Posted on 01/28/2013 1:40:39 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Those who work for a living might want to put away shoes, hammers, and other hard objects to keep from throwing them through the computer. A new study shows that on average the government spends $168 per household on various assistance programs, one-fifth more than the median income of $137.
As the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee reported (after all, who else in government is going to do it?), welfare spending per hour per household in poverty is $30.60, which is higher than the $25.03 median income per hour.
The Weekly Standard points out that direct welfare payments are not taxed:
"After accounting for federal taxes, the median hourly wage drops to between $21.50 and $23.45, depending on a household’s deductions and filing status. State and local taxes further reduce the median household’s hourly earnings. By contrast, welfare benefits are not taxed.”
Welfare recipients never had it so good. This is not to say that poor people are rich, or that life is easy for everyone on food stamps or on some other form of government assistance. It’s just that conservatives would rather poor people be working, rather than paying their way through life on other people’s dime (which at this point, is their children’s dime). Work is not only more economically productive, but it offers more opportunity for people to improve their own lot — not to mention that working people are more likely to feel dignity and self-importance.
If welfare is inherently compassionate, then there is a Pavlovian ego-stroke for Congress passing even unsustainable spending programs. On the other hand, conservatives get demonized for suggesting there is so such thing as a budget, and that you can’t keep looting the private sector without negative consequences — like systemically high unemployment...
(Excerpt) Read more at ijreview.com ...
Micros are great for heating LEFTOVERS!
I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been since I bought a heat and eat meal.
For that matter I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been since I bought fast food. Couple of years at least.
I have my own garden now so I pretty much don’t have to buy a veggies anymore.
If nothing else is growing for fresh veggies there is usually some type of greens growing.
A fresh tomato with my salad greens would be nice during the winter, but my dried tomato slices are just as good.
I put a lot meat on the table with hunting.
A friend of mine ripped out her flower beds around her house and planted veggies for the first time in her life. Her husband suddenly took up hunting.
But But But!
She has to get my hair and nails done.
She has to go to yoga class.
She has to go to the gym.
She has to go to the bar and go dancing.
She doesn’t have time to cook.
If I have to pick between a hot gym ,yoga girl or one who can cook? Give me the yoga girl any day. I can buy a good meal anywhere but a girl into yoga? I know from experience...they have certain skills.
True about 95% of the time, then there are a few who have significant disabilities, but in that case she'd be getting disability payments too, so you're probably dead on the money. I asked the poster who mentions her why the woman was poor, but he/she hasn't responded yet.
So tell me again why we don’t withold payroll taxes from welfare benefits? Is it because Social Security and Medicare have too much money?
Been there done that.
I’ll take a girl that can hunt, tend a garden, run a tractor, cook and do everything else to take care of themselves any day of the week.
I knew a girl that was also a finishing carpenter besides her day job working for an attorney, that also had “certain skills”.
“Yoga girl” was put to shame.
I see it all the time.
People buying prepared meals on the taxpayers dime because they are too lazy to cook.
Of course they aren’t too lazy to cook that pack of rib eye steaks they bought on the taxpayers dime.
As to schools, I think we need to dump the entire concept of "mass education," as the goal itself is, in a sense, a contradiction in terms. The problems to be addressed in the aggregate of inner-city children are so integrated with the entire process of child-rearing in dysfunctional families, that to ask a bureaucracy to mitigate those impacts is exceedingly unlikely to succeed: The bureaucracy cannot be a family and the family to be served has no prospect of functionality.
In a sense, the focus upon "raising the bottom" destroys the wealth it takes to fund it. Hence, we should be building the willing by which to develop the capability of raising up the poor on an individual basis within the penumbra of a successful family: from servant, to intern, to protoge. In a sense, it is the conflation of this model (in the sense of functional responsibility) and this one (in terms of the educational tasks themselves), neither of which are the control freaks and their indentured consituencies of dependents going to be receptive.
Fyi for those on welfare or snap it is virtually impossible to get off of it. Once you sink that low the regulations are stringent about what you can and cant have unless you game the system or get a lucky break.
Me too. You can tell the EBT payers. They split out the giant bag of dogfood and the beer to be rung up separately, most of their food is the heat and eat variety, and if there is anything that requires significant preparation it will only be the choicest cuts.
But you're right. There is little room for innovators, out-of-the-box'ers.
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Congressman Jack Brooks made it clear to my old man “BEFORE” LBJ’s Great Society that the purpose of the GS was not to get anyone out of poverty but to lock as many blacks into poverty as possible with the idea they would be a source of cheap farm labor as they would be getting paid off the books.
Anything on the books, and you loose your freebies.
Dhs even counts chickens/goats ect as an asset now so if you try to grow some of your own food you are penalized for it.
So much for that “cheap farm labor” thing. Laborers are mostly hispanic, where I live.
Make it where food stamps only cover certain foods and you’ll see a lot of people getting off food stamps.
Before some bleeding heart tells me I’m cold, I’ll save them the trouble and tell them they are right.
I don’t care if your kid doesn’t get to have a birthday cake that someone else prepared and you bought on a jacked up price on my dime.
You want you’re kid to have a birthday cake, make it yourself.
Agreed. What I have issues with is when those that DO eat primarily beans and rice and do all they can to better their circumstances are lumped in with the scammers/do nothings.
At the time a lot of blacks had small farms that had been worked out or were too small to make a living on so they hired out to larger farms to do the work and get extra money besides what their farm brought in.
Other blacks had left the farm and moved to the cities where they hired out as handymen.
A lot of farm hands are jacks of all trades so one person could do the same work it would take 4 or 5 different union members to do.
They were hoping the blacks would leave the cities and move back to the farms, but they didn’t.
After the GS they didn’t need to do extra farm work to get spending money so they wouldn’t do it.
Hello illegals.
Or, were LBJ & Co clever enough to know that they were creating a permanent entitlement society, void of the need for a breadwinner/father, and offering a perpetual voting bloc?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.