What's your take on Trump's move to deprive a few million more poor folks of food stamps?

But they’re not poor, they’re lazy. Just ask trump supporters here.

And just in time for Christmas! How’S THAT For grinch like timing?

@stanleybmanly It’s not in effect until April and they have to work 20 hours to keep benefits if they are able-bodied. Let’s not be overly dramatic. (Edited: and with no dependents)

Let them eat cake!

@KNOWITALL: If employment is available, if they have access to it, if they are only looking after themselves, (sometimes the government’s definition of “dependent” doesn’t match realities) etc etc etc.
And the governments definition of “able-bodied” also often doesn’t match reality.

@canidmajor Like I PM’d @stanleybmanly. Maybe ya’ll better do some research before you start getting outraged, again. Adults 18–49, none disabled, none with dependents, etc…it’s not just everyone without a care in the world.

They already only got these for 3 months without working that 20 hours. And as I also sent to Stan, it’s actually Constitutionally sound and with these cuts is a help system, not a way of life. Disagree if you want, but at least know the facts before you start slinging mud.

Nothing I said in my post was wrong or muddy.

Who is to make the decision if someone is able and of sound mind and able to work? I can already see this as being a cluster f@@k.

Good..

Here is the thing. Nobody will starve. We will just get more violent. The dude at 7/11 isn’t going to risk a pummeling if a poor person steals a pizza.

I will not starve. Guns are easy to get. If you think I will just rot on the street and die of hunger you are mistaken. I will walk up behind you and blow your fucking head off. Then I will loot you and buy pizza at 7/11.

Food stamps aren’t generosity. They are the minimum needed to keep the poor from cutting your fucking head off.

@canidmajor (yawn) The boy who cried wolf has more credibility than todays Democratic party.

Able-bodied people under 50 who choose not to work, not to look for work, or not to train for employment should not have access to welfare services.

Just want to throw this into the mix.
For what reason is the age capped at 49?
I mean, those older than that, say 50/65 are more than capable of work too right?
Assuming they’re able bodied, naturally.
Just curious, appears from the outside to be an anomaly of sorts.

@ucme I know a truly disabled person here they gave 44 a month in food stamps, no dependents and income of 800 a month, 65 years old. The systems been broken a long time here. Welfare moms with 3 kids get about triple the food, plus WIC.

@KNOWITALL That is state-specific.

If you want injustice, a person who gets a 1.6 percent raise in their disability money for cost of living, gets a conpensatory reduction in EBT / Snap (usually around 12 dollars) and other assistance, such as rental assistance, you get less as well. So your 1.6 percent raise will cost you 20–30 dollars a month.

@ucme There must be a cutoff somewhere. Fifty is reasonable to me.

@Yellowdog Yes, your income will affect all of your welfare amounts. They are means-based.

@Sagacious The point being the programs already keeping the poor at poverty level, so if under 50’s have some requirements, fine. Maybe that savings can support existing programs better.

@KNOWITALL Welfare is not meant to be a person’s way-of-life. It is meant to help through a period of hard times. Poverty or not, the government’s interest is that you don’t starve to death while you find work so you can sustain yourself. That changes as people move into old age. The elderly and disabled should be helped with much more gusto than people who fall into the category the president is focusing on.

People 50 and over who lose their job, for whatever reason are almost guaranteed to not find employment, whatever their skills, so probably why the age cut off at that point.

Really…50?
Wow, that’s rough!
Seems like they’re saying you’re washed up & over the hill from that age on.
I mean, I’m 53 & feel fitter than ever, can do the work of someone 30 years younger, both physically & mentally.

The thing I find so incredible about these cuts is that they are a dagger at the throat of the fool’s base. The people who will take the hit from this one are the RURAL POOR—where there are NO JOBS— places where the Federal dole is the only thing separating them from conditions in Somalia. The residents will wither along with their solid redlands proudly flaunting their magahats uand dodging the tumbleweeds.

@stan Wrong, we’re doing fine in Trump country. Plenty of jobs, investors, land for sale. No poop on the streets either!

Poop in the Whitehouse I’ll bet there’s land for sale! You’re in trouble if you’re a farmer. Stinky’s trade war probably means food stamps are in your future.

Considering how many times I have been approached by people who want me to buy their food stamps so they have cash to buy booze and drugs, I welcome the added stipulations.

Surely poop in the shitehouse sounds, well…more romantic? :D

But don’t you understand. Of course there are some junkies and meth heads getting food stamps. I personally know very few people who qualify for food stamps, but here in this town that is rolling in money, the resources exist to see to it that people are fed. It’s the hard scrabble places—the redlands where the need is greatest and the resources scarce. In this town the problem is in the distribution of food from the huge excess of fancy eateries.

@KNOWITALL Your naivety is astounding even for a small town, midwestern girl. But then, you also believe that birth control can never fail.

Life in the actual world is a little different from what you imagine.

@canidmajor ha, oh goody, I get to be on the long list of jellies you crap all over now?! At least I’m in good company, so I’ve heard.

Because you are old, this is your one free lie about me.
Both my nephews were condom babies, so try again.

You actually started it @KNOWITALL

@Patty I dont think poor @stanley has ever been to the heartland. Haha! He cant understand generational welfare.

@chyna And I finished it. Next.

Employment, is available. But it’s often part time, and those employers, want full availability.
Working two jobs is hard. Because both of your employers want you to be available ALL the time. That is not realistic.
It’s not easy to get 2 jobs…
That’s from personal experience.

What’s a condom baby? Does it mean failed condom?

@stanley Supposedly.

Stan was born in Chicago. But because Stan’s dad worked for the railroad, Stan was reared primarily in Nebraska. My siblings & I had a charmed life. We rode the train for free. So Stan spent considerable time in South Dakota, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma and Illinois. This was back in the 50s when Republicans were both progressive and LIBERAL. would not believe how idyllic life was in those places compared to what has happened to them now. Ask your parents.

And you should not assume that Stanley knows nothing about generational welfare. Stanley pays attention!

@stan creeps @knowitall out in third person. Haha!

Main streets still here waiting for you, stan. Lots of people sell out and come here, make a heck of a profit due to cost of living, too. Come, breathe smog free air again!

I know. Sell the house and buy a town in Missouri? All of the kids of my Midwestern relatives are trying to flock out here, and my house has been pretty much a staging area for their ambitions. My niece that I adore will be here in 2 weeks. She has her dad’s (my brother’s) personality and just bubbles. 5 years ago she insisted on being married here, which I tried to resist in horror. But she would not be dissuaded, and half of Iowa actually showed up here. They worked my tired old ass nearly to death, but it was exhilarating. The girl has some incredible friends.

@stan I actually just meant a house with acreage, not the town haha!

To each their own. Mostly its LGBTQ’s that move out there
no one else. They love it though, acceptance is life-changing.

My baby cousin and her husband had nothing good to say, but they like Trump so makes sense.

Stan. If you run for POTUS, I’ll finally vote, and write you in…
Respect…

Thank you, but I would rather be boiled in oil. Have you noticed how everyone who takes the job ages visibly right in front us? Obama came into office with black hair and left as grey as a goose. Trump looks particularly haggard for 3 years work. The transformation is straight from a horror movie. @KNOWITALL The common legend that it is only LGBQT and homeless people flooding into this town is woefully inaccurate. It’s young, highly educated technical single professionals of ALL stripes that wind up in the city itself, but there has been a HUGE influx of wealthy married people that have transformed places like Marin county from an enclave of hippies to the biggest collection of snooty well moneyed refugees from elsewhere that you will ever see. Remnants of the counter culture there are almost exclusively people in their late 60s and middle 70s who dug in back in the mid 60s through the 1970s. I believe it is a movement propelled primarily by status seeking women with affluent husbands and it makes for a concentration of insufferable people that is difficult to tolerate.

@stan Ugh, sounds awful. Check out Murder Mountain on Netflix sometime. Commune gone bad.
And you’re right about the job, they do age overnight seemingly.

It is all a distraction from the fact that he was just sentenced to pay 2 million to various charities that he defrauded.

Any man who will throw children in cages for his own amusement, he will have no problem starving the masses. Worst part is that he’s just getting started

A person who is not handicapped, and who has no children, who simply doesn’t work, does not qualify for welfare. Maybe $40 in food stamps, for a little while. I’m with @KNOWITALL. I also wish people would educate themselves of the guidelines, at least in their state, instead of assuming that people are just lazy assed deadbeats.

Trump is an asshole. That’s all there is to it. I don’t know how some of his followers can so piously go to church on Sundays without bursting into flames.

One of the reasons people end up needing food stamps is because the price of housing is so ridiculously high! So, even if you work, most of that goes to rent/mortgage.

Yeah. My truck broke down in a bad part of town several months ago. I walked into a nearby Pizza Hut, to charge my phone, while I waited for the tow truck. A very nice lady, who worked there, let me use her personal phone, while mine charged.
It was going on midnight, and I was still waiting for the damn tow truck. The lady’s shift was over, so she started walking. I asked the remaining guy there, if it was safe for her to walk home, in that area, at that time. His reply broke my heart.
He said the lady didn’t have far to go. She lives in the homeless shelter. Only a few blocks away…

So. This very nice lady, works a full time job, and has no home, or transportation. When I here people (mainly conservatives,) talk about the poor being lazy, I wish they had to walk to the homeless shelter, at midnight, through that area. After working 8–10 hours, no less. That’s not fair.
It’s not just rent, although I hear rent has gone crazy in lots of places. It’s the fact that wages, are pathetic. The CEOs, of these businesses, make millions. And if you ever worked for a large corporation, you know that they don’t deserve that money. When the economy tanked in 2008, the same people responsible for the collapse, got millions more (golden parachutes.)

It’s fucking capitalism. And crazy tax codes. And health care costs…THAT’S why people can’t get out of poverty…

I’m not aware of anyone here calling poor people lazy, yet that seems to be what half are arguing about here.
I do qualify for food stamps, but I don’t draw them. Food stamps are for people who can’t budget what money and/or other aid they get. That is not an accusation, it is a fact. If I drew it, I would receive less assistance toward my rent. It all equals out. Food stamps protect people against spending all their cash without saving something back for food. In my current situation, I spend less on food than they would allow. I don’t not need that much. This way, my budget is all cash, and I’m not wasting anything on food I don’t need.
Maybe instead of crying that the government is not doing enough for poor people, the complaints should turn to how much property owners want for rent of their units. That’s what sucks the life out of a poor person’s budget, rent.

^ “Maybe instead of crying that the government is not doing enough for poor people, the complaints should turn to how much property owners want for rent of their units.”

In that case, the complaints still need to be about the government. It’s irresponsible of a country’s leaders to allow policies that push people into poverty. You can’t rely on individual good will. Especially if large parts of society harbour the general idea that poverty is a choice.

Which brings up the rather depressing fact that accelerating poverty has great potential for business enterprises footed on the exploitation of the down & out. Everything from check cashing shops to confiscatory reverse mortgage schemes, the sky’s the limit with predatory capitalism. And most insidious of all are those enterprises which actually enlist government sanction and participation in the fleecing of its citizens. I still insist that it is impossible to get a handle on ANY of it until you understand that ALL of it is engineered to facilitate the transfer of wealth. Every one of the malevolencies afflicting us as a society are but indicators of who is winning the class war. And all it takes to appreciate this is to consider who wins and loses in a given situation. For example, who benefits from a housing shortage or massive student debt? Try to come up with an example of a single problem defining our society where the rich take a hit.

#Stan2020.