[censored][censored]entitlement[censored]welfare[censored!!!!]

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

and not constrained by accuracy
no ebt at chez ronaldos

[HankB]

. . . The only way to make things fair is to distribute the unhappiness evenly (which is really what liberalism is all about).

Or as a famous Limey put it:

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

[Ryan in Maine]

Then the only thing that EBT can buy is basic staples.  Things like bread, fresh or frozen meat, fresh or frozen produce, canned or dried legumes (beans, etc), and grains.  Period. End of [censored] list.  If they can't figure out how to cook, let them [censored] starve.  If it's "ready to eat" it's off the [censored] list.  No potato chips, no pizza, no junk food, none of that crap.  

As an employee on the front end of SmallMart, I think any SNAP sort of program should be modeled after the WIC program (with more strict qualifiers and monthly check-ups). But even WIC is getting broader...

Side note: Did you know an EBT card can act like a debit card? People can actually get $100 back at a cash register, completely unaccounted for, straight from taxes.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIC

[Ned Hamford]

http://youtu.be/NzspsovNvII
NSFW

This will really make you really angry then...

[Scout26]

About a month or two ago I post on my FB a receipt found in a parking lot that showed someone buying several hundred dollars in steaks and lobsters using their EBT card.   

Ahh, here it is:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/receipt.asp

Feel free to continue your rage.

[GigaBuist]

I can understand the rage, but I am pretty sure the video is satire.

Yep. For one, that would take work and talent to put together.  Second, he's got a college degree from ATI, which is probably like an ITT Tech for med training, but that's something. Third, followed the link to the guy's Facebook page, then to his fan page for "MR EBT" and he said something about an appearance on FOX News.

[De Selby]

Amazing comprehension of economics. Everybody knows that there's a fixed amount of wealth in the world, just like there's a fixed amount of happiness. So, if somebody becomes happy, somebody else becomes unhappy. The only way to make things fair is to distribute the unhappiness evenly (which is really what liberalism is all about).

If you're taking about material wealth, ie goods and services, he's basically right.  Wealth isn't ephemeral like happiness.

Resources actually are finite, so at some point, the only way to get more is for someone else to have less.

[GigaBuist]

If you're taking about material wealth, ie goods and services, he's basically right.  Wealth isn't ephemeral like happiness.

Resources actually are finite, so at some point, the only way to get more is for someone else to have less.

This isn't even remotely true.  As technology expands, along with techniques, we're able to do more with less.  Take basic food as an example.

Farmers no longer spend time in the field wrestling with teams of horses to get their job done; we have tractors now.  Tractors and automobiles are cheaper because we've automated their construction via robots in some areas.  When they become cheaper food becomes cheaper.  Modern agricultural techniques (fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) also help drive production up which drives costs down.  Advances in road, or rail, construction increase the efficiency of transporting those products all around.  Advances in fuel economy also serve to drive down the prices of these basic products.

When you put the exact same input into some particular program and get more out of it society benefits.  You didn't take anything from anybody.  You just made more stuff using the same amount of stuff you used to.

Putting it another way:  What would this message cost me back in 1844?  How much would it cost for me to send you a message, along with the other 80-100 people that will read it? $12 in 1844 dollars, assuming 100 readers.  Adjusted for inflation it's $277.46.  Probably costs a nickle to post and host this particular message today.  And anybody in the world can read it for 0.01 cents in electricity.

You are correct in that at some point you'll have to take from others to get more.  But we're not anywhere near there yet.  We might never be.  We'll eventually get energy so cheap (I'm guessing nuclear) that it'll cost next to nothing. Robots will build darned near everything and they'll build robots to harvest raw materials to supply themselves and build consumer products.  Eventually they'll build robots that build robots that build the stuff you want (we're getting close with plastics at this point) which build duplicate robots that can replicate themselves.  Eventually you end up with a Star Trek world where nobody has to do anything to support themselves because everything is on auto-pilot.  The only people working will be the ones that want to work and improve on humanity.  The basics will be taken care of.

We'll get there, eventually, and we'll do it a whole heck of a lot faster if people stop insisting that they need the other guy's stuff to make their life complete.  If you want to improve the human condition on this planet build something that does it.

[Perd Hapley]

If you're taking about material wealth, ie goods and services, he's basically right.  Wealth isn't ephemeral like happiness.

Resources actually are finite, so at some point, the only way to get more is for someone else to have less.

Were you unaware that we're still finding new resources we didn't know about, finding new uses for resources we already have, and that hard-to-obtain resources sometimes become more obtainable?

Also, how do you claim that wealth is not "ephemeral," when you've defined it as "goods and services"? There are always new and different services, and services that differ in their appeal to different customers, so it doesn't seem at all finite.

[Azrael256]

Resources actually are finite, so at some point, the only way to get more is for someone else to have less

We have the same resources we had 10,000 years ago.  I'm much better fed than any of the kings of the ancient world.

Technology is a resource multiplier, particularly when it comes to energy.  We may reach a tipping point and a downward slope at some point (although I would argue out of laziness or stupidity and not some inherent limit), but resource exhaustion won't happen until everybody who might have remembered you and me has been dead for ages.  If we manage to find a way to exploit resources off this planet, we'll survive forever.  Barring some huge devastating event in the interim, of course.

[gunsmith]

I didn't get upset at the vid, I actually understood 1/2 of what he was saying. ... a vast improvement over other rap vids.

Having had to sleep in a friends car while I was working, I can understand outrage over seeing your tax dollars wasted like that but I can also understand why poor people do not or cant cook. I certainly had no fridge or cooking facilities while being "homeless" .

I bet there is a huge hidden waste in other gov't programs. I'd rather cut EPA, Dept of Interior, D of edu, and wasteful parts of the defense budget like taking care of Europe's & Asia's defense needs. Once we get rid of that I'll be in favor of cutting EBT waste.   

[AmbulanceDriver]

Satire or not....  Unfortunately the reality is that in order to be satirical, there needs to be some truth to it.  And I have seen it first hand.  We've been shopping at the grocery store, see a cart loaded with soda, junk food, frozen foods, etc.  Everything pre-packaged.  Couple of hundred dollars worth of food.   And out comes the "Oregon Trail" card.  Oregon's version of the EBT card.  I didn't say anything, but I don't think I'll be able to hold back if I see something like that again.  I might just go off on the person...

[Monkeyleg]

DeSelby (why am I walking into this?), goods and services are not finite, but tied to supply and demand. If more people want Ford cars or McDonalds burgers, Ford and McDonalds will make more.

Resources are finite if the same resources are to be used for all time. We have something like 600 years of oil available here in the US through various means of extraction. While we're depleting that resource, we'll be finding another to take its place.

BTW, the video caught at least one conservative commentator with his satire meter broken: http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2011/09/21/four_minutes_to_explain_all_that_is_wrong_with_america

[Scout26]

Resources actually are finite, so at some point, the only way to get more is for someone else to have less.

I can only say this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0

[Ron]

Resources actually are finite, so at some point, the only way to get more is for someone else to have less.

While true in the abstract, it is a fallacy where it concerns practicality or current reality. We have resources on this planet out the kazoo, not even taking into consideration the already mentioned multiplying effect of technology.

The famines and over population that we were scared to death of (thanks to the propaganda our government schools and complicate media in the 70's) never materialized because of the technological advances that made us more efficient in food production.

We are seeing the same type of advances in exploiting traditional energy sources currently.

[Bigjake]

Shitcan welfare.

I'm tired of being a slave to anyone but me,  let along the smug aholes in that vid.  Which I see firsthand often,  and are the reason I don't buy groceries the first week of the month.  (Store is a zoo, and not worth the grief)

We'll probably have to sort the miscreants out with force initially, but the rest will either get a job or starve.

[De Selby]

What you all are missing about our resources (which are finite, I hope we all agree) is that they're already owned in this economy - they either are cash or have some value calculable in cash, or they're worthless.

Hence, by definition, if you get more, it will be because someone else has less.  Even being able to calculate the increased value of what you add to the resources you already own presumes someone else giving up what they have in exchange for it.

People with more cash can command more of the finite resource pie.  If you want more,, you need other people to give some of that up.

[makattak]

What you all are missing about our resources (which are finite, I hope we all agree) is that they're already owned in this economy - they either are cash or have some value calculable in cash, or they're worthless.

Hence, by definition, if you get more, it will be because someone else has less.  Even being able to calculate the increased value of what you add to the resources you already own presumes someone else giving up what they have in exchange for it.

People with more cash can command more of the finite resource pie.  If you want more,, you need other people to give some of that up.

All resources are not finite. Land may be finite. Human ingenuity most definitely is not.

Heck, oxygen is finite. Is that a problem for anyone?

Nice to see the fallacies of over a hundred years ago still alive and well, though.

[GigaBuist]

What you all are missing about our resources (which are finite, I hope we all agree) is that they're already owned in this economy - they either are cash or have some value calculable in cash, or they're worthless.

Hence, by definition, if you get more, it will be because someone else has less.

Lithium is a pretty good example of this.  It's becoming very high in demand now because of the explosion in building large battery packs for vehicles.  But, honestly, even before the whole EV car thing got underway we really saw it take off in the 80's with medical devices and then in the 90's with Li-Ion powered laptops.

That's why, when you look at the price of Lithium adjusted to 1992 dollars it was $44.50 in 1959.  Once the capitalists (medical and computers) got into the market they drove the price up, having to buy this finite resource from people that already had it, we hit $36 dollars in 1998.

Now, over in GigaBuist's Whacky World of Fun and Math the number 36 is lower than 44.50.  That's what happens when we get more efficient when we go about procuring something from the earth.  Incidentally the lowest cost point on my little chart here is 1974 where it hit around $25.25 a pound.  I'm not going to try and look it up, but given the history of the Li-Ion battery I'd say that's probably when research really got underway on using it in batteries, demand went nutty, but nobody was making money off it, so the price tanked.  I can explain why that works, but I won't bore you with it.

I do find it interesting that you label some resources as "worthless".   This is correct, in as much as in our current economy some things are worthless.  That's always going to be the case.  Oil was once worthless.  It was just annoying crap that bubbled up from the earth.  Eventually people found a purpose for that worthless crap.  Now it's an industry.  Lithium was once just something we gave crazy people, but now it's a major player in the energy industry.  

Technology is not static.  The economy is not static.  When one resource becomes too costly we find a way to switch to another.  Always have, always will.

People with more cash can command more of the finite resource pie.  If you want more,, you need other people to give some of that up.

Or you could figure out how to do stuff with things that others don't want.  Like oil or lithium.

[Regolith]

Or you could figure out how to do stuff with things that others don't want.  Like oil or lithium.

Or you could figure out more efficient ways of obtaining or using the resources we have, or you could figure out how to sell something that isn't even resource based, such as knowledge.

If wealth were fixed, we'd all still be living in caves.  We'd have been unable to build anything beyond that. And while the resources of Earth are finite, they are so large that we have a very long ways to go before we come even close to utilizing them all. And as soon as we lose the chains of our current gravity well, and then our solar system, the amount of resources available to us go from finite to nearly infinite.

[sumpnz]

What you all are missing about our resources (which are finite, I hope we all agree) is that they're already owned in this economy - they either are cash or have some value calculable in cash, or they're worthless.

Matter cannot be created or destroyed.  So in that sense they technically are both finite and infinite.  They are finite in the sense that you cannot create matter from nothing, so what we have is all there is.  But it also cannot be destroyed, just changed to a different form (e.g. oil is burned and becomes water, CO2 and other gasses).

Money (and wealth) however can be both created and destroyed.  There is no limit to the amount of wealth that can be be created, or exist.  The wealth held by the poorest in America (or Australia for that matter) today is still in excess of that enjoyed by all but the most powerful monarchs from any time prior to probably 1700 AD.

Now, that said, what makes you think that ALL resources are privatly owned?  Who, specifically, owns the tuna in the international waters of the Pacific?  What about the oil thought to be under the Arctic Ocean?  What about the iron content of the asteroids?  Even if they are all owned by *someone*, how does that mean that the rest of us cannot benefit from its exploitation?

Hence, by definition, if you get more, it will be because someone else has less.  Even being able to calculate the increased value of what you add to the resources you already own presumes someone else giving up what they have in exchange for it.

People with more cash can command more of the finite resource pie.  If you want more,, you need other people to give some of that up.

Well, bizjets are (for all practical purposes) a finite resource.  Because of that they cost $5million or more to buy, new anyway.  Sure, people with the money to buy them can get of them that I can, given that my income is under 6 figures right now.  But it's not like I have to give anything at all up so John Travolta can buy another one.

Also, have you no comprehension of supply/demand effects on an economy?  If person A buys a lot more gasoile (petrol in your language) than "his fair share" that can cause the price to go up.  Which will eventually cause person B to reduce his purchases of gasoline (either by replacing his ineffecient vehicle with a more effecient one, being more effecient with his driving - combining trips, being less of a lead foot, etc, or just stimply driving less).  This will cause the price to go down again.  So, yeah, person B might have "given up" some of his gasoline on account of person A buying more, but that was because of a rational decision making process related to the price of the gasoline, and had nothing to do with losing some quota that he's allowed to purchase.  Even if person B never curtailed his consumption of gasoline, the price rise would eventually cause oil producers to produce more and that gets everyone back to where they were before.  And before you argue that oil is still a finite resource, within my yet to be born grandchildren's grandchildren's lifetime it ain't going to run out, so that is not a valid arguement for human timescales of anything that is important.  And we don't really even know how long it takes to make oil.  There's plenty of indications that might well be far shorter than the 1E6 years kind of time scale.



ETA: Heh.  Post #1911.  If I had the cash I'd celebrate with a purchase of one of JMB's treasures.    So which one of your bastards bought the one I would have been able to buy - per De Selby's theory - if you had not??

[41magsnub]

Who, specifically, owns the tuna in the international waters of the Pacific?  

Neither of us....   

[sumpnz]

Neither of us....   

There was a reason I mentioned that ...

[wacki]

google took the original link down.  Anyone got another link?

[gunsmith]

google took the original link down.  Anyone got another link?

They did!!?? what a bunch of politically correct nonsense.


I'm a conservative but due to some poor decisions and a down economy I am familiar with what is considered poverty in the USA.

There are folks out there that live in SRO's ( single room occupancy ) I lived in one for a long time while working as a security guard.
They cost as much as an apt but you do not have to come up with a deposit because you pay by the week. No fridge, no cooking allowed ( due to regulations for fire codes ) People like me went out and bought little fridges and hot plates but its pretty difficult. 

I really don't think its as big a drain on the economy as the EPA is or rebuilding Afghanistan & Iraq.

Before the big welfare state they had a tent city in Central Park where folks down on their luck could pitch a tent while they were looking for work or saving up for rent, there used to be gospel missions where a sober person down on his luck could retain some dignity and a church would give them a room and three meals until he could get back & usually they would gratefully donate back when they were on their feet.

If I had a place to pitch a tent in SF I could save up enough in a month to get a decent place to live & in a year I could have a pretty good savings account but thanks to the gov't taking over what churches used to do its fubar ... no homeless person would be allowed to bring his gun into a homeless shelter - even if he was obeying the letter of the law.  Its hard to imagine how awful those places are, over run by institutionalized convicts and bureaucrats.

In most cases its easier to game the system then it is to go get a job at McDonald's, the day you get your job then all welfare/homeless benefits stop, plus you're working so you cant go to free food pantries.  So there is a gap between your first paycheck which is usually only for a few days - you usually wait two weeks or more for your first paycheck but you still have to eat & sleep  .

A guy I knew in AA went from prison to working for the city finding housing in SRO's  for homeless people. For him to help me I had to quit the job I had! Here I was sleeping in a dam car ( not even my freaking car but a friends) while working full time but legally he couldn't help me get into one of those places unless I quit my job and got on welfare!!!  If you're honestly looking for work or employed and wanting to stay that way yet your homeless, in  most places in the USA you are totally fubar. You either get in the system or you leave.

Yet my tax dollar gives Palestinians 53 billion! Osama's best buddy Pakistan gets billions, Ireland has a great economy & they get millions, Germany gets the best defense the USA can provide, illegal aliens get tuition rates better then Americans plus the EBT etc,  I say kick all the illegals off any benefit, spend the foreign aid on Americans & give working poor people the the benefits first THEN kick the leeches off.

Or better yet, only Americans that have a job get EBT / housing benefits ... The current system is built by public sector unions to keep them in charge of the poor and keep them in their jobs, the whole thing is broken and starving a few poor people while funding Hamas & the Palestinian Authority seems screwy to me