The Obama Years- A GOP love story

I'll take it back. The Military wasn't as high in the spending as I thought. I guess the statistic was government employees, which included Military. 104M worth of food stamps used on Military bases in 2012, which I believe is the most recent number.

A Private is given approximately 20K in salary and approximately 20K in food/housing incentives from the military.

I'll take back my statement.


maybe we should be talking about Wal-Mart who's employee need welfare to survive yet work full time .

How Walmart's Low Wages Cost All Americans, Not Just Its Workers (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/walmart_n_4466850.html)


The size of Wal-Mart is sometimes difficult to visualize. To put it into some context, consider the following: 100 million U.S. shoppers patronize Wal-Mart stores every week. Wal-Mart has twice the number employees of the U.S. Postal Service, a larger global computer network than the Pentagon, and the world's largest fleet of trucks. Americans spend about $36 million dollars per hour at the stores. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other company in the world, capturing one of every four dollars spent on food in the U.S. The average American family of four spends over $4,000 a year there. Each week, it has 200 million customers at more than 10,400 stores in 27 countries. If the company were an independent country, it would be the 25th largest economy in the world.
Given the sheer size of Wal-Mart, how it pays "associates" is likely to have an outsized impact on their local and state communities, according to a number of studies.
Wal-Mart's low wages have led to full-time employees seeking public assistance. These are not the 47 percent, lazy, unmotivated bums. Rather, these are people working physical, often difficult jobs. They receive $2.66 billion in government help each year (including $1 billion in healthcare assistance). That works out to about $5,815 per worker. And about $420,000 per store. But the federal and state aid varies widely; in Wisconsin, a study found that it was at least $904,542 a year per store. (See the accompanying chart.)

Yup...

I know someone with 2 kids working at walmart. She has a degree in dental hygiene, but she refuses to give up her walmart job.

Why?

Because if she did she'd get just enough of a raise to no longer qualify for gov't assistance, which would net out as less money for her and her kids.

I tried to explain the longer term benefits of moving into an actual career and off of gov't assistance... within 2 or 3 years she should easily be paid enough to net out ahead - not to mention the non-monetary benefits of moving your household off the welfare program.

She can't process it. Can't risk going a year with slightly less money.

So she's forever stuck at walmart, and on Gov't assistance.

I know the GOP gets lambasted for the way they characterize welfare recipients - in many ways it's ignorant. But the cry from the left that the abuse and incentive to stay on the system doesn't exist is equally as ignorant.

And so far the only real answer the left has given is to raise minimum wage. And the people pushing for it the most (ie: the people actually on minimum wage) don't seem to get how that nets out long term for them (not very good...)

Instead of this person being a productive member of our society and raising 2 kids in such a household, she's living off gov't assistance and raising her kids in the same manner. We're paying for 1/2 of their 'household income' instead of it being earned via a job she's perfectly capable of doing.

The. System. Is. Broken.

the system is broken.

reducing the amount of food stamps a recipient gets isnt fixing the problem though.

complex issue.

a politically unfavorable issue as well imo.

If you are for welfare reform = mean and out-of-touch. Against welfare reform = bleeding heart politician letting tax money go to waste.

a lot like the runaway costs of healthcare before ACA, a president/party needs to step up and make some unfavorable decisions to try and reform welfare. a lot like the runaway cost of healthcare, someone needs to put their head on the chopping block and do the right thing for this country.

unfortunately that person will take a lot of immediate attacks and wont be in office in 10-20 years when the benefits of those tough decisions can be appreciated.

the system is broken.

reducing the amount of food stamps a recipient gets isnt fixing the problem though.

complex issue.

a politically unfavorable issue as well imo.

If you are for welfare reform = mean and out-of-touch. Against welfare reform = bleeding heart politician letting tax money go to waste.

a lot like the runaway costs of healthcare before ACA, a president/party needs to step up and make some unfavorable decisions to try and reform welfare. a lot like the runaway cost of healthcare, someone needs to put their head on the chopping block and do the right thing for this country.

unfortunately that person will take a lot of immediate attacks and wont be in office in 10-20 years when the benefits of those tough decisions can be appreciated.

I agree completely. It would seem to be a situation ripe for compromise in the interest of what is best for the country... for whatever reason compromise has been made a dirty word (not just by politicians - there are a lot of actual voters that are firmly entrenched in one side so much they view compromise as a synonym for defeat...)

You have to find a way to de-incentivize being on the system without doing harm to those that truly need it.

I have ideas... how about being on gov't assistance = doing work for the government? You need tax payer money to 'live' - then pick up trash on the side of the road 10 hours a week, etc. What they're doing and how much they have to do can easily be modified to strike a balance between pushing people towards getting off the program and recklessly punishing people for falling on hard times.

Or how about making a stamp on your ID that means you're not on welfare? Restrict the purchasing of certain items to those with the stamp - alcohol, cigarettes, etc. Lottery tickets... god, the number of people that waste money on lottery tickets... We can't make those on welfare get that stamp, that would be too 'humiliating', so why don't we do something to those not on the system?

We need to cut where food stamps are accepted... My local pizzeria should not have a sign that says "Now Accepting EBT Cards!" EBT cards should not have transactions from strip clubs on them...

The problem of solving poverty in the US is hard and complicated, and ultimate probably only gets solved by having an education system that's worth a crap (lol - good luck.)

But there's plenty we can do to curb the waste and make the system more efficient and/or have better results. But first we need to determine an acceptable level of waste so we have a goal to shoot for and a way of measuring our progress towards that. We also need an acceptable level of hardship we place on legitimate welfare users (those not abusing the system) because that's going to happen and without know what is acceptable to our society we have no way of measuring success/failure of changes and we continue in this blind-monkey-throwing-darts mentality that got us in this mess to start with.

Those are hard conversation to have, so I have zero faith they'll ever happen.

there are 2 separate social welfare programs - food stamps (SNAP) and cash assistance. I believe both can be used/accessed on a person's EBT card.

food stamps cant be used at ATMs or used at strip clubs etc. pretty sure you cant buy prepared food or sweets etc. fairly restrictive.

Cash assistance money (however) can be withdrawn from pretty much any ATM (i think). its like the gov't deposits $180/mo in a person's debit card account. they should just do away with cash assistance and make it all SNAP .. but then ppl wouldnt be able to buy gas ... and if you allowed ppl to used SNAP for gas there would be a ton of people standing at gas stations offering to buy you $20 worth of gas on their EBT card for $10 cash etc ...

Every natural born US citizen gets 1 million dollars at birth from the government and nothing else the rest of their life ,how about that ?:food-smil

I wonder what would happen if all these giant corporations all started paying their employees actual livable wages and maybe scarified a small % of their profits. Does a CEO of a company really need to make 300 times more than their bottom level employees? How much is enough?

I wonder what would happen if all these giant corporations all started paying their employees actual livable wages and maybe scarified a small % of their profits. Does a CEO of a company really need to make 300 times more than their bottom level employees? How much is enough?

One of the many "benefits" of capitalism. Makes sure the rich only get richer and the poor get poorer.

it seems that US companies are doing these "inter-mergers" with foreign companies to avoid paying taxes in the US since the corporate loop holes are being targeted for reform.

Big Pharma Skips to the U.K. to Avoid Taxes - The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/02/big-pharma-skips-to-the-u-k-to-avoid-taxes.html)

More companies want to ditch America to cut taxes - CBS News (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-companies-want-to-ditch-america-to-cut-taxes/)


who knew ireland was a corporate tax dream land?

world economics, corporate tax structures, inflation etc is all to complicated for a guy like me.

im too distracted chasing that lone dollar dangling in front of me.

it seems that US companies are doing these "inter-mergers" with foreign companies to avoid paying taxes in the US since the corporate loop holes are being targeted for reform.

Big Pharma Skips to the U.K. to Avoid Taxes - The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/02/big-pharma-skips-to-the-u-k-to-avoid-taxes.html)

More companies want to ditch America to cut taxes - CBS News (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-companies-want-to-ditch-america-to-cut-taxes/)


who knew ireland was a corporate tax dream land?

world economics, corporate tax structures, inflation etc is all to complicated for a guy like me.

im too distracted chasing that lone dollar dangling in front of me.





This is not new ,my company got dragged into this shit years ago(1998/99) .Royal Ahold based in the Netherlands bought Giant of Carlisle ,Giant of Maryland and Stop and Shop, Martins , Peapod plus others they have sold off to improve the bottom line . We get put on the tight budget line while all earned monies go over seas .

Royal Ahold Set to Acquire Giant Food - NYTimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/20/business/royal-ahold-set-to-acquire-giant-food.html)