As anyone familiar with US politics knows, the US government shutdown has resulted in "food stamps", which is a welfare food assistance program now on debit type cards, being shut down and not funded in early November.

We went to the grocery today (a Kroger marketplace format store) at around 4:30 PM on a Tuesday.

Normally at this time on a week day this store is always kind of tense. Rude, nervous, pushy customers, very crowded, and a lot of casual rudeness.

Today when we went it was almost a ghost town. The parking lot was 1/2 full. The inside of the store was same. Very light foot traffic. People in the aisles were neutral or even polite, not something I'm used to experiencing in this store at peak time.

This told me these things:

1) The population of this town is mostly rude poor assholes who apparently use EBT.
2) Dry up the funds and they go away or go dormant.
3) The remaining non EBT using population is ok.

I've characterized this town as nearly 100% rude assholes, but now I see more clearly that there is a distinct economic line between individuals I loathe and "average" decent people. If you're poor in my town, likely you're stupid, rude, and/or a bit of a piece of shit.

EBT is seeming to me to be a discretionary thing and in most cases not necessary, because around here we aren't hearing about wholesale hardship.