One in Eight Americans Now Receives Food Stamps
 

The Safety Net - Living on Nothing but Food Stamps - Series - NYTimes.com
John Linder wants your children to literally starve to death, and he is on a House panel on welfare policy.

You have to understand that "lower the taxes" is the only consistent idea the Republican Party has left. If he were to propose that problems could be possibly be solved by any other method, he would essentially be declaring himself apostate.

Congressional panels basically determine government policy.

John Linder, a member of a panel on welfare policy, wants to do away with welfare.

Bolton was the liaison to the UN.

This is how they do.

Bolton fulfilled his obligations as a liaison, though, which was the weird thing.

He did. But on paper he's about the worst choice ever.

It's just strange to think that the Bush administration chose an appointment that symbolized their opinion of the UN, yet who was at the same time an effective bureaucrat.

It's one of the few things they did competently, and I refuse to believe it was on purpose.

I can sympathize with Isabel Bermudez on this issue as the job market, to me, does seems quite poor (almost hopeless) out there at the moment (even for college graduates) with seemingly no hopes of improving in the foreseeable future as I see it unless something is done.

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There is a good Chinese Proverb though that I feel sums up this situation and Mr. Linder's viewpoint which goes something like...

"Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime."

Sympathy aside, I really do think this welfare issue is becoming an ever increasing problem and, like Linder mentioned, I feel we need to give lower income individuals more motivation to succeed on their own and help weed them off government assistance.

Creating new jobs, whether by reducing taxes on small businesses, investing into the nations infrastructure (by creating new roads, bridges, or buildings, etc...) or what ever method(s) the government ultimately decides to use is far more useful in the long run than simply applying a quick fix like boosting welfare.

I do disagree with Linder in some aspects though as I feel we still need to help the lower-income families at least for the meantime until they are able to help themselves. We need almost an incentive plan of sorts to make individuals want to support themselves while at the same time supporting those who are otherwise incapable of doing it themselves.

People like Ms. Bermudez clearly already know how to fish.

The problem is that there aren't any fucking fish. It's delusional to assume that access to fishing holes and to fishing equipment is somehow equal across the board.

And if you think people need "motivation" to find methods other than food stamps to sustain themselves, you have some interesting ideas about how fun it is to try to live on stamps. It's not fun. It's demeaning. Nobody CHOOSES to live on gov't assistance because they're just too damned lazy; even the shittiest gas station job will usually provide a better standard of living.

Well, I shouldn't say "nobody", but to take a handful of welfare queens and use them to demonize the entire program is repulsive.

"Motivation" is all very nice, but people can't find work simply by wishing real hard and clapping their hands. The jobs have to exist.

And what, exactly, about lowering taxes causes jobs to materialize? Someone explain this to me. Okay, in theory, if the business owner is taxed less he can afford to hire more employees. But why would he? Demonstrably he can run his business with the staff he has now; why should he use his new windfall to hire more? Out of the goodness of his heart?

Oh, but Pang! If taxes are lowered, people will have more to spend! Our theoretical small business owner will therefore have more business! He will be forced to hire more employees by the sheer force of consumer demand!

Anyone who has ever worked a retail position during the holidays knows that customer density and staff density have no relationship in the mind of hiring managers.

Yeah I was thinking about the lower taxes = more jobs issue myself and was thinking it probably wouldn't achieve much in terms of creating more jobs.

I think possibly they are hoping it will inspire some sort of entrepreneurial feeling in everyday individuals which will in term perhaps lead them to start up a business which theoretically would create new jobs.

Of course lower taxes = more spending money for consumers = more spending which will possibly equate to a need for more jobs like you mentioned as well.

At the corporate level I suppose having more revenue flowing through the business, due to lower taxes, may also result in more hiring or lifting many of the hiring freezes which have seemed to have been put in place following the most recent (current?) recession.

I can sort of see the logic in this sort of mentality, but I feel investing more into construction projects and infrastructure would be a better solution for the lower income population and the country as a whole in the long run.

And I wasn't really belittling Isabel Bermudez with my initial statement, or at least I wasn't intending to. I do believe there are those individuals out there who are desperately in need of this government assistance. However, I feel that there are far more individuals than you or I can imagine Pangalin who are completely content leeching off this system. The fact that Mr. Linder seemed to express such hostility on this subject leads me to believe the numbers of these individuals are quite staggering.

I don't think the argument reduces to how many people are taking advantage of the system vs. how many are being supported by it. I've heard from people who've been in situations where they could take a job and wind up losing more benefits than their new job would supply. These aren't marginalized people, so it wasn't a big deal, but there is a large group of people where that difference means a great deal. It indicates to me that the process is broken.

Prove it, asswipe.

What about those of us who COULD be on gov't assistance (college student in a music program that has no free time for actually getting a job that pays well enough to do more than cover bills), but don't because ... actually I dunno. I feel like I'd be taking it from someone who needs it.

There are many factors of eligibility, but based on the information contained in your post, you would not be eligible for Food Stamps.

If you stopped giving out food stamps, in a generation or so there'd be few enough American's left to fit the labour market you currently have. Waiting for all the poor people to starve to death is much easier to implement than any attempts to introduce some kind of commie system whereby the tax dollars of hard working 'Merkins are handed out willy-nilly to lazy bums, right?

Either that or the proles rise up to murder us in our sleep, which is the risk you take, I suppose.

I'm hoping that they'll be too weak from malnourishment to hold their guns steady.

Maybe a system of cake stamps could be implemented instead?

:happymo0.gif:

I have seen this particular type of reasoning being used as evidence recently, and I don't think its premise is sound. I submit that this is a backward reasoning that isn't supported by facts, but what amounts to an appeal to authority.

Basically saying "while I have no fact to back up this assertion, because Individual X whom I respect have strong feeling about this issue then proposition A must be true. "

While one might defer to experts on certain issues, there must be ways corroborate their position with other information or facts, otherwise its nothing more then empty assertions.

Seeing as though he dissed my post asking for the same and then left Dodge, I can only assume he can't back up his gut feeling with facts, Magi.

Simple fact is that with a topic such as this there are hardly any ways to back up an assumption like the one he made with facts due to the fact that everyone that does use gov't help uses it for different circumstances.

To better show what I mean, I knew one fella who worked at a wal-mart who lived out of the YMCA trying to get back on his feet after some sort of financial melt-down I guess..middle age guy but he was getting help from the federal government in some way financially as well as far as food stamps go. Most would consider this a good use of the gov't money due to the fact he is trying to just get back on his feet and such.

Yet on another note, there was this 20 something female that had 5 kids that were at least 1 year apart in age and she had no job but received more cash than what I make in a month at my job from government assistance, and that isn't counting food stamps thrown in. Up in Iowa people call them 'welfare mamas'. Is it right considering most don't know the circumstances? I don't think it is, but that is the only way I can see someone making an assumption that some people 'take advantage' of the system.

All in all, it is impossible to judge who 'deserves' to get help from an outside source, and those who are just 'leeching' the system. Personally I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to make enough money to live on my own, and go to school full time myself, and I also hate the idea that I might have to use food stamps due to the fact that other people need it more than I will when that time comes.

Do you feel that your salary would support five young children? Why or why not?

I'm a single 20-something and I deserve more money than children!