Food Stamp Reform: Alcohol & Tobacco Restrictions

"Telling someone they cant get help if they are blowing their money on harmful things is not punitive."

Of course it's punitive. Ever study behaviorism or stimulus-response theory? Pos/Neg reinforcement, etc. You can read some examples here:
What is Negative Punishment (Examples and Effectiveness)

Removing the desired reward (and especially one that was previously allocated) is punishment for the undesired behavior. The example you cite w your daughter is perhaps a little more complicated. You are not removing something which was previously allocated, though I suspect that behaviorists would call yours an ex. of neg punishment also.

When arguing that these are not examples of punishment, you are referring exclusively to positive punishment. But you are not accounting for negative punishment.

 

But J, no one is taking away their right to buy those things. The hypothetical here is if one is going to exercise that right instead of feeding themselves and this fill the gaps with the government coin then the government coin (not a right) dries up.

They will always maintain their right to buy smokes and sips.

The issue here though becomes the kids. My belief is we cant really 8mpose a program like this because some of these folks would starve their kids for cigarettes.

Its why I support school lunches. We know a person here who runs the school lunch program in our area for the county. She said she sees famished, hungry kids devour their school meal and they often tell her its the only food they get all day.

Truth is when there are no good solutions I believe you err on the side of feeding children.

 

So I am punishing my daughter by telling her to spend her starbucks money on a parking pass? C'mon Davis, I'd be a pretty soft parent if I went weak sauce like that.

To be clear, the parking pass story is hypothetical, but with 3 teens now there are plenty of true stories that are similar.

 

From the link:

Can we establish justification for alcohol and nicotine to be considered "a favorable stimulus?" I don't agree that they are. Even when they "can be," they can equally (if not more) be the opposite. Then you factor in addiction, hangovers, and health issues; just seems like a tough sell.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

No, but you are probably applying negative punishment in the form of removing/denying a desired reward. Did you read any portion of the link I shared? This one outlines punishment vs. reinforcement pretty well.
Reinforcement vs Punishment Psychology [Examples]

 

I believe the convo was about removing gov funds due to people spending cash on alcohol and cigs. In this case, alcohol & sigs are not the favorable stimulus, the gov funds are.

 

My mistake.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

I guess we may be dealing with semantics. (I will give them a read when I get a few more minutes). But I am thinking more in lines of direct consequences brought about by action rather than indirect. That is how I would differentiate.

 

Liberal studies on how to train children to be liberal as adults!!! The country is so much better today than it ever was once we stopped corporal punishment in the schools. The grand outcomes we see every day in front of us. Don't follow the rules get your a$$ beat. Guess what you follow the rules!!

 

10-4 dinosaur!

 

So you don't trust teachers or school administrators to teach the way they want or choose which books to allow in schools but trust them to deal out corporal punishment?

 

No worries

 

Sure - you are operationalizing "punishment" differently. No problem. You are thinking about overt punitive measures. My purpose is to explain that negative consequences are also forms of punishment. Often the lines are blurred. Take for example, incarceration, which is both a form of positive punishment, as it constitutes the imposition of a consequence, but also negative punishment in the removal of a desired "thing" (i.e. certain freedoms).

 

Behaviorism has ZERO to do with liberal studies, whatever that phrase means. If you disagree, ask the Googles "is Behaviorism liberal?" You might be surprised at what you find.

Teachers absolutely need to learn about psychological theories, including Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism, etc. Don't confuse political ideology with psychological theory. You are also wrong about corporal punishment, which demeans children and teaches them that violence is an appropriate solution. We can agree, though, that following the rules is important and that consequences can and should occur under certain circumstances. The ways in which leaders administer consequences is vital.

 

It is interesting how this works. Apparently they can't ban hard drugs from food stamps.


The White Ghetto | National Review

It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum — are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices.

Last year, 18 big-city mayors, Mike Bloomberg and Rahm Emanuel among them, sent the federal government a letter asking that soda be removed from the list of items eligible to be used for EBT purchases.

You should read

 

That’s probably why there are kids showing up at school hungry. The parents are junkies not even using the food assistance legitimately. I don’t think this is the norm overall, but it definitely ties in to the various drug addiction crises (whether that’s opioid, meth, crack… whatever).

Seems like it would be pretty easy to
fix. The fix wouldn’t even have to “ban” soda completely (although just banning it would be the cleanest solution), just do a quantity limit and only let them do 1 transaction per day. That would make it not worth their time to try such laundering transactions. Problem is the shady stores probably aren’t above just doing fake transactions and coding the items as something else (I.e. they’d be getting into criminal fraud territory, but at least then it would be a cut and dry crime to charge the store with… I’m not even sure you could charge the junkie… other than child neglect). It’s a sad situation.

 

Coffee beans or instant coffee then. No way sodas or energy drinks should be on the list of permissible items. There should be some incentive to get off welfare. Not being able to buy luxury items should be one of those incentives. Just my opinion.

 

1. TLDR can also mean, "here's the summary for those who feel the above is too long, and they didn't read it all." Your confusion on that is fair; I should have written "TLDR version:"
2. No, because your daughter is still legally able to earn her own money and then spend it how she wants.

 

I'm not aware of any precedent on restricting civilians rights based on which entitlements or subsidies, but I'll make a deal.

I will support any law that prohibits people on welfare from vice purchases while receiving government benefits, but first we have to pass a law that prohibits companies from lobbying politicians while receiving government benefits.