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Attention WalMart Shoppers. Grab Everything!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Nom Chompsky, Oct 15, 2013.

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  1. Danger Boy

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    I hate to jump on the worn out "Let's rag on Ballsack" wagon, but this is pretty much what you sound like.
     
    #41 Danger Boy, Oct 16, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 27, 2015
  2. sisterkathlouise

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    How are people who work and take care of their families supposed to take all this time to do community service? 45% of SNAP recipients are children, 19% are elderly or disabled. Of the remaining 36%, over half are working at the time that they receive benefits, and well over 80% are employed within the year. Also, you have to consider single parents who are better off receiving benefits than working because wages are so low and childcare is so expensive.

    The length of time you can receive benefits depends on your situation and the type of benefits. For a single adult with no dependents who is not working, there is a cap on food assistance at 3 months. Families with children or people who are elderly/disabled make up the vast majority of recipients and aren't so limited.

    Cash assistance is obviously different and has a lifetime limit that varies by state (I think) up to a maximum of 5 years (that's the federal max).
     
  3. comforter

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    Only after the Wall Street welfare queens work off their bailout money through community service. I want to see Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, and the rest of them moving lawns and picking up trash to pay off their corporate welfare abuses. I've neither forgiven nor forgotten 2008. Yes, let's punish parasites, but let's start at the top end of the economic food chain.

    Back on-focus: That's why I'm in computer security, to take advantage of other's oversights. Usually it's by fixing them, but sometimes you have to demonstrate the problem by exploiting it for free stuff (I'm sure the same goes for tax lawyers).
     
  4. Clutch

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    I didn't say easy. I said easier than an adult, for the very same reasons you mentioned. There are a lot of opportunities, but they require a lot of hard work and involve delayed gratification, which most people (rich or poor) suck at.

    I spent a semester tutoring at an inner-city public school, the kind that's compartmentalized with locked doors and students go to the restroom one at a time with a resource officer escorting them. I'd guess that ~5% were actually interested in learning. They're probably the same sort of kids that went to my university, while their classmates are the same sort of kids who put spinning chrome rims on the Pontiac Montana down the street. The best story I have is the one kid who told me he was going to go to college. Excited, I asked him if he knew what he wanted to study. His response was, "Shit, [n-word], I ain't going to class. I'm just gonna get that pussy." I was confused because 1. I'm white and 2. he was eleven.


    As for the working poor, I support this idea. I don't like the idea of the welfare system subsidizing below-market wages for big businesses.
     
  5. ssycko

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    Yes, all those things are very easy to do on paper. But are you telling me at 13, you'd be able to say, "man, I should probably think about leaving my entire family and everything I know to get on a bus to somewhere that hopefully is better for me"? Because that's when all that shit starts.

    Sure, there are plenty of shitty poor people. But there are also plenty of good ones who got stuck in a system where they can't easily get out.
     
  6. Hoosiermess

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    I'm not unsympathetic and those on disability (legitimately) are not those I was talking about. From what I read 16% and single parents aren't working so they could easily work out some time to do community service. They could also enroll in college (single parents) with student loans and grants to improve their earning potential. I'm sure some, even many do and kudos to them.

    There are manual jobs that pay well, we need uneducated labor as well as educated. The RV industry here pays very well. Enough that families can make it so I know there are some jobs out there that would be enough, not everywhere but they are out there.
     
  7. sisterkathlouise

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    Students aren't eligible for food assistance unless they are working at least 25 hrs/week.

    And really, what people need more of are loans.

    It also doesn't seem like you're putting much thought into the whole idea of relocation. I don't know about you, but without a nice cushion, I wouldn't dream of packing up my life and moving to a place where I didn't already have a job and living situation lined up, especially if I had children depending on me.
     
  8. Hoosiermess

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    If single parents can receive benefits indefinitely without getting a job we might consider changing the law to allow them to go to school. I know I don't have all of the answers, it's just a thought.

    Agreed loans suck but so does living on EBT. Not being sarcastic, what do they have to lose? Why not take the risk of going to school even if they have to have a loan. They're broke, they'll get some grants. Same with moving. If it's not working why wouldn't they try to change it? Again, I don't have the answers but if they aren't willing to try then what do they really have to live for?
     
  9. sisterkathlouise

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    You can't live on SNAP, you can only buy food with it. Are you arguing that parents (single or otherwise) should be cut of from FOOD ASSISTANCE? So that they won't be able to feed their children? Because that's kind of fucked up. I'm opposed to starving children.

    What do they have to lose? Whatever sense of stability they have managed to achieve, whatever support they get from friends and family, knowledge of the area and accessible resources, etc.

    I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be accountable, but $7.40/hr is not a living wage. Maybe the government should be more accountable, and provide better education and a more reasonable minimum wage (amongst other things) so people aren't forced into situations where they need to utilize SNAP or cash assistance.
     
  10. iczorro

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    Easy. Join the military. I didn't have the money or grades for college, and I could easily have ended up working customer service for $12/hr until I got that sweet Asst. Manager pay bump at 30. Instead, I got schooling, housing, training, experience, travel. I'm making ~ $150k this year.

    Unless the person in question is medically unfit for service, there is no "Shitty situation they can't get out of."
     
  11. ghettoastronaut

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    I'm wondering if what I'm reading is serious here.

    So, your solution is to have people take out loans that they have a significant risk of not being able to repay. The problem with this is self-evident.

    And, barring the chance that they have a criminal record acquired during their childhood spent growing up in a broken family in a broken neighbourhood, your solution is for them to use even more tax dollars by getting a government job and have a rather large percentage of the population join a military that is trying to downsize.
     
  12. Crown Royal

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    The problem with your country is have have too big of a knuckle-dragger population. Here is an eye-witness account. The other day I went a Wal-Mart in Port Huron MI. The Wal-Mart five minutes from my house is the exact same size as this one. Now, there are many differences between these two retard havens, two main ones being: a) the prices were much lower in the USA one. And b) the USA one had a clothing section dedicated specifically to the show Duck Dynasty that is the size of the entire men's clothing department at the store near me. Really. That show is the number 1 show on TV.

    I think you guys should get a new hunting season where everybody who passes a basic aptitude test gets to hunt and pick off ten of the people who don't. It will be like Hard Target except instead of ex-combat vets you'll get a prey that hides from you in a glass bank vestibule.
     
  13. Hoosiermess

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    Yes, why not? Again what do they have to lose? They have little chance at improvement without doing something to get a job and these programs are not designed to carry people forever. I don't see the military as a bad option either. Yes they are being paid with Government funds but they're earning it by, for instance, protecting my fat ass, rather than collecting it. There is a difference.

    What would be your solution Ghetto?
     
  14. iczorro

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    Criminal record (barring violent felonies) isn't really a problem. Seems like half the guys I met in boot camp joined the military to avoid jail time.

    These people wouldn't be handed tax dollars, they'd be working for them, serving in the military. And I'm not saying it's for everyone, I'm saying that there is no excuse for complaining about your hard luck situation if you're not willing to take an available option for getting out of it.
     
  15. Hoosiermess

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    The government should be more accountable? The government is giving people a way to purchase food until they can get on their feet, that is more than accountable. These are meant to be temporary programs, not permanent so in answer to your question yes, there should be a cut off. When or after how long I don't know, I don't want kids to starve either. As for education, there is definite room for improvement in public schools. We are lucky that our local schools are all pretty good around here. Kids need to want to learn too.

    7.40 is intended for kids and those (usually young) who have no experience or skills. It was never meant to be a living wage.
     
  16. R_Flagg

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    Clutch both makes a good point here; welfare isn't so much for the benefit of the individual poor as much as it benefits the rest of us.

    See, welfare when you get right down is a safeguard for the economy. Not necessarily to keep the 'impoverished masses' from looting the homes and stores of the wealthy or to keep them from tugging on the coats of their betters on Wall Street begging for pennies, but to keep the lower classes as a whole semi-functional. Welfare is intended preserve the reserve pool of labor; you've got to have X amount of unemployed (and thus poor) people on the bottom of the economic chain so that when Randy the Fry Cook gets fired on Tuesday, McDonalds can have him replaced by Wednesday with an equally capable drone. (Feel free to substitute any sort of menial labor for that example). Some jobs can't be completely automated and at the same time aren't worth much more than the legal minimum wage; hence the need for a surplus labor pool.

    Welfare is simply there to ensure that when the need arises for cheap labor you've got a large selection of functional human beings to pick and choose from, that aren't severely malnourished. Public education serves very much the same purpose, when you need a warm body for a job you can pick from a large pool of people who can (in theory) read, write, and preform basic math. It doesn't make a goddamn if some kid in the poorest neighborhood of Chicago starves to death before he turns seven, because by the time he would have been old enough to work so would seven hundred thousand of his peers, which more than makes up for the loss of one individual.
     
  17. Popped Cherries

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    So you think the answer to our problems is the movie Purge?

    I was on SNAP for a while after an extended time on unemployment. I got downsized at my job and spent about 4 months looking for work before I found a job well below my qualifications.
    I'm not some uneducated teenager with no experience in the work force. I was stuck in a spot where there was a sudden flood of people equally qualified as me and there weren't enough jobs to go around for all of us. So I did what I had to do to keep living.
    The job I got, I was making $9.50/hr working 32 hours a week. That's 16k a year before taxes. After 20% taken out for taxes, that comes out to roughly 12.8k a year.
    Take a guess at how much I got on my SNAP card every month?
    If the amount you were thinking was $31, you'd be correct.
    To get that amount I had to fill out mountains of paperwork and after 3 months, I got adjusted down to $29 a month because I got a .25 raise in pay.
    It's a common misconception that everyone on SNAP gets the absolute full amount of money possible. Most of the people who get the full amount have more than one kid and don't work.
    Just a little firsthand perspective since I'm sure most of you have had little interaction with public assistance.

    As for the people who tried to game the system, honestly, I'm completely indifferent. With the amount of food that's overproduced every day in this country, we shouldn't have a problem feeding anyone who is hungry. I'm not just talking about shitty processed food either. Most supermarkets throw out about 25% of their produce and meat every week.
     
  18. ghettoastronaut

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    What I was trying to imply was that large numbers of poor people taking out loans with a significant chance of those loans not being repaid is a large (but not the only) part of what got us into the current economic mess.

    I don't want to sound like I'm down on military service or deny the reality that the military is probably one of the best ways for a lot of young adults to get their lives on track (or just off to a good start), but the problem is that this is a solution that simply can't be for everyone. During discussion of allowing gays / women to serve in the military, a theme that pops up is that any decision taken must be in the exclusive interest of maintaining or enhancing the military's combat effectiveness, and that it is not a place for social experimentation. Well, if the military is exclusively for the purpose of winning wars and not for any kind of feel-good fuzzy social goals, then why is it being held up as a great equalizer, a place for the poor to escape their circumstances? What about the high-achieving kids from top flight schools - doesn't the military have a keen interest in recruiting them? And I think it sets a troubling precedent for society at large and the military in particular if the military becomes a place for the nation's poorest to go after high school to go off and fight its wars. This is, of course, putting aside the issue of paying for all of these recruits, from buying uniforms through to college tuition, pensions and medical care down the line, and putting aside the issue of the U.S. military currently downsizing, which allows the military to be more selective in accepting new people.
     
  19. Seeker

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    This bullshit is why we didn't have political threads on the old board. Which fucking retard keeps approving these threads? The idiot board is supposed to be the one messageboard on the internet that's free from all this. Goddammit mods get it together.
     
  20. shimmered

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    I received assistance about ten years ago for a brief period of time.

    I had left my first husband and was working at Walmart for $6.90 an hour, 24-32 hours a week. Just enough to avoid being eligible for insurance.

    Anyway, three kids and myself - we got $325 a month, or something like that. I had to prove I had custody of my kids, and that they did in fact live with me. Provide identification and birth certificates and social security cards for all of us. I don't even know how to game the system, based on what I had to provide.
     
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