Fair means impartial, equal, unbiased. A law is unfair if it's biased, if it treats one citizen differently than another. ... you'll never get there by looking at percentage of income. ... regardless of what percentage that is of their annual income, lifetime income, body weight, IQ or favorite number. Your suggestion isn't fair, because it involves charging person A more than person B for the same citizenship. We are all equal partners in this country, we all have the same rights and benefits. That costs about $14,000 per person a year. Unless you want to start metering out federal services, the only way to fairly pay for that is charge every family $14,000 per person. And that won't work. A family of four would be looking at a federal tax bill of $56,000 per year. Very few families can pay their fair share of what this country costs (about 1 in 20). At our current level of spending, there is no fair way to keep the lights on.
I pay rent, food and get money from school loans and I qualify for EBT, I just don't use it out of principle. Several fellow students take advantage of it and they work as well also. Student loans are not taken into account for income but the irony is that the student loans are there specifically to supplement your income at least if you take more than just the amount for tuition. I only make $9.00 at my main job and I don't report my other income yet I manage just fine. Most people that are supposedly at poverty level aren't really at poverty level. They find other sources of income. The one I saw quite a bit of was people claiming back injuries or some other injury and getting a prescription for something on the taxpayers dime, then they would sell a portion of their pills. I know three people that ended up blacklisted from prescription meds (they could only receive a fraction of a normal amount) because of that and there were many others that weren't caught. When you can go up to a cashier and whip out a roll of $100s you have no business at all being on EBT and I saw it all the time. It is no different than the old ladies driving Cadillacs that would roll up to the places that gave out free bags of groceries because they were to cheap to pay for their own (*)(*)(*)(*)ing food. I am sick to death of people pretending that these people are anything other than the lowest form of fungus on the bottom of a rotting cow carcass. I don't have manners when it comes to the lowest common denominator of society. I grew up with them and saw first hand how degenerate and lazy these people were. A few of us worked hard and managed to get out but the rest were just happy drinking on their asses and selling their prescription meds and barely paying attention to their offspring.
EDIT: Re-read your post, apparently, based on that level of income, you're not actually living in poverty, assuming you work 30 hours a week and make more than 300 in your unreported income a month. So no, you don't qualify, if you applied based on this, you'd be committing fraud, and trust me, they find out, unless of course you're evading taxes, in which case you're breaking the law. What about people who went to school, had a career, and it was gutted during the recession? Are they degenerates for using food stamps? Of course not. I know far too many people personally in this exact situation. I'm not saying those people you describe don't exist, because i've met them myself, but i've met far less than i meet like myself or my own family.
It's supporters claim it is a metered service. I'm not one of them. Please review rule #13. Please remove my words from your signature.
Hate to break it to you but in the real world most people who work in either construction or jobs like waitressing don't report all their income. I don't know a single waitress that actually puts down all of her tips nor do I know anyone who does side jobs for cash report that as well. No one lives at the poverty level, its literally impossible to do without trying to purposely not work. Your state might be at 125% but Quest cards are given out in my state at 200% poverty level which I do qualify for probably even if I did include my summer work. At $9.00 an hour at 30 a week for a whole year I am making $14,000. You literally have to be trying your hardest to not work at all to only make the poverty level. I went back to school precisely because I was laid off. The difference is that unlike a lot of other people I knew who also lost their jobs in 2009 I didn't sit around and just wait for the unemployment checks to keep rolling in. The requirements were pathetic. You only had to look for two jobs a week in order to keep getting unemployment. Anyone looking for a job should be doing two jobs a day. We simply must run in different circles then because the majority of people I knew growing up were in fact abusing the system and leeching off taxpayers.
If you turn most tax programs over to states and municipalities you will have the classic race to the bottom. All the tax breaks and exemptions that states grant corporations to build new facilities in a particular state would be just the beginning of the shenanigans that would occur.
If you criteria for abolishing a government program is that there are people or institutions that cheat the program I,would guess that no government program either on a state or federal level would survive.
There is cheating the system and then there is just monumental, behemoth, voluminous amounts of abuse that go with EBT cards. People would buy ass loads of energy drinks with them. That is NOT what those EBT cards are for. That is taxpayer money going to pay for someones Redbull or Rockstar addiction, freakin $3 drinks. The simplest thing is to just use the WIC system which is for single mothers. Only certain foods are allowed to be purchased such as specific whole grain cereals, dairy and produce and probably eggs, bread and some meats. That and ONLY that is what should be purchasable with EBT cards. Outside of that happening then just take it all away. Another problem is that it used to be a social stigma to use food stamps. Now, precisely because they are so prevalent and availabe to people that really don't need them no one bats an eye. We need to get back to shaming people on them. A big siren should go off at the check out lane when someone is using it and and announcement should be played over the loud speakers about how this person is using tax payer money buy soda, chips and Redbull.
My guess would be that cheating on the EBT is very minor on the dollar scale of cheating on government programs. Actually EBT is minor on the scale of government spending? Of course if you have any dollar figures I might revise my opinion although the wasteful spending on just about any government funded weapons system would probably exceed all the waste on EBT since the beginning of the program. If you really want to be indignant about government waste this list should give you some real reasons http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/50-examples-of-government-waste
Did I ever give any indication that I liked other government waste? No, I didn't so why are you bothering to bring it up. You probably just made the assumption that I support the military, apple pie and all that stuff. I am a Libertarian I want government reduced at ALL levels. The topic was specifically EBT cards. Please don't try and change the subject. If you want to find stories about EBT waste then just google it. Note the distinction between waste and fraud.. I am talking specifically about people misusing EBT cards for items that they should not be getting off of other people's backs. EBT fraud is something like the case where money was being funneled back to Yemen a few years back. EBT waste is universal and everwhere while EBT fraud depends entirely on the state managing it.
Just responding to your claim that EBT fraudis monumental. It is trivial on the actual scale of government fraud. Funny to be so obsessed about small fry fraud committed by the poor when the real fraud is by the wealthy. Probably would be a good sociology study as to why people are more incensed by fraud committed by the poor than fraud committed by the wealthy and by corporations. Here is just one example that comes in at about 1.5 trillion. http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/02/26/The-Pentagons-Incredible-1-5-Trillion-Mistake Probably could add up,all the EBT fraud since the beginning of the program and not even get close to 1.5 trillion dollars.
And once again what does that have to do with EBT fraud/waste? That's like saying we should stop arresting people for shoplifting because its not as serious as murder or rape. There is EBT waste and it can be easily dealt with. Thankfully my state has done something about it. If you want to rant about other government waste then feel free to do so but I am sticking to the topic at hand which is EBT. The reason why people are upset about EBT fraud isn't that difficult to figure out and you don't need a study. EVERYONE has seen it multitudes of times. If you have ever gone grocery shopping then odds are that you have been behind someone who was buying food and drinks that they had no business buying with one of those cards. Most people don't follow the news that closely so they never even hear about stuff like the J35 boondoggle. They are considered informed if they have even heard of it much less the cost overruns.
