Tom Matrullo reports on a Habitat For Humanity Resale Store in FL that provides a discount if you bring in nonperishable food for a local food bank. The more food you donate, the bigger your discount on the used furniture, appliances, and houseware. Craigslist has the details. Apparently, the local store manager came up with the idea. Would be nice to see it taken up countrywide. Food banks are running low.
When you net all this out, though, it looks like the poor helping the poor. (Poor people bring canned food for people hungrier than they are themselves and thereby get a discount on a high chair for their baby.) Seems like a Utopia of self-reliant hungry people. No need for tax and spend welfare when the hungry can take care of each other this way. The furniture sold at a discount is, apparently, donated. So our gifts, bought, bartered and discounted, circulate in this mixed economy.
