I so valued your question that I went and ran the EITC calculator for the family of 4. The credit was about $2700. Don’t know what their income tax was so I can’t fully answer the question. If the EITC is actually higher than the tax they can actually get a refund. This would really be living high, no? The SNAP benefits I can calculate — would be about $200/month for the family of four.
Living high? I don’t know. I don’t know where they live or what other assistance they may receive. I will say that MANY here on this forum have had very hard times and may even be having them now. The government didn’t used to be anywhere near as generous and yet somehow we got by without the help. Worked two and three jobs. No vacations, no extras, maybe a pizza and a rented video twice a month. Kids did babysitting to earn spending money. If we couldn’t afford it, we did without. Now “poor” people expect to have everything they see on tv. Where’s the incentive to better yourself and your circumstances? That’s part of what it is to be American. College students used to live on mac and cheese and ramen. Somehow they survived. Now they can get food stamps. Great way to get people accustomed to getting “free” stuff from the government. Except it really isn’t free.