Doctors Say Food Stamp Cuts Could Cause Higher Healthcare Costs 1043
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Lauran Neergaard writes at the Christian Science Monitor that doctors are warning that if Congress cuts food stamps, the federal government could be socked with bigger health bills because over time the poor wind up seeking treatment in doctors' offices or hospitals as a result. 'If you're interested in saving health care costs, the dumbest thing you can do is cut nutrition,' says Dr. Deborah Frank of Boston Medical Center, who founded the Children's HealthWatch pediatric research institute. 'People don't make the hunger-health connection.' Food stamps feed 1 in 7 Americans and cost almost $80 billion a year, twice what it cost five years ago. The doctors' lobbying effort comes as Congress is working on a compromise farm bill that's certain to include food stamp cuts. Republicans want heftier reductions than do Democrats in yet another partisan battle over the government's role in helping poor Americans. Conservatives say the program spiraled out of control as the economy struggled and the costs are not sustainable. However research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts estimated that a cut of $2 billion a year in food stamps could trigger in an increase of $15 billion in medical costs (PDF) for over the next decade. Other research shows children from food-insecure families are 30 percent more likely to have been hospitalized for a range of illnesses. 'Food is medicine,' says Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern, who has led the Democrats' defense of the food stamp program. 'Critics focus almost exclusively on how much we spend, and I wish they understood that if we did this better, we could save a lot more money in health care costs.'"
Math, do it. (Score:3, Insightful)
$2 billion/year x 10 years = $20 billion > $15 billion
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Informative)
And can I say that the way the editors set the link break in the summary made it very easy to miss the "over the next decade" part or that sentence.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is only one of the costs, there may be other costs as well, like productivity losses from the illneess, or generally less productivity from less efficient division of labor.
Re: Math, do it. (Score:4, Informative)
Depending on the state you can work 40hr a week and still easily qualify for food stamps. That's not saying food stamps have a high max income limit, but min wage is so far below the poverty line it's a joke.
Hell some states are much worse than others, with laws that allow restaurants to pay wait staff $3 an hour. Yes the difference is meant to be covered by tips, but get a bad schedule or just a stingy tipping crowd (fun fact, the more someone makes the less likely they will tip drivers and waitstaff in low end restauraunts) it's not uncommon to take home an average of $4 an hour for a full work schedule.
Re: Math, do it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell some states are much worse than others, with laws that allow restaurants to pay wait staff $3 an hour. Yes the difference is meant to be covered by tips, but get a bad schedule or just a stingy tipping crowd (fun fact, the more someone makes the less likely they will tip drivers and waitstaff in low end restauraunts) it's not uncommon to take home an average of $4 an hour for a full work schedule.
That's illegal. The minimum wage (at least in Texas) is set. The restaurant can pay less with the expectation of tips making up the difference, but if they don't, the restaurant is required to make up the difference to get them to the "regular" minimum wage. Most don't, they just fire you if you complain (I've seen it happen).
Re: (Score:3)
If you're a single parent 100% of poverty is $15,510. If you're minimum wage you're under the poverty guidelines even if you work 40 hours. Since many jobs at that level don't give you full-time employment it's very very easy to have a job (or two jobs) and still qualify for multiple government programs,
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
>Except for the problem that being a single parent is 100% an individual choice for individuals born with their reproductive systems on the inside.
Except that the same people who are suggesting the cuts in food programs are:
1. Fighting abortion and birth control education funding.
2. Fighting mandates that birth control be covered by insurance.
3. Proposing that abortions in case of rape be illegal.
4. Passing laws reducing availability of abortion clinics.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the problem that being a single parent is 100% an individual choice
You do not stop being a parent when your spouse or partner leaves. Which is, you know, not always your choice.
for individuals born with their reproductive systems on the inside.
But not for people with external genitalia? Right, they have no choice at all. Their sperm just magically leap out and impregnate passers-by.
Why would somebody choose to have children they can't afford? Perhaps it's because we have so many entitlement systems
Look at overall birth rates before and after food stamp programs were enacted. Go ahead. We'll wait.
that having a child guarantees a middle-class lifestyle
You actually believe this, don't you? Dear God.
and perhaps another factor is how much we privilege Mothers.
"Privilege" and "public assistance" are not really things that have much to do with each other.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Informative)
As the linked article points out, that $15 billion is a simple correlation based on diabetes alone.
When cost savings are almost erased by one disease, maybe someone hasn't thought through the unintended consequences.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, if only poor people ate exclusively at vegetarian restaurants serving low-carb meal there would be no problem. It's not like unhealthy foods are cheaper than healthy foods .... oh wait!
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Processing food does not make it cheap or cheaper. It always adds cost.
False. In many cases, processing is used to increase shelf life. Less processed foods often spoil or deteriorate faster. Consumers thus often pay a significant premium for fresh foods, "whole" foods (which often contain spoilage elements removed in processing), and unprocessed foods in general -- since it costs more for stores to keep unprocessed foods in stock (waste due to spoilage) and often more to transport them.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Informative)
Diabetes isn't a food stamp issue.
To a large extent type two diabetes an educational issue.
Nah, it all goes back to Dept of Agriculture and high Corn subsidies.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
My point was that without the stamps the money for food would be more strained forcing the individual that was previously on food stamps to shop cheaper.
There's already been solid science done that poor diet actually causes a person's cognitive abilities to decrease, and reduces impulse control, aggression, etc. It's because high fat diets damage the neuronal sheath. It's speculative whether this is reversible or not, but it's clear that the poor literally cannot help themselves. Once you've been poor for too long, you're physically, biochemically, mentally rendered less capable of helping yourself out of your own situation by a substantial degree.
"They want to starve. There's plenty of jobs for them. They're just freeloaders... blah blah blah." It's all Conservative USDA-certified Prime Bullshit. The truth is a bit more sobering, and none too flattering: When you have a bunch of people whose brains have been scooped out and they no longer have good judgement or reasoning abilities... they're easy to manipulate and force into slavery. Just feed them endless amounts of cheap entertainment and drugs and you'll find happiness in slavery and destitution.
Frankly, it's been known since biblical times what poor diet does to people... it's just that we haven't been able to describe exactly how it happens until recently thanks to advancements in medicine. We want the poor to eat badly... because it keeps them poor, and exploitable.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would we want that?
Because we have a soul.
Here we are talking about a welfare program that costs productive members of society money.
Yes. Money is clearly more important than things like being humane and decent.
The poor/dependent classes are just that, poor, dependent and unproductive.
Therefore we should simply kill them. Afterall, it would improve productivity and enhance cash flow.
You make it seem like we do it to get benefit from them, when in actual fact we don't get anything from them besides crime.
Yes. Every poor person is just a cesspool of crime with no redeeming qualities of any kind. All human beings can be judged solely by their bank account balance.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately the summary does a crappy job of summarizing.
The $15 billion increase in medical care that was extrapolated is for one disease (diabetes) alone. Presumably there will be others as well.
Supporting material, read it. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only does our government not have the money to fund all those foodstamps, it doesn't have the funds to absorb the cost of additional health care either.
Conservatives and Liberals have different spending agendas, but they both want to spend, spend spend. We have no MONEY to spend.
Yes, you should do the math. (Score:5, Insightful)
You also need to count:
1) Lost worker productivity costs to the economy (most of these people have jobs)
2) Increased welfare costs (these new sick people are the age of parents and caretakers)
3) Increased long term health care costs (these sick people will not disappear in 10 years)
The costs of creating a huge underclass has serious economic implications. Ask any teacher and they will tell you that the kids they have trouble teaching are the ones who don't get enough food to eat, and those who don't live in safe neighborhoods. You know, the ones you're too afraid of driving through.
The fact that there are hungry children in this country should make you feel ashamed about gleefully cutting programs that feed the poor. And you don't even have the math partially right, nor do you seem understand the basic economic facts that operate in all known current economic theory (and common sense): taking care of a population's health (including nutrition) through a public service is much cheaper for societies than only guaranteeing emergency services, unless we start euthanizing the poor in hospital parking lots. That's how two dozen other countries provide 100% coverage for at least half the cost per capita with similar health outcomes.
These new puppet conservatives do not have common sense or common decency, and further, they lack a prime signifier of adulthood: the ability to put the needs of others above their own wants. Why you would want to support them in their quest to keep tax cuts for people who don't need them while gutting basic services to the next generation of Americans is quite mysterious, unless being a parasite of the aristocratic class is something that appeals to you.
And let's face it, that's all the Republican party is. As proof of this fact, name one Republican policy that benefits the poor to the detriment of the rich. Just one.
Christ may have died for the poor, but the GOP fights for the wealthy. It's an odd reality for the party of God, isn't it?
Re:Yes, you should do the math. (Score:5, Insightful)
And let's face it, that's all the Republican party is. As proof of this fact, name one Republican policy that benefits the poor to the detriment of the rich. Just one.
Christ may have died for the poor, but the GOP fights for the wealthy. It's an odd reality for the party of God, isn't it?
Not odd at all. It is by design; clever and obscenely cynical, but definitely by design that the GOP has managed to hook voters with meaningless "social issues" and convince them to vote, over and over, against their own (the voters') best interests. That strategy is starting to run out of gas now, as younger voters, who appreciate a woman's right to choose and don't really give a rat's ass about gay marriage, are tilting the balance. Still, this brilliant play has worked extremely well for decades.
Re: (Score:3)
If we did nothing as a society except include breakfast at every school, we would be doing an incredible long term service to the brain wealth of the nation as a whole.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there's food stamp laundring out there, but with such small amounts, most people really are using them to avoid health issues related to starvation.
If we dropped those subsidies that farmers get for keeping farm land out of production, and also drop price supports that keep food prices higher than they would be, you could plow half of that money into food stamps and probably have something line 4x the impact.
Foodstamps are run out of the Department of Agriculture, who also end up handing out price supports, and land banking payments. The mission of the department is to make sure every American gets fed.
They need to stop working against their own mission. The whole idea of paying farmers not to farm is wrong headed.
If the department wants to tinker with farming, they should fund crop development that provides greater variety in the foods American eat. Instead we live one chicken beef, and wheat and potatoes, essentially a mono-diet.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Foodstamps are run out of the Department of Agriculture, who also end up handing out price supports, and land banking payments. The mission of the department is to make sure every American gets fed.
That's a large part of it. But I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around something that was in the summary: it said that 1 in 7 Americans are on stamps. That's an appalling statistic -- 1 in 7 Americans are poor enough that they wouldn't be able to feed themselves without government assistance?
While I agree that paying farmers not to actually produce food is ridiculous, plenty of other countries manage to feed their people without needing to resort to a program like that. Food stamps aren't the problem, they're the symptom.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a large part of it. But I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around something that was in the summary: it said that 1 in 7 Americans are on stamps. That's an appalling statistic -- 1 in 7 Americans are poor enough that they wouldn't be able to feed themselves without government assistance?
These two things are not related. A portion of the government wants as many people on food stamps as possible, because as soon as you condition a person to free handouts you get power over them. There's plenty of food in America, to the point where obesity is inversely correlated with income.
In my childhood my family was quite poor (rural trailer park poor, not like them fancy trailer parks in the big cities). I believe the only reason we escaped that was my mother's refusal to depend on government hando
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Informative)
Obesity is inversely related to income because healthy foods cost more than unhealthy ones. You need to be pretty well off to get nice clean carbs and protein. But for 99cents you can get a nice big bag of chips.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess it depends where you live, but up here in Vancouver BC, healthy fresh food is quite a but cheaper than processed food, fast food, and junk food. You have to be able to cook, but cooking is so easy you teach your average 12 year old in a few months.
I do recall a visiting consultant being amazed at our selection of fresh fruits and veggies at the local grocery store, and it was a store with a pretty small selection. Seems in a lot of places in the USA just finding healthy fresh food can be hard.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Informative)
Microwave a potato or sweet potato. Inexpensive, fast, filling, better nutrition. A little pepper, maybe a couple of drops of olive oil or some such, good. (Still good without it.)
Frozen veggies aren't that expensive, and are pretty convenient.
If you're trying to eat cheap the crock pot is your friend, along with grains, beans, and rice. Meat and bean dishes go a lot further than just meat.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate this "myth". It is absolutely false and untrue that healthy foods cost more.
You can go to the store and get eggs, potatoes, chicken, carrots and any canned vegetable and milk very inexpensively.
What are the unhealthy foods that cost less than these items? Doritoes? No. Cookies? Not Oreos and such.
My observation is that lower income people generally view food as "an escape" and one of the few creature comforts they have access to.
Is isn't really the price.
Studies have shown that overweight people choose to buy foods of convenience (fast food, open and eat packaged food, microwave and eat food) and avoid difficult to prepare foods (ones that require 15-30 minutes of preparation).
Availability of Produce (Score:5, Informative)
For additional perspective, I participated in a hackathon in NYC last spring that focused on food insecurity in Newark, NJ. The problem was that in many poorer parts of Newark there are virtually no supermarkets and no produce to be had. Most people had to get food at corner delis because they did not have cars and could not get to a larger market. Now the problem was, none of the food at the delis had price tags, and no receipts were given after purchase. So the deli owners could and did charge ridiculous prices like $4/lb for apples at the beginning of the month, when everyone got their SNAP benefits, and then extend credit with interest to customers at the end of the month when those benefits had been exhausted. So everyone was under the thumb of their local deli owner and you had to keep good relations with him or he could decide to charge you $7/lb for apples or refuse to extend you credit to get you through the end of the month. It was difficult for us techies to wrap our heads around, but the problem is real and pernicious. There are places in this country where large numbers of people suffer under food slavery, and cutting the SNAP benefits they rely on compounds the problem severely.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Informative)
Milk costs more than soda.
I just checked my Wal-Mart receipt. A gallon of 2% milk is $3.19. A HALF gallon of soda is $2.19. So, no, the milk is not more expensive.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
A 2 liter of Walmart's own house brand soda?
2 liters = 4.23 pts, a little more than 1/2 gallon. Current price, observed today, in an actual Walmart: 55 cents US.
So, YES THE MILK IS MORE EXPENSIVE. People averaging results such as mine have figured out it's more expensive currently by a factor of about 3 and 1/4 to 1. Thank you for playing "I'm so out of touch that I think the average minimum wage worker buys the expensive brands and I'll sieze on that to 'prove' there's no problem." Please look at how much space your own Walmart devotes to their own generic brand and how much to the big name brands on the shelves. If it's 2 to 1 or better, well, there's your quick visual gauge of how bad poverty is in your area. Some stores have ratios above 5 to 1.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
But for 99cents you can get a nice big bag of chips.
Do you understand how much potato you can get for 99cents? And how much oatmeal? For protein, you can get 6 eggs for a dollar, and .75 pounds of turkey legs.
Obesity is only related to poverty if you don't know how to take care of yourself. Which is an important point, we need to help these people learn to take care of themselves.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
>A portion of the government wants as many people on food stamps as possible, because as soon as you condition a person to free handouts you get power over them.
I've heard that before - indeed almost exactly the same words - but I don't understand. It's so vague.
1) Which portion of the government? Are you talking about some federal or state employees, or are you referring to politicians? After that, can you get even more specific and give examples of persons doing this conditioning and then exercising power?
2) What do these employees or politicians DO with this power over some poor people? Do the government employees make them come over to mow their lawn? It can't be politicians saying "You must vote for me or I'll cut off your food stamps" because we have a secret ballot. The most that could be done is "if you stop putting me in, the Republicans will probably cut off everybody's food stamps, including yours"...but that applies to every public-spending decision. "Vote Republican or those Democrats will raise your taxes" is exactly the same proposition, and seems to be pretty legitimate. You might as well say "if you condition people to tax cuts, that gives you power over them".
If that sounds sarcastic or something, sorry ... I'm not trying to pick a fight, it's just the whole statement doesn't compute for me. I'll take up the same position if you've got some specific examples or something.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Interesting)
The worst thing about the US system is the thought that someone on welfare is a "bad" person. The places with lots of welfare and fewer problems with it do a better job of having it thought of as a tool, not a brand of failure.
That your mother refused free money makes her dumb, not smart.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a large part of it. But I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around something that was in the summary: it said that 1 in 7 Americans are on stamps. That's an appalling statistic -- 1 in 7 Americans are poor enough that they wouldn't be able to feed themselves without government assistance?
These two things are not related. A portion of the government wants as many people on food stamps as possible, because as soon as you condition a person to free handouts you get power over them.
There is so much wrong with that comment that I'm amazed anyone would make it. You figure if the "free handouts" would end, and the people taking the "free handouts" made enough money they didn't need the "free handouts" they would insist on them anyhow?
There's plenty of food in America, to the point where obesity is inversely correlated with income.
Those fucking Poor People! Don't you wish they would just go away and DIE?" They want everything, and give nothing. No seriously. DO you actually think that obesity is inversely correlated to wealth, and not by quality of calories consumed? That these poor people are getting too much food?
In my childhood my family was quite poor (rural trailer park poor, not like them fancy trailer parks in the big cities).
I was also poor - back in the days before food stamps. There was surplus food them, free, which would have to be even more of t rap than food stamps Show up, get some food for nothing. A socialist paradise. Surely a trap that would make people into Commies pronto. Would you believe that we dind't have to work for the Cheese and peanut butter we got?
I believe the only reason we escaped that was my mother's refusal to depend on government handouts, and determination to make it on her own (and a far more valuable inheritance than money that was).
Self reliance is indeed a good thing.
America doesn't need to resort to a program like that to feed it's people either - it's a deliberate trap, to ensure a dependable, dependent underclass.
After all, the only thing separating the poor form the rich is that the poor deliberately choose to be poor, and if they cannot survive on their own, they should just cease to exist, so that right thinking people like you can ascend to their proper place - right?
Most very respectfully, I've heard your shit all over. I started out poor, and ended up in the upper middle class, and am now retired. I did it by being almost pathological, and stomped on a few people in my day to get as far as I did. And no, not a bit of it had anything to do with the surplus cheese and peanut butter that we fed ourselves with, and sometimes actual real butter. You insult my family and myself.
Perhaps it's just the knowledge gained with years, perhaps I'm just some asshole who doesn't think right. But everyone cannot be wealthy. Just isn't enough GNP.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know the specific numbers, but food stamps / EBT is relatively easy to get, and the exact amount received monthly is calculated based on the income and size of the family. A family might only get $75 a month, for example. So saying that "1 in 7 Americans are poor enough that they wouldn't be able to feed themselves without government assistance" is certainly not the case, as many of the recipients are only getting a small amount to help supplement their food purchases.
A quick googling shows that the average amount received monthly is $133.08. Of course some families may receive several times that amount, and others much less. The maximum gross income for a family of 4 to receive any SNAP benefits is somewhere around $2,800. According to this online calculator [ndhealth.gov], a family of 4 with an income of $2,800 would get $8 a month assistance. If the income is $2,500 it jumps up to $80 a month.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed, the spread of the program is pretty huge. (It actually averages 14%).
But again, this may be simply because the program has been expanded beyond its target population lately. The largest growth has been under the current administration, which also happened to coincide with a major 5 year recession which threw millions out of work.
The most dramatic upturn occurred beginning 2008, with a rapid doubling over prior levels. [usda.gov].
Its hard to know if these levels will be maintained as people go back to work. On
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a large part of it. But I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around something that was in the summary: it said that 1 in 7 Americans are on stamps. That's an appalling statistic -- 1 in 7 Americans are poor enough that they wouldn't be able to feed themselves without government assistance?
There are two Americas. One in which a lot of people like those who work at WalMart, and fast food joints work, and yes, a lot of those folks qualify easily for Food stamps.
Minimum wage is the working wage for many people. And while it is common for many to bray about how a higher minimum wage is a job killer, who picks up that tab for the food stamps? Hint, it's the rest of us. And that's the big thing. These companies have managed to get the taxpayers to pay for their employees food stamps so that we can have "Everyday Low Low Prices!"
And let's not forget Section 8 housing, so that these people have a place to live.
So what to do? Unless we want to engage in some horrible Soylent Green solution, we have a lot of people out there who need to have some way of feeding and housing themselves. And despite what some say, a lot of these people work very hard, not a "Welfare Queen" in sight. For many of these folk, a Job at WalMart is about th height they can aspire to. And that's okay - I think that for too long, Americans have been sold the idea that the only thing keeping anyone from wealth and fame is their "will" or lack of it.
I'm not even sure how we do it at this point, because it is a mess. If we take as a starting point that the average American should be able to afford a modest house and to be self sufficient in feeding and clothing their family - that is becoming difficult. And if we have the idea that if the person who is willing to work, they should be able to support themselves, it becomes even more daunting. GIven that the average age of a McDonald's worker is now alomst 30, we can see that some folks are now trying to eke out a career in these places. At our local Mickey D's, a lot of the workers have degrees. They just don't have anywhere up the ladder to go. And they aren't lazy either.
For myself, I rose well out of the social level that I was born into. And at one point, I thought that "will" was all it took. But upon retirement, and upon reflection, I did all that by being sort of pathological, which is not a trait that would work if everyone had it - we'd all be at each other throats.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the US had a liveable minimum wage it would help. In Australia the minimum is around $20 us an hour. That none of you see the stupidity of expecting people to work to earn less than they need to survive is typical of the I've got mine stuff you nature of Americans, or to put it simply selfish bastards.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Interesting)
The U.S. has a higher GDP per capita than most large European countries, even higher than the richest, most developed and most populous country in Europe, Germany. Despite this, there are much more homeless and poor people in the U.S. than in Europe, and far more incarcerated people. Why? The shear between poor and rich in the U.S. is extreme, most likely the largest among western countries. Imagine how much rich people in the U.S. make if they manage to pull up the GDP per capita rating above a country like Germany, despite 1/7th of the population relying on food stamps. Why are the rich so rich and the poor so poor? Well, slavery has been outlawed in the U.S. so corporations have been smart about it and exporting industry into third world countries were quasi slavery is legal. The difference between paying a decent wage in the U.S. and paying next to nothing is pocketed by the wealthy 2%; CEO's, managers, shareholders. In practice, this is a direct money transfer from the middle-class to the upper-class. That's globalization for you. A popular argument in favor of the system claims that goods have become cheaper as a result, and we can all afford a better lifestyle. Yes, many goods have indeed become cheaper, but this is a result of increased production and technological expertise, not because they are cheaper to produce. The profit margin on your latest iPad is still immense. Also, people without jobs and income can't afford much of anything, so those who can afford a better lifestyle become less and less.
Now, after being sabotaged out of the middle-class, in the U.S. you are screwed because there is no social safety net to speak of. In the U.S. there is no room for socialism. There is no money for it either, because most of the tax money flows into the channels of those who can afford the best lobbyists. In the U.S. everything revolves around money, and those with it have been shaping the political landscape in their favor, creating a positive feedback cycle in which more and more tax money flows into corporations in form of subsidies, foreign military aid (more subsidies), government contracts (even more subsidies), wars (yet another name for subsidies), prisons (there is an entire industry in the U.S. revolving around prisons and hence interested in keeping crime up and having even minor offences punishable by prison sentence), etc.
Needless to say, there is just not enough money to go around for schools and infrastructure, let alone welfare, when you have all these government subsidies to fulfill, which keeps America's industry competitive and healthy. Yes, that industry that just outsourced another development plant to India.
So, the middle class is cannibalized, the rich get richer, the poor stay poor, everybody looks on because that is the way politics and economics work in the country of endless capitalism, all the while the heart of America disintegrates and everyone wonders, just how did the Chinese become so rich and successful all of a sudden? Well, here it is for you: American CEO's saved Communism while showing us the fatal flaws of capitalism!
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Informative)
Banks were not forced to lend to people who could not pay. Banks paid big bonuses to people to sign up as many people as possible, whether they could pay or not, then repackaged those bad mortgages as financial instruments that the rating firms then rated as AAA when they were junk, sold to investors, and laughed as they made big bucks while the economy crashed.
Greed and deregulation caused the crash.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Informative)
The counter evidence is that
1. The CRA was passed in 1977, some 30 years before the collapse.
2. Most of the bad mortgages were issued in the 2 years prior to the collapse.
Sorry, but the meme that the CRA caused the collapse is ridiculous on the face of it.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to yet another follow on effect of forcing banks to lend money to homeowners who could not in fact afford to pay it back.
A bank lending to a bad risk is bad for the bank. A bank committing fraud to lie about the risk of the loan when re-selling it, causing a global economic meltdown was the problem. It wasn't until after the meltdown when the foreclosures spiked. When the problem started, defaults were still below "expected" range, and profitable for the banks who made the loans, just not profitable for the fraudulent securities based on them.
The "subprime" crisis was so named by the rich white bankers to blame poor blacks. They shouldn't own property anyway, just work someone else's fields. The problem was unrelated to "subprime" loans or lending, other than the foreclosure rates were *always* higher than prime lending. So when foreclosures started (first outside subprime areas), they were blamed to shift responsibility and help hide the real cause, especially in racist America.
Everyone loves to hate on the banks. But they were forced into these stupid loans.
No, they weren't. They were encouraged to lend, not forced to. A government backed loan isn't a gun to your head, just easy profit. They chose fraud, not the government or the borrowers. Had the banks not committed fraud, none of this would have happened. The stock market cooled down at the end of the tech bubble, so new securities were invented to take the place. They were just bad ones. The sole responsibility of that ponzi scheme fraud lies with the banks.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Informative)
80% of the bad loans were issued by financial institutions not even subject to the CRA.
http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html [businessweek.com]
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Informative)
"Everyone loves to hate on the banks. But they were forced into these stupid loans."
Really? Where I live (Florida), the banks were forced to lend money to prosperous white Republicans who were buying property to flip? And to mobsters and friends of the banks' directors?
Here's a big investigative series our local paper did last year on Florida bank failures: http://htcreative.com/bankProject/banks.aspx [htcreative.com]
Issuing mortgages to food stamp recipients in poor neighborhoods doesn't seem to have been the big problem. And the thing about banks being forced to loan to people who weren't creditworthy was a right-wing lie. You didn't fall for it, right? Me neither!
Re:Math, do it. (Score:5, Informative)
>The whole idea of paying farmers not to farm is wrong headed.
Yet another person who doesn't understand land and soil conversation, and the long term effects of farming on soil health.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Informative)
Soil conservation has nothing to do with the programs that pay farmers to keep farms out of production.
Its price supports, plain and simple.
Re:Math, do it. (Score:4, Informative)
Without the subsidies and price supports, you soon would not have many farms growing food. Or are we to ignore the lead up to the dust bowl and great depression in order to make a point that farmers are rich or something?
The Idea of paying farmers not to farm (which doesn't happen much any more since we export so much now) is specifically to stop all the farms from going under when prices fall below the costs of production and concentrating production into a few large factory farms that will create severe shortages when a natural or other disaster takes them offline for a season. Having stable food prices is pretty much a necessity of modern society.
The majority of markup from the costs of food comes from middle men, not the farm. whether it's investors purchasing commodities in order to turn a profit or packaging companies, the majority of the costs go elsewhere. The American farmer only sees about 12 percent of every dollar you spend on food.
Re: (Score:3)
When I was a student and got most my food at the convenience store, along with the cheapest alcohol money could buy, it wasn't rare for someone to approach me for a food-stamps-for-liquor swap. I really didn't have to go out of my way to notice. That was quite some time ago, however.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Try working at a convenience store and see.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree it's pathetic, but you should really do more than simply blame them for it. These types of behaviors are ways people have of coping with a life situation they aren't happy with. While it would be better for them work to change their life situation to something better, if they were going to do that they probably would have done it by now. The bad thing about food stamps is they encourage this kind of coping over healthier behaviors.
But if you are going to take the tough love approach and cut off their food stamps, which I agree must be done, you do still need to make sure there's love in that action. If you treat them like you hate or distain them, you are going to push them further down the path they're already on.
Re:Try working at a convenience store and see.... (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you are going to take the tough love approach and cut off their food stamps, which I agree must be done, you do still need to make sure there's love in that action. If you treat them like you hate or distain them, you are going to push them further down the path they're already on.
Excuse me, you're getting in the way of all this righteous indignation we've worked up here. If we can't blame the poor and ignorant for their poverty and ignorance, how can we look down on our fellow man and absolve ourselves of any responsibility to help them?
first whine (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty tolerant of articles for slashdot, but this seems really far off subject.
Re:second whine (Score:4, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Healthy food costs less than shitty food. Some examples:
A gallon of water costs less than a gallon of soda.
A pound of frozen vegetables costs less than a pound candy.
A pound of chicken costs less than a pound of hamburger.
A dozen eggs costs less than a dozen candy eggs.
A pound of potatoes costs less than a pound of potato-chips.
This is all anecdotal, of course.
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
Orange juice is actually worse for you than soda, that's why you drink it from a smaller glass. If you buy it from concentrate, it will be about the same price as soda. I am on a budget, so that's what I do. I rarely by soda, but when I do I buy it in fancy glass bottles because it's a treat.
And they're much worse for you. Again, I'm on a budget so I only buy frozen vegetables.
I've never seen that, and I would be really surprised if it were true. I buy 3-pound bags of frozen chicken for $5, and 3-pound bags of frozen hamburgers for $10. Maybe the story is a little different if you're buying fresh, but then you probably aren't shopping on a budget anyway.
I'd have to know more about this to unpack it, but my own experience is that buying frozen food is much cheaper than anything else except for rice, beans, and flower. Nutritionally, there is no reason to pick fresh food over frozen food.
Re:second whine (Score:5, Informative)
You'll be happy to find out that SNAP (aka "food stamps") is already one of the best run programs our government has ever set up in terms of efficency and lack of fraud. [cbpp.org] It is a model for effective solutions to social problems. That fraud is rampant among SNAP receipients is simply a myth--and one that has been deliberatly crafted over generations to achieve certain political goals.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson
To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of hi
Re: (Score:3)
> He already told you junk food is far cheaper the regular food. 4 Dollars a gallon of milk.4 kids will go through 3 gallons a week
It will also be the backbone of their diet in the process. It won't just be empty calories but will be a good chunk of most of what they need to live on since we are mammals. That is what milk is actually meant for.
You also can't easily replace that calcium.
Living on real food cheaply can be done. It's just not very glamorous.
Re:second whine (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying the fat guy you watched was right, but OTOH when I was on food stamps my actual job involved burning 4,000 calories a day as a loader at a Home Depot. My food-stamp budget was $117 a month. I had no car. I had no place to store food in my room. This meant the way middle class people save money (ie: making nutritious lunch at home and bringing it to work) was impossible. Therefore was spending $6-$7 every workday on lunch at Wendy's. Which meant the $117 had to buy the other 1,000-1,500 calories a day or I'd fucking die of starvation. That meant pop and candy. With all this I still ended up losing like 40-50 pounds. My teeth are shit, but I'm alive. And if I'd tried to eat like a middle class person I wouldn't be.
My current situation is somewhat better monetarily, but the things middle class people assume I have when they give me food advice still don't apply. My fridge is about 1.5 cubic feet. This is enough room for a jug of milk and an apple. I do not have a stove. I do not have a car, so food that is at all hard to get (ie: isn't at every single Walmart) will not happen. Since taking multiple grocery bags on the bus is a huge pain in the ass (and my commute alone is already 2 hours on the bus system every single fucking day) multiple grocery trips every month to said Walmart will not happen.
Being poor the options open to you are simply so different that the strategies a middle class person develops for dealing with the world simply don't apply. Take the simple advice from the eater's manifesto: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Rules 1 and 3 are useless to me because I can't afford 'food,' and I can't store vegetables. You might as well give me three sure-fire rules for blowing up an Imperial Star Destroyer using only a Bat'leth.
And yes, I'm aware that one of those is Star Wars and the other is Star Trek.
Change food stamps... (Score:4, Interesting)
...from a "Dollar amount" to specifics foods or types of food. No $$$, just "Bag of apples/fruit", "Vegetables", "Loaf of Bread", "Milk", "Orange/Apple Juice", etc.
Perhaps have specific Food Stamp distribution centers instead of just about any old store accepting them. Take out the choice and lower the direct fraud (once they get the food from the program, there's not much you can do to stop them selling it if they choose, unless we just set up meal kitchens instead of food stamp, although that has it's appeal as well.)
Re:Change food stamps... (Score:5, Informative)
Take out the choice
The department of Agriculture, which runs the Food Stamp Program, is tasked by law to make sure there is enough food for everyone and that everyone gets fed. Food stamps were born by order of the Supreme Court, not Congress.
I'm pretty sure you won't find much support for having DOA nannies standing at every dinner table to make sure everyone on food stamps eats their collard greens. I'm positive you would accomplish nothing with this approach.
There is no way you can supply food support while at the same time make sure that no budget shifting takes place. They money that might have gone for what people get for free on food stamps will be directed to other foods. Or what-ever. Food stamps were not intended to fix stupid. Just Hungry. You ALREADY can't buy beer on food stamps, stop trying to micromanage the program you apparently know nothing about.
growing up, I always thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
Growing up, I always thought that the goal of civilisation was to alleviate suffering.
On economic grounds, it will cost net $500 million more per year (($2B x 10 - $15B) / 10) to keep people in adequate nutrition. By US budget standards, that's pissing in the ocean.
On humanitarian grounds, there is no question that the money must be allocated.
If society's job isn't to improve the lot of humanity, it has no purpose. If we look only at ourselves, we are no better than apes.
Re:growing up, I always thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
There will come a time when people who are guilty of nothing more than being born of mere average intelligence will not have any "meaningful" contributions to make to the scaffolding of society. We're already there for a lot of people. What do you propose we do about them? They're going to get their means of survival one way or another. I'd rather it be a peaceful and orderly process instead of violent anarchy. They may not have the technical skills to be computer programmers or engineers, nor the artistic talent to be great painters or composers, but guns, clubs, and jars of gasoline are technologies they'll readily understand and immediately grasp the utility of in their struggle to exist. Denied the opportunity to participate in the future economy by their unexceptional intelligence, they will not simply lay down and resign themselves to starving to death.
Re: (Score:3)
It is even worse than that. Even intelligent people are less and less able to afford the cost of education anymore in this country.
The US is a total welfare state (Score:3, Insightful)
Your multi-billion dollar business go under? Get a huge bailout from taxpayers.
Have five kids with four different fathers? Taxpayers will cover your kids' entire upbringing.
Your bank cause a market crash? Taxpayers are forced to cover your corruption.
Stopped looking for work for a few years? Here's free food and housing courtesy of taxpayers.
"Food stamps feed 1 in 7 Americans and cost almost $80 billion a year, twice what it cost five years ago".
So we've doubled the amount of money we spend on food stamps and we have record numbers of Americans that rely on the government for their food. I wonder which way the vote. When you don't work and get your income from the government (who gets its money from taxpayers) then there is no incentive to look for work. Have some kids, collect some checks, and don't ever look for work. And with all the unemployment and record food stamp usage both parties are now talking about letting millions of illegal immigrants into this country and legalizing the ones that are already here.
And of course cue the screaming. "Corporate welfare is worse than individual welfare". They are both a major drain on society. And individual welfare is now a record drain. There's no incentive to succeed anymore. There's no incentive for personal responsibility. You can have six kids out of wedlock and be rewarded by the state with free food and housing. This happens on such a massive scale that we lose billions annually creating a system that encourages broken homes, unwanted children, and bastard children with no future as productive citizens.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There isn't any incentive to succeed when corporate America does everything it can to hold your wage down and ignore the fact that you spent your own money on the education that they are taking advantage of.
And then you have those who legitimately *can't* work due to medical conditions. Not everyone is being a lazy ass. Getting the right wingers to admit this is like pulling teeth tho. I hope to god that someday they are completely unable to care for themselves.
Has it occurred to you that this country is ru
Re:The US is a total welfare state (Score:5, Informative)
>So we've doubled the amount of money we spend on food stamps and we have record numbers of Americans that rely on the government for their food.
Have you tried to reword that in the correct fashion?
We have record numbers of Americans that rely on the government for their food and have doubled the amount of money we spend on food stamps.
You also neglect that most of the people on food stamps ALSO HAVE A JOB.
You also neglect that the average household size on foodstamps is 2 and only a very small percentage of foodstamps households are over 4.
I'd go on debunking the rest of your 'talking points', but I'm not going to convince you of your ignorance on the matter, and you're not going to do any research to enlighten yourself on the matter.
As someone on food stamps... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I truly wish people would understand this.
Pretty much, anything processed is going to be either high in salt, sugar or fats.
I have no problems with food stamps, but I wish that you could only buy fruits, vegetables, grains and meat with them. Not only would people be healthier, but they would actually be saving money as well. Yes, believe it or not, healthy food cost less. Mainly, because YOU have to prepare it and cook it.
I'm somewhat shocked (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm somewhat shocked that 1 in 7 american's is dependent on foodstamps to get by...
Re:I'm somewhat shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
The average amount received by those "1 in 7" Americans is only $133. That's not enough to get by on. It's quite obvious that many people simply see SNAP as a viable source of "income", just like hunting for all the deductibles you can to reduce your tax rate.
Back when I was in high school I worked at a grocery store (to save up for my first computer - I bought a used Amiga 1000 for $700 - ahh the good old days). This was around 20 years ago, back when food stamps were actual paper things just like physical money. They were a MAJOR pain in the butt for cashiers to deal with, because of all the rules involved. They had to be removed from the booklet by the cashier - if they were loose individual "bills" then they weren't to be accepted. Since they were all new, they stuck together like crazy and were slow and annoying to deal with. Since cashiers couldn't give back food stamps as change, you had to give back cash. However, you could only give back up to a very small amount in cash (I'm pretty sure it was less than $5). Thus the shopper had to try and guesstimate, based on the denominations they had, what food to get to come within $5 of the increment they could buy (again, based on what specific denominations they had remaining in their booklets). In other words, it was extremely obvious to everyone around, including all the people in line behind you, that you were using food stamps because of the tedious and slow payment process.
Part of the reason they were a logistical pain in the butt is because they were intended as a supplement - you're getting $65 in groceries? Slap down a couple food stamp twenties and then pay the rest in cash. However people wouldn't use them that way - most would try and make their entire purchase in food stamps.
Now, it's just a card you swipe like any other, and I don't guess the cashier even knows you used an EBT card instead of a debit card. So I think since the stigma of using food stamps is now virtually gone (by simple fact that you can use them stealthily), many Americans see them as a perk or entitlement that they need to make use of, again, almost like trying to reduce their income tax by saving receipts for deductibles, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
According to Feeding America "76% of SNAP households included a child, an elderly person, or a disabled person. These vulnerable households receive 83% of all SNAP benefits." According to the USDA, "Over 30 percent of SNAP households had earnings in 2011, and 41 percent of all SNAP participants lived in a household with earnings."
Haha that's a good one (Score:3)
You're telling me that the people who use food stamps spend it on healthy items like fruit or oatmeal? The only thing I ever see people using EBT cards for is buying carts of TV dinners and bottles of pop. Add some potato chips and hotdogs to round it out. EBT should only work on certain items like WIC does.
Re: Haha that's a good one (Score:3)
That probably had more to do with where you are shopping than you know. Try shopping at a 'supermarket' in a lower income area. See how your choices change from fresh produce and quality protein to frozen everything and variations of junk food.
Oh, please (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost any political position is believed by its followers to be something that affects people's lives, and thus can be spun as affecting health care costs. It's just as easy to do it for the other side. Just take the standard political argument and tack on "so it affects health care costs". For instance, conservatives say that the costs hurt the economy. Well, in a worse economy, people have more health care problems (for hopefully obvious reasons). So food stamps increase health care costs because although they provide food (reducing health care costs), they also harm the economy by a marginal amount (increasing health care costs). If the latter effect is larger, then food stamps are a health care disaster.
And it's unlikely that the study which claimed that cutting food stamps increases health care costs by 15 billion took into account the possibility that paying for food stamps hurts the economy and health care costs are larger in a worse economy.
I can claim that gun control decreases health care costs (because it reduces gun violence and victims of violence use hospitals--this has been claimed for real). I could on the other hand claim that looser gun laws decrease health care costs (because people can use guns to protect themselves from criminals and people hurt by criminals use hospitals). Maybe we need stronger drug laws (stoned people don't take care of themselves very well) or weaker drug laws (the drug war sends people to prison where health is bad and they can't earn a living when they get out since they have an arrest record, making them poor, and so more likely to have high health care costs).
How about arguing that censoring video games reduces health care costs? (fewer teens will become criminals if you censor games; less crime means fewer people sent to hospitals by criminals). It's all about disguising a political position as a nonpartisan one, not about health care.
I think the only way to fix the food stamp problem (Score:3)
First of all, it is flat-out wrong to suggest that one person is not allowed to have an opinion about how another person spends their food stamps. The fact the the stamps come from tax money means EVERY tax payer has paid for the right to have an opinion about it. See also: subsidized health care, and how it makes everyones lifestyle everyones business (I propose all dangerous, injury-causing leisure time activities now be banned for that reason, and I will decide what is "dangerous").
Secondly, I disagree with the notion that just food is cheaper at a grocery store than healthy items, and that it isn't fair to expect poor people to eat rice every day. I am the procurer of provisions in my household of 3, so I have direct experience. "Staples" are refreshed, and used up, every month. To suggest I am being forced to supplement our meals with ten pounds of rice and a bag of potatoes every month is ludicrous, it is just intelligent home economics. Many hours of my free time are also spent in gardening every summer, and tomatoes and onions from that garden are eaten year round after I can it up, an inexpensive technology that has existed in its current form for a couple hundred years, at least.
The only way to fix the problem of "spending their food stamps on steak and lobster and junk food" is just to remove that choice completely. If someone is poor enough for food stamps, then we consult the Official US Government Dietary Needs table for the person at that sex at that age, and they get a box every 2 weeks with exactly the nutritious food they need, at the appropriate calorie level for their age, with enough snack cakes for small dessert every evening. This makes the fiscal conservatives happy... less money is being wasted. This also eliminates the ignorance of a person not knowing which foods are nutritious, and then the government can also even out the production of agricultural products and possibly remove the need for farm subsidies. If the government KNOWS it is going to need X amount of bread each month, then it can more intelligently utilize the nations bread producers. This makes the central-government socialists happy.
Really, it's win/win/win. If the person on the dole still wants a lobster once a month, no one will stop them, they can use their allotment of cigarette money for that week.
$2 billion? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me make sure I understand this.
Congress is waging war over $2 billion in budget cuts. In a budget that is around $3 trillion. The deficit alone is $680 billion.
Let's frame this in context. This is arguing over a 2 cent line item on a $300 bill.
And we wonder why our government is the laughing stock of the free world.
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Informative)
> a bigbox store like walmart wants to open up and provide jobs that pay a wage
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-13/how-mcdonald-s-and-wal-mart-became-welfare-queens.html [bloomberg.com]
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Somekind of wage at all is a great idea. We should re-invent the company store. Ban all labor unions, Dispatch with the EPA and OSHA. Dismiss minimum wages. Fuck, while where at it lets bring back slavery, because you know their masters had to take care of their slaves too.
Or you could wake the fuck up and read American history from 1850 to current and learn why we have many of the labor and wage laws we do. You have a wonderfully deluded idea that the past was some great and epic time where things where fair and anyone that wanted to work was showered with good wages. It is unfortunate that reality disagrees with you.
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Informative)
I worked in one of those stores. A single mother of five is almost certainly better off not joining the staff.
She's starting 20 hours a week* at just above minimum wage. That's about $160 a week. Daycare for five kids destroys that. Since it's a big box store all associates are expected to open once a week and close once a week, and they really like to change the schedule every week so you have no clue whether you'll be home Tuesday night three weeks from now, which means she has no clue whether your eldest will need to babysit his brothers or he can agree to go to an Academic Games tournament.
In other words getting the job is going to make her a worse mother without bringing in anywhere near enough to pay the bills. The only reasons for her to take the job are a) it might convince some self-righteous asshole who inherited $500k and turned his hobby into a job in the State Senate that she's not one of Those People, allowing her to keep her government benefits longer, and b) it qualifies her for the Earned Income Credit at tax time.
The reason left-wing working-class black city councils tend to be anti-Walmart isn't that black people are stupid morons who've been brainwashed by hippies, it's that they've done this math.
*Cashiers at my store usually start at 10 hours, and cashier is the entry-level for almost all women who are hired in, so 20 hours is probably an exaggeration. Garden is the other way women get in, they only get 20-25 hours there, and it's not unusual for Corporate to decree that there's no budget to hire them permanently after six months.
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:4, Informative)
Republican businessmen themselves know better than to work at starvation wages.
I once heard a management consultant give a presentation to a bunch of printers. He ran through the costs of running a folding machine, and it came out to something like $50 an hour. He said, if you sell folding for less than $50 an hour, you're losing money. And the harder you work, the more money you're losing. A lot of printers have very busily gone out of business.
If you're an employee, you'll lose money on a minimum wage job, and you're better off not working at that rate.
Most people who work for Wallmarts are making less than it takes for them to survive. Some of them do get welfare, more of them get food stamps, if they have children they get child tax credits, and they can't afford doctors, so if they get sick, they go to the emergency room and the rest of us pay for it.
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
The end game of these libertarian fantasies is the literal wholesale murder of millions of poor "undesirables", either directly on the small scale and justified as self defense or the defence of property, or enmasse through isolation into ghettos and systematic starvation. It would dwarf the Holocaust in numbers of dead.
If you start with the premise (itself not unreasonable) that every individual has a right to defend themselves from harm and their property from theft, and you have millions of people with no ability to survive other than the appropriation of resources by force, you're going to end up with a lot of dead humans. And when the tent cities gather enough boldness and enough desperation to march on the proper cities, then you'd have the military and police slaughtering thousands at a time to protect the property rights of the middle and upper classes.
Horrifying to imagine, but there are some people who would not only be willing to go through this conflagration, but would practically welcome it. Indeed, some are even working in earnest to bring it about. They want to see the streets run red with the blood of the poor. The worst reflection I've ever had on the human condition is that some of them don't just see this nightmare as a horrible means justified by a glorious utopian end--the process itself satisfies some dark urge inside them to cause pain on the largest scale possible. If evil exists, this is it.
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:4, Insightful)
How about when the girl gets on welfare with one kid you tell her "Here's the pill, here's where you can get condoms. If you get pregnant again you will be dropped from welfare and charged with child endangerment."
Why should people that are themselves dependents have the right to create more dependents with no consequences?
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:4, Interesting)
Why should anyone the right to create more people with no consequences?
I don't see why this is a problem exclusively surrounding poor people. We live in an overcrowded world.
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not exclusively a poor problem. However, I don't think it is unreasonable that someone that can't afford to take care of themselves be asked to not increase their expenses by their own choice while taking hand outs.
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
> How about when the girl gets on welfare with one kid you tell her "Here's the pill, here's where you can get condoms.
That's fine in theory. Except for the fact that the people that want to gut Food Stamps also want to destroy sex education and any form of family planning. The openly attack the private organizations that provide birth control pills and condoms to would be welfare mothers.
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
A pointless and moralistic stance.
Sure, but that's beside the point.
Opposition to contraceptives and proper sex education is purely malicious.
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
And religion is their solution, because it teaches people about long-held human moral principals like don't have kids out of wedlock, families should stick together, and communities should help each other.
They talk a big game, but when push comes to shove, let's face facts - most 'Christians' in America ('cuz let's face it, when we say "religion," they're the group we're likely discussing) don't give a fuck about helping the poor. They just don't.
Most of them spend their hour with Jesus on Sunday (an extra one on Wednesday for the AoG scammers), and the minute they hit the fucking parking lot, they go back to being the same selfish, narcissistic assclowns they are every other day of the week. I get to see the behavior regularly, by virtue of the fact my home is surrounded by churches; I've learned that leaving the house at noon on a Sunday is just not going to happen, because most of those goodly "Christians" would sooner run you into the ditch than let you out of your own fucking driveway.
You can talk about all the moralistic high-ground as you want, but until that talk translates into actually helping people, you're not accomplishing anything except paying lip-service. To me, that's worse than doing nothing at all.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:4, Informative)
My (black) son-in-law Chucky started a business installing, dismantling and rehabbing office cubicles a few years back. He's been growing it steadily, almost entirely through referrals and repeats.
He routinely beats white-owned competitors on both quality and price. He gets no government help, and is only now starting to go after government contracts.
You were saying?
Re: Decreased Costs (Score:4, Interesting)
You have to be careful with the "it's for the children" argument. If you let people use children as human shields, they will. While it sounds humane in the short run, it isn't in the long run. I know that there are a lot of people who don't believe that parents would willfully abuse their children, but it most certainly happens regularly.
That being said, I keep moving closer and closer to being a proponent of a minimum income for everyone. I believe that we are rapidly approaching (or may have already past) the point that there simply isn't enough real work for everyone to have a job. Sure their are plenty of ditches that could be dug with a spoon, but that isn't really productive.
Re:Decreased Costs (Score:5, Interesting)
All of the fat asses will have less food. If they want better nutrition maybe they should get a better job.
Well, one small problem... okay, a couple:
Grocery stores are a bit rare in the ghetto, and those few which exist usually charge exorbitant prices while providing very little in the way of variety (and don't ask about the produce.)
Most of these mothers have a shit education courtesy of public schooling (assuming the mother actually completed high school - usually she didn't), so "dinner" usually means fast-food takeout, or whatever the local bodega has in the way of food (imagine growing up on convenience store burritos and soda every night...)
Jobs suck in depressed areas - triply so if you have no education.
Moving (or even saving up enough money to do that) is a trial at best - especially when you consider that most "services" in depressed areas are geared towards screwing over the poor (see also payday loans, credit cards, etc).
Finally, the capper: government assistance sucks. It is geared towards insuring that once you are on it, you never come off of it. The moment you start making any money, you get taxed hard, you lose the assistance funding, and they kick you out of that government-assisted housing. Oh, and since you haven't the education or funds to access tax specialists or any other real option, you're basically fucked and stuck.
Now this isn't always the case - with the help of family, you can pull yourself out of such straits. However, because family has been pretty much obliterated over the decades in these areas by the lack of fathers, and by an overweening demand by certain ideologues that family is an anachronism? Well, it's part of how you wind up with a permanent underclass. ...and no one seems to want to fix this. The right wants to cut down funds in order to force initiative and drive, while the left wants to smooth over it with more money. To be honest, neither answer is correct - but a hybrid of the two would work well, if done right. Put a time limit on the funds, but require the recipient take classes, look for work, etc - then provide enough assistance towards the end so that the newly-working single mother isn't faced with instant penalties just for making a paycheck.
Re:Strawberry Shortcake Popsicle (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, tell me more about this wasted $13.50 that you witnessed...