Via Rush Limbaugh's free "Rush in a Hurry" email newsletter comes a reference to this USA Today article headlined, "More Restaurants Are Targeting Customers Who Use Food Stamps." Florida, California, Arizona, and Michigan allow restaurants to accept food stamps from "disabled, elderly and homeless people." Says USA Today: "Louisville-based Yum! Brands, whose restaurants include Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver's and Pizza Hut, is trying to get restaurants more involved, federal lobbying records show."
More: "Between 2005 and 2010, the number of businesses certified in the SNAP program went from about 156,000 to nearly 209,000, according to USDA data. There is big money at stake. USDA records show food stamp benefits swelled from $28.5 billion to $64.7 billion in that period."
I guess I can see the justification here if someone is too disabled to cook at home for himself (but not too disabled to go to and eat at a restaurant?). But merely "elderly"? I don't want to make more of this than there is, but is the American dream really headed toward a nation of people using food stamps at fast food restaurants? Don't get me wrong: I love fast food restaurants. But one of the things I love about them is that they are inexpensive enough that even the poorest Americans at least used to be able to go eat there without relying on foot stamps to foot the bill.
Earlier food stamp coverage at FutureOfCapitalism is here, here, and here.
