I’m not even going to speculate. And that’s not what the site I read led me to understand, as it was discussing specifically costings related to food stamps which doesn’t include any of that.
Yes, yes I did. $500 a month for whatever the heck needed or wanted, $500 a month in short/medium-term savings, out of around $1000.
Why do you feel that the only two options are “perfect planners who can survive any storm” and “worthless, selfish deadbeats”? I’ve already demonstrated how it’s possible, even plausible, on the median household income in the US to be doing everything as responsibly as possible and still get wiped out in the selfsame situation that you and your husband found yourselves in, through no fault other than bad luck. Your response is to either call someone doing very well on average means “selfish” for not scrimping every penny and planning perfectly, or to nitpick the spending decisions in a vain attempt to do what? Prove, somehow, that they’re unworthy?
I can see why you come here at least–the way you talk about your spending, I doubt you’re having much fun even when you DO lay out cash on something.
I can’t find the statistic Zeriel is referring to, but I’m going to guess that that’s $2100 per *year *per person on food. That’s $175 a month, an eminently reasonable amount. I highly doubt you’re spending less than that, especially if you’re buying cigarettes and booze with it.
Even the hungriest of children don’t eat $2100 worth of food in a single month.
Incidentally, did you and hubby give up the ciggies and beer when you were living off the government dime? Because I’m thinking your countrymen might not appreciate paying for that kind of crap, and I’m thinking they’ll appreciate it even less when they have to shell out for health care due to those things when you’re a senior. But I suppose that it’s moral and right for you to use government resources for whatever you please.
No, what I meant was we don’t spend that much a month at the grocery store even tho it includes a bunch of non-food items, so I just can’t see what these folks are buying.
At that point, you had $1400 so you lost $400 someplace.
I don’t, that is just what you all like to jump to.
Actually, no you didn’t. If nothing else, you have yet to explain why it is OK for people to take on even one 18-21 year high cost debt without having backup should someone lose a job. It’s not like it’s unusual for people to get laid off, why is it OK with you that people take so many chances with their kid(s) future?
No, I didn’t.
I come here for the same reason other people do - to kill time. However, the fact that you think we cannot possibly be having any fun here simply because we are responsible with our money certainly says a lot about you.
Don’t know since there wasn’t a cite. $2100 a month does seem like a hell of a lot.
I don’t smoke or drink beer, and he did try to cut down as much as his addiction allowed, on the cigarettes. I don’t even think we bought much in the way of beer back then, can’t remember. Not that it was actually the government’s dime anyway.
Somehow, it’s OK for all these parents to make majorly expensive selfish choices, but you expect the husband to kick cigarettes cold turkey simply because he took a whole nine months of his unemployment insurance back? Oookay…
How in hell do you support a minor child without giving the required funding to their parent(s)?
Darling, insular, hate-blindered welfare case, where the hell are there family-supporting jobs right now? Do tell.
And why do you hate other women so much? Where are the fathers and what is their responsibility in this fantasy deadbeat dole-scrounging family of your maggot-laden imagination? I understand that your father was a neglectful, abusive jackass, but your situation is not everyone’s situation. Try harder.
This is unadulterated bullshit.
I know better than you do. I know well better than you do. You’ve got a fairy tale in your brain of what poor families look like. I have reality in my own community. I could walk out my front door and look at a dozen houses where the residents are recipients of all manner of benefits. I see what they’re doing to survive. I’m helping them survive. You don’t know jack fucking shit living in your pitiful little Orange County suburban enclave.
More bullshit. If you’re going to try to cover your nonsense, can you at least try something we can’t blow apart with 20 seconds of searching on tvguide.com?
Do you watch the news at all? I mean you don’t have anything else to do so I’m sure that you could manage a half hour of nightly news in the evenings. Have ya noticed anything happening lately about Planned Parenthood, maybe?
Have you noticed anything about the 900+ bills all attacking the ability of women to access abortions lately, maybe?
Are you aware that teenagers’ access to abortion is next to nil in most states because of parental notification laws?
Do you know that the average cost of a first trimester abortion right now is more than $600?
There are more than half a million adoption-ready children in foster care as we speak, right now. What makes you think that every child born to those you deem inappropriate to parent (because you are, of course, the arbiter) could possibly be adopted?
And once again, you’re trotting out the complete fallacy that the money you’re getting in disability payments is the money you put into the system. That this is entirely false has been explained to you at least three times that I can think of, yet you keep trying to drink from that dry well. I know it makes you feel better to think that you’re still self-sufficient via the courtesy of the social security system, but face it honey, you’re living off of other people’s labor, just like the welfare mommies you so decry and deride. You live courtesy of me, and everyone else who’s still managing to work in this country. So you need to simmer the fuck down about who we should and shouldn’t be supporting. At least a young mother and her children will work and contribute to society in the future, unlike some people.
It was $2100 per year. Given that I subtracted it from the yearly rate, y’know.
Try reading it again. $14000 per year. So around $1000 per month (well, $1100, but I was allowing $600 savings and $500 everything else anyway).
So what’s the acceptable risk, then? Suppose someone prepares for 75% of likely situations? 90%? What about unlikely ones? In this country, if some misfortune or calamity hits 0.1% of households, that’s still 130,000 families.
It’s not the fact that you’re “responsible”, it’s the fact that you’re obsessed with the idea that anyone who is not perfectly planning for every possible disaster is “selfish”. You appear to be operating under the assumption that all catastrophes are surviviable and all contingencies are able to be planned for to a pathological degree. I imagine you buying a case of beer and thinking “Oh fuck, what if my husband is out of work for ten years and sixty-FIVE days, instead of sixty-FOUR. This money could keep us from being selfish deadbeats for that extra day!”
And I’ve yet to hear someone make an actual argument that a libertarian who takes public assistance is being hypocritical. It’s always stated as a given (as you have here) and heartily agreed with by the liberal douche echo chamber.
Certainly a person who rails about how public assistance sucks because IT ONLY HELPS ALL THOSE FILTHY FREELOADERS!!! EXCEPT ME… CAUSE IT’S JUST TOTALLY JUSTIFIED IN MY CASE is a hypocrite, right?
I’ve actually given serious thought to whether or not I should use services which I oppose.
I’ve known libertarians who collected public assistance of various types To a one, they all offered the explanation that since they had to live under the system and had paid into the system, they would be foolish not to collect the food stamps/welfare/social security. What was required, you see, was the abolition of the system, not for individual libertarians to take principled_if symbolic_stands.
And the record remains unbroken. If you want to make an argument that it is hypocritical to both (i) oppose broad government social programs and (ii) accept help from such a program, then I will show you the error of your ways.
Huh? Seems to me you said such a person was a hypocrite. If you don’t believe that, and just think that such a person is bad or yucky or gross in some generalized sense, then OK, you don’t need to justify your emotional responses to me. But if you think they are a hypocrite (a position I have often seen on these boards, including in your post above), then I’m inviting you to actually make an argument to that effect.
What I said was that I’ve yet to see a libertarian type who rails against the the parasites who use public services refuse to become one themselves, and when they do, it doesn’t even register with them.
So I’m not saying someone who says “I don’t think medicaid should exist” and then uses medicaid is necesarily a hypocrite. But someone saying “the only people who use medicaid are parasite scum” and then becomes on themselves and is completely oblivious to it because - oh, well it doesn’t count when we’re talking about ME are hypocrites.
What I find is that someone will say “I don’t think Medicaid should exist” and the part about “people who use medicaid are parasitic scum” is shoved into their mouth (i.e., they don’t say it, but other people think they do). But YMMV. I’ve certainly never said a single word about parasitic scum (I reserve my vitriol for liberal douches, mainly), but I’m sure some people put me in the category of people you are talking about.
Are you trying to use that second quote as evidence that I contradicted myself? Because it’s consistent with what I said. The important part here, essentially, is that you have to be a dick who would hate anyone on some sort of public assistance and then still use it. Curlcoat is undoubtedly that style of dick, right? Or you - if you went on welfare or something, I’d consider it hypocritical.
The key here is that you’re making a judgement about anyone who’d use those services, except when it’s you yourself that are using those services, then you’re oblivious that either a) you’re a filthy parasite scum or b) not everyone using those programs is filthy parasite scum. For anyone to continue to rail on about the filthy parasites while using the service is even worse.
For clarity Rand Rover edited post #177 which I responded to in #178. Now my asking about the second quote doesn’t make sense because that second quote was removed (and what is now the second quote was the third quote when I posted). It was edited while I was writing the response so I didn’t see it.
I’d be using the general you in that sense, yes. I don’t want to go digging around all day in which you explicitly call people who use social programs freeloading scum and such. I’d be surprised if you didn’t generally feel that way and I’m misremembering.
