Welfare Carols

[spydah]

It's the first of the month.
Get up, get up, get up.
It's the first of the month.
Get up, get up, get up.
It's the first of the month.
Get up, get up, get up.

- Chris Rock

Time to spend these food stamps that some hard working folks provided. ;D

[happyscooter]

Stupid me. I stopped by Aldis yesterday not thinking. I got behind someone who had a HUGE buggy of groceries. No EBT though. I steer clear of the store for the first 4-5 days.

[justwhoever]

In Indiana it's spaced out the first half of the month. Depending on the first letter of your last name depends on when you get your stamps. Better stay out of the stores here til the last half of the month.

[Gardening Grandma]

Well I'm not on food stamps, but I do go grocery shopping on the first because that's when we get our pensions.

[Deleted]

Really Spydah?

[Epiphany]

btw - chris rock was referring to a song that came out in the early 90's by bone, thugs, and harmony. look it up : )

[spydah]

I know rljrdn, I have it in its original CD. No need to look it up. Cleveland is def in the house!

[zibazinski]

Wow, where is that requirement, what state?

[zibazinski]

Has anyone seen it anywhere else? It isn't in Oregon, Florida, or Michigan.

[formerexpat]

Well I'm not on food stamps, but I do go grocery shopping on the first because that's when we get our pensions.

Including SS, the back door welfare program?[/size]

[formerexpat]

We are nowhere near the top of the list in preventing infant mortality or assuring a long life to our citizens.

Once you adjust for the fact the US includes all infant deaths while other countries have different standards, the statistics are on par with other industrialized countries.

The US also has a higher life expectancy than any other country after adjusting for murders and car accidents [both hardly representative of the health care system].

So much of what you read on these boards is the result of...ignorance

Mirror much? [/size]

[debtheaven]

Including SS, the back door welfare program?

OUCH Expat! I expected better from you! Do you begrudge SS to your parents too?! Or are YOU suddenly jealous because GG and the people of her generation have been paying into SS for DECADES?! I know not everybody does, but I believe SS will still be there for your generation too. I also believe you're very wise not to count on it. Either way you'll come out ahead.

Frankly I'd even be OK with you calling SS a Ponzi scheme, but NOT welfare!

I won't get SS but I will get a SMALL pension here, the French equivalent of SS. Rest assured, none of your tax dollars will have been harmed in the process. But, I do NOT consider that to be welfare in any way, shape or form. I've been actively contributing to it since I arrived here at 21, thirty years ago! And I'm still contributing, and will be for years to come.

This is not like you! Maybe you've just had a bad day?! LOL

[justwhoever]

Indiana IF you have a child not in school yet then you can receive food stamps without working. Once they are old enough for school you have to find a job. Or lose your food stamps. Not sure on the rules for receiving cash. The way the rules are here to even get cash assistance you have to have a child in the household and 1 or both parents not. And for every $1 you make in income, you lose $4 in assistance. In 2003 I did receive cash assistance for 2-3 months. My self and 2 kids. Received $388/month. Rent for me at that time was $350. I found a job making $7.05/hr at a gas station working 25-30 hours a week. I also got $588/ month in food stamps. There is no such thing as housing assistance, utility assistance or anything else people are always going on about here. And if you do not have a job then you have to go help the handicap for 40 hours a week or lose your money. And they get really pissed if you have a job that is part time. Either don't work and get cash or work and don't get cash.

I will never understand how the posters here talk about the welfare people they all seem to know about getting EVERYTHING paid for.

Yes I get food stamps now for our household. Yes I am married. Yes BOTH my self and husband work. Yes the state knows that we are together and work. And the only "help" we are getting is food for our kids and us. There is no other "help" for us. We pay for our house and utilities.

Being on "welfare" is providing us a way to eat right now but sure as hell isn't paying for anything else.

[whoisjohngalt]

Sit in an emergency room in a major city for 12 hours or more waiting for a hospital bed and your eyes will open. In New York City alone, we have closed several major hospitals within the last decade because so many uninsured individuals who cannot pay have bankrupted the lot.

What exactly is your point? Should the hospitals not treat without insurance? Bc I can see headlines and lawsuits now....

Or are you saying that people are so poor, they can't afford insurance??

Lena

[debtheaven]

Don't you know that expat is what the Irish call, "A begrudger?" For someone with supposedly so much money, expat is quite miserable and not a good example of the good life.

Tough, sorry, no I did not know that. And I won't take your word for it. I always felt quite an affinity with Expat, maybe because he spent a few years in Europe.

But I don't appreciate this most recent post, for sure! Karma to GG for being attacked for taking the SS she and her DH have both been paying into for decades.

[formerexpat]

OUCH Expat! I expected better from you! Do you begrudge it to your parents too?! Or are YOU suddenly being jealous because GG and the people of her generation have been paying into SS for years?! I personally believe it will still be there for your generation too. I'd even be OK with calling SS a Ponzi scheme, but NOT welfare!

I've already shown on these boards that I've paid as much or more in the 18 years since I turned 12 and paid into the system than many have over the course of their working life.

Social Security is currently means tested and will only be means tested further in the future because politicians do not have the balls to age appropriate the retirement age compared to the benefits they've promised the boomers.

So by the very nature of it, those that make more in retirement will subsidize those that do not. Passes the sniff test for welfare for me. You might not like the terminology but numbers behind the system are tough to counter.

For those that realize it's welfare, it's better to plan accordingly [my mother and her husband included] before the welfare is taken away...which it will be in one way, shape or form. Unless you know a magical way to close the over $100 Trillion [yes, with a *T*] unfunded liability for these social programs?

Sit in an emergency room in a major city for 12 hours or more waiting for a hospital bed and your eyes will open. In New York City alone, we have closed several major hospitals within the last decade because so many uninsured individuals who cannot pay have bankrupted the lot.

Sitting in an emergency room for 12 hours would have been a pleasure compared to our experience in London, at one of the better hospitals in the city. It was just after that experience that my wife moved back to the US to be in a real hospital. [/size]

[constanz22]

Mar 1, 2011 19:05:29 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

I wonder whether any of you have been out of the house lately? For several years welfare recipients have been required to work for benefits, and they do so at such glamorous jobs as cleaning public restrooms, shoveling snow in parks and cleaning roads and highways. Please write a delightful song about that.

That's not entirely true. I've been a social worker for almost 20 years. Part of "welfare to work" does require recipients to work for their public assistance benefit, but, if they have children, their children's benefit isn't affected in any way whether they work or not. IME, most do NOT comply with the welfare to work requirements and just forego their own benefit because they receive plenty for their children.

[formerexpat]

Don't you know that expat is what the Irish call, "A begrudger?" For someone with supposedly so much money, expat is quite miserable and not a good example of the good life.

How could you possibly know my level of misery or happiness based on posts on this board? By the very negative nature of your posts, I could say the same about you.

Money has nothing to do with my happiness, or apparent lack thereof. I've been poor and I've been comfortable. I've been happy during both.

What I said wasn't meant as a dig at GG - it's a fact. SS is a welfare program. It takes from the rich [rich defined as income for MFJ of > approx $40k] to give to the poor. I don't say that because I'm in the higher quintile of America; I say it because it is mathematical and financial fact and you don't need to be "rich" to be affected by the welfare program that is SS.

To summarize, the primary components that make SS a welfare program are:

1) the age of retirement is not properly set given life expectancy rates
2) the benefits promised exceed that for which premiums are paying [even more pre 1990 before the current rates were in effect and as income is lower]
3) taxation of benefits after reaching an income level of approx $40k

All of these combined mean that people get to retire too early and get a benefit that they do not financially deserve when comparing it to a traditional deferred annuity, the benefit they do get is higher than it would be if one purchased the deferred annuity with a private company and the taxation of these benefits penalizes those that saved outside of SS during their working years.

[/size]

[debtheaven]

For those that realize it's welfare, it's better to plan accordingly

I still don't agree with you calling it welfare, but I definitely agree it's better to plan accordingly. If you've read my posts over the past few years, you already know that, even though our "retirement plan" has been rentals rather than further discretionary investments into the market.

It's too late here, I can't argue with you at this hour LOL.

[formerexpat]

Many of the ones who are paying little or no taxes or getting those dreaded government subsidies are working 12 hour days six days a week while getting pennies from their employers.

12 x 6 x 8 = $30k a year. I could live on that.

And 72 hours a week - boo freakin hoo [/size]

[formerexpat]

It's too late here, I can't argue with you at this hour LOL.

Good night, debt.

[debtheaven]

Thanks Expat. Same to you (later)

[robbase]

the lyrics are "wake up" not "get up" :-)

[formerexpat]

Someone stressed over money could conceivably sound a lot more worried about money that someone richer than god. If you are indeed richer than god, at least be happy about it and show some gratitude for your good fortune.

My disdain for subsidizing too many people in the US is completely separate from my gratitude and appreciation for my financial security. Might be shocking to you, but you can have two or more feelings at once.

I never enjoyed the thought of ones life being largely subsidized by the federal government - even when I was a college student on a shoe string budget. It has more to do with how I was raised rather than my current income / net worth profile.

God forbid they should pay more taxes than him. Why they might have to discharge one or two of their butlers or put the yacht in drydock.

It's unfortunate that you refuse to see, or at least acknowledge that it's more detrimental to the butler making $40k in this scenario who loses his job since the rich person will still manage just fine with one less butler. Meanwhile, the government takes that $40k via increased taxes and inefficiently pisses it away.

All the while, you continue to mistake my anger at this typical scenario as the "poor rich guy being mad due to losing a butler" rather than "continuously seeing the little guy get the shaft due to government intervention under the disguise of helping the middle class".

[/size]

[formerexpat]

the lyrics are "wake up" not "get up" :-)

Yes, the Bone lyrics are wake up but Chris Rock changed them to get up while mocking welfare recipients [pretty funny too].

My favorite Chris Rock skit is the n****s v Black people: - caution; some colorful language. [/size]

[formerexpat]

Oh my. And I was so confused.

Was is past tense. I wish you understood the realities of the situation.

When people cut of their nose to spite their face, their jobs end up leaving the country. When those same people fail to adapt to changing environments, they are forced to take desperate measures, like servant jobs, to pay the bills.

Your "every corporate executive is a Gordon Gekko type" act is kind of old.

I've seen it unfold with a former girlfriends father. He was from small town America and a papermill was moving overseas. He was offered a supervisor position over in Germany - he declined because he didn't want to move over. The company offered to pay for him to get a bachelors degree at the local university - he didn't take advantage of it. So, he took his pay off from the company, works at the 24 hour Walmart in major town nearby and he and his wife are struggling.

You may blame the corporation for making a financially beneficial decision. I blame the employee for not adapting and taking advantage of the other opportunities afforded to him.

[/size]

[whoisjohngalt]

My BIL was layed off from a mill in June '09. He was receiving UE for over a year and then found this program that was designed to pay you if your job was moved overseas. Well, for the past 10 months he has been getting money to live on, money for education AND mileage to get to the place of education. So, by the time he is done with all that, he just lived off govt for 2 yrs!!!! for free and got 100% free education.

I said it before and I'll say it again - if you are able-bodied and have half a brain and if you can't make it in this country, there is something wrong with you.

Lena

[Firebird]

Mar 1, 2011 19:05:29 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

I wonder whether any of you have been out of the house lately? For several years welfare recipients have been required to work for benefits, and they do so at such glamorous jobs as cleaning public restrooms, shoveling snow in parks and cleaning roads and highways. Please write a delightful song about that.

This is news to me. None of the welfare recipients I know have to work for their benefits.

Explain?

[Firebird]

Mar 2, 2011 23:59:26 GMT -5 formerexpat said:

Oh my. And I was so confused.

Was is past tense. I wish you understood the realities of the situation.

When people cut of their nose to spite their face, their jobs end up leaving the country. When those same people fail to adapt to changing environments, they are forced to take desperate measures, like servant jobs, to pay the bills.

Your "every corporate executive is a Gordon Gekko type" act is kind of old.

I've seen it unfold with a former girlfriends father. He was from small town America and a papermill was moving overseas. He was offered a supervisor position over in Germany - he declined because he didn't want to move over. The company offered to pay for him to get a bachelors degree at the local university - he didn't take advantage of it. So, he took his pay off from the company, works at the 24 hour Walmart in major town nearby and he and his wife are struggling.

You may blame the corporation for making a financially beneficial decision. I blame the employee for not adapting and taking advantage of the other opportunities afforded to him.

[/size][/quote]

Gave you karma for this post, expat. You might sound harsh to some but I appreciate you for telling it like it is.

[bobbysgirl]

Mar 1, 2011 19:05:29 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

I wonder whether any of you have been out of the house lately? For several years welfare recipients have been required to work for benefits, and they do so at such glamorous jobs as cleaning public restrooms, shoveling snow in parks and cleaning roads and highways. Please write a delightful song about that.

Yes, but what they do is do things to get fired and rinse and repeat.