Education Via Video Games

An anonymous reader writes "According to Wired/AP, food stamp recipients will now receive video games instead of brochures and pamphlets, in an effort to educate them on how to get the most benefit. One wonders why someone that can't afford food would have spent money on a computer on which to play these games."

Comments

It's not the 80s any more

[Minwee]

You only need to buy a computer once.

Seriously, I could walk down the street to the Goodwill and drop $10 on an old monitor or a PC, but they wouldn't be pretty. For $100 I could buy a decent P-II system used. That's not too bad for something which I can use to help me get a job. Heck, it's less than some unemployed people I have known spent on beer in a month.

Believe it or not, computers don't all cost $4000, have an "Alienware" logo on them and come with artificially intelligent graphics cards from a company called "Skynet".

Re:same

[iocat]

That's just bullshit. There are plenty of people who are poor as hell who still have cars, so they can get to their crappy minimum wage jobs. Without a car, many people would flat out STARVE TO DEATH, and having a car is often more important to the super-poor than anything else. I know, I live near tons of them in East Oakland.

I'd change your list to read something like

If you have to live with 8 other people in a two bedroom house to make rent, you're poor.

If your children face the prospect of going to terrible schools, and you don't have any recourse (like even sending them to better schools in the district), you're poor.

If you'll lose your job if your car breaks down because you won't be able to afford to fix it, you're poor.

A crappy Goodwill TV is $15 *at Goodwill*, so you're not going to get much rent money for selling it. And the entertainment / keep kids off the street value a TV provides is so extreme, I don't even consider whether or not you have cable as a reliable indication of poverty anymore (again, at least where I live, in East Oakland)

Finally, if you're poor and trying to make sure your kids won't be poor, buying a PC is not some indication that you're no longer poverty stricken. Hang out at a Goodwill next time some crappy 486 goes on the floor. It's sold in SECONDS.

I'm about 10 degrees to the right of Atilla the Hun, and even to me your post smacks of total cluelessness about the situation that actual poor people are in.