After reading my most recent Breeder’s Digest [#21, Breeding, Feeding and Culling in Harm City] a male reader became incensed that food stamp recipients are using ‘my tax dollars’ to by $200 designer cakes and steamed shrimp. He went on to expound on his collective utopian point, “They should be made to buy basics: ground beef, chicken, vegetables. I work with this guy who makes the same as me, yet he lives with a woman who has five kids by five different guys, who pays almost nothing for rent. This guy gets to eat off of her food stamps and has no bills. It isn’t fair. It’s not what the Founding Fathers meant to be. How can it be this way? I want these poor children fed, but the food isn’t even going to them but to these deadbeat dads! There has got to be a better way to feed people.”

I did what I could to comfort the fellow, “Welfare has no relation to feeding the hungry. It is about transferring wealth from one group to another in order to grow the government and foster the kind of antagonism you are feeling, which will grow the domestic military arm of the government exponentially when these sentiments are no longer contained by the belief in the fairy-tale Founding Fathers, who were just a bunch of scumbag slavers who wanted to cut the Home Country out of the profit scheme. Any empire requires a threatening parasite class to which funds are funneled away from the fearful productive class. The state provides the force matrix that feeds the parasite class and protects the productive class, making it equally indispensable to both sides, and assuring its growth in response to unrest from either segment of these two enslaved groups. Inequity is built in as the driving dynamic of the system and cannot be dispensed with.”

He looked at me with bug eyes, “Say what? What does that mean?”

“It means you’re locked in to a deliberately unfair system that has just begun to put the squeeze on you. As to your point about a nutrition-based system for feeding the poor, the closest thing we have is called the WIC program and it is administered by the Department of Agriculture. Vouchers are distributed one per month per child, in addition to a fruit and vegetable check for every WIC family. That is a six to ten dollar value. The standard check either provides formula for infants or surplus American grown foods. The fact that you believe that this corrupt system can be fixed, and that you can be counted on to vote for the corrupt politician who promises to fix it, fuels the system and grows the government that owns you.”

He looked at me as if he were going to cry, and then thankfully a luxury car commercial came on the TV in between the 7th and 8th innings of the ballgame we were watching, causing his eyes to glaze over, and the impact of my unsettling words to fade. By the time that American Ninja Warrior began broadcasting he had no other concern but celebrity and consumption, thankfully putting to rest the demons I had let loose in his mind. In the future some lying politician will no doubt effect an inoculation against any future attempts to infect his mind.

In case you are interested what a WIC check for a child between 6 months and 5 years redeems for, I, your friendly neighborhood Ghetto Grocer, have provided a list below. The cost is of course variable as it is redeemed for retail. However, most items must be generic or store brand to qualify:

2 gallons of milk

1 dozen eggs

1 half gallon of unsweetened juice

36 ounces of unsweetened or moderately sweetened cereal

16 ounces of American cheese

16 ounces of whole wheat bread

16 ounces of dried or canned beans or 18 ounces of peanut butter