Every so often, you will read of a small-time grocer busted for laundering food stamps.
Usually, the discount is seventy cents on the dollar and the amount per bust is in the millions.
What this means is that there is a consistent, stable market for excess food stamps. Predictable.
And huge numbers of people who would be happy to swap a hundred dollars of food for seventy dollars of something else.
Which is to say, doing something they wouldn't be doing if they were actually short of food.
And, yet, each one of these, each added to the number of food stamp recipients, is evidence of our compassion as a nation.

Yes, EVERYONE on government assistance is living the good life. Grow the fuck up. I can tell you ten stories about the other side of the coin for every bullshit lobster and caviar on food stamps story.
FACTS: The government 'poverty level' is insane. A family of three with a monthly income over $2000 is ineligble for cash assistance, food stamps (SNAP), and Medicaid/Medicare. Let me see you folks live on $2000 month, with a family of three.
Otherwise, sit down and STFU. The corporations and the rich get A LOT more welfare from Uncle Sugar.

It isn't about who gets more DrCos. It is that neither should be getting.

> Let me see you folks live
> on $2000 month, with a
> family of three.

This tone of voice has always struck me as repellent. I remember a scene in the documentary "Hoop Dreams" where one of the two boys' mothers when on a rant like that for about five minutes. I have the bills for this and the expenses for that, and do you know what the cost of X is nowadays? How am I supposed to make things work with only Z-many dollars from the government?

Well, drcos & basketball Mom, you AREN'T. You AREN'T supposed to make things work purely on the kindness of others. Your life is going to have challenges and unpleasantness just like everyone else's life. Falling into the clutches of social care doesn't mean some satisfactory answer to your problems is society's larger goal.

For society's best outcome and for your own, you're going to be spending every hour you live under government benefits finding a way to do better for yourself, just like people who don't receive benefits. That doesn't mean something's going wrong.


Later in the film we see the woman completing a degree of some kind to advance her employment at a hospital.

Yeah... Poverty *really* sucks. So what> The fact that others (Wall Street) might be working the systems better than you do in no way ennobles your loathsome whining.

If you and your family of however many want to live better than you can while receiving gifts of two thousand dollars every month, then you should go get more money. You should go to work for someone or improve some resources or circumstances such that they're grateful to pay you. This is called wealth creation.

"The chief virtue of a capitalist mode of production is its ability to create wealth. Wealth is created when assets are moved from lower to higher valued uses." -- Luke Froeb

To follow up on what Crid said, the welfare-cheating drug addict and the politically connected CEO lobbying for government subsidies are both of the entitlement class. The entitlement class is getting larger (and their demands are growing), and the productive class is getting smaller. As Reynolds likes to say, this will not end well. I put myself through college on an income of about $400 a month, including paying for tuition and books. I ate a lot of Kraft Mac and Cheese (25 cents a box, the raman noodles of that era), and there were times when I had to park my car and drive everywhere for a week or two because I didn't have any money to buy gas. I solved the related problem by always reserving a bit to buy condoms. (Not that I had many opportunities to use one... being an engineering student is a very effective contraceptive.)

drcos does raise a good point, which is that the way welfare systems are set up dis-motivates one from trying to get off of welfare. If you're a non-working welfare recipient, getting a job that puts you just above the cutoff actually results in a decrease in your take-home pay.

The corporations and the rich get A LOT more welfare from Uncle Sugar. ~ drcos at July 27, 2017 5:35 AM

They also provide A LOT more - jobs with income taxes (corporate and personal), economic output with sales and export taxes, and other economic activity with jobs and taxes.

Or were all those jobs created at Apple, Federal Express, Facebook, and Microsoft created from government largesse?

the way welfare systems are set up dis-motivates one from trying to get off of welfare. If you're a non-working welfare recipient, getting a job that puts you just above the cutoff actually results in a decrease in your take-home pay. ~ Cousin Dave at July 27, 2017 7:25 AM

That has always been aa problem with our welfare system and should be the first thing addressed in any welfare reform.

A single parent who get a job paying what welfare paid now has to find childcare, not a cheap proposition thanks to licensing laws, and will find that the childcare costs eat up most of the new paycheck - thus demotivating that person from getting off welfare.

We need to stagger the cut-off, enabling the newly employed person to meet the expenses the crop up when one begins working, i.e., transportation, childcare, clothing (cleaning and acquiring), etc.

> Let me see you folks live
> on $2000 month, with a
> family of three.

The first thing you might want to do is get the fuck out of New York or San Francisco. (Or any other high cost blue area)

I know a number of families who live quite comfortably on less than 2000 dollars a month, but they do it in the heartland.

The food stamp program is rife with abuse and fraud in many states. It needs to go away, and be replaced with actual food.

The numerous opportunities for graft is what keeps the politicians funding it.

Working in a grocery store turned my wife and children into staunch conservatives. Not only do you feel taken advantage of, you are forced to take abuse from utterly shameless freeloaders.

Most people are decent, but there are enough who are not to kill empathy in almost everyone. My sympathy is reserved for those who try to help themselves.

A couple of years ago, Maine put in a requirement for work to get welfare (if able-bodied) and amazingly, the rolls shrank radically. People would rather not have the money than work for it it seems.

Back before college got so expensive, I paid for most of my last 2 years with part-time work. My friend there lived in his van in the remote parking lot and showered at the gym. I've always painted my own house and done my own repairs and yard work and worked 2 jobs. THAT is how you get ahead. Minorities may have it rough, but they also imagine that whites get stuff handed to them and don't see people who work 60hrs/wk or 2 jobs, who never get arrested, who never are unemployed, who don't snort it all up their nose. Getting ahead is hard, for anyone. Being a big screw up certainly doesn't make it easier.

cc: "...who never get arrested..."

Years ago when I worked in health services in a big jail I told an inmate that I'd never been in jail. He did not believe me. He didn't think it was possible to not ever get thrown in jail.

And then there's holier-than-all bookstore clerk who judges those who buy this book.
http://www.themillions.com/2017/07/a-booksellers-elegy.html

If you really are getting $24,000 a year from the government, that's like doing reasonably well on an investment fund of $600k.
The difference is that if the individual with the money in the bank goes out and earns more, he gets to keep it and the investment income, too.
Someobody on welfare who's making $24k a year from the government will realize zero if he gets a $24k job.
It's a disincentive
And then we see the Able Bodied Adults Without Children required to work and...choosing not to. How can they eat with zero assistance? Perhaps they didn't need it but scammed the system. Because being hungry is a powerful incentive that would incentivize them. So we have to presume they're not hungry. So how'd the get benefits in the first place?

"So how'd the get benefits in the first place?"

Have you ever looked at any of these programs? How did they get the benefits? They knew how to fill out the forms. That is it.

The problem with welfare is baked into it's competing interests. The bureaucrats want to expand. More beneficiaries means more employees. More employees means more people under their boss and aside from the pure ego based empire building issue managing more people often results in higher pay. On the flip side is limited funds to pay for it all. Notice efficient use of the funds isn't really part of the system. So virtually all welfare programs end up with incomprehensible forms designed to get rid of beneficiaries as an attempt to control costs, but once you understand how to fill out those forms there is very little effort to kick people off. And there is roughly nill effort to verify people actually needed the funds. In the end many many people who really need the help can't get any because they don't have generations of experience working the system. And many of those who do get help really don't need it. They just have the skills to work the system. And that applies to both welfare queens and crony capitalists in equal measure.

In the end if you really want to help people the government isn't a good solution. And any government program that uses 'merit' or 'deserving' as a criteria is inherently doomed to fail. The government flat cannot tell what those words mean.

"So virtually all welfare programs end up with incomprehensible forms designed to get rid of beneficiaries as an attempt to control costs, but once you understand how to fill out those forms there is very little effort to kick people off. "

It's worse than that. The complexity is a tool that the mandarins can use to pick and choose who gets the benefits. Are you an inner-city woman with six kids by six different baby-daddies, and you've never worked a day in your life? Here, sign this form that I filled out for you, and we'll start sending you checks. At election time, remember which political party got you this sweet deal. Are you an inner-city woman entrepreneur who has fallen on hard times because Antifa firebombed your store? I'll bet you vote for the opposition party, don't you? Take a number and sit over there. We'll get to you in a week or two. Maybe. No promises. If you don't like it, move to the suburbs.

(Guess what happens next...)

I agree Cousin Dave. But even when they don't put their thumbs on the scales the forms end up in gibberish land.

We have only one welfare program that doesn't suffer from this, Social Security. And that is because eligibility is so simple to determine. Are you over 62, have you paid in, then you qualify. Otherwise you don't. Simple. No real way to game the system. You can't artificially age yourself. You can't really claim you paid in when you haven't. They have records. There is really very little an individual can do change things. Consequently SS has some of the fewest perverse incentives of any government welfare program. Everything else is a crapshoot. We have companies owned on paper by black women who don't even know where the headquarters are. But they qualify for government benefits. We have people refusing to work because they would lose benefits. We have people spending their money now so they can have lower assets and qualify for government help (my grandmother was one).

Pretty much any sort of government based welfare doesn't really work.

Never been a grocery clerk. But I'm familiar with one or two and I presume those discussing this issue on the 'net do the same thing; figuratively look over shoulder and....say the same kind of things Vance described.
In Michigan, beer and soda bottles and cans have a dime deposit to promote returning them instead of lining the roadside.
Some folks have been seen buying Pepsi or Coke by the case on the government, taking it into the parking lot and emptying the bottles, and returning the empties for cash. Means they're doing so well they didn't even feel like drinking the stuff; presumably have lots of it at home.
This would be swapping a half a buck's worth of food for a dime in cash. Means they're not hungry. But, dumping it instead of drinking it means they're trying to avoid becoming morbidly obese while on food stamps. Good for them.

Well the $2000/month figure isn't what's coming from the government, it's the income figure at which they cut off benefits like Medicaid.
So for folks who might need expensive medication that if they don't have Medicaid/assistance is unaffordable (without choices like not eating), what's the answer?

These folks are not looking for lobster or caviar, but something better than ramen. And most of them are working to the extent where they don't really have the opportunity or funds to "better" themselves. Education costs. Kids have to be babysat. Most of these low end jobs don't really have fixed hours either to schedule classes around.

So how do you fix that? Being smug and looking down isn't helping.

what's the answer?

Dont have kids you cant afford

Dont buy candy and energy drinks at a gas station

Dont use food stamps at restaurants

People dont have a problem helping people who need it, they may not ENJOY it, nut they dont have a problem with it

What they have a problem with is people who obviously dont NEED it gaming the system

I was at a gas station, I was working as a driver, its 120 degrees in the summer round here, I was hot and sweaty and needed to go to the bathroom.

I was buying a drink and the lady in front of me bought two energy drinks, some candy, a couple of SlimJims, and a Disney brand strawberry milk for her kid.

Paid the $20 it cost with food stamps and then they wnet out and got in a Lexus.

Now, maybe the car was her boyfriends, or loaned to her for the day.

But rather than buying a couple hours worth of snacks at inflated gas station prices she could have bought nearly 40 lbs of chicken at a half dozen local grocery stores with that same $20

THAT is what pisses people off

"So how do you fix that?"

But the current system hasn't fixed that either. In fact it can't.

Let me give you real life examples. Years ago my wife had a hard time finding work. Ended up making less than minimum wage and barely surviving on a starvation diet. She applied a couple of times for welfare. Always got denied. Never got told why she was denied. Just a no welfare for you letter in the mail. Obviously she made some mistake on some obscure form somewhere. When we were dating I tried to help her fill out the forms but no difference. Today none of that is a concern. I make good money and we don't need the support. But I've met dozens of people like her who couldn't get the help when they needed it. And I've met dozens who got all kinds of support they really didn't need. I knew a guy who made over $90k/year and still got free diapers for his kids from the county.

As I said above, government welfare doesn't work. It isn't that a few small changes and everything will suddenly fall into place. By it's inherent nature for the majority of people it can't work.

That pisses me off as well. But there are people who need the assistance who don't spend it on junk (and don't drive a Lexus). Who DO buy actual food for their families.

The issue for me DrCos is the efficiency of the system. Government run aid programs are terribly inefficient. You might actually do more good throwing the money in a trashcan. People who attend federal or state based job programs are actually less likely to get a job than the exact same worker who didn't attend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or6CwOyx30I

The skit is a bit over the top but a fair amount of truth as well.

There are two main issues with bureaucratic welfare:
1. Not enough information. Quite frankly the government doesn't know who actually needs assistance. And after decades of trying it is clear that they will never know.
2. Perverse incentives. In addition to the inherent perverse incentives for bureaucrats to get people permanently on welfare pretty much any attempt to separate out the deserving and the un-deserving causes perverse incentives as well.

These are pretty much intractable problems. Which is why I've come to the view we shouldn't even try to separate the deserving from the undeserving. There is little point in trying to do impossible things. Instead welfare should be setup on a defined contribution stance and anyone who wants to sign up can. More people sign up everyone gets less. Eventually there is so little help to go around that it isn't worth signing up and the pendulum swings the other way. There are fewer people and everyone gets more. This is a low overhead and stable way to offer help. But it does make it harder for politicians to buy votes. So it will probably never happen.

As for welfare doing some good, irrelevant. The Nazis did some good. It doesn't matter. The question is how much good vs. how much bad. And it is clear that current systems still do quite a lot of bad.

"I was buying a drink and the lady in front of me bought two energy drinks, some candy, a couple of SlimJims, and a Disney brand strawberry milk for her kid.

Paid the $20 it cost with food stamps and then they wnet out and got in a Lexus"

I keep hearing these outrageous tales of witnessing people buying junk with food stamps.

Um, you do realize that paper food stamps were discontinued years ago, don't you? It's all on cards these days. How would you possibly know how other people paid for their food?

BTW, restaurants have never accepted food stamps.