maybe we should expand the amount of people on foodstamps by 6.5 million?

You are one hateful piece of work. Warms my heart to think of tax money forcibly being taken from you and redistributed to others

The point of this thread is to share reform ideas. Saying food stamps suck does not qualify as a reform idea. Suggesting the death penalty for abusing the food stamp program qualifies as entitlement reform, therefore it is better than just saying food stamps sucks.

lol bahbah

Any fake racist articles to post with thoughts on the subject?

Geriatric Hunger Games FTW. Instead of food they get insurance. And put that crap on the u toobs to help pay down the debt.

.... lol that was a different thread.

Again, you are off topic.

What is more hateful IYO, wanting to raise minimum wage or wanting to cut food stamps? Please show your work & include the people helped and hurt from both decisions.

You call me a ******...

So me saying that there is definitely a sizable % of ******s out of the 40 million on food stamps is different how?

Cite or STFU on the bolded.

OK, agreed, it was a different thread that you posted a fake news article designed to trick racists into thinking it was real news, then went to the mat defending the racist article. My apologies if I led readers to believe that display of admitted racism by you was in this thread.

Blindly wanting to cut food stamps in the name of fiscal discipline (lol sub 2% of spending) is the pretty clear answer. Of course, we have a body of work from you specifically which indicates you dont particularly like your money going to the poor, particularly minorities, so we aren't making these decisions in a vacuum.

Minimum wage legislation, within in the boundaries being discussed and that are pretty politically feasible, is going to have a pretty marginal effect either way. Better wages for some, lost jobs for others, I think the puts and takes argue for a small increase at this time based on where it tracks on a real basis vs. historical average.

Of course, your position on the minimum wage isnt that it should stay at current levels, is it?

Yeah? So what?

Or an idiot or whatever...

I misspoke, I should have said "a portion of the money the government chooses to let you keep". My apologies. That's what it is and, in your case, I hope they take more Or, even more elite, confiscate silver at an ordained rate

No government truly cares about the riffraff.

Or anyone else.

Hate to break it to you Silverman, but you are the riffraff by any possible standard of the word.

So? What's your point?

Trying to put focus on me instead of addressing the undeniable fact that governments don't care about the unwashed masses?

Poverty Rate Actually Near 0% After all govt handouts applied

Quote:

Way back when, poverty alleviation was almost entirely done by simply giving poor people cash money. This obviously made them less poor so it was a very effective strategy. However, it was felt that this wasn’t quite the right thing to do and therefore the system has changed over the years to one of sometimes giving money, but not very often, plus giving benefits in kind (Section 8, Medicaid, SNAP) and aid through the tax system (EITC). The US is now spending a great deal more on poverty alleviation (after inflation of course) than it used to but by the official measurement of poverty pretty much nothing seems to have changed.

The reason for this is that we don’t actually count benefits in kind or aid through the tax system in our definition of poverty: although we do count just giving poor people cash money. The upshot of this is that in the old days what the poverty line was really measuring is the number of people who were poor after the things we did to reduce poverty. Today that same poverty line is measuring the number of people who are poor before all the things we do to reduce poverty.

It’s worth noting that the four major poverty reduction programs are Medicaid, SNAP, EITC and Section 8 vouchers. And we include none of them, not one single groat of that money spent, in our current estimates of poverty.

So, while our definition of poverty has not changed (three times a low-cost food budget for a household in the early 1960s upgraded for inflation) what we’re actually measuring is now completely different. The US poverty numbers today do not measure the number of people still in poverty after the aid given: they measure the number of people in poverty before aid is given.

Gives credence to my point that reducing wasteful spending is an excellent way to enact reform that benefits entitlements.

Oh, so in that case we only have 6.5 people below the poverty line, after SNAP.

So we still need to boost it by 6.5 million folk.

Uh, glad we had this talk.

Gambool, you are lying. I never once defended the article. Once I read it I agreed that it was racist.

I'm not sure if you understand what the word "blindly" means.

If you were spending more money that you make and you spent 2% of your income on bull****, sent 2% to your local drug dealer, 2% for someone to cut your grass in a different pattern everyday, and 2% on origami lessons don't you think you should cut down one or more of these things instead of being a moron and just saying "lol sub 2% of spending"?

I have no qualms with using some of my income helping the poor. I do however, have a problem when a significant amount of that money goes to hurting the poor.

It makes no difference to me if my money goes to a poor white person or a poor minority.

FYI- Rich people are the ones paying all the taxes in the country so not much of "my money" is going to the poor since I don't make that much money.

You are totally ignoring the largest portion of the population that is effected by a raise in MW. When you raise MW you raise the price of almost all goods and services. A raise in MW effects everyone one way or the other.

No my position is not to keep MW at current levels.

Nope. You posted the link then started beating up strawmen about how the article didnt really say racist things about the knockout game and that it didnt matter the article was fake, women something something guns. Then you slowly backed away.

Lol bahbah.

Spending 2% of the budget on what should be a core function of government is not a fiscal calamity. Its basic math, and its not a frivolous use of money.

Again, lol bahbah.

Food stamps dont hurt the poor by any reasonable definition of the word

lol bahbah

Yeah, based on your racist posting history Im sure its just a happy coincidence that you dont like sending money to things that tend to benefit minorities

lol racist bahbah

Cool, so stop crying about what the government is doing with my money then. Trust me, us well off are doing just fine, that marginal tax increase somehow wasnt the end of days.

No, its not all goods and services, Im sure that extra 0.1% inflation is going to be the tipping point that blows over the economy.

Yes, because much like you think food stamps hurt the poor, you think a minimum wage above zero hurts the poor.

lol bahbah

The article was definitely racist. However, I did deny that it said that the KO game was blacks hitting whites because it never said that. I also said that just because someone says that a game is becoming popular among a group does not mean that that group is the only one partaking in the game.

Your whole argument about how spending 2% on a core function of government isn't bad because it is a core function is silly. What would happen if every "core function" of government needed 2% of gov't spending? (hint: it isn't possible)

I never said that spending money on food stamps is frivolous. I am a huge supporter of food stamps. It is the amount of money that I have an issue with.

My posting history only looks racist to the dumbest of posters. I see no reason to argue my point on why I'm not racist to someone who sees me as racist for saying something that they themselves have said as well.

I'm not crying about any of this. I am not just defending the rich either. Taking money from those that are working to give to those that are not is good, but only to a certain point. After a certain point you are hurting the upper, middle, and lower classes.

In regards to your .1% inflation guess (which I think is way too low): Why should we not be worried about increasing the prices of goods in services, but be worried about cutting food stamps?

No, I don't think a MW above $0 necessarily hurts the poor. It only hurts them (and the middle and upper class) when MW is above the market price for labor. And even when MW is above the market price it doesn't hurt all of the poor, it only hurts a majority of them (along with everyone in the middle and upper class).

Yes it really did.

No, my whole argument is that whether we spend 1.8% or 2.2% isnt going to matter for the overall fiscal health of the country and since there are 1000 other things that we could cut first its a really horrible place to look to start entitlement reform unless you really dont like the lucky ducky poor.

So what do you think the number should be and what are you basing it on?

Nothing to argue really.

Effective tax rates are not really high relative to historical norms.

Because one represents a super small price increase on a subset of goods and the other represents some people's only way to eat food?

Lol bahbah

If something only makes up 2% of something and you are arguing that it is too small to really matter if we cut it or not how can there be "1000 other things that we could cut first"? The max number of other things to cut would be 48 (and not 1000). Its MATH.

This has nothing to do if I like the poor or not. It has to do with the best way to help them. Just because you think that the best way to help someone is to give them fish doesn't mean that your method is better than teaching them how to fish.

The money put into food stamps or any other entitlement program should not be tied to government spending, gov't revenue, or GDP. The amount shouldn't be effected if our economy grows or if taxes go up or down. It should be based on needs.

What is your point? That we should therefore cut taxes? The % of people in entitlements programs is high too. Does that mean we should cut some of those people out since the number is high compared to a historic measure?

As I just posted, I am 100% for food stamps (and always have been) for anyone who needs them. It is the relatively small % of ppl who receive them that don't deserve them that we should be focusing on.

And I do agree w/ you that we will always have to make sacrifices to help anyone out. It is just unfortunate that the people hurt the most by food stamp abuse and a raise in MW are those lower income individuals who are trying to make a living the honest way.

You are too dumb to understand math, so lets move away from numbers.

What would you like to see done to "teach people how to fish" then? Besides giving food stamps fraudsters the death penalty?

Why do you think the people who need government assistance will be the same in a good economy or a bad economy? That makes no sense. What is your definition of someone in need that doesnt change with the economy?

Im not the one ranting about cutting taxes and the rich paying for everything. What is your definition of the point where we are hurting upper, middle, and lower classes?

Against my better judgment, I will try this again:

If food stamps are 2% of the budget, and the debate is around the "relatively small" % of people who dont deserve them, then how can food stamps have a large effect on the fiscal healthy of the country? What is your definition of "relatively small"? Multiply that by 2% and what's the effect on the budget? Cost efficient ways to reduce fraud and waste, have at it, but its simply not material to the overall fisc.

Yes, those poor that would have earned $3 an hour with no minimum wage sure are getting the hard one from the government. lol.

I'm pretty decent at math so unless you said this to cover your incompetence we can talk about the numbers.

It took 98 posts ITT for someone besides my self to start talking about what the OP intended for us to talk about ITT. There are a lot of ways to help the small % of ppl abusing stamps or unemployment to help themselves. Giving more of an incentive to individuals to get jobs and companies to expand would probably be the best way. This can be done in a lot of different ways.

I know you are slow, but you don't actually think the death penalty thing was serious do you?

You wanted to tie entitlements to governemnt spending, which in theory should go down when revenues go down and revenues go down when the economy is bad so maybe you shouldn't bring this up.

You said we should raise taxes since they are low compared to historic norms. So should we cut entitlement when it gets above historic norms or not?

If we are able to cut stamps & unemployment abusers out we are better off in two ways. We will be able to lower our deficit (less spending) and those ppl would have to get jobs (higher revenues).

I don't think you understand how supply and demand relate to each other.

Gambool you are so lame with the never ending racist name calling. Can you try and limit it to every other post instead of every post?

It's almost like you have a prop bet with someone to see how many times you can call the same people racist, and you haven't reached your mark yet.