Verbally attacking welfare / food stamp recipients (Mexicans, cost, school, economy)

[d from birmingham]

Originally Posted by PedroMartinez

The shear volume that most of us are paying.

Food Stamp Recipients Outnumber Women Who Work Full-Time | CNS News

What your little link fails to tell you is that the majority of those on food stamps are working full time jobs.

Walmart loves to underpay it's workers so they have to be on food stamps.

Oh btw the majority of those on welfare are white and live in rural areas.

[aquietpath]

It wouldn't bother so many people if the recipients didn't waste their food stamp allotment on junk or make extravagant purchases. I have been behind people who have loaded carts with candy, sodas, chips and convenience foods. The most upsetting was one customer who had five packages of filet mignon and paid with her food stamp card.

[d from birmingham]

Originally Posted by aquietpath

It wouldn't bother so many people if the recipients didn't waste their food stamp allotment on junk or make extravagant purchases. I have been behind people who have loaded carts with candy, sodas, chips and convenience foods. The most upsetting was one customer who had five packages of filet mignon and paid with her food stamp card.

Yet such abuse is like 1% of all ebt recipients. The majority of the ebt fraud is actually done by the supermarkets owners and managers.

[thefragile]

5 packages of filet mignon....right. Evidence please. And who cares if they did? They get a specific dollar amount. If they want to buy steak, they can. That's your own problem if you're not buying yourself some filet mignon. Regardless, it's all urban legend.

[Clemencia53]

Originally Posted by LowonLuck

Why do some people take every opportunity to verbally attack people on assistance? I am constantly reading posts on forums and social sites that indicate that anyone one welfare or food stamps is a greedy, lazy freeloader.

That is not the case. As a single mom of two children, we are on welfare. I work 40-50 hours a week in addition to maintaining a household and raising children.

I know way more people that work full time and get assistance, then I know that do not work and get assistance. Help me understand.

Easy target. People need someone to kick around. Not a good thing.

[EntropyGuardian]

Originally Posted by aquietpath

It wouldn't bother so many people if the recipients didn't waste their food stamp allotment on junk or make extravagant purchases. I have been behind people who have loaded carts with candy, sodas, chips and convenience foods.

Well at least we know they were an American citizen with a diet like that.

[aimeesc]

Originally Posted by eastmemphisguy

What I'd like to know is how these same people can unironically bellyache about "welfare" while taking thousands in benefits from the government every year. Public schools are a much more expensive entitlement than food stamps. If you send your kids there, you have no right to complain. Middle class people with kids in public schools spend money on stupid stuff all these time. Should we brand them with a Scarlett P? Those enormous interstate highways you take to work? They didn't build themselves either. And the list goes on forever. People need to get a grip on reality.

The people that pay for those programs have every right to use them and complain about the quality of their child's education or the quality of the roads. If less people were on assistance there would be less everyone as a whole had to pay out, money is not free. The people that have no right to complain are those that do not pay into the system. If someone works for everything they buy and they are frivolous with their money, who cares, they worked for the money, it is none of anyone's business but theirs.

[Unsettomati]

Originally Posted by PedroMartinez

The shear volume that most of us are paying.

Food Stamp Recipients Outnumber Women Who Work Full-Time | CNS News

About $76 per capita per year.

Big deal. It's not like there isn't waste and fraud in every single government program, in many cases to the tune of far more than $76/capita/year.

There are fraudulent contractors building tanks and bombers.
There are fraudulent corporations getting grants and tax breaks.
There are corrupt LEOs and prison officials and builders of airports and roads and all manner of infrastructure taking money for things they don't do and items they do not produce.

People who selectively choose who gets their wrath for perceived sins of the collective group as a whole are doing nothing but conveniently grinding the axe of their choice, and pretending they stand on principle.

They don't.

[OwlKaMyst]

Originally Posted by Osito

I may be a little biased on this subject having been a cashier and seen people spend all their food stamps on expensive foods that I couldn't afford, and then watching them spend cash on fancy furniture, movies, big-screen TVs and the like, but I think most of them deserve to be put in their place. I once heard a twelve-year old girl say to her mother, who spent almost 100 bucks of WIC on the baby formulas she needed, "I can't wait until I'm old enough to get on WIC!" It was so hard to keep my mouth shut my blood started boiling.

Then of course there's the fact that so many of them have entitled, nasty attitudes and walk into stores with a chip on their shoulder, like just because those of us who work for a living and pay their taxes on top of it, are there that we have to put up with whatever treatment they dish out because the taxpayers are paying for everything they buy and therefore they strangely consider themselves "customers". The ones on WIC can't even be bothered to bring their own pen to the store!!! I'm so over the entitlement mentality in this country and I feel that it's not getting any better. It's disgusting!!!

I don't know if it was intended or not, but this makes it sound like people are 'saving money' by having food stamps and this makes it so they can afford the high dollar items.
Plus it sounds like someone is being a stalker. How do you know these people who buy the expensive foods are also buying big screen TVs? Are they friends or do you follow these people around and peek in thier windows?

Now I am not saying that these types don't exist. They most definatly do.
However, as I say, the post makes it sound as if they save money using food stamps to have the cash to buy 'fun stuff'. Anyone who is on food stamps and buys a big screen TV has income that they are not reporting to social services.
The amount of food stamps a person or family gets per month is not enough to get through the month unless the diet consists of peanut butter and jelly sanwiches, rice & beans, and kool-aid. I know this from experience.

For those on food stamps buying garbage food- these people probably have no idea how to cook. With microwaves and processed packaged meals, les and less people are actually cooking food. I recently met someone about age 30, had no idea how to make potato salad.

For those who buy the expensive foods with FS, who is to say that these people are using the food to actually make 'extended' meals? Maybe that expensive slab of meat went into beans or a stir-fry and fed 3 people for 2 meals; in contrast to one steak per person for a single meal.
Maybe the meat was on sale so they stocked up and plan on freezing most of it.

It's not fair or right to assume or judge based on a momentary observation.

[PedroMartinez]

Originally Posted by d from birmingham

What your little link fails to tell you is that the majority of those on food stamps are working full time jobs.

Walmart loves to underpay it's workers so they have to be on food stamps.

Oh btw the majority of those on welfare are white and live in rural areas.

There are a few things I do know.

1. I can't get anyone to clean my house for under $25 per hour (no license needed in Texas).
2. I can't get anybody to paint my house for under $35 per hour (no license needed in Texas).
3. I can't get anybody to pressure wash for under $25 per hour (no license needed in Texas).
4. When I was going to school, I hung wallpaper and I AVERAGED $30 an hour on residential jobs and $50 an hour doing commercial jobs back in the early 90's (no license needed in Texas).
5. I can't get my car worked on for less than $75 per hour.
6. I can't get my boat worked on for less than $75 per hour.
7. I can't get my plumbing worked on for less than $100 per hour.
8. When I do work in my backyard, I hire a guy who works a warehouse my friend manages for $15 an hour plus pizza to do any digging.

If you fill out an application which requires essentially no skills and you are clocking in and out at specified hours in an air conditioned building where you get paid the same regardless of busting your hump or just getting by and then head home to watch tv, yep, you're probably getting a fairly crappy wage that won't pay the bills or ever move you forward.

When I finished high school and started going to junior college, I worked for Mervyn's department store for a little above minimum wage. I believe it was around $6 per hour. One day I went to a wallpaper store with a girl who was going to wallpaper her bathroom. By circumstance, they were about to have a class on how to hang it, so we attended it. It was relatively simple. I picked up a card by the register for a wallpaper hanger. I called and asked what they charged to hang wallpaper, and it was $15 per roll. I attended another class and then asked if I could hang some displays at the store for free. The staff, who didn't want to do it themselves, agreed. After doing it a few days, I had cards printed up and put them at the register by several other groups of cards. Soon I was getting calls for jobs, and within a month quit the department store. I continued hanging wallpaper while in junior college and while at the university I transferred. I also hung wallpaper briefly after college while job hunting.

If I didn't have even a high school diploma and was working at Walmart, I'd find a painter, and volunteer to work for free just to learn the tricks and get the practice. Then I'd post ads on Craigslist and rent, borrow and beg for whatever equipment I needed to do the first few jobs.

Any adult without specific limitation such as a mental handicap, physical disability or some unique situation has no excuse to moan and grown about getting minimum wage. If you're (most people) too damn lazy to put in the effort and sweat to improve your life, tough luck; it's your own dang fault.

"What, I have to work in the heat. Oh no, not me."

"What, I have to work for free to learn that trade. Oh no, not me."

"What, I have to go from work to a vocational school to learn that trade. Oh no, I've got stuff I want to do."

Like I've said, some people have legitimate reasons while they can't get ahead, but for most people, it comes down to being too lazy. In places where there are the fracking booms going on, they pay people quite well to dig ditches and carry pipe. In Houston, you can't get a person out in the suburbs to clean a house for less than $25 per hour. We've shopped around plenty and know this to be a fact. If you can't learn to dust, sweep, vacuum and mop, you're not worth more than minimum wage.

Sorry, but that's just the cold hard truth.