‘I Am a Welfare Mom and I Can Tell You: It’s a Nightmare Come True’

[DMC]

it's not my hobby horse. I wouldn't do anything with it. I don't think welfare fraud, even if it were common -- which I tend to doubt -- is a good reason to curtail assistance to folks who need it.

Sure it is. Anytime you take from the well, the well has less water. It doesn't matter how you take from it, legal or not.

[DMC]

Here’s an amazingly simple way to cut poverty

l: In 2013, 15 percent of people eligible for food stamps didn't get them — down from a whopping 31 percent in 2007. In 2012, 20 percent of people eligible for the earned income tax credit(EITC) didn't get it.

an experiment in conjunction with the IRS in which they sent mailings to 35,050 tax filers in California who didn't claim the EITC in 2009, despite their tax returns indicating that they were eligible and despite an initial reminder notice from the IRS. Collectively, these filers had left $26 million to which they were en led on the table.

Overall, 22 percent of people getting the survey responded and claimed their money.

What would really make a difference, and unlock billions in currently unclaimed money, is a system of automatic dispersal.

The IRS typically knows most people's wage income from W-2s filed by employers, and so can probably guess who's eligible for the EITC and file those people's returns for them, ensuring they get the benefits.

, the IRS could file returns for everybody

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...udy-experiment

So you think people who can file an income tax return are welfare burden? Or that the federal government guessing who gets what is the answer to poverty in a nation where the number 1 health issue is obesity and it's most prevalent among the poor? Somehow I don't think you're on the right track.






Poverty here isn't the same as it is elsewhere it seems. We're focused in the wrong area. It's not survival that's the issue here, but standard of living and the poor, by nature almost, sacrifice their financial futures for immediate returns thus overeating and over-indulgence in just about anything they can over-indulge in.

[boutons_deux]

Somehow I don't think you're on the right track.

... which is evidence that I am

[DMC]

... which is evidence that I am

Sure, let the federal government decide who gets their own money back, because that extra 200 dollars will go a long way toward getting a real education for the 5 kids left at home under age 10 while mom is twerking at the club.

[Winehole23]

Sure it is. Anytime you take from the well, the well has less water. It doesn't matter how you take from it, legal or not.

welfare fraud is overhyped. If you have a problem with public assistance per se, that's something else entirely.

[boutons_deux]

Holiday Season Giving to Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder of Amazon, is routinely touted in the media as an entrepreneurial genius. That assessment may well be correct. After all, Amazon has made huge breakthroughs not only in internet marketing, but also in promoting the spread of e-books, and more recently as a new source of television shows.

But however brilliant Bezos may be, the public should recognize that his success has come with a huge helping hand from the taxpayers. He has received in the neighborhood of $4 billion in subsidies from taxpayers over the last two decades to help his business grow.

If you missed that line item in the budget, it's probably because the media have mostly chosen not to give it much attention. The basic point is a simple one: The brick and mortar retailers with whom Amazon competes are required to collect state and local sales taxes on the products they sell. For most of its existence, Amazon was exempted from this requirement in most of the states it did business.
This amounts to a massive subsidy to Amazon at the expense of both big chains and tiny family operated business.

For example, in a state like New York, where combined state and local sales taxes average over 8 percent, Amazon could charge a price that was 1 percent below its brick and mortar compe ion, and still have an additional profit of 7 percent on everything it sold.

That is a huge deal in an industry where profits are often just 2-3 percent of revenue.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/ite...-to-jeff-bezos

[rmt]

Holiday Season Giving to Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder of Amazon, is routinely touted in the media as an entrepreneurial genius. That assessment may well be correct. After all, Amazon has made huge breakthroughs not only in internet marketing, but also in promoting the spread of e-books, and more recently as a new source of television shows.

But however brilliant Bezos may be, the public should recognize that his success has come with a huge helping hand from the taxpayers. He has received in the neighborhood of $4 billion in subsidies from taxpayers over the last two decades to help his business grow.

If you missed that line item in the budget, it's probably because the media have mostly chosen not to give it much attention. The basic point is a simple one: The brick and mortar retailers with whom Amazon competes are required to collect state and local sales taxes on the products they sell. For most of its existence, Amazon was exempted from this requirement in most of the states it did business.
This amounts to a massive subsidy to Amazon at the expense of both big chains and tiny family operated business.

For example, in a state like New York, where combined state and local sales taxes average over 8 percent, Amazon could charge a price that was 1 percent below its brick and mortar compe ion, and still have an additional profit of 7 percent on everything it sold.

That is a huge deal in an industry where profits are often just 2-3 percent of revenue.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/ite...-to-jeff-bezos

There is nothing stopping these other companies from doing what Amazon is doing - it's available to them too. If they choose to stay in a high tax state like NY, then they have to suffer the consequences and pay up. How this can be seen as tax subsidies to Amazon is beyond me - more like those companies' stupidity.

See Uber - either the taxi industry innovates or declines.

[rmt]

So you think people who can file an income tax return are welfare burden? Or that the federal government guessing who gets what is the answer to poverty in a nation where the number 1 health issue is obesity and it's most prevalent among the poor? Somehow I don't think you're on the right track.




Poverty here isn't the same as it is elsewhere it seems. We're focused in the wrong area. It's not survival that's the issue here, but standard of living and the poor, by nature almost, sacrifice their financial futures for immediate returns thus overeating and over-indulgence in just about anything they can over-indulge in.

Part of the problem could be that healthy foods like fruits and vegetables are very expensive while the more unhealthy food like hot dogs and soda are dirt cheap - so the top income bracket has less obesity. And also more education in nutrition.

[boutons_deux]

Part of the problem could be that healthy foods like fruits and vegetables are very expensive while the more unhealthy food like hot dogs and soda are dirt cheap - so the top income bracket has less obesity. And also more education in nutrition.

yes, fresh food is more expensive than food-like packaged substances from BigFood, but also, ignorance about nutrition, esp how ty the BigFood is, plays a huge role.

[rmt]

yes, fresh food is more expensive than food-like packaged substances from BigFood, but also, ignorance about nutrition, esp how ty the BigFood is, plays a huge role.

Wow, boutons, I like when we agree :-) It's so nice not to be insulted.

[Splits]

yes, fresh food is more expensive than food-like packaged substances from BigFood, but also, ignorance about nutrition, esp how ty the BigFood is, plays a huge role.

And when you're working two or more jobs you do not have as much time to cook, so not only is it cheaper but much more efficient to drive through some crap joint every night.

[mingus]

yes, fresh food is more expensive than food-like packaged substances from BigFood, but also, ignorance about nutrition, esp how ty the BigFood is, plays a huge role.

Are there any studies you can point to that support that? I've a really hard time believing people need help in this day and age to figure out what junk food is. You'd have to be living under a rock.

[DMC]

welfare fraud is overhyped. If you have a problem with public assistance per se, that's something else entirely.

another common premise. can you offer anything besides anecdotal support for it?

I don't have a problem with public assistance in the true definiton of that term, which needs to be adhered to. Public assistance is when the public helps someone. It's not when someone taps into the coffer for a generation of payments for what the see as a viable "work free" lifestyle.

I also don't agree with the concept that people accepting public assistance should not have their lives tightly controlled. What individual would invest in a corporation and not have any control over the direction? Why would the pubic invest money into the maintenance of a group of humans who do nothing but provide need for more assistance? There has to be some level of control so that the return on investment is attractive. It don't mean financially, not per capita of course. I mean that people who use the welfare system should be closely monitored and their progress recorded. If they aren't moving forward, they should be cut off. Sucks to be kids of these people, but sucks worse being born in Somalia or Mexico. We still have CPS and if the parent(s) of the children are not going to step up to the plate on raising them, why should we keep paying? Reserve the funds for those who will benefit from them, where eventually society benefits from these people. Right now we are funding inner city gang farms.

What human right encompasses the right to live by the work of someone else?

[boutons_deux]

Are there any studies you can point to that support that? I've a really hard time believing people need help in this day and age to figure out what junk food is. You'd have to be living under a rock.

packaged dead food-like substances and industrial junk food are everywhere, convenient, low-cost, high-calorie, engineered by scientists to be irresistable, habit-forming.

Doctors aren't educated on nutrition, why do you think uneducated, poor people, esp blacks and Hispanics, would know about healthy nutrition?

TV shows have plenty of overweight and obese people as "acceptable" characters.

The govt-approved S.A.D. Standard American Diet is pathogenic, too many carbs, too much meat and dairy (as dictated by subsidized BigFood/BigAg).

Even sit-down "casual dining" restaurants put way too many calories on the table, to give people their "money's worth".

One has to be quite "radical" to resist, to escape from the pathogenic BigFood toxic, pathogenic universe. There's even pejorative terms for people who are conscientious eaters: "foodie" and orthorexic.

Poor people in ty environments are under never-ending financial, social stress, where food really is stress-relieving, comfort food.

When 150M+ people in USA are overweight, obese, it becomes the accepted, implicit norm, the way "average" people should look.

[DMC]

packaged dead food-like substances and industrial junk food are everywhere, convenient, low-cost, high-calorie, engineered by scientists to be irresistable, habit-forming.

Doctors aren't educated on nutrition, why do you think uneducated, poor people, esp blacks and Hispanics, would know about healthy nutrition?

TV shows have plenty of overweight and obese people as "acceptable" characters.

The govt-approved S.A.D. Standard American Diet is pathogenic, too many carbs, too much meat and dairy (as dictated by subsidized BigFood/BigAg).

Even sit-down "casual dining" restaurants put way too many calories on the table, to give people their "money's worth".

One has to be quite "radical" to resist, to escape from the pathogenic BigFood toxic, pathogenic universe. There's even pejorative terms for people who are conscientious eaters: "foodie" and orthorexic.

Poor people in ty environments are under never-ending financial, social stress, where food really is stress-relieving, comfort food.

When 150M+ people in USA are overweight, obese, it becomes the accepted, implicit norm, the way "average" people should look.

You're an expert at saying a lot without answering the question.

[Dirk Oneanddoneski]

Woman in the op is full of here is what you get in Texas just in free food http://yourtexasbenefits.hhsc.texas.gov/programs/snap/

[CosmicCowboy]

They need to go after the s bag husband, garner his wages, force him to support his kids and give her alimony. This poor woman should contact some of the bigger churches in her area - they sometimes have ministries to help people in her situation.

X2. This must not have been in Texas or the attorney general would have hammered the ex-husband. I have one employee I withhold an average of $1600 a month and send it directly to the AG for the ex.

[DarrinS]

People in this thread complaining that healthy food is expensive, must not ever go to a grocery store.


And you know what's cheaper than drinking soda? Water

[CosmicCowboy]

Actually fresh produce is pretty damn expensive. The new food tracking laws are a big contributing factor. Every vegetable now has to be individually tracked from grower to grocery cart.

[boutons_deux]

Actually fresh produce is pretty damn expensive. The new food tracking laws are a big contributing factor. Every vegetable now has to be individually tracked from grower to grocery cart.

Even before tracking, the cost of fresh produce leaving the farm has always been a small fraction of the shelf price.

[mingus]

You're an expert at saying a lot without answering the question.

'cuz he knows it's a stupid claim. Of course people know grilled chicken breast is healthier than fried chicken, or that water is better than soft drinks, or that baked potato is healthier than fries. These foods and knowledge of the good or bad consequences of indulging in them is not a novelty.

LOL the imagined effect of the portrayal of fatasses on T.V. has on eating behavior. The hypocrisy of it is if we excluded fatasses from being on T.V., or limited their portrayal to being ty, unappealing with no redeemable qualities, he'd be crying about unequal representation of and prejudice against fat people.

[Dirk Oneanddoneski]

'cuz he knows it's a stupid claim. Of course people know grilled chicken breast is healthier than fried chicken, or that water is better than soft drinks, or that baked potato is healthier than fries. These foods and knowledge of the good or bad consequences of indulging in them is not a novelty.

LOL the imagined effect of the portrayal of fatasses on T.V. has on eating behavior. The hypocrisy of it is if we excluded fatasses from being on T.V., or limited their portrayal to being ty, unappealing with no redeemable qualities, he'd be crying about unequal representation of and prejudice against fat people.

Tons of people are that stupid though, that's why there has been a big push to list calories on menus at McDonald's and banning soft drinks

Im with boutons on fat shaming

[DMC]

Even before tracking, the cost of fresh produce leaving the farm has always been a small fraction of the shelf price.

More ambiguous bull . "Small fraction of".

99% is only a small fraction of the total. Prove otherwise.

[Blizzardwizard]

Rightwingnuts: But but but, living on welfare is easy They're stealing a living I'm telling you

[DMC]

Tons of people are that stupid though, that's why there has been a big push to list calories on menus at McDonald's and banning soft drinks

Im with boutons on fat shaming

Fat people are just like everyone else. We all love fattening foods, but we have that "that's enough" voice and that worry and acknowledgement when we know it's not for us. Same is true for alcohol or drugs or even something as benign as changing your oil. Some people just don't have that voice in their head telling them to stop. It seems that the more fat people are common place, the easier it is for wanna-be munchers to over-indulge. Where the rest of us have a couple drinks and say "I've had enough", there are plenty who drink until they puke, every night. Eaters are like that. They eat all the time, and food is their purpose for living. It's amazing to be around an obese person, they talk about food all the time, their Facebook has food pics, they never waste food and always get the up-sized. It's amazing, and they are typically in families that are fat as well so they can all feel ok eating like cattle around each other.