Two of my husband’s coworkers have complained bitterly about the same situation: They work hard themselves, but have (they say) relatives who live pretty well off welfare programs. One of the coworkers is a white man in his upper 40s who lives in Georgia; the other is an African-American man in his 20s who lives in the Milwaukee area.
Somehow I was under the impression that most welfare programs were discontinued or at least greatly reduced years ago. I know that SNAP (food stamps) and Section 8 (housing subsidies) are available, but can a family live off SNAP and Section 8 by themselves?
What programs if any are there that would legitimately allow able-bodied adults to live a decent life without working? (I say “legitimately” because I want to disregard the fraudulent use of Social Security Disability by able-bodied adults.)
I suspect there may be some programs that help families on a short-term basis, but the two coworkers claim that these family members have been living like this for years.
More likely you are looking at some kind of SSI disability (legit or not). Many people on those programs also qualify for other things like SNAP or Section 8. With some free groceries and dirt cheap housing you will never be rich but you will get by. I have a couple acquaintances who have played this game semi successfully.
Some of these people also claim to be on such things while partaking in a variety of illegal revenue streams. Cops could care less about welfare fraud and reporting it could easily end with a “hmph, not on our program, must be a mistake”
I’ve never though the US was a country with a generous welfare system.
Is it possible that the two men in question have income from criminal or tax-dodging sources, and use “welfare” as a way of explaining to busybodies where they get their money?
If there is a myth about people living well off welfare, someone is going to take advantage of it.
I hadn’t thought about them living off illegal income, but it’s definitely a possibility.
Anyone got a cite about how much a family might get in various social welfare payments other than SS Disability? My husband’s coworkers are using this “I got family members who don’t work and live better than me on government money” business as a rationale for doing things like getting rid of the ACA and cutting way back on Medicaid. I think husband would like a way to refute their claims.
(Well, OK, I think he pretty much believes them and more or less thinks we as a country could save a boatload of money by getting rid of social welfare programs. I’d like to show him that they are wrong about there being a bunch of deadbeats gaming the system – if indeed they are wrong, that is.)
There have been, and still are, pilot programs where people earn a basic income just for breathing (discussion of whether or not this is a good idea should go in the thread I started in Great Debates concerning various forms of “socialism”).
Last I heard, there was a small-scale US pilot in Oakland, California. So it is possible even in the US, but apparently the people you mention in the OP would not qualify, unless they lived in Oakland recently, or a similar basic income system currently exists in their state/county/city of residence.
Wait, is this 100% remote work? How does he have two coworkers who work on opposite sides of the country? I’m not sure that I’d use that term, or even cow-orker, on people I barely see.
Anecdotal, but I know six people on social security disability, and in each case it is obviously fraudulent.
A couple years ago a man and his wife bought the house that it closest to us. He is a pig farmer, has dozens of pigs, and spends all day working the farm. (He also raises chickens, ducks, goats, and who knows what else. It’s like a zoo over there.) Talked with him one day, and you guessed it… he’s on disability. :rolleyes:
Anecdotal, but I know a guy on social security disability who of course doesn’t work, but is an avid softball player who chuckles amiably when asked about his “disability”.
Now, for all I know, he’s silently battling some horrifying condition: putting on a brave front by pretending to be fit, because he doesn’t want pity or condescenscion. But as far as I can tell, uh, no; that’s not the case in his case.
For a household of 3 or 4, that’s about $510 and $650/month, respectively. IIRC the income cap is 1.3 x the federal poverty line, which also varies by household size.
Yes look at Ruken’s list of other programs. What you have is almost like a lottery with a very small proportion of the poor population doing moderately well (being recipients of a half dozen programs) while the great majority of the poor getting very stingy or no benefits.
Housing is a big factor here. Perhaps 1/4 of the relevant poor get housing assistance; the other 3/4 getting nothing at all–and housing is a very big chunk of expenses for the lower 1/4 of the population.
Conservatives are very good at adding in health program costs to produce misleading numbers. So if say Medicaid averages $10,000/year in cost they add this number in as if it were the same as cash (while failing to note that the middle class who the comparisons are being made to get health insurance as a fringe benefit and that a huge proportion of Medicaid costs are nursing home costs for the formerly middle class elderly).
It’s always easy to look over your neighbor’s fence and declare the grass is greener over there.
Define “decent”.
After the Great Recession slapped me upside the head my spouse and I lived very meager lives for several years. You are correct, welfare programs are greatly reduced from the past (the key year was 1996, if you’re interested, under the Clinton administration).
Section 8 is available IF you can get it - many places the waiting lists are 10 years, or there is even a waiting list for the the waiting list. If you do get it then you have to find a landlord willing to accept it - not all of them do (mine doesn’t, for example).
SNAP covers ONLY food and nothing else - not soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, or other such household goods. IF you know how to cook and you’re savvy about how you shop you can eat a healthy diet on the current funding levels (Trump has proposed cutting it by 30%, though).
There is also WIC, which is open to pregnant/nursing women and children. It, too, only covers food, and only very specific foods.
That leaves TANF - the only cash benefit still available, and that open only to families with small children for a limited time.
Can you live on *just *Section 8/SNAP/WIC/TANF? Yes, but I wouldn’t call it living “well”, even if it’s arguably “decent” from the standpoint of fulfilling truly essential needs. It’s marginal, though - you need to supplement it with things like meals at soup kitchens, food pantries, assistance with paying utilities, charities that provide clothing, and some small source of cash such as picking up and turning in aluminum cans, doing the occasional odd job, dumpster diving and the like (or some less savory practices).
TANF is limited to 5 years per eligible child so yes, that’s limited. Food stamps are (largely - don’t want to bog down in minutiae) limited to three months for the able-bodied unless you either find work, can prove you’re seriously looking for work, or an an enrolled student in an accredited school of some sort.
The problem with living “for years” on the patchwork of assistance is that there is no provision for things like clothing or shoes, repairing stuff that breaks, and so forth. The benefit(s) are just for housing and food. People who do live for years in such situations are invariably helped via things like the local church, sympathetic friends and relatives, doing odd jobs, or, yes, engaging in either grey or black market activities.
The thing is, from the outside someone working 40 hours a week may not see the struggles. There is a definite pressure to keep up appearances and not discuss financial difficulties or other problems. If doing this really was so wonderful and attractive more middle-class people would be quitting their jobs to live the lifestyle.
During those lean years I didn’t look like a stereotypical “welfare queen”. I am an educated white woman who was assumed to be middle-class throughout all that. I worked my ass off piecing together bits of work, selling (legal) scrap, selling off some of my possessions, and hustling MUCH harder than I ever did for 40 hours of conventional employment. It was awful. From outside, though, I’m sure I appeared to be living “well” because we had a spacious apartment, two working vehicles, and ate well (in no small part because of a large vegetable garden I had for years). I’m sure some people thought I was taking “advantage” of the taxpayers (never mind I was still paying taxes all those years, including the SEF where applicable) or cheating somehow but I wasn’t.
Generally, you can’t live well just on social programs. But the difference is not as great as one might think from reading sob stories written by advocates.
You left out TANF (income subsidies), Medicaid for medical costs, and a whole host of minor programs, e.g. college tuition subsidies, heating/cooling subsidies, free cell phones, child credits in the tax code, and others. The biggest expense which is not directly covered by some sort of subsidy program is clothing, but TANF covers a lot of that. Autos and related expenses can be tougher.
If someone is living really well on the social program lifestyle, there’s generally some sort of fraud or crime involved. Most commonly making a bit of income on the side and not reporting it. (A little goes a long way here, since the major expense are all covered as above, and a few hundred extra here and there can bring you into that next level lifestyle-wise.) Or straight-out crime, e.g. stealing things here and there (shoplifting, break-ins etc.). Also, it’s extremely common for people to report other people’s dependents as their own on their tax forms for purposes of EIC and child subsidies.
On the whole, people on “welfare” live a lower standard of living than your typical middle-class suburban family. But not all that much. The biggest difference is probably in housing - even if the HUD subsidies are high enough, many renters of better class housing won’t accept renters on HUD (this has been discussed on this MB in the past).
I know a guy who collects SSI disability money who probably shouldn’t be getting it. He also works a bartending gig three nights a week that is entirely off-the-books (no salary, just tips.). He also bartends private functions, like weddings. He is doing pretty well. It is kind of sad; he’s thirty years old and his situation likely will one day catch up with him.
Back when we got married and moved into our house, there was another young couple that I was very envious of. There we were, counting every penny, with only one bedroom, the kitchen and part of the living room set up, an ice box because we still hadn’t been able to purchase a fridge, and these people were going out to eat every single day.
Then one day the wife came to my house and asked, did I have a thermometer? The kind for people. She thought her husband had a bad fever, but she didn’t have a thermometer… I came over, thinking I may be able to help with something else.
And they didn’t have bedclothes. The only furniture in the house was the bed, a table and two chairs. There was no phone, she used mine to call for the doctor while I brought down some bedclothes. The kitchen only contained the built-in furniture it came with. And there were no bedclothes.
We use “who knows if they have bedclothes” as shorthand for that story, when someone envies someone else’s spending.
There’s also likely significant observer bias going on. How do they know how their relatives make money? Money’s one of those subjects that people can be reluctant to talk about.
I have a sister who is a single mom with three kids. I know she has a small business, but I don’t know how much money she makes off of it. Could she be on some form of government assistance? Maybe, maybe not - I have no way of knowing and if I asked she’d probably tell me it was none of my business.
She’d be right too.
People often assume they know more about others’ lives than they actually do. Imagine one of the co-workers knew their relative collected some health benefit from the government 5 years ago - do they know that the relative is still collecting that health benefit? Probably not. Would that stop them from talking about it? Also probably not. People can be blind to their own biases.
I got SNAP in the early ohs. It was barely enough to eat on, if you buy the absolute cheapest crap you can find, like store-brand or generic macaroni and cheese instead of Kraft. Most people on SNAP find that it only pays for about half of their groceries. The S stands for Supplemental. And you have to prove that you have a job or you are looking for a job. And even then, there’s a maximum of something like 24 months.
I personally knew someone who lived in Section 8 housing on disability and she had no job at all. Her disability was due to mental disease. She’d been committed in a mental hospital for years, had brain shock treatments, and occasionally suffered from hallucinations but she had it under control. Her disability check paid the rent and clothes and her groceries plus she had a couple hundred for household items and once in a while going out to see a movie or something. I would not call her rich by any means. Maybe you could say she was “doing well”. She lived in a crappy apartment and had no car. She did have a pet rabbit and lots of books on her bookshelf. Over all, it was cheaper than paying to keep her hospitalized for the rest of her life.
I also knew someone who was on 60% disability from the military. He worked a part-time job, which was not easy for him because of back pain and leg pain. He often talked about being in terrible pain while at work (12-18 hours per week) because he couldn’t take his pain meds while working. He was in and out of hospitals four or five times a year. He got free rent from a local charity, made $400 working part time, and got a check for $350 from the VA. That paid for food and medication and cigarettes and bicycle repairs. He didn’t have a car. He was constantly broke and borrowing $20 here or $20 there to buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. But he always paid me back after his disability check came in. There’s no way I could possibly describe this person as “doing well”.
I strongly suspect that there’s a combination of things going on with the OP. First, the people in question may have a whole other side to the story that got left out when it was told. Second, they may have illegal income, such as working off the books and getting paid under the table and not reporting it on their SNAP application. Third, the person telling the story may have exaggerated and embellished it to fit more closely with their world view.
These are generally the biggest parts of such stories. But there’s another aspect as well.
There are some people who don’t come from backgrounds where social-program dependence is the common lifestyle, and don’t live in such society when they’re on these programs. But there are others who do. And the two groups will tend to differ in this regard.
Because frequently there’s the rules and the way things are done. The people who temporarily find themselves on these programs do things by the book, while those for whom it’s a lifestyle tend to try to game the system. And every system can be gamed, including these. If you’ve seen many other people doing these things, then you’re much more aware of how to work around the rules and make sure you qualify for as much as possible or can get various requirements waived and so on. Not to mention that you’re more aware of the vast breadth of different programs available than the guy whose background does not involve familiarity with the welfare system.
So you have a lot of the latter type of guy saying “hey, I was on these programs and they have limited benefits and strict rules etc. etc.” not realizing that there are other people who manage to work around the system, in some cases illegally but in some cases legally.
But again, not to discount the factors you mention, which are frequently a big part of such stories (especially those involving “welfare queens” living princely lifestyles while on these programs).
If you want to limit the parameters to “legitimate” welfare, then you are ignoring and eliminating the exact abuses that people complain about. As others have mentioned, I know of families who abuse the SS disability program.
And then you have the “single” mothers, who get subsidized housing and food stamps. Often, the boyfriend and/or baby daddy is in the picture, often even living in the same apartment (unofficially). But since they are not married and he doesn’t officially live in the same dwelling, his income does not get counted when it comes to welfare calculations.
And then add in the underground economy, where people work off the books for cash payments. Or construction workers who get laid off in the winter and collect unemployment, and then work for cash for contractors.
Yes, there are people who live like this for many years. Are they “living well”? Probably not, but the ones I’ve seen are not living hand-to-mouth. And it’s the lying and system manipulation that angers people who are living by the rules.
E.g. I once spoke to a guy working as an auto mechanic who told me he was injured and milked his worker’s comp for as long as possible. Then the insurance company sent out a spy who caught him hoisting up an engine, and that was the end of that …
Separately, my wife had an uncle who was officially unable to work and receiving disability payments. He was pretty open about his need to work off the books and avoid getting caught doing any work.
