Re: Food stamp glitch leads to Wal-Mart stampede
I skimmed through the first 10-ish pages and noticed something weird.
No one is talking about what they stole.
Food.
Yes, that's all they
could steal. But there's really only one possible motivation for stealing food: not having enough, or not being sure you will in the near future.
There's no status attached to having a truck ton of food, like there is an iPhone. There's no "fun" involved with having a truck ton of food, like there is doing some retail therapy. And beyond that, most food goes bad. You can really only accumulate so much food that you don't intend to eat within the near future.
There's only one motivation for stealing food. Hunger, and legitimate fear of hunger.
If these people had enough food, they wouldn't steal food. There's no reason to.
This is a place where 60% of the population lives in poverty, including half of children. Children, keep in mind, are expensive, but cannot work in most cases.
South Mansfield, Louisiana (LA) poverty rate data - information about poor and low income residents living in this city
Don't be fooled into thinking getting food stamps means they will have enough food. I've seen people on food stamps who obviously do not have anywhere near enough food. Weirdly, this is why they sometimes put on weight. They don't have enough to buy sufficient quantities of quality food, so they buy crap in bulk instead so they can feel full, even though they are nutritionally malnourished.
Furthermore, this is a state as a whole that has shown before that it has had quite a break-down of social cohesion. It's ever man, woman, and child for themselves down there.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised this instantly devolved into a Red Team versus Blue Team assignment of blame, but can we just look at what happened here?
This is way more complicated than debating the moral goodness or evil of the great unwashed, or the minutia of what some doltish bureaucrat did.