In the Shopping Cart of a Food Stamp Household: Lots of Soda

Have you ever seen an embarrassed politician for living off of government welfare for decades?

 

Is it even possible for a politician to feel shame? If history tells us anything, it's that in order to run for office, you have to be genetically incapable of feeling it.

 

I think it was the point where we stopped being cannibals... but that's just me.

No, old people should not be ashamed to ask for help in their old age.

We should be ashamed we don't do enough for them. We should be ashamed that in the richest country in the world, we still have poverty.

 

Really?

[video=youtube;L174nqFrLoE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L174nqFrLoE[/video]

 

I'm on SSI, get SNAP at $146/month and the SNAP isn't cash unless I would illegally do something to get cash such as go to a store that would ring up imaginary food and give me half the value as cash they pocketing the other half which I won't do. I need the food and my last treat was a half-gallon of sugar free ice cream for $4.00 after coupons and it being on sale which is a dairy product. And is lasting me awhile. But I was born disabled and have cognitive issues that make employment ,according to the government, unemployable on the current job market even with training and support so why should I be ashamed to take benefits I did everything asked of me I got a High School Diploma even though it took me five years, I worked when I was younger, worked on improving my employability where I could but in the long run got sicker and sicker and less fit due to lack of reliable health care and poor diet (I bought what I could afford which was cheap food). Frankly I'm eating far better now on disability and if the government gave me a job with Medicaid for medical care and the job paid enough I would do the work but they won't and I have no incentive to risk working I might lose my vital benefits I get then what? I'm doing everything I can to avoid going into a Nursing Home, then I would refuse food and water wanting to die, they would Baker Act me and have to keep me in a mental facility since the second they let me out I would kill myself and say so which would cost how much? I don't want to live in a Nursing Home, live is a bad word, exist fits better.

So go ahead limit junky stuff on SNAP I would not find it an issue I have ones much bigger, so do a lot of people on SSI. I appreciate what I get its keeping me going.

 

The politicians have purchased their offices, .....with our money.

 

Who is "we"?
Are you saying that you want to be taxed at the highest effective tax rate, pay the ACA tax, lose any ACA premium subsidy you get, and give up any other government subsidies you may be receiving, so that you can legitimately be part of the "we" ?

 

Those F@#kers are shameless, but we could always tell that by what they do and say to get elected.

You are right, though. They should be embarrassed.

Face it.

Barak is likely to spend at least 30 more years sucking expensively on the government teat. Michelle Obama is just another Black woman who has been unemployed for almost 10 years, and has been living in government housing for 8.

George W. Bush has worse diction than average dufus living in a single wide, and he just waits around for his mailbox check.

Bill Clinton is just a smarmy bubba who has been paid to be professionally skeezy by US taxpayers since 1993.

Jimmy Carter has been paid and provided a staff and offices since January 1981. We have supported him for 35 years based on a job he did for only 4 years! Yet this pales in contrast to Strom Thurmond's 48 years in the Senate, for the first half of which he was an incompetent racist, and for the second half of which he was an incontinent and senile racist.

And no, NONE of these dip$h#ts have the decency to be embarrassed by any of this.

While Trump has a lot to be embarrassed for, at least he waived his salary. It is a rarity for a politician to be paid what he/she is actually worth.

 

Yep.

It kind of makes me long for a more honest sort of corruption where the politicians buy their offices with their own money.

How sick is that?

 

First,
Asking for help (from people you know or from NGOs) is not even remotely the same thing as demanding it from taxpayers through the medium of government public welfare programs. Asking for help from individuals is a way to draw from accumulated personal social capital, which is earned, in a manner of speaking.

Second,
Only the mathematically crippled think that the US is the richest country in the world. Our "wealth" is borrowed. Most Americans have a net worth of less than zero. Think about that. Most Americans are actually "poorer" than totally broke.

The US Federal debt is over $19 Trillion, more than 105% of GDP (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S).
The US aggregate household debt is over $12 Trillion, more than 79% of GDP (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N)

Third,
If we only consider standard of living, not income, the US has pretty much ended real poverty. Most of the few truly poor people in the US are homeless, the majority of whom are either very temporarily homeless or mentally ill. There are also a very few others who are primarily in rural areas.

It does not look like American poverty is almost eradicated, however, because we keep raising the standard of living that counts as "poor". There was a time when living at the current poverty line was actually middle class. As a culture we have designated that things that were previously luxuries (cell phones, televisions, carbonated beverages) are now basics.

We have even decided that being fat is so common as to no longer signal wealth. Think about that. For the entirety of the history of our species, if someone was fat (with a bmi of 20-25% or more), then that meant they were rich. That did not change until the 20th century.

We have made good medical care so common, so cheap, and so easily available that for $20,(less than three or four hours of work at the lowest legal rate) anyone can get better medical care over the counter at a drug store than was available to kings prior to the late19th century.

The compulsory free public education through high school makes available to ALL minors an education that rivals the quality and exceeds the scope of the best university education available to the richest elite prior to the 18th century.

 

I'm not sure where to even start to unpack this mess.

I think I'll start with your claims about the "debt". We could pay down the debt in a decade if we made the rich pay their fair share. We've done it. After WWII, Debt was 120% of GDP. A decade later it was down to 25% of GDP, even with Cold War and Infrastructure spending.

No, "Fat" poor people isn't something to be proud of. It shows a problem. Poor people are fat because they can't afford the healthy food. They only can afford the cheaply made junk.

Overall, I don't consider, "Well, we live better than they did in the 18th century" to be a sign of progress. We live less well than our European and Japanese counterparts... And those countries have the kind of social welfare states you abhor.

 

I know exactly where to start unpacking this mess.

The post-war economy of the 40's and 50's is never coming back, regardless of what Trump says, and has no bearing on this discussion for the following reasons.
Refer to http://www.polidiotic.com/by-the-numbers/us-national-debt-by-year/ for the debt data.

• Debt in 1945: $258,682,187,409.93
• Debt in 1955: $274,374,222,802.62

In that period, there were only 3 years when the debt had a net reduction

• 1947: Retired $11,135,716,064.59
• 1948: Retired $5,994,136,595.68
• 1947: Retired $2,135,375,536.11

Even so, from 1945 to1955 there was a net rise in the Federal debt of $15,691,035,392.69

The reason the Debt-GDP ratio went down was a radical rise in GDP, largely because the US had the only industrial infrastructure left in the world that had not been physically and metaphorically damaged by the war. That meant the US was a net exporter of manufactured goods with trade surpluses ranging from $1.4 billion to $8.7 billion, with an average of $4.9 billion for the period. (http://www.econdataus.com/trade05.html)
During this time the GDP was had growth rates that averaged over 16%/year, and got as high as 76% for 1945, and 37% for 1946. (http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-year)

Our GDP is now growing at only 2 to 4 % (http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-year), and our post-war trade advantage is completely gone.

(By the way, Cold War and Infrastructure spending contributed to the rise in GDP, as did the Korean War. Things the government buys are part of the GDP.)

The following data is from 2011 (http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data)
Regarding "fair share":

• The top 1% of households make18.7% of income, but pay 35.1% of federal taxes.
• The top 10% of households make 45.4% of income, but pay 68.3% of federal taxes.
• By Contrast, the bottom 50% of households make 11.55% of income, but only pay 2.89% of federal taxes.
• The top 1% already pay for more than a third of the cost of Government
• The next 9% pay for another third of the cost of Government.

I agree that the top 10% of people probably get more individual benefit from being in the country than the other 90% of people, but there is no way that they use 2/3 of services or infrastructure. On balance, it is arguable either way for the bottom 90% of earners to pay for only 1/3 of the cost of all government services and infrastructure.

However, the bottom 50% are only paying 2.89% of the taxes, which means they are not paying their fair share, or anything close to it. If the top 10% are going to pitch in more for the sake of fairness, the bottom 50% need to pitch in, too.

The following data is from 2011 (http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data)
Regarding paying the debt down in 10 years:

• Assuming $20Trillion in debt, an interest rate of 2%, equal monthly payments, and a 240 month period, the interest on the term is roughly $2.083 Trillion. (These are all rounded for ease.)
• In order to pay back 22 Trillion over 10 years, the top 10% would have to pay an additional 2.2 Trillion per year. (Technically, this is feasible, but only if you completely discount how people really behave.) That means an aggregate tax burden for the top 10% of $2.911 Trillion/year.
• That translates to 76% of their Aggregate income being paid in taxes.
  
  Let's assume we are going to apply this percentage equally to all of the top 10% (We would not, but let's just to look at what it does to the cutoffs.)
• The bottom cutoff for being in the top 1% of households is $388,905 per year. Your plan would mean that these people would take home $97,000/ year. The bottom cutoff for the top 5% is $167,728/ year. These people would take home $41,932 I won't even bother with the cutoff for the top 10%.
• This means that all these people would create fewer jobs. They would invest less. They would not hire as many nannies, cooks, gardeners, etc. They would not spend as much on consumer goods or at restaurants. This Would impact their local economies.
• Moreover, these people are the ones who occupy CEO and upper management positions in companies. They would very likely start moving to relocate their companies, and their jobs to places with less extortive taxes. That would reduce tax revenue, increase unemployment, and crew the bottom 75% of American households.
  
  I agree that the debt needs to be paid down aggressively. I do, however know that the people who would suffer worst are the ones in the bottom 75% of households. Tons of them would loose their jobs at a rate that would make the recession of 2008-2009 look like times of plenty.

People are fat because they consume significantly more calories than they have to expend in order to survive. The simple fact that the food you are calling "cheaply made junk" is nourishing enough that people can get fat on it means that they are doing extremely well compared to historical standards. These so-called "poor" people still eat, and more to the point, most of them do not have to work hard enough to survive that they burn all the calories they consume. By standard biological definitions, that is doing extraordinarily well.

Your concept of "cheaply made junk" is not spoiled food, not poisonous food, not food in inadequate amounts. Your only problem with it is that it is not as good as what rich people get.

Well, of course people with more money can get better food, just like they can buy better cars, bigger houses, and take more expensive vacations. That is how the income/ standard of living spectrum works. When we broaden that spectrum to include the whole rest of the world, and the last century, American "poor" people are a LONG way from the bottom of the spectrum.

So you are saying that making progress since the 18th century in raising multiple critical aspects of standard of living is "not a sign of making progress."

What is your definition of the word progress?

My point is that in multiple ways, the standard of living in the US has risen to such an incredible degree that in order to be able to find poor people in our society we have to completely change the definition of poor. Comparing us to Japan or Germany does not change that. it only demonstrates that you need to think about why you did not compare your concept of progress to rural India, or to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Mexico, or Chile.

 

That's going on everywhere. Seen lots of it in the bay area. Lots of junkies get cash that way.