Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Once again if someone uses an EBT card they are a burden on society. If a person cannot see that I would say they are also cognitively impaired which likely gets to the heart of the issue.
What part of the fact that if someone is on welfare then they are robbing other people for their own benefit do you not get? And I typed very slowly to aid in comprehension. If someone has an EBT card the they are taking from others - period. And are people suppose to be impressed that someone claims they worked for 35 years, as if that suddenly justifies them becoming a BURDEN to their fellow man? If so then they did a damn poor job of managing their finances. Apparently buying a private disability policy wasn't part of the plan either. Oh but what plan, because it appears someone descended from a family of losers. Which goes to my point that they should sterilize people who accept public aid in order to break the cycle of dependency.
Yes, I know, you've said it before. You're perfect, you can do no wrong, nothing bad will ever happen to you. Well, all I can say is enjoy it while you can, because buddy, it's a long, hard fall to the bottom.
So you really think these losers on food stamps who defend your right to talk smack about them are worthless:
You mean the fact they are too stupid to grasp that of the three holes on a woman's body commonly used for sexual gratification only one can lead to pregnancy?
What a surprise! I didn't know men had an aversion to sex. And I didn't know that all births were virgin births. Imagine that. A woman getting pregnant all by herself. Will wonders never cease!
Here's a clue for you: why don't men just keep their zippers up and all those pregnancies would suddenly go away.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SportyandMisty
We do not all pay for these. Half the population pays no federal income tax. They are freeloaders depending on the rest of us, and unfortunately they have the right to vote.
You're talking about the 1% who keep their money in offshore accounts so they don't have to pay income tax, right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by f5fstop
I live in a neighborhood that is far from being low income; just the opposite. Woman three houses away sends her three brats up there for lunch while she lays by the pool with her friends. Husbands an attorney, so I doubt if they are LOW INCOME.
But we all end up paying for the people to drop more little brats and now it includes school.
So you're upset with the programs to help poor kids because someone who isn't poor is taking advantage of it?
But how can that be? I thought only the poor lowlifes took advantage of these programs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by I love boots.
I know someone that volunteers at a food bank. She said the people coming in are looking for prepackaged quick things, sugary cereals etc. Food bank shoppers don't want oatmeal, rice, dried beans, bags of potatoes and other nutritious things that are cheap in bulk and can go a long way. Things we eat at my house plenty.
I don't think there is anything we can do about what someone else chooses to feed their kids. people don't learn to cook anymore and think its really hard and its not.
I used to volunteer for a food bank myself. Those people were coming in and looking to get anything they could to feed their families with. Fact is, the food bank I volunteered for had a variety of items a person could get that were donated by the local stores and restaurants.
Each item had a value point and each person could only use so many points a week and some things were limited to only two per person, like only two loaves of bread or only two baked goods.
I myself never learned to cook at home. In fact, until a couple years ago, I didn't cook much at all. My freezer was filled with pre-made food. Since then, I've learned quite a bit about cooking and one thing for sure, getting good food to cook with isn't always cheap and cooking takes time. I can see where a person working two jobs would find it difficult to find the time to cook for a family.
Most food banks depend on what the surrounding communities donate to them. I volunteered in a fairly well-to-do town. The town I currently live in is pretty poor. The food banks here reflect that and you will never find things like pastries and fresh vegetables here.
Last edited by rodentraiser; 06-28-2016 at 12:33 AM..
A reasonable assumption of reality to base a (younger) life around is:
01) Expect a lower standard of living than your predecessors
02) Expect your job/carer/profession to disappear at any time, live you life and plan with that uncertainty in mind,expect to train for multiple careers, constantly reinvent yourself
03) Diversify your income streams, always have one or two side businesses
04) Minimize your expenses while increasing your quality of life where you can - for instance a family bike ride and picnic verses going out for dinner, actively working a garden plot (these activities are family oriented, save you money, and improve your health and mental well being)
05) Target saving a minimum of 25% of your gross income by managing your lifestyle(this is when possible)
06) If married with a working spouse, only live off of one income - you should be in disparate industries.
07) Always look at what the median income is for a college graduate. Do not build a lifestyle that requires more than the median income less 25% to maintain
08) Keeping in mind the above also look at the median salary for you profession - remember the rule of reversion to the mean
09) Every week ask what you would do on Monday if your job was terminated on Friday
10) Build a retirement plan targeting the age of 50, if you hit it you will smile, if you don't no harm done you tried and will better prepared than most
I developed most of these rules around 1982-84...I lived my life by them; they served me well and are currently serving my offspring well.
I just posted this in the hope it would benefit someone and not as an element of preachyness (at least in this post)
Hate to agree with anything USAgismo says but overall this looks good. I have to ask about number one. Why expect a standard of living lower than predecessors? Do you mean starting out or their whole life? I think that's defeating and may not be what happens. I would say mine is better.
Number six is absolutely the most important one. Looking back I know doing that from the beginning was one thing that got us ahead.
Some of these things require an intelligence a lot of people, frankly, don't have. I hit 30 before even thinking about financial planning. My parents never taught me. Schools certainly don't teach anything even close to that. If someone, anyone, would have told me about this stuff when I was 18, I would be retired right now. Even with the economic crash.
Realistically, everyone's situation is different. When cost of living is 110% of your income, you can't save 25%. It's hard to move. It's hard to get the skills needed for a better job. This is the situation a lot of people find themselves in. Sometimes it's bad decisions. Sometimes it's just their lot in life. It's easy to sit in a good position and offer advice to the down trodden. It's not so easy for the down trodden to heed it. Some compassion for those not as well off as you goes a long way.I certainly don't want a bunch of people living off the government without putting forth any effort (members of congress, drug addicts, the lazy) but our economy is not exactly one where everyone can just get a job and pull themselves up by their bootstraps (an expression coined to convey the impossible nature of a task that has been, rather recently, twisted to mean just do it and you'll be ok.) and put away money for the future. An absurd amount of the population aren't able to cover an emergency 400 dollar bill. A huge number of people have no savings at all.
This is a legislation problem. This is an education problem. This is a globalization problem.
If every American of working age decided to better themselves and go after in demand degrees to fill in demand positions, a massive number of people would be left out int he cold still.
Starting your own business can help fill some of that gap, but not all of it. We need those jobs that went to Mexico and China. The manufacturing jobs that built the middle class out of high school graduates. We need to teach people how to manage money and plan for the future.
And even if everyone straightens up and flies right, we still need cashiers, fast food workers, janitors and all these other low paying jobs. The jobs that can't sustain a life.
A lot needs to change and hopefully it does before the automation boom that is impending. When all of our jobs are rendered obsolete by robots, we'll all be wishing for the compassion I am suggesting.
An intelligence people don't have? While I would agree that looking around I can see that most aren't terribly smart that's ridiculous.
I'm terrible at math, but the math for this isn't that hard. If you make 50k a year and spend 50k a year or more you will have nothing. Most people I know that spend 110 percent talk about how hard it is but never cut back on anything. Maybe my parents did help me. Not by showing me how to plan a budget, but just by stressing over and over again how hard it is in the beginning. Telling me how hard it was for them and my grandparents before them. Somehow we must have said the right words, because our oldest son is doing really well. Kids learn by example. Your have them for 18 or so years and a parents influence is everything and we have out schools already trying to teach kids things where they should have no business going. We don't need more and its part of the problem.
If it was you the said you really didn't start retirement planning till age 30, I don't think that's so bad. Still young. There are some that don't have much to sock away before that. Hind sight is 20/20 and looking back there are things I would do differently.
I think the people blaming it on the robots may be watching too many movies. Things change. Long ago my grandfather was the ice man. He delivered big blocks of ice for ice boxes before people had refrigerators. People replaced their iceboxes with refrigerators and he learned how to do something else. Jobs becoming obsolete is not a new thing. People have to adapt. Not as easy as it sounds, in fact life was actually pretty hard for them then, but what else are you going to do?
When you decided that SSDI is needs based, that tells me all I need to know about the futility of trying to have a discussion with you about this issue. You can get SSDI if you are a millionaire, you are eligible for SSDI if you have enough SS income There is no requirement that you NEED money in order to draw SSDI yet you want to call it welfare...
Whoops, you're totally right! I completely got SSDI mixed up with SSI. SSI is the needs based one, not SSDI. Totally my bad. SSDI should be considered part of Social Security. Alright, so lets fix the numbers. SSI spent $59 billion in 2015 (as opposed to the $159 billion spent by SSDI). So if we replace the $159 with $59 in my calculations, that brings need based spending down to 35% of "All Government Spending minus Social Security and Medicare", as opposed to the number I previously used, which was 37%. So you brought it down 2 percentage points, good catch!
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2sleepy
And of course you don't want to talk about unemployment insurance being included in your "welfare spending", you just blow that off...I guess that is some kind of welfare too, huh?
OK, for this one I'm pretty sure I mentioned that unemployment was included in my "welfare spending". Anyway, unemployment is not part of Social Security, and it's not part of Medicare in any way, so it has to count for something. So the next question is Unemployment spending money that we spend to buy a good or service? Well, no, it isn't. Is it free money that we give out to those who need it just because they need it? Well, yes, yes it is. Therefore it's needs-based spending. N'est pas?
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2sleepy
How odd to claim that programs that are not needs based are somehow 'welfare' and inherently bad because they are a redistribution of wealth, but you don't say a word about the big daddy of wealth redistribution, the enormous transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich
1) I did not say needs-based spending was *bad*, I said it was growing faster than we can afford it, and that we are doing ourselves more harm than good by overspending on it. Instead of 35% of spending, we should curtail it down to say 25% of spending. Then we'd be all right. Not cut it outright, just trim it a bit, so that we're not bleeding money.
2) I believe I did mention earlier that the middle class was shrinking while the lower class was growing. Because those who have the personality and characteristics that would keep them in the lower class tend to have more kids, and those who have the personality and characteristics to make it as middle class tend to have less kids. So there are less middle class personalities around, and that money that's left isn't going to go down, it's going to go up. In other words, the wealth transfer from the middle to the upper class is not occurring because of the "greed" of the upper class, it's occurring because of the dwindling "greed" of the middle class. It considered bad form for middle class people to be competitive about anything other than sports anymore, and if you aren't competitive in education and business, then guess what. The competitive people are going to beat you.
If we could get the middle class to have more kids and shift their competitive spirit away from college football teams and back to education and business, then the middle class would easily be able to pull all that money back down from the upper class. But as long as the middle class keeps the attitude of "take my money!!", then that's what the upper class is going to do. And if we could get the lower class to have less kids, then there would be less kids to split the available money between, and each person would end up having access to more resources than they have now. Simply by merit of having less mouths to feed with the same amount of money.
I myself never learned to cook at home. In fact, until a couple years ago, I didn't cook much at all. My freezer was filled with pre-made food. Since then, I've learned quite a bit about cooking and one thing for sure, getting good food to cook with isn't always cheap and cooking takes time. I can see where a person working two jobs would find it difficult to find the time to cook for a family.
Most food banks depend on what the surrounding communities donate to them. I volunteered in a fairly well-to-do town. The town I currently live in is pretty poor. The food banks here reflect that and you will never find things like pastries and fresh vegetables here.
The problem you're talking about here happened the family unit has fallen apart. I grew up with mom at home cooking 3 meals a day. It is a problem that so many no longer cook, but it isn't a problem the government can fix. It would be difficult, but expecting an outside source to take care of it for you isn't realistic. People just have to do it if they don't want obese kids existing on garbage food.
Getting back to the free school lunch thing. It's changed since I was in school. It's no longer a balanced meal take or leave it. The kids are allowed to make bad choices about what to eat and forgo putting things fruits and vegetables on their lunch tray. Parents have better control if they eat summer lunches at home anyhow.
I completely got SSDI mixed up with SSI. SSI is the needs based one, not SSDI. Totally my bad. SSDI should be considered part of Social Security. Alright, so lets fix the numbers. SSI spent $59 billion in 2015 (as opposed to the $159 billion spent by SSDI). So if we replace the $159 with $59 in my calculations, that brings need based spending down to 35% of "All Government Spending minus Social Security and Medicare", as opposed to the number I previously used, which was 37%. So you brought it down 2 percentage points, good catch!
It's not 37% or 35%, you are still using your magical math. Quit playing games and list everything that you are including in that 35% and pull your figures from something other than a RWNJ website and we can talk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pkbab5
OK, for this one I'm pretty sure I mentioned that unemployment was included in my "welfare spending".Is it free money that we give out to those who need it just because they need it? Well, yes, yes it is. Therefore it's needs-based spending. N'est pas?
Wrong again, you did include unemployment or you couldn't have come up with this bizarre figure of 35%, and no it's not needs based, a CEO who is laid off can apply for unemployment, it is the same principle as SSDI which you finally agreed is not needs based, N'est pas?
Quote:
Originally Posted by pkbab5
And if we could get the lower class to have less kids, then there would be less kids to split the available money between, and each person would end up having access to more resources than they have now. Simply by merit of having less mouths to feed with the same amount of money.
Be careful what you wish for, if the poor (I guess that is who you consider the 'lower class') have fewer children there won't be anyone around to wipe your a$$ and clean the dribble from your chin for minimum wage when you're 80.
I just want to remind older folks that in a social darwinian scheme of things they are unproductive moochers too, and they will be dealt with in the same way society treats other unproductives.
Untrue. You are ignoring intertemporal choice and intertemporal resource allocation.
Let's ignore the fact that the economy crashed 8 years ago. If you had your kid 11 years ago (5th grade) like I did and lost your excellent job due to the crash, skrew you for procreating and skrew your kids too? How quickly people forget about a massive economic collapse that devastated the middle class. I don't have the same job I had in 07. That job is gone. Same is true for millions of jobs. We can't just let kids starve to death.
I have to wonder how many of the people deriding the use of tax payer money to feed kids also complain about a proposed minimum wage increase? Maybe if we paid people enough to live, we wouldn't have to subsidize.
Would your kids starve if not for the free food during the summer?
I sympathize with those who have lost jobs and I know wages are depressed. I don't have any issue with government assistance for those who need it. Most of us are only a couple pay checks away from being in a position where we may need financial assistance. I know people who are poor, working poor, who receive food stamps and other assistance. I dont know any who have starving children or depend on this summer food program to feed their children. I don't have issue with reduced or free lunch program at school for those that need it although Im confident those children would not starve to death if the program didnt exist. I don't feel there is a need for this summer feeding program or free lunch for everyone.
Perhaps it is different in metro areas or Northern states. Living in the Southern rural Appalachia I do not see starving children nor kids that need additional food assistance.
Anyone can apply. Dosent mean you will receive. A CEO is never laid off. They are fired with cause or quit. Neither one will get you unemployment.
My point was that it is not a needs based program and
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
