It’s especially impressive, coming from a fat orange shitgibbon who never earned a goddamn thing for himself.
This is the original conservative idea about ‘welfare’, conservatives in the mold of Milton Friedman who coined ‘negative income tax’.
Many things nowadays are more about the culture war for its own sake than either the Democrats nor GOP really sticking to what used to be known as ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ positions. In this case an at least nominally GOP president. (Supposedly) economizing on benefits by a method like this is populist not conservative. Conservatism is supposed to be based on thinking things through in terms of humanity as it exists not as one would like it to be. So, you’d first think through whether this really would be more efficient (transport, weight, so perhaps having to set up distributional channel duplicating private sector’s; food types that might further increase govt-funded medical costs, etc). You wouldn’t do it at a greater cost in order to make aid recipients less well off. Although you wouldn’t not do it just because, as a side effect, it makes aid recipients feel less than proud. The culture divide has reached the point of some left-populist emotionalism seemingly (to me) saying people should be outright proud to be dependent on the govt. And lots of unreasonable stuff now is defended by the more reasonable left/right by ‘well the seeds of this were sown by the other side’s excesses’.
Back to EITC/negative income tax (which is a little different than UBI which would be unconditional, well off people would get it too in pure form*). It’s based on the idea, ‘do what you want with it’ and that’s better if it’s more efficient. But the efficiency would be from reducing bureaucracy administering other more complicated subsidy schemes. That’s never happened. The political fact is a lot of people do care the details about what aid recipients do with aid, not limited to rightist populists (a significant element of the Democratic base is govt workers, who only naturally don’t prioritize finding ways to do things with fewer govt workers).
*and completely support people so completely unaffordable, one of the most ridiculous ideas IMO to be taken at all seriously. Making the welfare state more about direct means tested transfer payments, and cutting more complicated and duplicative poverty programs accordingly, might be politically unlikely but is sounder fundamentally IMO.
I’d like to address this little tidbit. You’re wrong.
The issue is that government workers are not incented to find ways to do more with fewer government workers. If they would take a government unit and say, “Look here’s the deal, you guys figure out how to cut staff and keep the quality and we’ll give you half of the saved direct salary costs as raises, we keep the other half as cost savings/capital improvement funds”, those folks would quickly figure out how to shed the dead weight. They don’t like working with lazy idiots any more than you like paying lazy idiots.
However, I have yet to see this plan be offered by either party. Instead, the Dems think everything’s hunky dory (or pass ‘across the board’ raises that reward the lazy idiots equally with the hard workers), while the Pubs cut a bunch of staff with no incentive to the remaining workers (some of whom leave to go where they’re better appreciated), then scream that government is broken when the shit inevitably hits the fan.
The rules of grammar and punctuation are not trivial or petty nonsense in a medium (like a message board) where all we have to judge each other on are our words.
Fuck your paternalistic classist bullshit. We both know that in no way, shape, or form could it be cheaper to ship individual servings of foods to millions of people than to send them plastic cards and piggybacking on the whole grocery industry who are already shipping all the food required already. Your point there about “some that do not efficiently use their assistance” clearly shows that you think you know better. Fuck that idea, and fuck that idea hard. I firmly believe the actual people receiving that assistance are in the best place to decide what they use that money for. So you can take your “I know what’s better for poor people than actual poor people” attitude and shove it right up your ass.
Also, to be clear, if I thought everyone with a different opinion than mine was a shit person that would be damn near the entire board. Lots of people have different opinions, it’s what makes the world interesting. Your opinions just suck. So please take your persecution complex and also shove it firmly up your ass. You might need to wiggle your hips to fit it up there with your “I know what’s better for poor people than actual poor people” attitude, but I have confidence in your eventual success.
Well said.
And can I throw in a potentially controversial opinion? WTF is with food stamps in the first place? Isn’t being poor hard enough that you also have to get humiliated at the til, judged for every item in your basket? It’s so bloody Victorian, why don’t you just throw everyone in a workhouse and serve them gruel.
Pah, Land of the Free, my arse.
I recognize your opinion as well, and respect and value your right to disagree with mine.
That was a really well thought out and lucid perspective on this. I appreciate you presenting that and without insult. It is a perspective that I am definitely considering now. The example above about the overhead and administration, and your elaboration on it, makes a lot of sense. I suppose others were trying to explain it but without a comparison point (as you stated with the Great Depression) which left me unconvinced otherwise. I have thought about the costs before, and earlier I was trying to state that on the surface the plan may be good, but wasn’t presented with a proper counterexample and comparison point as you have presented, and I wasn’t aware of their being an actual estimate on the program, so I have been informed. I appreciate the input on the matter as well as your polite demeanor and candidness on it as well.
I do want to add though, as much as some may not believe it, my family has used assistance in the past and I do not look down upon the poor. I think my view on it may be skewed due to the fact that I knew my family used it responsibly and I have witnessed a lot of those who abused it (continued using assistance when it was not needed/masking income/money, lying about dependents/dependency situations etc.) and was comparing it to that. I believe my mental picture of some of those types who did such things have skewed my opinion, but I also know that of course, not all of those struggling are the same.
I know it’s a bad idea to look for respectful discourse like this/yours in The Pit (as to be expected) but it is refreshing to see. Thank you.
It might very well be. Because I’m pretty sure their intent is to take away half of the monthly grocery subsidy and replace it with a quart of milk, a box of cereal, a bag of beans, a bag of rice, a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.
Because they keep comparing this box to a Blue Apron box. Which contains ONE MEAL’S worth of food. If they are going to box up two weeks worth of groceries that would be a freaking BIG box. So unwieldy that it would negate the whole idea.
That is your opinion. As you said, it is what makes the world interesting. I may not like your opinion on me, but it is definitely your right to have it, even if it sucks.
[/heateddebate]
They also keep comparing it to blue apron, which is not “shelf stable, non-perishables”, but actually contains meats and produce.
Not that they aren’t bullshitting all around about it anyway, but they need to make up their mind as to whether it is something “like Blue Apron”, which is their claim, or something utterly unlike anything that a respectable company would ask people to pay money for.
And it’s quite stunning that people didn’t/and some still don’t consider the cost of administration and shipping. That was my very first thought. They see the back of the napkin number of 129 billion saved (that’s over 10 years) and do zero critical thinking about it. What we need to do is pour money into education.
What people don’t seem to realise is the boon this will be to drug dealers. Let’s say that a monthly box of food would cost $200 at your local supermarket. Pay the drug user (because they’re all drug users, amiright? :rolleyes: ) $40 for his or her box of food, which he or she uses to buy alcohol and crack. Consume the food yourself for a $160/month saving. If you don’t like beans and pasta and rice and such, you can donate the supplies to a food bank and claim a $2,400/year charitable contribution. The druggie gets cash for alcohol and drugs. The drug dealer gets money for his product. The liquor store owner gets paid. You get cheap food and/or a tax deduction. And the druggie still gets to eat because he or she just goes to the food bank where you donated the food. Please, wont somebody think of the independent pharmaceutical marketing professionals?
From here:
For a family of four, the maximum SNAP amount is $649. The Trump proposal would take away half of those funds ($324) and send the family a box of food once a month with the equivalent of $324 worth of canned/boxed food instead.
How much would a box containing $324 worth of canned food, milk, juice, peanut butter, etc weigh?? Well over 100 pounds, I’m estimating. How will they be shipping millions of these boxes that are so heavy that most people can’t even lift them?
You’re overanalyzing it. They brought up the Blue Apron analogy for one reason, and one reason only – the name evokes an image of fancy expensive service for people who can’t be bothered to handle things their own selves. It’s a “welfare queen” dogwhistle.
The diabolical cleverness of it is that the proposal doesn’t need to actually go anywhere (it won’t) to get the meme into circulation.
We should have an omnibus thread of omnibus threads to make it easy for people to find them.
I encouraged them to think beyond the omnibus and they failed me.
Yep. I did a rough calculation on that the other night. 16 million people x 50lbs. A typical semi truck carries 40,000 lbs.
That would be 20,000 semi truck loads. A month.
Oh yeah, that will save money.
And that’s only at 50lbs a month.
People like trump don’t understand that not everyone can wish for something and it will magically appear on their doorstep.
I posted elsewhere that perhaps this was just ‘round table spitballin, thinking out of the box’ I’m all for that. But that this ridiculous idea ever stood up for 5 minutes is quite an insight into just how stupid this administration is.
Somebody give this man a cigar, this is such a great example of a political dogwhistle that I am bookmarking it for future reference. 100% nailed it.
Oh no, the shipping comes out of the $324. The poor make that up in their savings of shoe leather.
Speaking of “dog whistles”,
What they want us to think the poor will get Blue Apron . . . what they’re actually thinking the poor should get Blue Buffalo.
CMC fnord!
Please…“Ken-L Ration” is about as far as the GOP is willing to pay for.