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If you step back from your "personal responsibility" argument and personal feelings, you'd see that all data points to the fact that eliminating means testing for safety net recipients always produces overall higher rates of success, leaves less people who need help to fall through the cracks, saves money for the government, is far more effective at helping people get back up on their own, and introduces no significant rise in fraud.
You're letting your feelings about how individuals "should" behave (a very subjective and culturally-driven standard) get in the way of what data and numbers from past large-scale experiments have shown us.
It's not about feelings, or fraud. It's about believing that the models everyone loves to cite don't accurately portray the complexities of reality. The reality is that even with record poverty and unemployment, we also have both record levels and record severities of obesity transcending generations.
Do any of those models account for the healthcare cost burdens of the willfully unhealthy as they transition into their elderly years? If so I'd genuinely like to see those models. In the research I've done, most models fall short of projecting long-term impacts and related costs. Yeah of course I can get behind supporting people out of bad situations with less oversight if the math works out. I just don't think the math works out when you actually account for long-term impacts of supporting bad habits.
I'm actuality not quite sure about the healthcare system impacts, thought that's something you've now peeked my interest in. Will do more reading.
Re: obesity and poverty: the two are often inseparable in discussions such as this. We know that poorer communities are often food deserts, not because there a lack of restaurants/groceries, but because the availability of nutritious, affordable options is nonexistent (or extremely limited). If an individual has $100 to spend on food for the family, the unhealthy options will generally be preferred because they pack more bang for the buck in terms of caloric impact and ability to stretch the quantity, not to mention the time-savings factor which we can't ignore for individuals who may be balancing multiple jobs and family responsibilities.
Unironically, and not in the right-wing meme way: Change my mind. I think socratic exchanges in good faith are the best way to expose the flaws in one's arguments. I absolutely could be wrong, and honestly I would love to be wrong about this one. Bypassing bureaucracy to offer unconditional aid, and it actually having a net benefit, is easily the ideal solution. And either way, thank you for at least hearing out the argument in good faith.
My counter to "food deserts" is modern logistics. Soylent may not be the cheapest, but even in it's most expensive form (premixed, preflavored, individually bottled, and shipped via an online purchase) it's like $3.25/400kcal. Which sounds like a lot, but for people who need to lose weight, ~1600-2000kcal per day is $400/mo/person. That is very easily eclipsed by a largely fast food and freezer dinner diet. Yes it's a fair argument that soylent isn't a fair fight on strictly calories/dollar, but it is a fair fight on dollars/meal and dollars/good_nutrition. Plenty of poor families spend that or more with assistance on fast food and freezer dinners because it's cheap, convenient, and filling, but the same dollar could be spent on a healthy alternative at even it's least efficient form. The less convent and more efficient forms come around ~$1.50/400kcal and that would put a month's of calories at less than $200 per person. I would challenge someone to feed a person, even unhealthily, for less. Feeding the poor and hungry isn't an economics or logistics problem, it's a perspective and individual willpower problem.
Except those models are the best we have and are the result of long term research. Unless there's new data that says otherwise its stupid to use anything else.
Considering how health care system is already wrecked, bloated, and filled with wasteful spending it'd be smarter to fix that instead of cutting food programs because you think poor ppl are just lazy slobs
Unless you're a professional data scientist you're research doesn't amount to shit. Especially since you don't seem to factor in outside stimuli that creates shitty eating habits like affordability, adjacency to stores that sell healthy food, and the fact most of our food is filled with sugar for no damn reason.
I know all about stimuli that creates shitty eating habits. Source(anecdotally, sure): I was once 375lbs. I choose soylent as my primary nutrition because of how hard it is to eat healthily, cheaply, otherwise. I think others could benefit from an internal shift in perspective about what food is, and what food should be. When you discipline yourself to separate food into categories of fuel and pleasure, it's a lot simpler to find a sustainable balance. I still eat other things when I go out with friends or my wife but otherwise, we both mostly fuel ourselves with flavorless goup and are the healthiest we've ever been for it. Mentally, Physically, Emotionally, everything. At first it sucks to see ads for taco bell and whatever but by the time you've lost 150lbs and you feel the difference in your body, it's just not worth it. I'm not suggesting this lifestyle to anyone with reasonable portion control and health, I'm suggesting this lifestyle to anyone who chooses to pay too much to eat too much and could benefit from a change.