• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Food Stamp Rolls to Grow Through 2014, CBO Says

Aunt Spiker said:
I really want to agree with you - but I don't think it would be enough to just employ people at a factory job.

For a small family (2 kids - mom/dad) Min wage is under $2K a month - around $12K a year. . . that's far less than the poverty level.

It's not so much a reflection of unemployment - it's a reflection of how little money people can make when they even do work full time: and how costly it is to live in a society every everything must be bought and paid for in large sums.
Click to expand...
And yet so many here want to make an equivalence of our poverty level to some third world country, as if the cost of living is the same.
 
Boo Radley said:
That is true, but again, don't forgive those who oftered, who lied, who sought to make profit on the failure of others. Blame rarely lies in one place. And ask yourself one more question, if we don't use credit in a huge, over extending way, what happens to jobs? Will we really have more jobs if fewer are buying and more are saving? Or could it mean less jobs?
Click to expand...
And to add, many people were using credit as an addition to income because income levels were not keeping up.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
And to add, many people were using credit as an addition to income because income levels were not keeping up.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, is people overextending themselves with credit 1) Bush's fault, or 2) the Bankers fault?

I won't put in "3) their own fault" as we have seen you disregard any possibility of that one.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
You are lumping the fraudsters with those who acted in good faith together.

Both the lender and the borrower are signing on a loan, the control of the loan is with the lender. They decide if they will lend. They are suppose to check credit, earnings, the true value of the property they are lending for.....they even get to take out default insurance, and they still retain ownership of the property when it defaults. No one holds a gun to the lender.


The lending fed the boom, money was in huge supply and was looking for good returns. The stock market was still in doldrums, so investors went for commodities and real estate ALL AROUND THE WORLD. Lenders like Countrywide were giving loans to anyone with a pulse, this was augmented and evident by the low interest rates. Even the Bush admin pushed for increased mortgage lending. It was people like Brooksley Born who warned Greenspan et al of the out of control derivative market that was funding the mortgage tranches. They, the lenders, the credit agencies...they all had the overview of the market to know things were out of control.....NOT the individual borrower. The individual borrower had no inclining of the size of it. Those regulators did nothing, just as they did nothing when the dotcom boom busted. Bush stripped the SEC to nothing, the FBI was not investigating mortgage fraud even when they had full knowledge of it.

Don't try to shift this blame to individual borrowers, don't try to shift blame to SNAP recipients, those dogs won't hunt.
Click to expand...


Aw, the poor borrowers that knew full well they couldn't afford the $2500. per month mortgage they were signing for, but signed it anyway to get the house because they knew that by the time they were forced to sell they could cash out the fake equity being added at the 20 and 30% fake rates per year, and come out ahead. Nah, don't feed me the unsuspecting poor borrower had nothing to do with, as with the liberals that forced the lenders to make loans they knew were not going to be paid either. That is just pure BS, and in the situation where there is plenty of blame to go around, you are trying to pin it on one scapegoat that you don't like, and that is just dishonest.


j-mac
 
j-mac said:
Aw, the poor borrowers that knew full well they couldn't afford the $2500. per month mortgage they were signing for, but signed it anyway to get the house because they knew that by the time they were forced to sell they could cash out the fake equity being added at the 20 and 30% fake rates per year, and come out ahead. Nah, don't feed me the unsuspecting poor borrower had nothing to do with, as with the liberals that forced the lenders to make loans they knew were not going to be paid either. That is just pure BS, and in the situation where there is plenty of blame to go around, you are trying to pin it on one scapegoat that you don't like, and that is just dishonest.


j-mac
Click to expand...
I agree, the scenario you created is pure BS.

If a borrower is forced to sell, due to not being able to meet payments since income is deficient, there is NO equity in the house because you are way, way underwater. The value is gone, it is below what you paid. You are selling at a loss, it is called a short sale. Of course again, the lender is covered, he has insurance for the default, his losses are minimal if at all.
Oh and to add, the borrower was paying for that insurance....it was part of the mortgage payment.
 
Last edited:
Aunt Spiker said:
I really want to agree with you - but I don't think it would be enough to just employ people at a factory job.

For a small family (2 kids - mom/dad) Min wage is under $2K a month - around $12K a year. . . that's far less than the poverty level.

It's not so much a reflection of unemployment - it's a reflection of how little money people can make when they even do work full time: and how costly it is to live in a society every everything must be bought and paid for in large sums.
Click to expand...
Absolutely true.

The loss of living-wage jobs is killer.

When you add in the fact that not much has dropped in price and much still continues to rise, oh yeah, there's still too much downsizing .. in wages.
 
j-mac said:
Aw, the poor borrowers that knew full well they couldn't afford the $2500. per month mortgage they were signing for, but signed it anyway to get the house because they knew that by the time they were forced to sell they could cash out the fake equity being added at the 20 and 30% fake rates per year, and come out ahead. Nah, don't feed me the unsuspecting poor borrower had nothing to do with, as with the liberals that forced the lenders to make loans they knew were not going to be paid either. That is just pure BS, and in the situation where there is plenty of blame to go around, you are trying to pin it on one scapegoat that you don't like, and that is just dishonest.


j-mac
Click to expand...

I'm always amazed j you distain for working people. Not to say they are never worthy of criticism, most everyone is at one time or another. But that you're never as hard on those who seek to take advantage of them, never as hard as those who abused them, always for those who have harmed the worker today, making excuses for them, . . . well, I'm always just a little surprised. True you're not alone. But there is more than one legitimate view here.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
As I have said before, individual investors had little overview of the world-wide housing bubble, especially those buying 2002 thru 2004.
Huh? Investors default or take a loss on investments all the time, for some reason the same rules don't apply to home buyers. If an investment loses 50% of its value and has little chance of recovering for many years if ever, there is no financial reason to keep adding good money to bad.
Click to expand...

A home is not always an investment and is actually a liability.
There is a difference between investors selling dogs and a homeowner dumping his debt obligations, solely because it didn't pan out.
The homeowner made a promise to pay, should a person not be held accountable for breaking their promise?

Silly people bucking age old advice, about not putting all their eggs in one basket.

Gimmesometruth said:
Do you realize how that sounds, "just because they can't make their mortgage payment on an underwater investment due to job loss.... is no excuse".
Click to expand...

Yes, I do.
I expect adults to behave like adults.

Making excuses as to why you can't honor you obligations, is not gonna cut it.
Maybe they should of factored job loss into the financial picture, when they purchased their home.
Had they made preparations, this wouldn't have been an issue.

If you're living month to month, on borrowed money and time, I have no moral obligation to feel sorry for you.
Especially when you could of done otherwise.
 
j-mac said:
That definitely has a part to play for sure. Just because you are given a credit card with a $ limit, doesn't mean that you actually spend it. Just because you are offered that $500K house with no income verification, and a payment of interest only, doesn't mean that you actually sign the loan and take the house you know damned well you can NOT afford.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the poor jerk who may not have even graduated high school should know full well that the banker offering to finanace him is a complete idiot. :lol:

The bankers signed the contracts, too. In fact, they advertised to pull people in, they set the terms of the contact, they facilitated it's up-front cost by taking the bankers origination fee and other costs and "folding" them into the loan. Then they took their $1000+ origination fee, which they got regardless of later foreclosure.

Afterword they sold those poorly documented and sometimes fraudulent mortgages to someone else - who in turn bundled them, paid their buddies at S&P/etc to mis-label them, then sold them again so they wouldn't be stuck with the assets they knew full well were toxic.

Hell, JPMorgan was shown more than once to have advertised transactions on one side while they were hedging them on the other. LOL!
You gotta' love those bankers! :lamo
 
Last edited:
j-mac said:
"Charity" isn't always measured in terms of money redistributed in the form of give aways is it? "Charity" is also IMHO, teaching people to do the right things so that they can become self sufficient.....
Click to expand...
Yeah, telling some he's a ****ing lazy bastard for being laid off from his job of twenty years because of a financial crisis is a good way to start a teacher-student relationship. :roll:
 
Arbo said:
You are one of the one's that thinks a car and a smart phone are necessities of modern life. Spin however you want, you have re-defined poverty to a level that would leave most of the truly poor in the world laughing at you.
Click to expand...
You've already shown a car is needed since those mass transit systems can't pay for themselves and you don't want to fund them. You can't have it both ways. Either mass transit is there, and you're willing to pay to keep it there, or it's not and people will need cars. :roll:

As for cell phones, I've seen plenty of jobs that require them whether you have a home phone/land-line or not.


Yeah - comparing the USA to third-world countries is a good move. The similarities are obvious to anyone and we should be more like them.
 
Last edited:
MoSurveyor said:
In fact, they advertised to pull people in, they set the terms of the contact, they facilitated it's up-front cost by taking the bankers origination fee and other costs and "folding" them into the loan. Then they took their $1000+ origination fee, which they got regardless of later foreclosure.
Click to expand...

Choo, Choo! Train keeps rolling, down it's narrow track.

MoSurveyor said:
You've already shown a car is needed since those mass transit systems can't pay for themselves and you don't want to fund them. You can't have it both ways. Either mass transit is there, and you're willing to pay to keep it there, or it's not and people will need cars. :roll:

As for cell phones, I've seen plenty of jobs that require them whether you have a home phone/land-line or not.
Click to expand...

Some jumbled up crap there. It's just too early in the morning to even attempt to follow your convoluted pseudo logic in the first part. If a job 'requires' a cell phone, than it should provide one... if it is need that often for the purpose of that job. If it does not, than it can not be required.

All in all, is there any point where you start putting personal responsibility into the mix? Because so far it seems you absolutely refuse to consider that part of the equation into anything.
 
I am sure this thread will get more exciting today as they release the Medicaid and Medicare report from the CBO. The prediction is that the programs do not have enough money to sustain themselves. OMG the horror...the humanity. Who knew we couldn't tax the hell out of everything and just shower then entire republic with freshly printed Benjamin’s to make our problems go away?
 
Blue_State said:
I am sure this thread will get more exciting today as they release the Medicaid and Medicare report from the CBO. The prediction is that the programs do not have enough money to sustain themselves. OMG the horror...the humanity. Who knew we couldn't tax the hell out of everything and just shower then entire republic with freshly printed Benjamin’s to make our problems go away?
Click to expand...

I already read a few stories about how the government is playing politics and moving money around to cover what will be the loss of the 'medicare advantage' plan. Makes sense the current administration wants to hide the fact they are going to kill off a big part of the plan from seniors. They don't want a load of seniors mad at them prior to the election.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
If a borrower is forced to sell, due to not being able to meet payments since income is deficient, there is NO equity in the house because you are way, way underwater. The value is gone, it is below what you paid.
Click to expand...


That is the lenders fault? In what world do lenders of mortgages control what the rate of equity is in the housing market? Now, if the borrower is not able to meet payments on the house, then maybe they weren't qualified to buy the damned thing in the first place.

The pressure for lenders to take these unqualified borrowers and get them into these houses was brought about directly by the CRA. It was government turning the blind eye as to what banks did with these sketchy mortgages in mitigating their loss when they inevitably went belly up, and that is on the banks. But, don't feed us that these people out there buying 3,4,$500K homes that knew full well that they could never afford them are not to blame at all either.

You are selling at a loss, it is called a short sale.
Click to expand...

I am familiar with what a short sale is. And if the borrower can't afford what THEY borrowed then that is an option for them to mitigate THE CONTRACT THEY SIGNED!

Of course again, the lender is covered, he has insurance for the default, his losses are minimal if at all.
Click to expand...

As they should be, they are a business, not a charity.

Oh and to add, the borrower was paying for that insurance....it was part of the mortgage payment.
Click to expand...

Ok. Those are the terms of buying that house. If you don't like the terms that are spelled out at closing, then don't sign the contract. Once you sign that, YOU AGREE to those terms.


j-mac
 
MoSurveyor said:
Yeah, the poor jerk who may not have even graduated high school should know full well that the banker offering to finanace him is a complete idiot. :lol:

The bankers signed the contracts, too. In fact, they advertised to pull people in, they set the terms of the contact, they facilitated it's up-front cost by taking the bankers origination fee and other costs and "folding" them into the loan. Then they took their $1000+ origination fee, which they got regardless of later foreclosure.

Afterword they sold those poorly documented and sometimes fraudulent mortgages to someone else - who in turn bundled them, paid their buddies at S&P/etc to mis-label them, then sold them again so they wouldn't be stuck with the assets they knew full well were toxic.

Hell, JPMorgan was shown more than once to have advertised transactions on one side while they were hedging them on the other. LOL!
You gotta' love those bankers! :lamo
Click to expand...


Blaming the people that offered you the money YOU wanted, at substantial risk of loss to themselves, then later couldn't afford, because of your lack of prior planning, or care to even budget is NOT THEIR PROBLEM.

Yeah, telling some he's a ****ing lazy bastard for being laid off from his job of twenty years because of a financial crisis is a good way to start a teacher-student relationship.
Click to expand...

What, Who said that? Now you are making **** up. Look, when I was in school, we had classes in middle school that taught us how to balance a check book, budget money, and calculate household expenses. Where is that today?

You have generations that are not being taught to be financially self sufficient, instead sending generational message that Sugar Daddy Government will take care of you cradle to grave. That is NOT America.

Maybe you want to be a slave to the US Government, and have your children be slaves to the Government, not me.


j-mac
 
Arbo said:
Choo, Choo! Train keeps rolling, down it's narrow track.
Click to expand...
The facts sometimes suck, don't they?

Arbo said:
Some jumbled up crap there. It's just too early in the morning to even attempt to follow your convoluted pseudo logic in the first part. If a job 'requires' a cell phone, than it should provide one... if it is need that often for the purpose of that job. If it does not, than it can not be required.
Click to expand...
Tell that to the employers who have 5 people to choose from for every one job opening. Of those five I have no doubt at least one would be more than willing to use their personal cell phone.

Arbo said:
All in all, is there any point where you start putting personal responsibility into the mix? Because so far it seems you absolutely refuse to consider that part of the equation into anything.
Click to expand...
Everybody suffers from the consequences of their actions. If you think the guy living out of a suitcase really wants to live like that you should think again. If you think the mother of two who lost her husband really wants to use a food stamp credit card, think again. There may be a few people getting government money who would rather sit around all day and do nothing but I'm sure the vast majority would rather have a job that paid enough so they could afford all their bills without any help.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
A home is not always an investment and is actually a liability.
Click to expand...
BS, for the majority of home owners it has been an asset with increasing value which you already admitted can be used as collateral. Have you ever owned real property?
There is a difference between investors selling dogs and a homeowner dumping his debt obligations, solely because it didn't pan out.
The homeowner made a promise to pay, should a person not be held accountable for breaking their promise?
Click to expand...
Again, an inexperienced comment....of course there are consequences, it creates a huge black mark on your credit rating lasting for at least 5 years.

Silly people bucking age old advice, about not putting all their eggs in one basket.
Click to expand...
Red herring, no one said it was the only investment....oh snap, did you imply it was an investment?

Yes, you did.



Yes, I do.
I expect adults to behave like adults.

Making excuses as to why you can't honor you obligations, is not gonna cut it.
Maybe they should of factored job loss into the financial picture, when they purchased their home.
Had they made preparations, this wouldn't have been an issue.

If you're living month to month, on borrowed money and time, I have no moral obligation to feel sorry for you.
Especially when you could of done otherwise.
Click to expand...
Yes yes, millions of families in the US, most of them 2 income households, should have anticipated the massive job losses of 07-09 and the subsequent tight job market following the worst drop in the economy since 1929 and should have had enough saved up to pay their mortgages despite the fact that savings in the decades leading up to this were the lowest due to non-existent wage increases.

All of this....is their fault.
 
MoSurveyor said:
The facts sometimes suck, don't they?
Click to expand...

I have yet to see you provide any.

If you think the guy living out of a suitcase really wants to live like that you should think again. If you think the mother of two who lost her husband really wants to use a food stamp credit card, think again.
Click to expand...

So in answer to asking you if you ever believe in personal responsibility, we get 'No' as your answer. Figured as much.
 
MoSurveyor said:
Everybody suffers from the consequences of their actions. If you think the guy living out of a suitcase really wants to live like that you should think again. If you think the mother of two who lost her husband really wants to use a food stamp credit card, think again. There may be a few people getting government money who would rather sit around all day and do nothing but I'm sure the vast majority would rather have a job that paid enough so they could afford all their bills without any help.
Click to expand...


There is no way you can quantify that statement. This is your belief, and one driven through emotion.

What I am saying should be in the goal of what your statement is if you truly believe what you said.


j-mac
 
Gimmesometruth said:
All of this....is their fault.
Click to expand...

In the days of old (aka, the days of being responsible for oneself and one's family), people were taught to save. Some have carried on that tradition. While others have become the consistent child sucking off the government tit, and blaming everyone else for their own inadequacies.

So as the old saying goes, piss poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
 
j-mac said:
There is no way you can quantify that statement. This is your belief, and one driven through emotion.

What I am saying should be in the goal of what your statement is if you truly believe what you said.


j-mac
Click to expand...

Can you quantify your statement? Show the emotion. Can you never say something like this is true without it being called emotional? Or is it possible you'd like to frame it this way so as to not address what he is saying?
 
Boo Radley said:
Can you quantify your statement? Show the emotion. Can you never say something like this is true without it being called emotional? Or is it possible you'd like to frame it this way so as to not address what he is saying?
Click to expand...

I did address it. However to humor you Mo said "I'm sure the vast majority would rather have a job..."

Suppose you tell me how he would know that with such absolute conviction? Did he conduct a survey of every welfare recipient?

As for you characterization of what I am saying, you'd do better to debate rather than try to make this personal?

j-mac
 
j-mac said:
I did address it. However to humor you Mo said "I'm sure the vast majority would rather have a job..."

Suppose you tell me how he would know that with such absolute conviction? Did he conduct a survey of every welfare recipient?

As for you characterization of what I am saying, you'd do better to debate rather than try to make this personal?

j-mac
Click to expand...

The same way we all make rather common judgments. His comment was reasonable and not emotion laden. I have no idea why you threw in the emotion thing, so I asked if you were trying to frame it that way to avoid. It's a fair question.
 
Boo Radley said:
The same way we all make rather common judgments.
Click to expand...

Oh, ok. So when I, or other conservatives make statements about what their observations in life are in relation to their political beliefs then it is, ahem, in your own words, 'overgeneralization'....But when someone you agree with does the same thing, then it is just a "rather common judgement...." Yeah, get off it man.


I have no idea why you threw in the emotion thing, so I asked if you were trying to frame it that way to avoid. It's a fair question.
Click to expand...

Actually it is more a "when did you stop beating your wife?" question. But, I'll humor you......The answer is no!


j-mac
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom