If they receive $100, and everyone else receives $500, they have indeed lost something tangible beyond jealousy.
I’m guessing I’m being whooshed, but from a logical standpoint they should not even care what the neighbors are getting. The fact they do says something.
Yes, we heard from PandaBear77 that it happens but that the costs of implementing the kind of oversight that you and the OP are looking for would be costly.
I would bet that it would cost more than the money it would save in fraud.
So no, I don’t think there should be more intrusive rules that we couldn’t afford to implement. We should be pursing those who commit fraud when they’re discovered but I also understand why they don’t (cost of proceeding vs the likelyhood of ever getting money).
If everyone else gets $500 and you only get $100, then there will be more money chasing the same amount of goods, and so inflation will eat away all of your $100 and more, leaving you poorer than before, assuming of course that you had the same average wealth as everyone else. If you needed that $100 just to put food on your family, that’s a different story because you would have had zero dollars, whereas now you have slightly less than pre-gift $100 due to inflation.
I think you’re carrying the hypothetical beyond the scope of the original study[ies].
Oh, I don’t want to investigate people’s food purchases. PandaBear77 pointed out how easy it was to commit fraud (which you conveniently left out). That can be rooted out with certain precautions. Not entirely, but a dent was made when we went to EBT cards across the country.
Also, in the LAT article that I linked, investigators were cut and the state lost money because of it. So obviously spending money looking into every possible angle is not cost effective, but clearly there’s a need for investigators. And combating fraud also acts like a deterrent. If it’s harder to break the law, you may not even bother trying. (:
People who don’t receive as much as others shouldn’t have any resentment or interest in what others have? Not convincing but a nice idea.
There’s enough complaining on this board alone about the elite among us who should share more to make me think that dictate is expecting saintly behavior on both sides’ part.
It would be nice to think that we are all so elevated that we never cast a glance at what our neighbor is doing or has. And maybe we also wonder how he manages to afford it!
I am sooo tired of all these anecdotal stories of “my friend has a friend who saw a woman in the store on food stamps while carrying a designer handbag…” etc, etc. If there is any merit to the stories, then tell us about all the letters you have written to your Congressman. Or complaints made to the local Human Services agency. Don’t just whine and moan about it as if you are entitled to be consoled because there are crooks in this world.
Second, even if there is fraud and abuse, the solution is not to eliminate the programs, but rather to eliminate the abuse. That takes good leadership, from the top down.
How do we get good leadership from the top down? We demand it and act upon our expectations. We don’t just vote based on sound bites and radio call in shows that inflame and justify our basic preconceived notions of the world - we actually look into the problems and try discover, in detail, what is wrong with our system and why our leaders are not doing something effective to fix it.
Want better leaders? Take the money out of politics.
How to take the money out of politics? For starters, start backing a constitutional amendment that would require public funding of all Congressional and Presidential election campaigns. We’re paying taxes already, just allow for part of them to be pooled and shared out between candidates - anonymously. At the same time, ban all personal donations from individuals and corporations. (Sorry folks, you can’t have it both ways - to be able to personally contribute to your favorite pol and at the same time demand that all pols remain free of outside influences.)
//rant mode off//
I’m more concerned that money saved by corporations when receiving huge tax cuts does not go directly to the CEO’s pocket then if some single mother bought a bag of doritos.
Thanks for double checking the math on this - I too was coming up with $1,000,000 in taxes for .03% to be $300
What the debate seems to be lacking is a real consideration of cost-benefit analysis. It matters to me not a whit that someone is getting food stamps but doesn’t deserve them for whatever reason if we’re going to have to pay twice as much to root them out than we’re going to save by striking them off the rolls.
We also need to look at impact on honest people. Let’s say we now require a great deal more documentation. What if this doubles or triples the amount of time to receive the benefit? What will fill that gap, nothing? What if 5% of people who are disqualified due to investigation are disqualified incorrectly – what happens to those people? Is there an appeals process? How long does that take? Not everyone has checking accounts, not everyone gets paid by direct deposit. An awful lot of at-risk people don’t have bank accounts and get paid in cash, remember. How are they and their kids eating while they gather yet more documentation, yet more proof?
Anti-junk food laws are also potentially a problem. Classifying food items isn’t easy and processed foods are among the cheapest. So let’s ban cookies and chips – what classifies a cookie? A chip? Does it matter if the cookie is lower fat? What is the fundamental difference between a Fig Newton and a Nutra-Grain bar, or between a chocolate chip cookie and a chocolate chip granola bar or a chocolate cereal? Is everything with chocolate banned, no matter how trivial the amount? Does it matter if the chip is baked? What separates a baked potato chip from, say, a lot of types of crackers? It’s one of those things that seems to be ‘common sense’ but the devil is in the details of actually enforcing this. Every item in the grocery store would need to be reclassified, and standards for those classifications would need to exist.
Think of paying taxes. How many stories and anecdotes about tax cheats do you know or have heard? I’ve heard countless ones. Does it mean that it’s a good idea to now audit ten times as many people as we do – or audit every citizen, no matter the cost? I know it’s easy to get all morally stirred up because you saw someone use an EBT card to buy something you didn’t approve of, or because they seemed outwardly wealthier than they seem to ought to be. That outrage doesn’t make good policy and has the potential to destroy needed programs.
I kinda doubt that you could tell the difference by sight.
Some of the most self entitled people I know are hedge fund managers. This was especially apparent during the bailout.
So wait, food stamps are administered separately from WIC and other need based programs? It seems to me that while it might not be worth checking up on suspicious Food Stamp recipients because its only $100/month but it might be worth doing more checking if it was all the need based programs combined.
I want a social safety net for folks and I’m willing to pay for my share so that I can live in a society that has that social safety net but I want some controls in there.
One of the most frequently litigated cases by teh IRS is the EITC. If they threw everything into one pot, we could probably make better decisions.
Pandabear77 did not specify what state they work in but I find it difficult to believe any state is so lax.
The rules for receiving public assistance in Texas are much harsher, for instance you cannot own a car newer than a decade old in make(this disqualified my sister from help when she was alone with two kids and there was no way to sell the car and get a old one) they also request years of back federal income tax returns. When I applied at 19 and told them I had never worked they said go file we need those returns to verify income, the IRS said if I filed five years of returns with $0 income they would assume it was fraud and not to if I had no income.:rolleyes:
I can’t believe there is a state where with not one bit of paperwork you can get foodstamps, it sounds outlandish!
As I mentioned on the first page of this thread, I received WIC and did not qualify for Food Stamps . I had to show two years of tax returns. Also linked to earlier in this thread, one cent more than $24,096 for a family of 4 disqualifies you for Food Stamps today.
I sure would like to know which states all these people are getting benefits without having to prove need. Maybe I’ll retire there. Get me a Beemer and a fur coat and live in the lap of Welfare luxury.
Wow.
Thanks for having 2 kids you can’t afford to raise.
Just send us an invoice and we’ll take care of that for you. :rolleyes:
You’re welcome. You’ll especially thank me now that my college educated children are paying for you when you’re an old man.
Anecdote: one of the times I was in the Public Aid office I overheard a caseworker ask a new applicant what she did for money. The reply was “I’m a whore”. Given that the caseworker’s next response, in a very normal, routine tone of voice was “And how much do you estimate you make a week as a prostitute?” I’m guessing at least a few “off the radar” self-employed do tell the truth. I also expect the drug dealers and car thieves to lie through their little pointed teeth, too.
Illegals do not legally qualify for either food stamps or Medicaid. They only food aid open to them are soup kitchen and pantries that don’t ask (usually church run) and the only medical care they can get is that for life-threatening emergencies via the ER. The only way they can get food stamps or any other government benefit is to break the law, usually by committing identity fraud.
So… you’re saying that before a formerly middle class family can get food stamps they have to sell their TV’s, computers, vehicles, jewelry, and every other item of value they have in their possession? Because that’s how your coming across, that before they apply they have to sell everything and basically be living in a place with bare walls and no furniture.
Or did you mean something else?
YOU CAN NOT STAY ON WELFARE FOR DECADES ANYMORE!!!
That has been impossible since 1996. Folks, that was sixteen years ago. Can we PLEASE keep up with the times?
Apples, when you make a mistake that glaring you come off as uninformed at best, and more likely in the willfully ignorant category. You’re up in arms about something that hasn’t existed for 16 years and admit you don’t know how the system currently works. You’re wrong on so many points it’s just sad.
You offer to buy someone else’s groceries for them, then pocket the cash. Or you buy groceries, return them, and either pitch a hissy fit when clerk refuses to give you cash and insists on putting it back on the card or don’t dring in the reciept at all and throw an even bigger hissy fit when asked for one.
And if you’re in a convience store you need to pay for those frozen dinners, sandwitches, et al before you microwave them. Yeah, that was fun, taking food off the counter in and throwing it in the garbage front of customers (& their children) then tell them that they need to go back to the cooler, get another of the exact same item, and have me ring it up before they put in the microwave. :rolleyes:
Same deal for the fucking breakfast sandwitches; the one’s in the cooler are fair game, the ones right by the register under the heating lamp aren’t.
It’s really fun watching somebody do that, then informing them afterward then they try to get the deposit that this state doesn’t have bottle return. 
Thank you. I had a college professor say just that in one of his lectures. Foodstamps are primarily a form of agricultural subsidy ("agriculture in this case including grocers) that has the happy side effect of feeding the poor.
Not going to change unless somebody outspends the junk food manufacturers in order to [del]bribe[/del] lobby legislators and Congressmembers focus.