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Work Requirement For SNAP Causes 85% Drop

It's pretty sad that in this country you can have a job and still require food stamps to get by.

No, It is sad that people think that working a minimum wage job should provide for a family to live. Minimum wage jobs are supposed to be "starter" jobs for high school kids, not a 40 year old with a family.

What is even more sad is that the party most responsible for the poor suffering in America are the Democrats. Democrats always talk about Republicans not caring about the poor, and they are right Republicans don't, but Republicans at least aren't lying about it.
 
Workfare is conservatives falling into the trap door of Big Government fantasizing. People whose labor neither the public sector nor private sector has a need for don't need to be given make-work employment to appease emotional desires for greater government control.

This is a bad idea all the way around, and I'm embarrassed that conservatives fall for it so often.

At a national debt of 20 trillion dollars I would hardly call Big Government a conservative fantasy.
 
At a national debt of 20 trillion dollars I would hardly call Big Government a conservative fantasy.

The national debt doesn't necessarily make government "big." Government-compelled labor? I'd say that does. I'll never understand why that concept arouses conservatives.
 
The national debt doesn't necessarily make government "big." Government-compelled labor? I'd say that does. I'll never understand why that concept arouses conservatives.

Well, I don't see Belgium or Luxemburg running up 20 trillion dollars in debt. You have to have big government to have big debt.
 
Well, I don't see Belgium or Luxemburg running up 20 trillion dollars in debt. You have to have big government to have big debt.

What does this have to do with workfare? Do Belgium and Luxembourg have workfare?

Workfare is Orwellian. The people who refuse to work, can't work, or whose work neither the public nor private sector sees any value in buying shouldn't be forced to do made up bull**** tasks.
 
Well, I don't see Belgium or Luxemburg running up 20 trillion dollars in debt. You have to have big government to have big debt.

Belguim has about the same population as Ohio and Luxemburg about the same population about the same as Wyoming. Of course their not going to run up huge debts.

Anyways I did the work requirement here in New Mexico and I liked it. Though it was a waste of money to make me go through basic adult education despite me academic record. It did make me feel like a damn genius though. Everyone else in the class but me could barely read and write. I was just there because I had a newborn and she needed to eat right then. And to boot they helped me get a job in a area where I had already applied at every place that I could think of. They worked out better than the "un"employment office..
 
What does this have to do with workfare? Do Belgium and Luxembourg have workfare?

Workfare is Orwellian. The people who refuse to work, can't work, or whose work neither the public nor private sector sees any value in buying shouldn't be forced to do made up bull**** tasks.

So if I refuse to work I can get taken care of by either the government or the rich? Is that really the American way? Or is that the liberal way?
 
Belguim has about the same population as Ohio and Luxemburg about the same population about the same as Wyoming. Of course their not going to run up huge debts.

Anyways I did the work requirement here in New Mexico and I liked it. Though it was a waste of money to make me go through basic adult education despite me academic record. It did make me feel like a damn genius though. Everyone else in the class but me could barely read and write. I was just there because I had a newborn and she needed to eat right then. And to boot they helped me get a job in a area where I had already applied at every place that I could think of. They worked out better than the "un"employment office..

Only big governments can run up big deficits.
 
So if I refuse to work

There is a spectrum between inability and unwillingness. On one extreme end, imagine someone who is omnipotent and omniscient, could do literally any job in existence flawlessly, but absolutely refuses to do any job, and then on the other extreme end, imagine a person who would be willing to work his ass off doing literally any job in the world for any amount of pay, but happens to be an unconscious quadriplegic. The former is 100% able but 100% unwilling, the latter 100% willing but 100% unable.

Most people fall nowhere near either of these extremes. Most people are physically able to do countless types of jobs, by mere virtue of their ability to sit in a chair and use their hands on a keyboard. Physical ability to work is not usually the problem, because ever increasing numbers of jobs do not require significantly special physical abilities. Increasingly it is the cognitive/intellectual/mental/emotional mix of abilities, plus experience and credentials, that makes a person not only "able to work" but also desired by employers. The problem is there will always be millions of people at any given time that no one in the economy wants to employ. Even if they're theoretically able to work, theoretically able to learn/be trained, hell even if they're willing to work, that doesn't mean any employer out there, public or private, necessarily has any need or desire for them. And this problem will never go away. If we have several million working age people the product of whose labor the society doesn't want, why are you trying to compel society to buy their labor anyway?

I can get taken care of by either the government or the rich? Is that really the American way? Or is that the liberal way?

Your basic needs will be met if you refuse or are unable to meet them yourself, yes. However those needs will be met in a bare minimum way such that, were you to be completely satisfied with that existence, it would indicate things about your personality or mental state that shed light on why employers probably don't want you to work for them either. Let me put it another way: when it comes to people who would prefer to be lazy and have no interest in their organization's mission or what their work entails, the feeling on the employer's side of the table is mutual... just stay home, I'd rather not deal with you.

As soon as you take this bunch of people whose personalities/mental states/bodies are incompatible with the modern work environment and require them to start doing jobs, that means you 1) have to make up tasks for them that no one else is already doing, 2) those tasks are likely to be make-work in nature (because everyone else is already doing the stuff that matters), and 3) it means you need to hire other people to competently babysit them in their performance of these bull**** tasks, which is like appointing a calculus and advanced algebra teacher to teach remedial math to a hodge podge bunch of delinquents during detention.

I don't disagree with conservatives very strongly on very many things, but this is one of the biggies. Workfare is a very foolish inconsistency in the conservative ideology. Conservatives want to be pro-business. Forcing private sector employers to hire people society as a whole would rather not hire is not pro-business. Conservatives want government to be more efficient. Forcing government to employ the very people government has already decided it doesn't want or need to employ works directly against that. There is nothing about workfare that is aligned with conservative ideals.
 
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Not for a senior citizen on social security or a disabled person on disability.

Yea well New Mexico doesnt have 11 dollar an hour minimum wage and according to this link a bigmac meal is only slightly more in Washington. $6.47 vs $7.01

50 cents more is nothing compared to the pay increase. New Mexico's minimum wage is $7.50. But even though I am living in New Mexico I was born in Washington and grew up and lived in Oregon much of my life. I was just up there not to long a go to visit. The high prices in the Pacific Northwest have more to do with the Californiafication of the area than wages. BTW speaking of Oregon a Bigmac meal sets you back $6.71
 
There is a spectrum between inability and unwillingness. On one extreme end, imagine someone who is omnipotent and omniscient, could do literally any job in existence flawlessly, but absolutely refuses to do any job, and then on the other extreme end, imagine a person who would be willing to work his ass off doing literally any job in the world for any amount of pay, but happens to be an unconscious quadriplegic. The former is 100% able but 100% unwilling, the latter 100% willing but 100% unable.

Most people fall nowhere near either of these extremes. Most people are physically able to do countless types of jobs, by mere virtue of their ability to sit in a chair and use their hands on a keyboard. Physical ability to work is not usually the problem, because ever increasing numbers of jobs do not require significantly special physical abilities. Increasingly it is the cognitive/intellectual/mental/emotional mix of abilities, plus experience and credentials, that makes a person not only "able to work" but also desired by employers. The problem is there will always be millions of people at any given time that no one in the economy wants to employ. Even if they're theoretically able to work, theoretically able to learn/be trained, hell even if they're willing to work, that doesn't mean any employer out there, public or private, necessarily has any need or desire for them. And this problem will never go away. If we have several million working age people the product of whose labor the society doesn't want, why are you trying to compel society to buy their labor anyway?



Your basic needs will be met if you refuse or are unable to meet them yourself, yes. However those needs will be met in a bare minimum way such that, were you to be completely satisfied with that existence, it would indicate things about your personality or mental state that shed light on why employers probably don't want you to work for them either. Let me put it another way: when it comes to people who would prefer to be lazy and have no interest in their organization's mission or what their work entails, the feeling on the employer's side of the table is mutual... just stay home, I'd rather not deal with you.

As soon as you take this bunch of people whose personalities/mental states/bodies are incompatible with the modern work environment and require them to start doing jobs, that means you 1) have to make up tasks for them that no one else is already doing, 2) those tasks are likely to be make-work in nature (because everyone else is already doing the stuff that matters), and 3) it means you need to hire other people to competently babysit them in their performance of these bull**** tasks, which is like appointing a calculus and advanced algebra teacher to teach remedial math to a hodge podge bunch of delinquents during detention.

I don't disagree with conservatives very strongly on very many things, but this is one of the biggies. Workfare is a very foolish inconsistency in the conservative ideology. Conservatives want to be pro-business. Forcing private sector employers to hire people society as a whole would rather not hire is not pro-business. Conservatives want government to be more efficient. Forcing government to employ the very people government has already decided it doesn't want or need to employ works directly against that. There is nothing about workfare that is aligned with conservative ideals.

The trouble is the left is willing to help anyone even if they are able to work and chose not to because the rich should share their wealth, even though rich celebrities sit high and mighty in their multimillionn dollar mansions and do nothing for the poor but complain about rich CEO's not paying their fair share.
 
Yea well New Mexico doesnt have 11 dollar an hour minimum wage and according to this link a bigmac meal is only slightly more in Washington. $6.47 vs $7.01

50 cents more is nothing compared to the pay increase. New Mexico's minimum wage is $7.50. But even though I am living in New Mexico I was born in Washington and grew up and lived in Oregon much of my life. I was just up there not to long a go to visit. The high prices in the Pacific Northwest have more to do with the Californiafication of the area than wages. BTW speaking of Oregon a Bigmac meal sets you back $6.71

And that Oregon big mac meal has no sales tax added on.
 
The trouble is the left is willing to help anyone even if they are able to work and chose not to because the rich should share their wealth, even though rich celebrities sit high and mighty in their multimillionn dollar mansions and do nothing for the poor but complain about rich CEO's not paying their fair share.

I don't think what I'm saying is registering with you. Whoever it is you're referring to in the bold there, their work is not wanted or needed. People who are satisfied to not work and sit back and collect whatever they can get have a psychological problem that is not conducive to being a productive employee, and therefore employers don't want them. Workfare imposes people employers don't want to deal with on them anyway. And again, the work that is conjured up for these types of people is going to be mostly make-work, because other people are already doing the stuff that matters in the course of their regular actual gainful employment.
 
Please tell me which small government has run up a national debt of 20 trillion dollars.

Please tell me where I said that claim? What I did say is that small government with a bad plan can run up big deficits. Hell any government no matter its size can screw things up. Just making a government smaller doesnt mean that it wont spend as much.

Trump for an example wants to spend more on the military. He isnt spending less by any stretch of the imagination. Trump doesn't want small government he just doesn't want things that he has dubbed Liberal.
 
I don't think what I'm saying is registering with you. Whoever it is you're referring to in the bold there, their work is not wanted or needed. People who are satisfied to not work and sit back and collect whatever they can get have a psychological problem that is not conducive to being a productive employee, and therefore employers don't want them. Workfare imposes people employers don't want to deal with on them anyway. And again, the work that is conjured up for these types of people is going to be mostly make-work, because other people are already doing the stuff that matters in the course of their regular actual gainful employment.

I get what you're saying. Anyone who doesn't want to work can get taken care of by either the government or the rich. Let them die in the streets for all I care. No one's forcing them to work if they don't want to. They can live under a bridge and pull scraps of food out of the garbage. If pigeons can live off of french fry scraps on the ground then these people can to if that's their chosen profession.
 
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That if you make it harder to get food stamps, fewer people will get them? Nobody disagrees with that. That's obvious. Duh!

The question is did the people who stopped getting benefits truly deserve to lose them? And is this an overall benefit to the state or did these people who lost their benefits simply have to resort to crime, and begging to survive? Did the lose of benefits magically force these people to go get a job? Obviously not because if they went and got a job they could keep the benefits.

The whole point of food stamps is to help people who can't afford food find something to eat so that they don't have to resort to begging or theft in order to eat. If you only give these benefits to people that have a job obviously there are few able bodied people without dependents that need them if they already have a job. But what Alabama likely did is actually cost their state even more money, by forcing more of these people onto the streets begging, or potentially made them resort to crime in order to feed themselves.

Well yeah, but look, we have a growth industry, a for profit prison industry with stocks traded on Wall Street to support. And in a post-industrial society the system can turn $40-50K per hominid per year on profiting from bondage and a return to convict leasing. The industry has the usual stables of lawyers and lobbyists pushing any legislation that will benefit the industry; higher rates of poverty, crime, violence and recidivism all benefit shareholders and Wall Street.
 
I get what you're saying. Anyone who doesn't want to work can get taken care of by either the government or the rich. Let them die in the streets for all I care. No one's forcing them to work if they don't want to. They can live under a bridge and pull scraps of food out of the garbage. If pigeons can live off of french fry scraps on the ground then these people can to if that's their chosen profession.

Do you extend this attitude to seniors who didn't bother to save enough of their own money for retirement and passed and protected laws that mandate younger taxpayers would come to their rescue and support them like welfare recipients? Would you repeal Medicare and Social Security?

What I often find is that conservatives hold underfunded pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and usually even Medicaid in an entirely, universally different regard than other much smaller programs like SNAP or subsidized housing, as though they are some diametrically different thing. They aren't. They are government-funded social programs. All of them. So to protect and defend and fight for some social programs but not others ultimately boils down to discrimination against one type of person that would qualify for the programs you want to abolish and a belief in special government handout privileges for another type of person.

In this case, if you support social programs for older people but not younger people (and maybe you don't), you would be attacking younger adults and thinking they deserve nothing from government while hypocritically defending and advocating for older adults whom you think should get free money directly from government. Why be discriminatory on the basis of age? Either you're a borderline anarcho-capitalist who supports no social programs whatsoever, including Medicare and Social Security, or you think age is some magical qualification that either entitles you to handouts because you're a certain age, or entitles you to nothing because you're another age. That would be nonsensical and indefensible.
 
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Do you extend this attitude to seniors who didn't bother to save enough of their own money for retirement and passed and protected laws that mandate younger taxpayers would come to their rescue and support them like welfare recipients? Would you repeal Medicare and Social Security?

What I often find is that conservatives hold underfunded pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and usually even Medicaid in an entirely, universally different regard than other much smaller programs like SNAP or subsidized housing, as though they are some diametrically different thing. They aren't. They are government-funded social programs. All of them. So to protect and defend and fight for some social programs but not others ultimately boils down to discrimination against one type of person that would qualify for the programs you want to abolish and a belief in special government handout privileges for another type of person.

In this case, if you support social programs for older people but not younger people (and maybe you don't), you would be attacking younger adults and thinking they deserve nothing from government while hypocritically defending and advocating for older adults whom you think should get free money directly from government. Why be discriminatory on the basis of age? Either you're a borderline anarcho-capitalist who supports no social programs whatsoever, including Medicare and Social Security, or you think age is some magical qualification that either entitles you to handouts because you're a certain age, or entitles you to nothing because you're another age. That would be nonsensical and indefensible.

No. This attitude is for those who can work but choose not to and expect someone to take care of them anyway - the very same people from the OP in this thread where once a work requirement was made of them to collect benefits, they chose not to work. I'm a big believer in America and these people have a total and complete right to say that they don't want to work. Let them eat french fries off the ground like the pigeons then. The choice is theirs and if that is what they choose then that is what they choose.
 
It's pretty sad that in this country you can have a job and still require food stamps to get by.

I dont know where that is the case except where people are living beyond their means. Even at minimum wage, a worker would make 1200 a month. Thats more than enough to pay for housing and food in a average cost of living area.
 
Do you extend this attitude to seniors who didn't bother to save enough of their own money for retirement and passed and protected laws that mandate younger taxpayers would come to their rescue and support them like welfare recipients? Would you repeal Medicare and Social Security?

What I often find is that conservatives hold underfunded pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and usually even Medicaid in an entirely, universally different regard than other much smaller programs like SNAP or subsidized housing, as though they are some diametrically different thing. They aren't. They are government-funded social programs. All of them. So to protect and defend and fight for some social programs but not others ultimately boils down to discrimination against one type of person that would qualify for the programs you want to abolish and a belief in special government handout privileges for another type of person.

In this case, if you support social programs for older people but not younger people (and maybe you don't), you would be attacking younger adults and thinking they deserve nothing from government while hypocritically defending and advocating for older adults whom you think should get free money directly from government. Why be discriminatory on the basis of age? Either you're a borderline anarcho-capitalist who supports no social programs whatsoever, including Medicare and Social Security, or you think age is some magical qualification that either entitles you to handouts because you're a certain age, or entitles you to nothing because you're another age. That would be nonsensical and indefensible.

I would repeal medicare and social security. First off, they arent constitutional. Second, they are inefficient. Local communities can much better handle charity of their local seniors who fail to plan without having to tax the entire country. Thats not anarchy, thats federalism.
 
I dont know where that is the case except where people are living beyond their means. Even at minimum wage, a worker would make 1200 a month. Thats more than enough to pay for housing and food in a average cost of living area.

You forgot taxes. Taxes are killer for people on minimum wage. Those are the type of tax cuts I could really get behind.
 
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