That doesn’t give anyone the right to choose for them.

So you agree that there is some amount of acceptable spending on sweets.

It is their own dime. The government is everybody, and it’s here to serve. Somehow they got in your head that they aren’t entitled to that, but they are.

Edit: had/head

You do realize that banning candy and soda is not going to ban sugar. Sugar is a staple product and will always be available on food stamps. Soda is just a processed item, same as candy. In exactly the same way as Dinty Moore canned stew and Campbell’s soups. Should those be banned too? How about bread? It’s a carb and it’s processed. Let’s make the poor people make their own bread cause fuck them for being poor.

Where should the line be drawn?

If that’s your stance you might wanna leave the low hanging fruit where it is and pick something that actually matters. Just my two cents. Like defense spending.

as someone else pointed out a specific example that comes up regularly (this is apparently already how it works): 1 particular brand of peanut butter was available, but their lite version wasn’t… with a cart full of groceries, figuring out exactly what gets paid for with what or what needs to be put back isn’t a fast process… this takes not only the persons time, but the cashiers time and everyone behind them in the queue

these are things we call negative externalities: costs forced to other places in the system without being accounted for in price

there are many, many, MANY more costs associated with any government program and intervention but this specific example would cost the country as a whole far more than the occasional unhealthy snack

But mostly fuck poor people. Since that’s the most immediate priority.

Yeah its not like our bodies need sugars for so much critical functionality that we evolved a reward system for eating it /s