of dollars or more per year.

For reasons that aren't relevant here, didn't have a ton of time to do the evaluation... extreme prejudice was exercised against anything that didn't have a 'download now and get started button'.

Even if I wanted to jump on a sales call, I didn't have 2 and 1/2 days to wait for you to get back to me.

Maybe a sales funnel is the right tool for certain industries but when your primary user is technical, don't make them jump on a phone call. Get out of their way and make sure the documentation is good. If they like what they see and they have questions, they will chase you down. That is when you should do the pitch call...

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#45

Post by karakot »

CodingJeebus wrote: post #33
aeternum wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The problem here is that healthier food tends to cost more, so you'd essentially be forcing people to buy less food unless you also simultaneously raised the disbursement. And then a certain wing of the media starts screaming about how the poor are eating organic salads on the backs of taxpayers. Sounds reasonable in theory but has little basis in our current political reality.

I hate this common trope about health food costing more. Beans, lentil, rice, potatos, carrots, onions, cabbage, garlic don't cost a lot, add some additional cheap proteins like chicken and eggs and you're good to go for like $50 or less per week per person. And if you can buy in bulk and freeze, then it can get even cheaper.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#46

Post by bulbar »

Difwif wrote: post #28
qgin wrote: post #16

Anyone who has ever worked on any sort of sales funnel knows: every time you ask someone to take an additional action, you lose people. Ask everybody to reapply, you'll end up with fewer people. You can say that's evidence of previous fraud, but it's largely just going to be people who didn't make it through the additional friction.

[removed]

> somehow incapable of doing basic things for something they care about

Even my ADHD often made me incapable of doing basic things for stuff I cared about. I can't imagine the struggle for people with more severe live conditions. Same goes for you, apparently.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#47

Post by derbOac »

Volundr wrote: post #25
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION

1% of 1.5%, so ~0.015%. I think it's fair to question if the juice is worth the squeeze here. To say nothing of if the most efficient way to go about it is really to make 41 million people reapply and reprocess all those applications.

That's the thing. If they've identified some tiny percent of fraud, investigate that. Implement policy or protocol changes to prevent it from happening again in the future. Requiring everyone to reapply on top of whatever else they're doing is probably more costly than any gains.

It seems the biggest fraud and waste here is in the administration.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#48

Post by david38 »

aeternum wrote: post #30
CodingJeebus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You added the "just", not me. But to your point, there are much, much larger and controversial line items in the budget to argue about than feeding the poor. Preventing starvation is important to a functioning society, as widespread hunger has ended many a government throughout history.

[flagged]

Reform is needed, yes, but this is a stupid comment.

By your own argument 75% of SNAP is spent on normal food, mostly by people who need it

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#49

Post by drweevil »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #12
CodingJeebus wrote: post #8

For perspective, SNAP constitutes somewhere around 1.5% of the total Federal budget[0], and provides supplemental income for over 41M Americans[1]. So they're making everyone reapply because their disbursement headcount is off by less than 1% (180k vs 41M). It's hard not look at stuff like this and not see gross oppression. 0: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-federal-gover... 1: https://www.cbpp.org/res…

It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION

It's always a wonder to me that someone can consider spending 1.5% of the federal budget on our own people, so that kids don't go hungry, as excessive (I take that interpretation from those scare quotes), when we spend at least $1 TRILLION of $7 TRILLION on defense spending, which in absolute numbers is greater than 9 of the next most powerful adversaries combined [1]. But where is all the concern over 'fraud and abuse' in that enormous sum?

>“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?” she asked during a Thursday appearance on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.”

Forcing all SNAP recipients to reapply over such a small discrepancy (> 1% of the 1.5%) is cruel and spiteful. And the comment by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins quoted above is disrespectful and unprofessional at best. But none of this is a surprise, given this administration's past history.

[1] https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-spends-more-o...

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#50

Post by weird-eye-issue »

SigmundA wrote: post #31
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with everything you said, but people would say the exact same thing about some of the more wasteful programs that were shutdown. "It is only $50 million" etc got really old... It is not like you can expect to just find massive line items that can be easily removed

Yeah I mean they could pay for the new ballroom or two and have some money left over by not feeding those scammy undeserving people. Or even better we could give some more money to Argentina.

Brilliant logical fallacies
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