Soda for Food StampsFollow

I'm not sure how that relates to "I would have died if I'd sold the car". You've created a string of assumptions that IMO aren't founded.



So you waited until it was too late? What about two months earlier, when you hadn't yet missed any payments, and you might have had some more money to do more things? See. The first thing one should do when they lose their job is shed any unnecessary expenses. Now. Not when they run out of money. Right now. Day one. Lose your job, go right then and trade your car in for the cheapest thing you can find. That way the money you do have saved up will last longer, and the likelihood of decreased income for a while wont hurt you as much.

My point is that you did have choices along the way. But you made poor ones, which led you to be in a jam you couldn't get out of.



Because you had whacked priorities though. I'm sure you managed, but if you'd purchased a more reasonable car (like one that cost say $300/month in financing and another $100 in insurance), you'd have saved yourself $400/month. You could then have saved that money (since you had "no problem" living on the remaining income, right), and then had significantly more money to use as a buffer against losing your job *and* you could have kept the car even with the lower salary you had for a period of time. You decided to buy the absolute most expensive car you could afford. That was a mistake.

Spending nearly half your take home pay on a car is too much, no matter how much you earn. I realize that most people can't do this (or choose not to), but ideally you should have sufficient savings to live for 3 months at your current expense level (preferably 6 months btw). This should cover you between jobs. But you can also hedge that by reducing you expenses if you do lose a job. My point is that you made purchasing decisions right to the edge of what you could afford, assuming you'd never lose your job. You then continued to spend money assuming you'd get a new one quickly. When both of those assumptions failed, you then were shocked to find yourself in a tough situation.



There was no work to be found near to where you lived? You could not get a ride early in the morning, and hang out at/near work? You had other options. It's just that keeping the car and going on food stamps was an easier one to take.

And I'm sorry, but I still don't buy that there was no other option but to keep paying $800/month on that car. That just seems somewhat absurd to me. I don't know what kind of messed up situation you were in prior to that point which created that circumstance, but it's not normal. Normally, you can trade in a car for a less expensive model pretty easily. You'll lose most of the cash you've been paying to the financing agency, but they'll do it because from their perspective they get another sale, and from the finance office's perspective, it's better to get a smaller amount per month from you than to get nothing and then have to repossess the car. And they then still get to sell your old car again as well. It's win/win/win for them, so I'm not seeing how you could not make some kind of deal.

My god what happened to Alma? He is almost making some sense.

ah a close but no cigar type thing. GDI.


Edited, Jan 17th 2013 10:35am by rdmcandie

You give up your entitlement (mortgage tax break) and you might be justified in ******** about other entitlements (food stamps).


Hypocrite.

Yes. I would favor a flat tax. Too bad your "conservative" buddies don't.

No, it isn't. You keep claiming that no one will starve in the U.S. I agree and with the auxiliary statement that a person will commit a crime before starving. What they do before they hit that point is irrelevant to the conversation. Unless you have comments to add that are irrelevant to starvation or "food insecurity", because I don't.



This topic is over food stamps. The only thing being provided is money for food, not shelter, transportation, health care, etc. However, to answer your question, you limit and restrict it to each individual on a case by case scenario. For example, someone who just lost their job who is fully capable of working will get less time and benefits as a person with health conditions that prevents that individual from getting certain jobs, etc.



I'm not bouncing back and forth. I've said that the government is providing money for the food (in reference to food stamps), nothing more nothing less. The outcome is that money frees up money to spend on other stuff. As I mentioned, how a person decides to spend the money allocated on a specific cause is irrelevant to the intent of the cause.

I can spend my housing allowance on strippers, that doesn't mean that the government is giving me money to support strippers.



There's absolutely no deception involved. Unless the person has exactly zero dollars or less to their name, then OBVIOUSLY, money is being spent else where. There are different levels of poor. We're not talking about 3rd world country level poor, we're talking about USA poor. people that are "USA poor" tend to have CLOTHES and usually a place to stay, limited food and limited money. The food stamps are there to provide food for the people. Unless your argument is "If you have money to pay for a place to live or to wear clothes, then you don't need food stamps", then you have no argument.

I guarantee you that a much higher percentage of conservatives want a flat tax than liberals. Let's be clear. I'm talking about a single flat tax. No exemptions. No deductions. Every single person pays the exact same percentage of their total income. I don't think very many liberals (or any) will support that.

And you keep wobbling from one point to another. No one starves in the US as a result of lack of availability of food. Period. That has nothing to do with the fact that there are choices to be made between food insecurity and crime though.



WTF!? Take a language course some time. I honestly have no clue what you're trying to say here.




But you just agreed that food stamps provided for food often actually result in other things being purchased because it frees the person from having to choose between buying food and buying something else. You even said this was a good thing. So I think it's more than fair to talk about the impact of helping people afford those other things.



That's great. But how do we determine if our current method of determining how much each case receives is correct or not? You say we should tailor the benefits to the cases, but then argue against someone like me simply pointing out that we're currently handing out more food stamps than we should because they're enabling people to buy other things than food. Then you insist that this is perfectly ok. Then you insist that if things aren't working we should adjust them. It's like you just run around in circles on this, never admitting that the other guy has a point, but never sticking to one yourself.


Do you think that food stamps are currently correctly managed? Yes or no?



Except for the times when you say this:



So, it's not money for food. It is something more. WTF?



Of course it's relevant. It's relevant to anyone who isn't brain dead.



Yes it does. More importantly, if you feel you have enough extra money after the government assistance to spend on strippers, then it's reasonable to assume that we can reduce the amount you receive by the amount you spent on strippers. In fact, we should arguably keep reducing the amount you receive until you no longer spend money on strippers. If you're able to afford extras, then you don't need government assistance. Period. It really is that easy.



When people insist that any attempt to reduce food stamps allotments is wrong because "you'll be taking food out of people's mouths!", when those receiving the food stamps have enough extra money to pay for $800 cars, strippers, liquor, cigarettes, lottery tickets, etc, then the argument being used is absolutely deceptive. It's based on a false claim that if we reduce that person's food stamps, that they'll go hungry as a result. But that can't be true if that person has money to spend on any luxuries at all. That person *could* afford sufficient food to avoid hunger. If they choose not to in favor of hiring strippers, or buying lottery tickets, that is their choice. We should not feel sorry for their hunger at all. And we're certainly under no obligation to continue to reinforce their bad choices by simply giving them more money in the form of food stamps.




Yes. Which is what I've been saying all along. But for some bizarre reason you keep insisting that food stamps are for "buying food, nothing more, nothing less". That's absolutely false. For the vast majority of food stamps recipients, that money is "obviously" being spent elsewhere. So let's stop defending food stamps on the basis of them just being about buying food.



Sure. But when those people are maintaining $800/month cars? Or spending money on liquor, or cigarettes, or playing the lotto, or going to a casino, or buying a playstation, or any of hundreds of things that people spend money on that are not necessities? I have no problem with someone who receives food stamps, but if they are doing so, they should be so poor that they can't afford any luxuries at all (very few at least). They should at the very least meet the rest of us half way by making good choices about what little money they do have. Which is where this argument began. No one on food stamps should *ever* be choosing to buy soda at all anyway. They should not be buying chips, or crackers, or any form of snack food. If you are so poor that you require other people to help provide you with money to buy food, then you should be buying food, not junk.


We should not need to pass laws prohibiting what people spend their food stamps on. We should be limiting public assistance such that those who receive it will be forced to make good choices *or* go hungry (or end out on the street, etc). You yourself agree that people will do extreme things to avoid actual starvation (like committing crimes). But does this not also mean that they'll do something far less extreme (like not spending money on soda) long before reaching that extreme? If someone truly had a choice between soda and avoiding starvation, they'd choose to avoid starvation every single time. The reason why people on food stamps buy things like soda is because they are not remotely near that level of economic desperation. My argument is that we should be able to safely trim the benefit amounts to a point where people will make good choices while still being well above the "desperate" level economically. There has to be a point at which this will happen. We're way way way way way above it. The fact that so many people on assistance spend so much on luxuries is proof of this. The fact that differences between outcomes based on receipt of food stamps doesn't seem to change hunger rates at all is another bit of proof as well.


We can bury our heads in the sand and repeat rhetoric like "We must provide food stamps to people or they'll starve!", or we can look around at the real situation and make intelligent changes to our system. I'm simply suggesting the latter course.

Edited, Jan 18th 2013 6:13pm by gbaji

I think the original source is paywalled, actually.

Here ya go. Not going to bother discussing with Gbaji since he can't seem to get the republican parties **** out of his mouth long enough to admit he is wrong most of the time.

So not really so out of touch at all. It was one part of a much larger article, which discussed effects of several tax changes on numerous income levels. The liberal lens just discarded everything except the graphic and made it appears like this was all they cared about. Good thing they are trusted stewards of the truth!

If you'd stick to a consistent point within a given paragraph, I wouldn't have to do this. The way you write, if I simply quoted a paragraph and responded, I'd have to spend even more time explaining what part of your paragraph I'm talking about with each part of my response. And if I don't do that, someone will inevitably assume that when I say "wrong, its <something else>" it must have been in response to the randomly inserted "people need to eat" rather than the more obviously wrong statement like "if people don't get food stamps, they'll starve".

So yeah. Your own writing style forces this. Stop inserting random and meandering statements into your text. Stick to a single point per paragraph. Then it would be easier to respond.



See. I don't know what you mean by "categorizing them in the first place". That's like nonsense talk.

I repeat myself because it's abundantly obvious from your responses that you didn't understand me the first 5 times I said the exact same thing. I keep hoping that someday it'll sink in. More importantly, I keep hoping that if I quote you saying one thing and then immediately following it with the exact opposite thing in the very next sentence that the light bulb might just go off in your head that your position isn't consistent or logical. Well, I keep hoping anyway. When you say "It's all about providing food, nothing more", and then in the next sentence say "It's obvious that it'll do more than provide food", one might think that me pointing this out would clue you in about how silly what you just said is.


I'm not going to hold my breath though.