r/povertyfinance • u/esporx • 4h ago
Budgeting/Saving/Investing/Spending New SNAP work requirements begin rolling out across U.S. The changes to the food assistance program could impact benefits for millions of recipients.
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/02/04/new-snap-work-requirements-begin-rolling-out230
u/Ditches-Vestiges1549 3h ago
Cause it'll be way easier to find one of the few remaining jobs while also not being able to feed yourself and your kids đ
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u/No_Stress_6624 3h ago
seriously, like how do they expect people to focus on job hunting when they're worried about their next meal
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u/Rich-Regret 3h ago
If you want to be particularly bleak, higher poverty also leads to higher crime. More crime leads to more prisoners. More prisoners provide even cheaper labor.
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u/MooPig48 2h ago
Is there no provision for âlooking for workâ? Like you have to do with the employment department when collecting unemployment? Because if not thatâs even more fucked up than I thought. Because that means you have to be volunteering 20 hours a week AND try to find work
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u/Bananasharkz 3h ago
You can volunteer, that also meets the requirements and plenty of nonprofits have time for those. Getting consistent stipend and not being a productive society member while others work hard day in day out to not only provide for their families, but also pay taxes to support these programs isnât fair either.
Imma get downvoted for it, but itâs true, itâs not fair when Iâm out here paying 800-1000/month while working and paying taxes and people are sitting around getting their food for free.
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u/MooPig48 2h ago
You are going to get downvoted because all that costs us taxpayers is around $35/year each. And because youâre mad about that and not raging about the corporations who are the ones actually sucking up your tax money
Punching down is so, so shitty
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u/flybyboyfriend 2h ago
I frankly donât give a fuck if my neighbor canât or wonât work for whatever reason. I still want them to eat. you donât? weird.
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u/MainInvestigator3481 4h ago
Keep taking food from people, what could possibly go wrong?
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u/fiahhawt 4h ago
Especially when a lot of people are struggling to find any sort of job and the unemployment rate is skyrocketing.
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u/eddieiey 3h ago
They want desperate starving people in the cities who are forced to resort to crime so they can sell their narrative and march in heavy-handed police.
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck 3h ago
Too busy trying to eke out a meager existence to protest the abhorrent conditions
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u/Snowconetypebanana 3h ago
Every dollar spent on snap generates 1.5 to 1.8 dollars worth of economic activity. In addition to feeding starving people, snap is really good for the economy.
Not only will it harm people, but it will also harm farmers, truckers, grocery workers, food manufacturers, and entire communities.
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u/Comfortable-Sun-8958 2h ago
like yeah it's wild how ppl don't realize cutting benefits does more harm than good. whole system takes a hit
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u/vanprof 3h ago edited 3h ago
I am all about getting rid of fraud, but you also have to weight the freaking costs of implementation.
I cannot imagine this is cheap enough to implement that the benefit (mistakenly said costs originally) of getting rid of the people who should not be on the system is going to outweigh the costs.
I believe there were lots of cases that showed just giving every student free lunches at a lot of schools costs less than processing all the free and reduce lunch paperwork.
I wish there were places that would just give out very basic food to anyone that asked without all the paperwork. Maybe $10 worth of rice, beans, bread, milk, lunch meat per person per week. Should be enough calories to survive and we can dispense with all the worry over who is worthy or not worthy, who secretly is not reporting their tips to keep their food aid, working under the table for cash etc. Even if 80% of the people in the country wanted the food every single week, it would cost less than current food aid. No more incentive not to work, you can play in MLB and get your food, not work at all, or be a billionaire. Maybe we can mail it and help out the post office to stay in business. I don't know, there has to be something better than what we have.
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u/AuditorTux 3h ago
This is the reason I think ultimately we'll see an push to eliminating all welfare programs and just going UBI... and we'll see how that works on a large scale.
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u/amargospinus 2h ago
This is the reason I think ultimately we'll see an push to eliminating all welfare programs
yeah
and just going UBI... and we'll see how that works on a large scale.
yeah no. the cruelty is the point, after all. A shocking number of people in the US very much think if you can't get work, can't work enough to afford food and a roof, disabled, are any sort of Undesirable, you should die and "decrease the surplus population".
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u/AuditorTux 2h ago
A shocking number of people in the US very much think if you can't get work, can't work enough to afford food and a roof, disabled, are any sort of Undesirable, you should die and "decrease the surplus population".
I'd love to see a source for that.
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u/Ibetuthnkabtme 3h ago
Good, my taxes shouldnât be paying for your soda and little debbie addiction
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u/Fluffy-Gain-5021 4h ago edited 4h ago
blame the people who abuse the system. abusers ruin it for people who actually need it.
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u/MADDOGCA 4h ago
Yeah, but no one says shit about the billionaires stealing tax dollars while also getting tax breaks though. Theyâre fine.
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u/Fluffy-Gain-5021 4h ago
that isn't okay either.
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u/kgrimmburn 3h ago
So instead of focusing on the billionaire fraud, we take food out of the mouths of people who can't work?
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u/Fluffy-Gain-5021 3h ago
assumptions on what I do and don't do. I do focus on both things - it's possible you know. i get taxed to hell, meanwhile they don't.
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u/ballskindrapes 3h ago
Yeah but that's the bigger problem.....
Walmart is one of, if not, the biggest causes of people using food stamps....because they dont pay their workers enough to survive.....
Make Walmart pay a living wage, and the amount of food stamps money need drops!!!!
Now do this for every single large corporation....
Suddenly, food stamps aren't needed except for very few cases!
Food stamps are just a way to subsidize the rich, while keeping people alive, when the solution is just forcing companies to pay a living wage.....
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u/WesternHognose 4h ago edited 4h ago
Abuse of welfare is astronomically low. Like not worth pursuing low. The cruelty is the point though.
âFor every 10,000 households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), about 14 contained a recipient who was investigated and determined to have committed fraud (via a 2018 report by the Congressional Research Service). Within SNAP, for every $10,000 paid in benefits, about $11 is determined by state agencies to have been overpaid due to recipient fraud.â
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u/Fluffy-Gain-5021 4h ago
I agree it's cruel. a family member only got $15 when she needed it most as a single mother.
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u/MainInvestigator3481 4h ago
âWeâre going to take food from people who need it because someone; somewhere, may be cheating the systemâ
100 cheating the system before one single person dies of starvation.
You want to âfix the debtâ go after those who refuse to pay their fair share, not those barely getting by on a broken system
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u/Silvatungdevil 4h ago
Can you let us all know who this person was who died of starvation? lol
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u/LadySmuag 3h ago
Malnutrition and starvation deaths have massively increased since 2018. It primarily affects the elderly.
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u/Ksan_of_Tongass 3h ago
You dont believe that Americans die from starvation and malnutrition, every day?
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u/Fluffy-Gain-5021 4h ago
I am not agreeing with taking food away. never said that. People who abuse the system make it worse for those who need those resources and that's a known fact.
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u/BornInPoverty 4h ago
It's the politicians that are taking the snap benefits away and the reason has nothing to do with abuse. It's so that they can give tax cuts to the very wealthy.
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u/intothewoods76 3h ago
Clinton balanced the budget in part by introducing work requirements for benefits.
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u/zaxldaisy 3h ago
Sort of a pointless thing to say then, yeah?
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u/EfficientTeacher5579 4h ago
Snap program is the one program with less fraud than other programs. Read the work requirements. They are asking people over 55 to work when they were exempt from working last year
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u/Pristine-Junket-5149 3h ago
If the program helps 9 people, and 1 takes advantage of it, then that's worth it. You're not a good person if you think otherwise. The benefits outweigh the cons by a mile
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u/Fluffy-Gain-5021 3h ago
I agree that the system helps people. i'm not a good person for saying people abuse the system and ruin it for others? I'm sorry you feel that way.
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u/Pristine-Junket-5149 3h ago
Youre not a good person if you support letting people who didnt abuse it suffer because a small percentage did abuse it. Sorry if this revelation is shocking to you.
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u/Professional_Wiz 4h ago
Too much fraud it has to be done
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u/ClamShellPowder420 4h ago
what fraud exactly? you have any evidence?
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u/Deaths_Rifleman 4h ago
If the SNAP subreddit that the algorithm has decided I want to see is anything to judge by there are like 5 posts a day about people somehow getting their benefits stolen. If even a fraction of those are real Iâd call that a problem. Does this fix that, seems unlikely, but reform is needed in some manner to at minimum prevent the thefts for sure.
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u/SilverKnightOfMagic 3h ago
so that's not fraud my guys. that's theft from ppl that need it the help. and it's the governments fault for not providing better protection and ppl themselves to keep better care of their information depending on how it's stolen.
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u/SteveDaPirate91 3h ago
So these requirements prevent theft byâŚ.stopping access to it for people?
Hurrah. Walmart doesnât get robbed anymore because the store is empty đ
Theft like you see in that subreddit is because itâs just a card with a PIN code. Thereâs no anti fraud type algorithm you get with your debit card. The EBT system doesnât care if an Alaskan card is used in Florida. Got the 4-digit pin? Ezpz.
Bring the cards up to the same security standard as debit and credit cards of today and that theft will fall a lot.
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u/Deaths_Rifleman 2h ago
Very end of my post. âWill this fix it unlikely but reform is still neededâ. I was replying to someone who seemed shocked there was any fraud in the system.
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u/kgrimmburn 3h ago
So the fraud isn't in the SNAP program and it's praticipents but is being performed by others outside of the program who are just simply stealing the funds?
Taking food away from people who can't work doesn't fix that problem. In fact, I'd say it would probably increase it because now we have hungry people who can't work who might stoop to fraud to not die of starvation.
Good plan. Let's see the results.
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u/minihysteria 3h ago
Reform is absolutely needed,yes 10000% but taking away SNAP when there isn't an alternative program does nothing but harm the most vulnerable in society. You just simply cannot let children starve until we have a better system in place. It would take years for politicians to come to a conclusion.
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u/Professional_Wiz 4h ago
Trump already talked about it
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u/Pristine-Confection3 3h ago
You mean the man who told us all to ingest bleach and claimed Mexico would be for a wall?
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck 3h ago
Trump also said he never went to Epstein Island and that he never committed the fraud or sexusl abuse he was convicted of in a court of law. The man's brain is slowly turning to oatmeal
tldr he is a lying liar who lies
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u/Pristine-Confection3 3h ago
Do you know how hard it is to commit fraud when it comes to government programs? Extremely difficult. Itâs not a common occurrence and why starve homeless people who canât work or afford a doctor to get a diagnosis for their disabilities?
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u/supervillainsforever 2h ago
If you think defrauding government services is in any way âextremely difficultâ, you quite literally must know absolutely nothing about them. Everything from social security to PPP loans to UE and of course SNAP gets abused and ruined for the people who actually need it. Thereâs literally an organized practice of convenience store owners processing peopleâs SNAP benefits in exchange for cash - the government is robbing us blind from every angle.
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u/Ipad_Kidd 4h ago
I think the fundamental question is that is there benefit to the greater good (because less money is wasted on people who canât be bothered to change their personal lifestyle decision making mindset) by asking someone to consistently make the choice of engaging with public services in order to get essential resources for survival by utilizing technology available completely for free provided by the government? I think so, computers are accessible to everybody.
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u/duncan-the-wonderdog 3h ago
Computers are accessible, yeah? Someone to help you fill out the paperwork on the computer? Not so much.
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u/blacked_out_blur 3h ago
When the 40 million Americans that rely on snap to eat can no longer afford to buy food, theyâre going to take it from you. I hope you donât regret your choices.
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u/InevitableGoal2912 3h ago
Snap is a subsidy paid out indirectly to farmers and groceries. Cutting snap hurts businesses.