• Dewded@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How about any small business? If the process of being able to accept food stamps has bureaucracy, you’ll end up locking out small companies unable to meet requirements or who cannot afford it.

    Food stamps at scale could also lead to stores opting for the cheapest alternatives. Salaries will ultimately scale down through supply and demand to a point where people will have less money, but now they’ll have stamps. This in turn can hurt innovation and competition as newer products tend to cost more and people will need make stamps suffice for daily food.

    A money-based UBI is safer as you’ll ultimately see smaller salaries, but the amount of money you’ll have per month will remain static. This gives freedom of choice. Not to mention people also need homes, clothing and other daily goods in exchange for money.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Any business selling food can accept food stamps. There’s no barrier to accepting them. I’m not sure why you think any food-selling business would be left out.

      • tmyakal@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I think they don’t actually understand SNAP and they think you’re talking about literal vouchers like it’s an alternate physical currency.

        • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          I actually think if we added universal EBT/SNAP we could have the same effective pros of vouchers by having government-run supermarkets pop up. The “public option” would actually work for groceries, unlike healthcare (which should be universal).

          EBT would save money building their own retailer and negotiating their own prices (or even enforced price regulation for them), which would force for-profit grocery stores to permanently compete against a non-profit-seeking competitor they would never be able to run out of business.