Lately, I’ve been noticing a lot more use of the so-called EBT card, probably because I’d never heard much of it until a couple months ago. I knew there was a food card, but I didn’t know the specifics. There was the young man in the gas station trying to withdraw cash with one, then someone who stopped by and tried to sell me premium steak, and when I said I couldn’t afford to pay so much for meat he asked whether I had an “EBT” (that’s the first time I heard the term). Just the other day, I picked up a pizza at a local pizza place, and noticing how empty it was remarked on the slow business. The manager said “it’s because they’ve all run down their EBT money by this time of the month.”
Maybe I’m naïve, but it’s been an eye-opener to see how widespread the use of supplemental food assistance is. I must be a real chump, because when I was dead broke after divorce I made heavy use of my crockpot and subsisted on beans and rice for the most part, losing over 35 pounds in the process (sadly, I’ve gained most of it back). And here I could have been eating roast beef and artisan bread pretty much every day…
What’s sad about this program is that the need for welfare at the level it’s currently used is largely the state’s fault. In order to prop up our “equal” utopia we’ve structured society so that working people are having a harder time getting by on a full-time paycheck even as their jobs disappear. Add the destruction of the family and costs are even higher. Working class people and below are now at the point where they really do need state support to live an adequate modern lifestyle, which includes a car, medical and dental, a place to stay and food on top of the rest. It didn’t have to be this way, but here we are.
Any attempt to cut social costs is going to involve one of two things, or both:
1. We are going to have to drop the pretense of equality
2. We are going to have to cut people’s support across the board
The implications of 1 are that people are going to have to settle for what may not be their ideal lifestyle. Enforcing an equivalence between a married mother and a single mother is very costly, and involves state costs for the father(s), mother, children, lawyers, social workers and jails. The EBT, section 8 and other programs are essentially a subsidy to single motherhood and illegitimacy. Family law is a subsidy to courts, jails, child support agencies, etc. The taxpayer foots the bill in all cases.
As an example, say a woman gets pregnant and has a kid with some babydaddy, their relationship falls apart or never was much to begin with, and the process begins. First, the court puts a child support order on the father. Often, he can’t pay, or it isn’t much. On top of the CS, his living expenses go up, and he is now unable to pay for necessities. The father, although he won’t get nearly as much as the mother, will have to apply for some support in the form of medicaid and/or SNAP to make it possible to pay his CS. Or he’ll potentially be jailed, costing the taxpayers another $30,000 per year or so.
The mother will not be making much with a baby or two, so she’ll get WIC, EBT cash benefits, section 8 and so on. It all adds up to a lot of money, and in the meanwhile you’ve got to pay the social workers, courts and so on.
However, say the mother and father stay together. They may need some support from time to time – say WIC when the children are infants – but in aggregate it will be far, far less than if they hadn’t stayed together. And in fact they will be eligible for less if they do stay together. On a very simple level, it makes sense: two-parent families don’t need as much support, so they shouldn’t be eligible for as much. But this obtusely ignores human nature. When you privilege one group of people with subsidies, the others will make efforts to join them.
Even well-to-do young families with income differentials between father and mother are beginning to get on the bandwagon. I know a young man with a good job, a wife, and a baby who refuses to get married legally because it would increase their expenses significantly. His baby’s mother is in fact his wife as we understand the term. She’s a good one, too, raised on a self-sustaining family farm by a traditional Catholic family. But if they get married legally her health insurance costs go through the roof, and they won’t be able to pay the mortgage and other important bills. She works, but doesn’t make much money, so she gets subsidized healthcare because she isn’t ‘married’.
The setup is totally counterproductive, as it’s guaranteed that every dollar spent will only result in increased costs in the future, because the welfare system is structured to encourage people to pursue the most socially costly lifestyles. Not only does it encourage high-cost choices such as single motherhood; it actively penalizes people for making socially responsible choices. This is a disaster in the making.
Reform would be easy practically speaking, but politically it would be very difficult at this point, thanks in large part to feminism and the politics of female sexual liberation.
One thing I’d propose would be structuring welfare so that two-parent households had access to better benefits than singles. Perhaps cash benefits should only be granted when both parents live together with the child, section 8 only to two-parent households (widows exempted of course) and so on. All mothers and children should be at least fed, clothed, doctored and sheltered – we have enough for that these days – but that should be about it if they are single mothers by choice. Even if we gave more to two parent households than we currently do, it would amount to less on a case by case basis than both parents cost when separate today. Actually, it would probably be significantly less than one single mother costs.
On top of that, a two-parent household is better for kids by all measures, which means the kids are less likely to end up in jail or on welfare themselves. The stability of the home would be more conducive to productive work, would decrease promiscuity and its associated costs, and would soon lead to far lower social costs. It would be the right thing to do, so why not do it?
Sometimes I get so cynical I almost believe there’s a concerted effort on the part of higher ups to keep people down by wrecking families, creating dysfunction when it’s unnecessary and so on. But that’s too complicated. The real reason it’s happening is that some people can profit from this, and they have created powerful interest groups, such as our courts, the AMA, feminist groups, bar associations and so on to perpetuate the scam. It’s all about the same old sins: greed (on the top) and lust (at the bottom). People find a way to game the system, consequences be damned, and they just keep at it as long as the getting’s good.
At its root, the welfare system, like so much else that characterizes the US today, is just another enormous racket. Ordinary Americans, as usual, are the victims.
{ 54 comments… read them below or add one }
Career women who are forgoing children don’t seem to make the connection that they will be subsidizing the single-mom-heroes who are pumping out offspring and getting paid to stay at home.
EBT should be stopped right now. Give these parasites minimal rations of flour, oil, and salt-pork and tell them to prepare their own foods rather than spending our tax dollars at the Quik-Mart, which ultimately get funneled overseas to the very people who are loaning our government money to provide for welfare. Insanity.
I would dearly love to see all forms of welfare eliminated. Even WIC. Free cheese. All of it.
You want to see how fast this country can come back swinging? You make it real simple: work or starve. Hunt or starve. Fish or starve. Get off your fat lazy asses, you parasites, or die where you are.
Read Thomas Sowell’s book, The Vision of the Anointed, if you want to see how insane the development of our welfare system was. Ever since WW2, poverty–measured by any objective metric you like–was on the decline. Then, no sooner than Johnson rolled out the welfare program, “poverty” increased!
Imagine that. You offer free money provided you’re poor, and silly shitloads of people become poor.
Dumbest things America ever did:
1. Slavery
2. The 19th Amendment
3. Welfare
Maybe it wasn’t pre-meditated, but there is certainly a feedback loop created when 10s of millions will go hungry if they don’t vote Democrat.
Welmer
As an example, say a woman gets pregnant and has a kid with some babydaddy, their relationship falls apart or never was much to begin with, and the process begins.
No, no, no, no! That’s mysogynist! Look, it’s 2013, learn to write these things properly. Here, I’ll show you how it is done:
Julia decides to have a child…
That’s how we refer to such events, with a gracious 3rd-person reference that casts no blame on anyone, but merely states a calm fact.
Anything else is crimethink…
Do I detect that America is discovering ‘The Benefit Trap’?
Nothing is ever fair. Consider the following (from last Friday):
Married friend: You get a 25% discount on your Council Tax, for being single.
Opus: Au contraire; unlike you I pay a 50 % surcharge for being single.
Married Friend: I pay for myself and my wife and thus I pay twenty five per cent more than you.
Opus: It is not my fault that you pay for your wife, but I am not prepared to marry just to get your notional benefit.
@Opus
If the wife is paying for herself, does the rate go up for him?
If a society rewards vice and punishes virtue, it shall reap a bumper crop of vice and a meager harvest of virtue.
BTW, you missed a big one. The maximum Earned Income Credit for 2012 is:
•$5,891 with three or more qualifying children;
•$5,236 with two qualifying children;
•$3,169 with one qualifying child; and
•$475 with no qualifying children.
Does anyone see a potential “moral hazard” if low-income women are paid almost $6,000 a year to *not* get married?
That’s over $400 a month more to “live in sin” rather than matrimony. Your tax dollars at work, folks.
I’m a middle aged unemployed white male living off “emergency” unemployment benefits and a recently aquired EBT card. I filled out the online application and had a phone interview in a matter of days. I then had to bring in copies of my bills to pick up my card. The social services office had about 15 women working there, mostly hispanic and the “customers” were almost all women, again mostly hispanic, with a few white trash types. They all stared at me as I wandered around, like I was a freak or something. “What’s HE doing here?!”
It’s a really pretty card. For a single guy with no kids they put $200 on it a month which you can use to buy anything if you go to an ATM and withdraw cash. (ATM’s near liquor stores won’t work for this) Yesterday I bought freshly made sushi from the local organic food store. It was delicious! Just a swipe of the card.
I have no pride and I have no shame any longer. America has spoken and the entitlement-welfare state is what she wants. I’m sucking on the TEET of Nanny Gubmint until she runs dry. Now I’d prefer a job, but the ladies down at the unemployment office are little help to us middle-aged white guys that frequent the place. They only manage to make us feel worse than when we went in – condescending, disrespectful and perpetually annoyed at your presence.
I’m sorry to all you guy with kids whose standard of living will be considerably diminished when they reach adulthood because of leeches like me. Again, I’d prefer to work but unfortunately there are no affirmative action quotas for older white males and I’m having to compete with sassy young single moms and women of color who are trending in employment right now.
If it makes you feel any better, my latest donation to The Spearhead was via goverment funds, of which 46 cents on the dollar is now borrowed and goes against the debt which is now over $16, 500, 000,000,000. Life is good. I’m swilling a bloody mary and watching my President’s inauguration. Gotta go Beyonce is on!
Angry harry said it well and best a long time ago on this question :
It is so much more cost effective, cheaper, energy saving, efficient, economically prudent, structurally productive and socially calming to have people of the same kit and kin living together.
For starters …
1.
There wouldn’t be so much heavy reliance by people on an already overstretched and indebted social security and welfare framework, were they to live within family/self support kinship networks.
2.
The costs to the treasury, the environment, the ecology and to human habitat spaces are so much more less and manageable, where people are permitted/encouraged to share and live together naturally.
Funny, I was reading that letter from MoneyWeek about the end of Britain due to exponential growth of the welfare system.
http://www.moneyweek.com/endofbritain
The parallels to Mr. Price’s article are striking. Read with a grain of salt, though, because MoneyWeek is trying to sell you something.
Totally understand if you want to moderate this one down the memory hole, Price.
I think there should be whorehouses for single mothers to work at, to pay their debts to society. Such a system would kill several birds with one stone.
There would be safe and legal access to prostitution, presumably reducing the drugs and violence associated with the way the trade is currently practiced.
It would allow single mothers to learn the value of getting up and getting to work on time, so that they might aspire to a different career.
It would assist traditional families in steering their daughters and nieces and sisters in a different direction, with a very visible and well-known consequence to ignoring the families’ advice.
It would allow single mothers to give back for all the resources they consume, and ideally it could replace child support on some sort of sliding scale of pay for the workers. Perhaps starting at $50 paid per client, less $20 per child more than 1. That way, a single mother with 3 kids could still get $10, and more than that would be inclined to try to hide off the grid the way divorced and separated fathers now have to.
I have my own opinions about whether choice single mothers cause more harm than divorcees, but for this proposal I suppose that they should be treated differently. Divorced women would surrender their children to the father and have to pay half their whorehouse earnings to support the family, however they would get the full $50 regardless of the number of kids.
Perhaps the whorehouses could charge $80 for providing their services, with a modest 20% discount for married men who proved they had a family to support.
Best keyster post ever!
That Beyonce’..she’s got the bootie..
Booooooooooooootiiiiiiiiieeeeee!
Hit that,hit that.
Er,what was the topic?
Here’s the skinny on the wonders of Council Tax, the successor to the erstwhile Poll Tax (that ended the usual way of course, riots, can’t pay? won’t pay! &c) which was set up to end the alleged “unfairness” of the Rates.
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/tax_e/tax_council_tax_ew/council_tax.htm
Deadly dull, unless you’re a student of how a completely rentier society does (or doesn’t) function. And this is the simplified civilians’ translation … the actual statute doesn’t even bear thinking about.
The bit in question can be glimpsed in “Discounts”, I think
“If only one adult lives in a property, they will get a 25 per cent discount on the council tax bill.”
and in “Council Tax Benefit and second adult rebate”
“A person who is liable to pay council tax may be able to claim Council Tax Benefit. The amount of benefit they may get will depend on their income and capital.
If you have someone living with you who is not liable to pay the council tax on your property, you may be able to claim a benefit called a ‘second adult rebate’. “
Theoretically it’s a graded property tax, but has so many exceptions and rebates, it might as well be a second income tax. Which is what some fringe parties are agitating for (ineffectually).
@W.F.
The short answer is No.
Council Tax (on property) is rated by band (dependant on its rateable value). HMG grant single people a twenty five percent discount so I only pay 75% of what my married friend pays. He however works as does his wife, so notionally she pays 50% and he pays 50% – though in practice he pays all of it. If she did not work he would still have to pay 100% of what is due. If neither work, he still has top pay 100% (it’s his property) – although he might then apply for a full (100%) exemption by reason of poverty.
Britain is often portrayed by the press as a benefit scroungers paradise, such that the press alledge that immigrants desire to come to Britain because of our generous welfare – France and Germany are not sufficiently generous, you see, which is why you have hordes of immigrants at Sangatte Refugee Camp in Northern France trying to get in. Consider (and rather picking up on the theme of the last thread) a friendly acquaintance of mine. Was he a virgin? Possibly, though in his spare time he had taken up American Football! He has a white-collar job and being desparate to have a woman went out to Phillipines and met a woman and they fell in love, and married (aaaah). Now he wants her to come here, but HMG say that unless he can demonstrate (which he cannot) that he can support her and her four children (by other men) she (and the children) may not settle in Britain.
DW3: Too late, single mothers are already turning to stripping and sex work to make ends meet in the UK thanks to recent cuts in their monthly dole checks.
http://whatmenthinkofwomen.blogspot.com/2013/01/single-mums-turn-to-brothels-stripping.html
The real problem is that we’ve spent decades building up the welfare State and are now at the point that if we even withdraw just a little bit the effects would be enormous. 50% of the population have no real ability to survive without government assistance and would literally starve to death without it (although given the amount of excess weight most of these have it may take quite a long time to even get close to death).
But what do you do? The government is in a catch 22 type of situation where if they stop the welfare funds people starve to death but if they keep going like they are eventually the government will go broke and be unable to pay and people again starve to death. Either way we are in for some very painful times sometime in the far or near future.
Ending the welfare state abruptly when you have societal problems like the US has would result in an explosion of crime and mayhem. A starving person has nothing to lose.
But I’m sure more than a few of the type who say those things would love nothing more than to gun down “those people”.
Keyster, you cracked me up. +1
Dw3, I’ve brought that idea up in a “Modest Proposal” sort of way. Since men are responsible to pay for the children that women they have sex with choose to bear (that is the stark legal reality – every child that is born is born due to the SOLE choice of the mother), then it stands to reason that:
Money paid to support a child = the obligation a man incurs by having sex with the mother.
Since having sex is enough to legally entitle a woman to a man’s money if a pregnancy ensues and she elects to give birth, shouldn’t taking a man’s money legally entitle him to have sex with the mother if he has not already done so?
Fair is fair, right?
My Modest Proposal: a single-mother-by-choice who takes public assistance should be required by law (as men’s financial obligations are), to have sex with any man who can produce a 1040 showing that he paid taxes in the past 12 months (at least once for each child).
If being forced or tricked into paying for another man’s child makes a man a cuckold, the current system makes cuckolds of us all (well… except Keyster for the moment).
Since negotiating all that individually is impractical and inefficient, let them receive their public assistance at free public brothels – they can pick up their checks at the END of their shift.
Obviously this is not a serious proposal, but it demonstrates the lopsidedness of the current situation. If baby-mommas had to put out for the beta schlubs who are paying de facto child support for their “choices” through taxes, there would be less of this nonsense. Then again, feminism is about giving women the same “power” they believe men have, it was never about giving them legally-enforceable responsibilities like men actually have.
I think there should be whorehouses for single mothers to work at, to pay their debts to society. Such a system would kill several birds with one stone.
Already happening through free market forces.
The competition is fierce.
It’s the undesirables that aren’t even worthy of whoredom who have to go begging. “Alms for the poor sir?”
Lament of the once independent empowered woman:
“I’m so fat, old and ugly and I can’t even be a whore.”
That’s when she comes to the realization of what her TRUE value was all along….short of being a mother.
@Lyn87
Keyster, you cracked me up. +1
Nothing about that comment was a joke.
Welmer wanted to know if he was chump for not taking advantage of this and I’m inferring that he was. It’s ridiculously easy.
I found out about it through my friends 35 yr old daughter who works as a teachers assistant and lives in his basement. She doesn’t pay rent and has plenty of money for food, but the EBT card is like free.
Any young man that gets married today and/or has children is a fool. Because you’ll be working all your life to pay for them, and die from stress before you can enjoy retirement. And they won’t even appreciate your sacrifice. I know you idealist types think it can’t happen to you, but it probably will.
The man who marrys and has children becomes an ipso facto slave to the State and Corporatocracy. That’s not liberty or freedom, it’s tyranny through feminist governance.
Keyster ” … and die from stress before you can enjoy retirement.”
Dammit man, you’ve blown my super-secret Plan!
The thought of being Old, and an old Man at that, in Britain’s caring, inclusive, feather-bedded, all-encompassing welfare Big Momma state makes a little bit of wee leak out.
No freezing to death chewing on a bit of old cardboard from the bin for me, or being beaten to death and robbed by strapping Slavic/African peasant hoydens in a “care” home.
In fact, I’ll go round and fix a few tools up in the shed right now, what with being snowed in and all, and it’s dark or whiteout most of the time, so it doesn’t matter if I get up at “lunchtime”. Can’t tell the difference (‘nother brill prezzie the kids got us. Russian submariner/polar 24hr watch. Strictly mechanical, naturally. A wee gem. Smart kids.)
Of course, a 200 ml bottle of Talisker (mightily reduced in Saino’s) and a tin of Gawith Hoggarth’s will go with me to help the hours pass and take the edge off the cold. And I think I’ll double up on the eggs, bacon, sossingers, fried bread and beans in the “morning”, and put evaporated milk in the porridge. Again.
Since I’ve dumped the statins (fucking poison, couldn’t believe it, bloody doctors!) I aim not to be a burden on the boys (well men now, really) for longer than it takes for them to say “Dad, your’re losing it”. They get everything, of course. Such as it is. Coward’s way out, I suppose, but if I’m too old or demented to fight anymore, then ..
The maximum allotment of EBT is $200 per month per person on zero income. Enough to keep someone alive and healthy if they are careful. Its not exactly luxury spending.
As for as cutting it off. Not a good idea An insurgency or just the crime rate increase by a fraction of the people using aid would be enough to topple the US. 50 million people use it ! 10% of them would be able to render the US unstable and very possible overthrow the USG or put in someone who makes Obama look like Ayn Rand
High food prices and hunger led to the Arab Spring after all.
Also the assumption that everyone on relief is lazy or whatever is stupid. Yes some are unemployable and worthless but a great many people can’t find work because tah dah its been outsourced or automated away and wages had been slammed down 40% since 1973 (1%) a year and inflation is high
If you can get a lot of jobs for the less skilled that pay what they’d pay as percentage of the economy in 1973, come talk to me,
Lastly, its not a Black White issue or even a not working/not working issue. Quite a few working people of all races get aid because wages are low and more than a few of them are in the military.
Its a public safety issue and while it sucks, there are only two ways out. for the US Prices come down (including housing) about half adjusted for productivity increases or wages double.
Pick one otherwise you are going to be paying for aid till the cows come home or the rebels get ya.
Even Milton Friedman advocated a guaranteed minimum income. So some level of social welfare is not necessarily anathema to good economic policies. But as it stands today, social welfare has become a jobs program for female bureaucrats and a pork-laden crony capitalist program for retailers, restaurants, and slumlords. It’s another way that people profit off the taxpayers in the name of “social justice” and “save the children.”
I would not have as much of a problem with it if the EBT was only available for use on “staples.” For instance if someone wants a pizza they buy crust, sauce, cheese, and toppings and make it themselves. But buying from a pizza shop is absurd. And, people buying steak and lobster should be criminal.
It’s a way to buy votes and incentivize government dependency.
I’m sure you guys have heard the term “going Galt” before (if not, see Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged). I see going Galt as an extension of MGTOW. After all, this society has decided to enslave men to support women, enslave the producers to support the takers (but I repeat myself), so the only way to unchain yourself is to quit being a producer, as much as possible. Let the entire machine collapse. Who cares if the EBTers riot? They are going to anyway, when this whole house of cards collapses, but at least you can spend the declining years of civilization enjoying yourself, but more importantly, NOT being someone else’s slave. Because the taxation of the workers to pay for the non-workers is nothing BUT slavery.
I went Galt a few years ago. I examined my financial situation, calculated how much per year I would require to live (and live simply), and realized I could get by for YEARS without even having to work (no income = no paying income tax). Others might have to work, but in the USA we have graduated tax brackets, so the less you make, the lower percentage of your income you have to give up. If you make little enough , you pay net zero. So, instead of that high stress, long hours, high paying job you have, you could work a low-stress, low paying job (perhaps even part time), pay little to no taxes, and have LOTS of time to do whatever the hell you want. I live simply, but my time is MINE, and whenever I read about the fat, sloppy, idiot EBTers using their EBTs to buy liquor and whatnot, I at least am spared the need to feel cheated and used.
In this day and age, MGTOW is the SAME as going Galt. The entire culture and government has gone feminist, so you don’t just ignore the whores, you ignore the whole system and let it die without you.
Well, it is going to happen sooner or later. The longer it takes, the worse it’ll be. Looks like there are only two choices for first world societies: continuous low-level misery – Victorian Britain – or a cataclysmic collapse and misery for almost everyone – Weimar Germany.
I have a theory about mankind’s affinity for warfare. It’s the ultimate simplifier. There’s no need to deal with the mind-bending complexity of normal life. Just put on that blue uniform and try and kill the man in the grey. I remember training to fight the Russians in Germany’s forests and plains and it was very good in a way. I remember the sense of “bring it on, Ivan.” I think the Germans succumbed to this siren song en masse in WWII. They had the best uniforms and really great hardware. What could possibly go wrong? I have the same sense now regarding an epic house-cleaning in the US of A. It would feel pretty good right up to the moment when that DHS hollow-point emptied my skull.
Lot of sound good sense in the comms. tonight, but I have a nasty feeling that in my peculiar backwater, “Even Milton Friedman advocated a guaranteed minimum income.”sounds an awful lot like a guaranteed floor to the revenue streams of the ubiquitous rent-seekers.
Of course, even a blind man on a galloping horse could see that there’s not enough to live on, as it would always be kept at rock-bottom.
It’s just that each individual rentier would seek to gouge as much as possible for their own particular interest, and hope to do down the other sectors. Thus baking price-maintenance and possibly a degree of inflation into the mess. So for example the #1 killer, housing costs, would never fall.
Over Here, we’re already seeing it in the behaviour of the owners of the #2 essential, the fuel/energy cartel (rumblings have started among the public). Immigrants from hotter lands occasionally express wonderment at the lack of “truly poor, hungry people”, and upbraid us for our good fortune and “selfishness”.
I always point out that we do get that poor on occasion. But not many make it past February, if they can’t get assistance, so the year-on-year numbers are tiny. No huddled masses round here, boss. Mild consternation, and a frisson of apprehension, from the complainers. And yes, we seem to have cunningly cornered the entire world’s supply of sparkling, freezing cold, fresh potable water, more than is either necessary or convenient. Up to the windowsills sometimes. Although by then it’s not fit to drink.
Charles Murray, the co-author of The Bell Curve, wrote a whole book about this very subject called “In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State. Basically, industrialization, especially advanced, takes away jobs on balance. Add to this outsourcing and insourcing and voila, you have a first class long term crisis. Instead of humiliating people by making them beg for help, and instead of a vast Bureacracy to choose winners and losers, just give everyone the bare minimum, say 10,000 a year. By his estimation, a vast sum would be saved. And having a job would still be a huge ego boost and finacial incentive. Most people will still want this so nothing essential will change. We’d free up alot of human energy as a result – and get rid of bureacrat parasites.
It’s no good cursing the darkness and calling people names. You can’t have a country and send all the jobs outside. And then bring in professionals from Asia and manual laborers from everywhere. Curse people if you want AFTER you deport the Illegals and after you end insourcing. We didn’t take the sane route where the Private Sector worked FOR the Nation as in Japan. Instead the Goverment serves the Corporations and Banks. That’s the situation, and failing a Revolution, we have to calculate from here. But whatever the answer is, it has to be big and bold. Murray’s answer is. Obviously it would call for price fixing of basics or an increase in the stipend to match living expenses.
Again, it’s not the Path I would have chosen but that ship seems to have sailed.
Sometimes I get so cynical I almost believe there’s a concerted effort on the part of higher ups to keep people down by wrecking families, creating dysfunction when it’s unnecessary and so on. But that’s too complicated. The real reason it’s happening is that some people can profit from this, and they have created powerful interest groups, such as our courts, the AMA, feminist groups, bar associations and so on to perpetuate the scam.
I have been saying the same for a grip; except I also feel those at the top actually are in on the take of the breaking up of the American family! Judges, and lawyers most certainly are; and the senators and reps on the state level must be in on it. In other words; only the most stalwart of dupes or evil state pimps make it to DC to maintain their lucrative grip on the status quo.
a guy, what you are describing is how some wealthy people live. Not many – the lure of spending more money is obviously quite strong – but some.
Say, for the sake of argument, someone had 10 million dollars, cash or equivalent. If they invest that into tax-free bonds, such as munis, they could reap 200,000 dollars per year, gross. And their income after taxes?
$200,000 net, because of the tax-free status of the bonds. Now, that won’t support a jet-set lifestyle. Such a person would not be skiiing in Sun Valley (where the billionaires outbid the millionaires), nor flying a private jet around, etc. and so forth. But an upper middle class life, in a good house in a good region, with good health insurance, etc. would be easy to do with that kind of income. Not Galt, but not exactly tax slave, either.
This is, by the way, why there is a big difference between high income and high wealth people. A professional, such as a doctor or lawyer, who is netting $200K is probably working 60 to 80 hours per week to gross $280K or more. High income, no doubt. A high wealth individual is in a different category completely.
This is why left-sing “tax the rich” schemes fail. High wealth individuals, such as most members of the US Senate, are always able to create their own tax avoidance schemes, and others who know them can pay professionals to exploit those schemes. Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich are not paying nearly the same taxes as a percentage of income as the ordinary cube farm worker.
And none of those people have the slightest clue what they have done with the EBT program.
“Let them eat cake”…
@ a guy,
My plan exactly — over the next year or two, I will simply, gradually, STOP feeding this beast.
And yes, I expect to acquire one of those EBT’s – Can’t beat ‘em, so I’ll join their ranks..
There is a bright side to Obama’s speech, where he stated,
“It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began, for our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.”
If he means what he says and he’s able to implement it, women should be getting a massive pay cut.
Ok, my story.
When I was in my twenties I had a lot of money and a future that was bright. I had a lot of women, many as friends, but I was looking for that special one, who was honest and noble to the core. I bought 15 acres of land in a paradisiacal location and built a beautiful house.
I met one who was not, yet I liked her anyway, I felt she lived her own life at least…I admire independence. I didn’t question that her parents were wealthy and gave her anything she wanted, including house, car, travel, education, anything she needed. I was young.
She told me she couldn’t get pregnant, she already had one kid and apparently her doctor told her that her ovaries were toast, or something like that. I was always protected when I fucked her….anyway I made it clear to her we were just friends. She was attractive and in demand, and I encouraged her to find someone suitable to her politics.
Long story short, she got pregnant. It was obvious it was intended on her part, she was advised by her womans group that I was a ‘diamond in the rough’.
For the next 10 years I was in court 4 times a month at a cost of $4000 -5000 or $50 to $75.000 a year in legal fees, while the government granted her a free lawyer, a free prosecutor, a police force who acted for her benefit only, and several judges. I paid $20.000 a year in child support. Overall at least $300.000.
This fiasco went on year after year, on top of which I faced the approbation of society and it’s idiots.
After 4 years I never saw my daughter again, even to this day. I lost my property, eventually my profession, and much of my sanity.
I just stopped working. I went on social benefit and found a cheap place to live where I could at least be not harassed, (the various trials I went through over this period would take to long to cover).
I was burnt, it was like post traumatic stress…I just can’t put up with anymore shit.
So now that I’m an unproductive member of society, people judge me as a parasite, but from a distance because I would choke the living shit out of anyone who indicated so to my face.
I want to work, I want to start again, but I hampered by the thought that IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE.
Anyway you cut it, what I’m doing now makes the most sense for where I’m at now.
All honour, all integrity, is gone from this society. The only thing left is to either fight the system head on, or game the system until you can.
Am I a misogynist? You better believe it.
Am I a parasite? Maybe…but if you think I need to kiss anyones ass, you better get ready buddy, because my boot wants to say hello to your face.
The thing that has always got to me more than all, is the complete incomprehension of people. I can lay it out on the table, and have all the court documents, yet they don’t get it. It’s like it’s taken for granted some cunt can come by and steal your child, use the weight of the government to ruin your life, hook her fetid claws into the flesh of your mortal life for decade after decade…so what am I complaining about?
Apparently I’m should love the present state of affairs. People are surprised I feel somewhat angry against society and them… it’s like “Come on…give us that smile!”
The present system must be brought down. Do what you have to, stay free and stay sane at any cost. Remember ‘all’s fair in love and war’ is something women usually say as excuse for the fact that feminine moral worth is something quite superficial, it’s an act for them, an entitlement, skin deep.
Avail yourself of it. We are at the stage where the gloves are begging to come off. It’s time to kick out the jams.
Keyster,
I was on a plane last week and something happened to bring your point home. First, my frequent-flyer status got me a complimentary upgrade to first class. I didn’t pay extra, mind you – that would be NUTS.
(I have a theory that few people PAY for first class, because it is really expensive for the relatively short amount of time you’re going to be there. Every time I have ever ridden in first class it was free due to frequent flyer status. I can’t find any hard numbers, but I suspect the vast majority of people there are being comped by the airline because they travel for their work a lot. Since the vast majority of business travelers are men – it’s actually part of the “wage gap” – first class always seems to be about 80% working-age male.)
So far, so good: I’m living large for a couple of hours with my own armrests and my choice of snacks that are unavailable in coach. The second thing was that the person next to me was a chatty Kathy. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a nice lady, and awfully attractive for her age (I figured she was younger than me until she gave me enough information to figure out that she’s actually eight years older). She mentioned something to me that pertains to our topic.
She had previously left her job to go into business herself, so she had been “officially unemployed” for a while. Out of the blue she had gotten a call from some welfare-type office offering her an Obamaphone. She was genuinely offended. She said something like, “Here I am sitting in first class, and they want to give me a phone. They even offered to give me extra minutes if I referred other people to the program.”
This woman was NOT a frequent flyer – she was on vacation and she asked me to show her how to navigate to her next gate after we landed. That means that she almost certainly DID pay the exorbitant fare for a first class seat out of her own pocket. It requires a lot of disposable income to justify paying several hundred extra dollars to sit in a better seat for four hours – yet the government was trying to give her a cell phone at taxpayer expense.
Any system that offers (even that isn’t strong enough: not offers… solicits) to give electronic devices to people who can afford full fare for first class plane tickets is doomed. You paid for that system – you might as well get what you can out of it before it comes unglued for good.
My wife just got laid off a couple of weeks ago. She has a job interview tomorrow. If she doesn’t get it I’ll suggest she put in for unemployment. Might as well – the money for that program came out of our paychecks.
Charles, a hypothetical insurgency has about a 50% of success and a 100% of making things much worse for everyone on planet Earth
. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done but the back of the envelope calculations mean heavy casualties. Its quite possible for it to be the highest body count in history from a total global imperial collapse and an end to food exports and food entering cities
Worse this one is shaping up to be a war of extermination, to the knife and hilt to quote Western Rifle Shooters . We went through these gyrations before in the late 89 to early 90′s and it was bad but no figured they had a chance and they were unwilling to fight dirty, feeling for the most part that it was just mislead countrymen they had to fight.
Now, because of Clinton actions in Bosnia with regime targeting, mass immigration , failing infrastructure and a generalized feeling there will never be a recovery we are hanging off a cliff. Its not a pleasant place to be so excuse me if I’d rather not play.
TMG, even poor people need an occasional luxury.
More importantly, unless we actually get jobs and lots of them, the economy can’t function. I am coming to the conclusion we need tighter economic controls so that pretty much everything we do is don’t here. Few Imports, Few Exports
Its the only way to get actual jobs for people and create demand. You see technology makes it hard for a great many people to have an prosperity these days . Put an end to shipping jobs to where labor is cheap and you can make a real dent.
Also before anyone makes amoral argument, way to much economic liberalism comes from the assumption that moral conduct is free and something people must give to the state, We no, its not. Its part and parcel of the social contract and it costs something. It must be paid for
Otherwise society reverts to the la of the jungle and these days, the future is on the side of the apes
The maximum allotment of EBT is $200 per month per person on zero income. Enough to keep someone alive and healthy if they are careful. Its not exactly luxury spending.
When you add this to $350 a week for 2 1/2 years of unemployment, it beats the stress and bullshit involved of having to work 5 days a week; pretending you like people you hate and dealing with idiots. I’m legally gaming the system just like single moms, illegals, inner city blacks and white trailer trash.
Do Ineed it?
Of course not! I’m not a poor man. I simply don’t have any pride.
When you get your W-2 this month and see how much you paid in taxes last year, think of me sitting around drinking beer and playing guitar all day while you’re slaving away kissing ass at some dead end job. Oh and wait until the ObamaCare Exchange opens in my state next January. FREE HEALTHCARE to treat my ongoing back pain and whatever else makes me uncomfortable. And don’t even get me started on the Disability case I’m filing, which will kick in right as my unemployment dries up.
All those idealistic young college kids enraptured in the idolatry of the charismatic hip/cool multi-culti Socialist – – are gonna have to pay the debt tomorrow he’s helping me rack up today. HA HA HA…what fools!
My plan exactly — over the next year or two, I will simply, gradually, STOP feeding this beast.
Stop feeding the beast and the beast will feed you. All you gotta do is ask.
What’s sad about this program is that the need for welfare at the level it’s currently used is largely the state’s fault. In order to prop up our “equal” utopia we’ve structured society so that working people are having a harder time getting by on a full-time paycheck even as their jobs disappear.
Just like the video below which caused a lot of controversy on the internet, the female singer avoid the social and media criticism thanks to been women and black but when a white male does the same shit hits the fan even when GOP women like Ann Coulter does it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLTTX35LNJo
I’ve see people on welfare with Ipads, Ipods, and babymammas wearing jewelry and the kids with the latest video game console plus 5,000 worth of video game, headphones Beats By Dr Dre that cost 400 the pair.
Look what happens to women when Georgia run out of EBT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufk7IXdxc-c
But remember they don’t need meeeeen.
Keep Obama president he gives free phones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio
OT: Spectacularly brilliant video on critical thinking and the (hoaxed?) Apollo moon landings.
Here is a funny youtube called “Swipe Yo EBT”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzspsovNvII
“The social services office had about 15 women working there, mostly hispanic and the “customers” were almost all women, again mostly hispanic, with a few white trash types. ”
@keyster
I’ve been thinking about all of the places I go that seem to have entirely female workers, and it’s a lot. My vote for Worst goes to my local Chase bank, where I recently had to pay a visit to the inside of the bank owing to an ATM failure.
Four women were ostensibly playing the role of “bank teller”. There was one other customer. How long did it take me to get served? Answer: longer than you might think. It turned out that there was an invisible pecking order. One of the women was performing a kind of triage function; she asked what you wanted to route you to the right place. But wasn’t she standing at a teller’s window? couldn’t she help me right away? Apparently not.
So I was directed to a pair of women, neither of whom were in any hurry to help me, their eyes were downcast looking at their workstations, not working but not exactly volunteering to help. So I just picked one. She wasn’t very happy about that.
No, no, I’m not suggesting or advocating that. The point I tried to make was that an appeal of warfare is its liberating clarity. This does not offset in any way the terrible effects of warfare, but AT LEAST you don’t have to think too hard about the meaning of life and what you’re going to do that day. You’re going to march, dig, and kill the guy in the wrong uniform or die trying.
The best experiences in my life have come working in small groups with other men in a modern facsimile of a Neolithic hunting party. Our ancestors did this for so long it’s hard coded in our genes somehow.
It’s free, swipe your EBT! (Left/liberals gotta keep their entitlement-happy supporters entertained until they take away all our guns, freedom of speech and other liberties.)
I’ve been thinking about all of the places I go that seem to have entirely female workers, and it’s a lot.
Yeah but, the CEO and the board of directors of Chase are all male, plus women make 77 cents on the dollar of males, so it’s only fair that all these places employ nothing but females at lower level jobs.
“Social Justice” is anything that marginalizes the hetero-normative privileged white male. Illegal hispanics, women, “our gay brothers and sisters”, etc. need “justice”…against their oppressors…people like me and you and our privileged white ancestory….MUST pay, must feel what it’s like to not have any “power”…vindication through government fiat.
America has over 44 million people on Food Stamps.
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/food_stamps/food_stamp_nation-SNAP.html
Charles, I agree war does have a liberating clarity.
The only reason that the rise of the welfare state cannot be stopped, is because it benefits mostly the women.
If it would benefit mostly the men, it would be tuned down immediately.
Actually, it would probably not exist at all.
And now we have even a law called “gender mainstreaming”.
It says that no law or regulation can be passed, if it mostly affects one gender. This law is used to block any reduction of the welfare payments, because that would mostly affect women.
Naturally, like most laws, it is an evil feminazi law, that is only used when a law could negatively affect women, never when a law affects mostly men.
That there are a ton of laws that very clearly mostly negatively affect men (let’s take criminal law, or family law, for example), they could not care less about that.
Actually that’s the whole point of all laws: to torture, enslave, punish and rob men, not women, and to transfer money from men to women.
Bill- While I realize you do not like politics on your site, Romney was right when he talked about the 47 percent who were “takers.” Those are the people who are “taking” it from the rest of us. And those are the reason the current guy was sworn in yesterday.
The difference between the “takers” and you and me is that as MEN (and likely white) we are expected to work. And we (men) have been taught it’s shameful to take, particularly when we do not need it.
I find it shocking that people who are in residential substance abuse treatment are entitled to welfare (when the government is paying their treatment fees). I recently learned that women go into domestic violence shelters to “quick qualify” for Section 8 housing. This part of the system is not for men like us because we have pride.
And if you or I showed our faces in the welfare office looking to get in on these benefits, we would either be 1) not helped or 2) told to go out and get a job. Is it any wonder that working men are disillusioned- and the election was so close? Some of us have already realized the current scam- that we are the “givers” whether we want to be or not.
Matt
*laughter* I lost count how many times I’ve heard this argument.
Back in the days of the industrial revolution as described by Charles Dickens, the bottom 25% of society did work. In fact an argument can be made the comforts of the upper class was only made possible by the poor doing all the disagreeable work like: cleaning out the chamber pots, fetching water, and shoveling coal into furnaces. The rich needed the poor.
Thanks to technological gains and outsourcing, this is not true today. The bottom 25% of society in the USA do not work. The rich of today no longer need the poor. The poor can all magically disappear tomorrow and it wouldn’t make a damn difference to the rich. The rich can still enjoy everything they have. The equation has changed.
It would be cheaper to hire 1 million privately armed security guards rather than give food to 50 million people. That’s a mathematical fact. You still think social welfare cannot be cut?
In Britain, their welfare system will even pay for polygamous Muslim families, made up of individuals who hate the West and bring in Sharia law. We in America haven’t reached that level of insanity yet, but just give it a few decades.
Welfare, guaranteed minimum income, whatever… it’s not about the money so much as it is about the abuse of it, gaming the system to avoid work. Or using the money to buy tattoos and bullshit like that.
And welfare as Danegeld? Fuck that noise.
There has to be a counterbalancing cost, to make it unattractive and uncomfortable to spend long periods of time on the dole by choice. Require X hours of community service, picking litter along highways, or some other scut work be performed to keep the EBT coming.
Personally, I’d like to see the right to vote be suspended for those who have been on benefits for extended periods of time. It creates a vicious circle of dependents voting for more dependency and free goodies, bleeding us all. Yeah, I know, good luck getting that one through.
Welfare, guaranteed minimum income, whatever… it’s not about the money so much as it is about the abuse of it, gaming the system to avoid work. Or using the money to buy tattoos and bullshit like that.
I’ve given up fighting it since November 6, 2012.
I’m now a part of the Welfare State and I’m embracing it as a life style choice. When you’re in your 50′s, out of work with no college degree in a very youth oriented geographic location – you’re fucked. I’ve been trying to sign up for “Out of Work and Over 50″ seminars offered at the local unemployement office and they’re booked out until March. The discrimination against old white guys is palpable. Everyone knows it exists but they ignore it. There are no EEOC quotas for old white guys and employers don’t like you because it makes the business seem old.
Remember it’s not about experience or competence or work ethic.
It’s about likeability. If you don’t “look like” who they want working there, you don’t get the job. And bald paunchy grey haired men are very UNCOOL right now, kinda like the GOP.
Thing is, Martin, these lucky winners “who hate the West” don’t seem to have twigged that they’re being enticed with a cornucopia of free goodies by the Owners for a purpose. It’s a small, grotesquely overcrowded island, you can’t run, and there’s nowhere to hide, so ..
Oldest trick in the book. When SHTF
“Oh no, angry pitchfork-waving yokels, don’t misdirect your fury towards my moat and drawbridge.
See! There they are, those freakishly-garbed dusky heathens, they’re the cause of your misery. Taking your jobs, or even worse, not. And your homes, and grooming your nubile daughters for white slavers. The very idea! Insolent,ungrateful aliens. And then there’s the drugs .. don’t mind us, we’re all as poor as church mice and live in a ruin, whereas they keep their savings in Krugerrands under the mattress”.
And the carpet-thumpers are dumb enough to enthusiastically cast for the role, making themselves as obnoxious as possible and avidly seeking media attention for their noisy imbecilities. The polar opposite of e.g., the Sikhs or Ghurkas (who are from around that neck of the woods, I believe, it’s not a”race” thing; admittedly the numbers are smaller).
Normally this scapegoat part would be filled by the usual suspects, the Jews, but they’ve had the dashed cunning to integrate seamlessly and invisibly, becoming the backbone of our arts and sciences, among other things, and have mostly junked the silly hats and gay hairdos, and stayed off the dole. Sly beggars. Unlike this lot.
Here is a clear example of “we better get before daddy gov runs out of it”
Fight over Food stamps.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2268342/Police-hunt-women-brawl-social-services-caught-tape.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTe-c_hmY4U
NOtice how they are all women
It would be cheaper to hire 1 million privately armed security guards rather than give food to 50 million people. That’s a mathematical fact. You still think social welfare cannot be cut?
——————————-
I have wondered about this for some time. The rich dont need the poor as much anymore either in a religious sense or as servants. What we consider philanthropic is related to our religious values and what we consider to be most important in life. I wonder why our non-christian elite is so eager to work day and night to support the fornication of the left half of the bell curve.
If I gave money to your children; or even your wife and had a system(including counselors) that denigrated you/whispered in their ears against you-you’d call that perverse. Gov. does it and it’s ‘welfare’.?
If anything they should give the money/job training/preference to the fathers. Don’t they have the responsiblity?