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good point, I didn't consider Prime pantry....
Drug testing the poor did nothing in some cases. Seems that most poor people are more interested in surviving than doing drugs.
http://time.com/3117361/welfare-recipients-drug-testing/
The testing is meant to assure taxpayers their money isn’t being “wasted” on the less desirable, those who would somehow manage to buy drugs with the assistance. But in Tennessee, where drug testing was enacted for welfare recipients last month, only one person in the 800 who applied for help tested positive. In Florida, during the four months the state tested for drug use, only 2.6% of applicants tested positive. Meanwhile, Florida has an illegal drug use rate of 8%, meaning far fewer people on services are using drugs than their better-off counterparts. The drug testing cost taxpayers more money than it saved, and was ruled unconstitutional last year.
Where I live at in North Carolina, the main employer is a nationwide chicken processing plant that I won't shame publicly. They employ thousands of people that work like a SOB for every penny they get. They have many mills and smaller offshoots of the main company all around our area that reach into Virginia for example. One of the main features that they tout is a "Wellness Center" for when you get sick, injured on the job, need information on where to look for a daycare, etc. Sounds good right? They also carry welfare applications and the state Social Security employees hold seminars there. Why? Because the chicken processing plant pays such low wages that even the supervisors in the plant qualify for EIC when they do their taxes. Capitalism at work! Oh and the plant was subsidized by the State of North Carolina so the owners of the plant don't even have to pay local taxes.
There are plenty of people on assistance that do need the help. Of course there are assholes clogging up the system. There are assholes at your job too I bet. But you can't punish everyone that deserves help because you saw an asshole exploiting a loophole.
Now as far as the Amazon thing goes, they are just trying to steal Walmart's customers. Around here Walmart is 35 miles away and many poor people don't own cars. You can't expect people to walk 70 miles to get good prices when they shop. So to get food for a person that is disabled, they have to pay a person a $50 - $75 fee per trip to go shopping for them. Disabled people typically get $600 - $700 in cash a month and rent is $450 for a run down trailer to $600 a month for a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere. You still have to pay for electricity, water, etc. To be exact most areas don't even have city sewers; only septic tanks. Outhouses were finally abolished in the early 2000's. Nice places with city water cost much, much, more. Section 8 has a backlog of 5 years from what I was told by a Social Security employee.
So if you're disabled, you are pretty much fucked. Having the ability to get groceries, bed pads, adult diapers, Clorox bleach, paper towels, toilet tissue, etc delivered to their homes is a godsend. People at the Social Security office have a list of charities that will pay for things like a wheel chair ramp for some; but nobody does "welfare checks" to see if you're still alive or dead in your house as the gas costs too much. It's a rural area so everything is spread out. You just find out one day that Mr. Smith died in his house because he stopped paying the neighborhood kid $5 to cut his grass.
That's how the poor live here. Do some of the kids get high on weed? Sure do! Do some of the people on assistance look like they could get a job? Sure do! For every asshole exploiting there are a TON of people that really need some help. For example every week I visit a little old lady that can't remember if she is 79 or 85. Since I take care of my mom it's easy to carry on a conversation with her. One day I saw that her 65 year old daughter had walked some miles to the super overpriced grocery store and bought her mom some food. Instead of asking them why were they poor, I helped them to repair their vehicle so the daughter could drive to Walmart 35 miles away. Didn't cost me a dime; just some elbow grease and I made a new friend.
In short don't judge everyone by the dirt that the few do.
And none of that means a hill of beans for the kind of person you are. Making broad generalizations about mass amounts of people you don't know says all anyone needs to know about you.