Your opinion on food stamps and those who use/abuse them?

[Swellegant]

Let's look at this in proportion: while you are footing the bill for a woman to cheat the system, the actual amount of your contribution to the food stamp program (called SNAP these days by agencies but still referred to as food stamps even though they haven't been actual stamps since the early 70s...they were scrip before they became EBT cards), which makes up about a millionth of the federal budget, is nugatory at most. A much larger proportion of your tax dollars, probably a good five or ten bucks a month, is going into the pockets of the shareholders of military-support, agriculture, and oil conglomerates. Rich folks who don't even have to be bothered to fuck around with cards and social-workers in order to live off your hard-earned money.

I will be the first to admit that the social welfare system in this country is deeply flawed; but every attempt at reform has been disastrous because people have this idiotic idea that someone who was raised on welfare in a section-8 housing development surrounded by nobody but other people who've been on welfare for three generations, in the midst of the highest crime-rate areas, attending the worst schools in the nation for three generations, will just up and get a job if you cut off her benefits, and that's going to make everything better.

Say you're a young woman in a densely populated urban area; your mother was on welfare since before you were born, and your grandmother before her; you don't know anybody who's married, you don't know anybody who has a job, you don't know anybody who even finished high school. Your education was slipshod, your nutrition was slapdash; you have access to birth control, but your local churches and the national religious right block any effective sex education that might give you an idea on how to avoid pregnancy, and besides getting pregnant at sixteen is simply what everyone you know does. Your role models on TV don't appear to have jobs, either, though they seem to have money for no apparent reason. The only prosperous people you've ever met are drug dealers and sex workers.

How do you fix that? Can you even fix that? Maybe, maybe not... but either way, a problem that goes that deep can't be cured by cutting someone off from the only support system they've ever known.

Yes, people cheat the system; yes, we pay for it; but please don't lose sight of the bigger picture by focusing on those who exchange their EBT cards for crack, and the crack-dealer's wife using them in your local grocery and then getting into the crack-dealer's Escalade to drive back to the crack-dealer's home. Which is, I think, what you probably saw.

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

^but Huntreo didn't see anything about a woman and an Escalade. He read about someone bitching about it on Craigslist.

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

^ And Pretty Pete is STILL not reading the thread.

I read the thread you ******

I know that if someone doesn't agree with you then you get very defensive.

Is there a reason for that?

Were you denied food stamps?

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

That's the thing. It was not MEANT to be a "debate"...even at its inception.

READ!




...and there you go.

No. I don't take kindly to being belittled or bitched at for my opinion.

and I cannot believe how heated you are over this. wow.

I'm not belittling you and if you feel that way then I apologize.

But if you don't know by now everything in life is a debate. You put it out there and I gave you my opinion, but all you wanted wanted was a bitchfest of so called abuses.

I feel sad for you...... did the welfare worker tell you that you were denied benefits or something?

 

[Swellegant]

I missed the whole second page while I was writing my response.

I'll also go all the way back to the title and say something about people who use food stamps: I've been one of them. My mother was on welfare throughout my childhood, and we lived in vile neighborhoods surrounded by other welfare recipients. Later, when my father got custody of us, my stepmother got Section 8 and food stamps even though my father worked because there were four kids to feed and Daddy was a gas-pump jockey.

In my early twenties, I myself was on welfare (or General Assistance, as it was called) and received food stamps (Federal Nutrition scrip, actually), while living with my sister who also got TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and more food stamps, even though her husband also had a job (security guard, 6.50 an hour). I was virtually unemployable at that time, and without the GA I would have probably turned to prostitution. After my sister and her husband split up, I was allowed to move back in with my Grandmother, and go back to school, and become gainfully employed; but I wouldn't have made it through that period without the welfare system. So I'm a little biased in favor of it.

What's really shameful, though, is that the dollar amounts of TANF, GA, and SNAP have not changed in the last twenty years since we were on them; twenty years of inflation in one of the most expensive places in the world to live, and the maximum benefit amount is still 336 for a single adult and 650 for a single adult with two children, with 180 and 300 in SNAP, respectively (and not evryone gets the maximum amount). How does anyone live off that kind of money in a city where a studio apartment costs at least $900? Even with Section 8, nobody is living high off the hog, here.

Oh, and then there's the Earned Income Credit, which allows people with extremely low incomes (under $11k a year) to get more money back than they payed the IRS. Sounds good, except most of the people who qualify for that are not allowed to save money, so it all goes on retail (like nice phones and clothes)... which ends up right back in the pockets of the corporations. The whole thing is weighted against the people who are supposed to benefit from it. They're made dependent on a niggardly system that does absolutely nothing to help them off it.

And even worse than that are the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who do not qualify, or are unable to jump through the various bureaucratic hoops put in place by reformers, and die on the streets of hunger and exposure. Most of them are mentally ill and/or drug-addicted, and there are pitifully few people trying to help them, pitifully little money spent to fix the problem.

So I get very impatient and even a little angry when I hear about people abusing the system; and I also get very impatient and a little angry when I hear people complaining about the cost of the system... when twenty times as much is spent on considerably less noble purposes. Not nearly enough money is spent on eradicating ignorance, poverty, and substance abuse; it's like taking 5 milligrams of penicillin when you need 25 to kill the infection, this nickle-and-dime approach to curing the welfare state is simply a waste of time and energy.

 

[Telstra]

Let's look at this in proportion: while you are footing the bill for a woman to cheat the system, the actual amount of your contribution to the food stamp program (called SNAP these days by agencies but still referred to as food stamps even though they haven't been actual stamps since the early 70s...they were scrip before they became EBT cards), which makes up about a millionth of the federal budget, is nugatory at most. A much larger proportion of your tax dollars, probably a good five or ten bucks a month, is going into the pockets of the shareholders of military-support, agriculture, and oil conglomerates. Rich folks who don't even have to be bothered to fuck around with cards and social-workers in order to live off your hard-earned money.

I will be the first to admit that the social welfare system in this country is deeply flawed; but every attempt at reform has been disastrous because people have this idiotic idea that someone who was raised on welfare in a section-8 housing development surrounded by nobody but other people who've been on welfare for three generations, in the midst of the highest crime-rate areas, attending the worst schools in the nation for three generations, will just up and get a job if you cut off her benefits, and that's going to make everything better.

Say you're a young woman in a densely populated urban area; your mother was on welfare since before you were born, and your grandmother before her; you don't know anybody who's married, you don't know anybody who has a job, you don't know anybody who even finished high school. Your education was slipshod, your nutrition was slapdash; you have access to birth control, but your local churches and the national religious right block any effective sex education that might give you an idea on how to avoid pregnancy, and besides getting pregnant at sixteen is simply what everyone you know does. Your role models on TV don't appear to have jobs, either, though they seem to have money for no apparent reason. The only prosperous people you've ever met are drug dealers and sex workers.

How do you fix that? Can you even fix that? Maybe, maybe not... but either way, a problem that goes that deep can't be cured by cutting someone off from the only support system they've ever known.

Yes, people cheat the system; yes, we pay for it; but please don't lose sight of the bigger picture by focusing on those who exchange their EBT cards for crack, and the crack-dealer's wife using them in your local grocery and then getting into the crack-dealer's Escalade to drive back to the crack-dealer's home. Which is, I think, what you probably saw.

This is a great post

 

[bankside]

The only reason why this would be the case is because right wingers constantly harp on about it, not because it actually does that much damage but because it supports their ideological stance that the system of social welfare should be ended entirely. It's an effective way to get people squabbling with themselves. Fact is that whether it's a benefit cheat stealing a few hundred or at most a couple thousand dollars/pounds/whatever it is coming out of your pocket, but a wealthy person not paying millions of dollars worth of taxes is also cheating you by not paying their taxes in the first place. This means that benefit cheats will be technically taking money out of your pocket, not out of the pockets of the wealthy, because they never bothered to pay in the first place. Therefore who is cheating the system more?

Of course the top tax rate and off shoring revenues matter because they are cheating the government (and therefore the citizens) of FAR more money.

And what prolongs the debate and ensures that winner-take-all right wingers keep getting away with it is progressive types who say "LOOK OVER THERE!!!! CAPITALISM!!!!!" instead of just saying "Yes. Welfare fraud is a problem. We can definitely pass laws to address that. Now about your overseas tax shelter...."

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

No, I have not applied for food stamps. I can buy food with what money I make. But sitance you're asking, I do know plenty of "eligible" people who have. People who genuinely needed it and were thankfully, accepted.

Spare me(us) the faux "I feel sad for you" remarks. Move on to your next game.

So you make make money. How much taxes do you pay? Just asking?

Is it worth this bitchfest?

still sad for you.
.

- - - Updated - - -

I missed the whole second page while I was writing my response.

I'll also go all the way back to the title and say something about people who use food stamps: I've been one of them. My mother was on welfare throughout my childhood, and we lived in vile neighborhoods surrounded by other welfare recipients. Later, when my father got custody of us, my stepmother got Section 8 and food stamps even though my father worked because there were four kids to feed and Daddy was a gas-pump jockey.

In my early twenties, I myself was on welfare (or General Assistance, as it was called) and received food stamps (Federal Nutrition scrip, actually), while living with my sister who also got TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and more food stamps, even though her husband also had a job (security guard, 6.50 an hour). I was virtually unemployable at that time, and without the GA I would have probably turned to prostitution. After my sister and her husband split up, I was allowed to move back in with my Grandmother, and go back to school, and become gainfully employed; but I wouldn't have made it through that period without the welfare system. So I'm a little biased in favor of it.

What's really shameful, though, is that the dollar amounts of TANF, GA, and SNAP have not changed in the last twenty years since we were on them; twenty years of inflation in one of the most expensive places in the world to live, and the maximum benefit amount is still 336 for a single adult and 650 for a single adult with two children, with 180 and 300 in SNAP, respectively (and not evryone gets the maximum amount). How does anyone live off that kind of money in a city where a studio apartment costs at least $900? Even with Section 8, nobody is living high off the hog, here.

Oh, and then there's the Earned Income Credit, which allows people with extremely low incomes (under $11k a year) to get more money back than they payed the IRS. Sounds good, except most of the people who qualify for that are not allowed to save money, so it all goes on retail (like nice phones and clothes)... which ends up right back in the pockets of the corporations. The whole thing is weighted against the people who are supposed to benefit from it. They're made dependent on a niggardly system that does absolutely nothing to help them off it.

And even worse than that are the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who do not qualify, or are unable to jump through the various bureaucratic hoops put in place by reformers, and die on the streets of hunger and exposure. Most of them are mentally ill and/or drug-addicted, and there are pitifully few people trying to help them, pitifully little money spent to fix the problem.

So I get very impatient and even a little angry when I hear about people abusing the system; and I also get very impatient and a little angry when I hear people complaining about the cost of the system... when twenty times as much is spent on considerably less noble purposes. Not nearly enough money is spent on eradicating ignorance, poverty, and substance abuse; it's like taking 5 milligrams of penicillin when you need 25 to kill the infection, this nickle-and-dime approach to curing the welfare state is simply a waste of time and energy.

Thank you sir for this post.

 

[bankside]

Let's look at this in proportion: while you are footing the bill for a woman to cheat the system, the actual amount of your contribution to the food stamp program (called SNAP these days by agencies but still referred to as food stamps even though they haven't been actual stamps since the early 70s...they were scrip before they became EBT cards), which makes up about a millionth of the federal budget, is nugatory at most. A much larger proportion of your tax dollars, probably a good five or ten bucks a month, is going into the pockets of the shareholders of military-support, agriculture, and oil conglomerates. Rich folks who don't even have to be bothered to fuck around with cards and social-workers in order to live off your hard-earned money.
.
.
.

Yes, people cheat the system; yes, we pay for it; but please don't lose sight of the bigger picture by focusing on those who exchange their EBT cards for crack, and the crack-dealer's wife using them in your local grocery and then getting into the crack-dealer's Escalade to drive back to the crack-dealer's home. Which is, I think, what you probably saw.

I don't know why it is so compelling , psycologically, but it is. People don't like to help someone move toward their own standard of living unless they know that person has done everything humanly possible to make it on their own. Otherwise they feel taken advantage of. Rich people don't bear as much scrutiny because they aren't seen to be "asking for anything." It's a powerful magic bubble they live in.

And we can't just imagine people will put things in perspective.

I actually have an idea to help people see the bigger picture, it's exactly what you suggest to show them a breakdown of where their tax goes. And not "40% to national defence and 8% to service the debt." But actual detailed dollars and cents, broken down finely based on actual taxes paid.

Something like:
Your total tax payable was $8476. You paid:
$600 - War in Iraq
$328 - War in Afghanistan
$120 - New aircraft carrier
$17.42 - Veterans Benefits
$23 - Debt servicing & repayment - Ronald Reagan 8 year term
$27 - Debt servicing & repayment - George Bush 4 year term
$28 - Debt servicing & repayment - William Clinton 8 year term
$75 - Debt servicing & repayment - George W Bush 8 year term
$33 - Debt servicing & repayment - Obama to present day
$6.84 - NASA
$427 - Medicaid
$8.21 - SNAP program costs
$0.37 - SNAP fraud unrecoverable costs
$1.01 - Construction of new embassy in Mexico City

bla bla bla

Just pages of detailed breakdown of where it all goes.

That way someone can see that SNAP fraud cost him personally 37 shiny new pennies this year, but isn't that delightful that it's down from 41 cents last year? Now about that aircraft carrier....

 

[Kabluey]

Fact is, there are takers in life. Some people will game a system or take advantage of things not intended for them.
Trick is making sure people who need this kind of support aren't harmed in the fallout of dealing with fraud.

 

[Callum]

I don't mind a food stamp program...I just wish they (government) were more strict with regulation of it. Much like what Lex said five miles back on only allowing staple food items to be allowed in the program.

 

[Telstra]

lol are you kidding me right now? Who are you to give my financial information/tax situation to. You're doing too much.

And this is a "bitchfest" because you're trying so hard to make it one. Calm down.

Be "sad for me". I'm fine, but I still don't like people abusing the food stamp program. That is what this thread is essentially about, you know. No matter how many people try to make it about everything else.

You should give up.
Do you think the government is that dumb and can't catch the people who are abusing the system?
Or there are corrupt government officials who take money under the desks and turn a blind eye ?

 

[opinterph]

Thread closed at request of original poster.