Foodstamp Cuts.
- Thread starter Nastyman!
- Start date
As they should. If you have been out of work for two years you are clearly unmotivated.
I'm talking just 6 months.
Anyway are you now saying people with long term employment might as well just give up and stay on benefits? Apparently after a point they don't deserve to be hired.
We can't cut foreign aid. If we do that, we can't continue to support other countries who end up hating us anyway.
Mow lawns, learn a trade online "with Google," tighten up on your budget, cut the internet, buy a TracPhone, get some paying roommates, buy huge bags of rice and milk, and profit. Also be persistent with job finding. Turn in 40 applications over the week and make it routine to check in regularly in person. From 8 to 5, your job will be to find a job. Put ads in the paper offering your handyman services. It's not that difficult. I used to struggle with money and school barely allowing myself to have any food to eat, and I made it happen. I would be lucky to even eat a decent meal ten days out of the month with the longest I went without food being eleven days. I've learned that you need to make the world bend over for you instead of expecting someone else to do it for you. If at any point for any reason you can stand up and say "I'm doing my best," then you're a damn liar. If you aren't collapsed on the ground, you aren't giving it your all. I'm currently making $30,000 - 50,000 a year and I only have a minimum wage job.
All good suggestions except I have to disagree with the TracPhone thing. I had one of those when I was first starting college and the amount of money I shelled into that thing was wayyy more than what I would be paying for a normal contract from Verizon or whatever. Now granted, I was 18 years old and just starting college so I was texting all the time, but the point is you need to be careful with those things. It depends on the person, but sometimes it's cheaper to just have a contract. And yeah yeah you can say don't talk as much or text as much, but that's easier said than done for some people.
Last edited:
A lot of that kind of thing depends on location. I will give that to most people living in a moderately sized city. You have public transportation and anybody can get around.
If you're in small town America or a rural area you have jacks*** to work with.
Hell... I tried something simple taking an Adult Ed. course in welding for $200. The teacher was good and had us all doing hands on work. Try applying for a job afterward and nobody would even let me weld test. They all want experience.
So to be a little fair, I think people aiming to get real work go through a lot of that kind of thing finding out they wasted their money. Or maybe they try to just sell lousy crafts or garden vegetables and food not understanding the permit process. I suppose I could have bought my own welding equipment and offered to fix s*** with my noobie level of experience and had the resulting welds fail.
Now, I've been out of work 2 years, but all this time I've been back at College for IT Security. Hopefully, the time and money invested in this pays off.
If you're in small town America or a rural area you have jacks*** to work with.
Hell... I tried something simple taking an Adult Ed. course in welding for $200. The teacher was good and had us all doing hands on work. Try applying for a job afterward and nobody would even let me weld test. They all want experience.
So to be a little fair, I think people aiming to get real work go through a lot of that kind of thing finding out they wasted their money. Or maybe they try to just sell lousy crafts or garden vegetables and food not understanding the permit process. I suppose I could have bought my own welding equipment and offered to fix s*** with my noobie level of experience and had the resulting welds fail.
Now, I've been out of work 2 years, but all this time I've been back at College for IT Security. Hopefully, the time and money invested in this pays off.
No one deserves anything. If your employer can't make a buck off of your labor, why should they hire you??? There are plenty of opportunities to volunteer, doing whatever, to keep your self busy and healthy. But after a couple of years of unemployment, I would expect that person to be riddled with mental illness. No they would not be qualified to do much at that point.
It should pay off this time with a field like that. I know people want to follow their passions and stuff with schooling, but at the same time you got to be smart about it. People have the most ridiculous majors and it just makes me wonder what they hope to do with these things. I'll tell you what most of them end up doing: flipping burgers.
I guess this is fair, but what if the person really is qualified for the job?
Or worse, they were downsized and actually did take a job flipping burgers instead of collecting government benefits? That would look just as bad if not worse. I think they would do better to lie or not admit to working at McDonalds.
Also, I think working at McDonalds or a factory assembly job would contrubute more to mental illness than loafing around the house. Especially if the worker has a Bachelor's Degree and is forced to be underemployed with co-workers and customers that are morons.
Well that is where networking comes in. Virtually everybody gets their job by who they know, not what they know.
When I started my current career track almost 10 years ago now, going from code monkey (I was mid thirties and no one wants an old code monkey) to construction, I got my start by volunteering at Habitat for Humanity. Being at Habitat introduced me to people who had paying gigs. From those places, I met more people, got more gigs. Ten year in and I am working on my third apartment building where I collect top end rent from the best selection of renters. Who knew, every last person alive needs a place to live.
If you wanted to go the food service route, I would suggest starting your gig flipping burgers. From there go to bar back, then bartender. Before you know (say five years if you haven't totally destroyed your credit) you will getting your SBA loan for your own restaurant.
When I was younger, I had an attitude problem. I felt like the world owed me a living. That affected how I perceived the world. I felt like I had to get a job, so that people would give me money. I was wrong about that. We are no different than the animals on the planes of Africa. You have to hunt down and kill your opportunities. People are going to get hurt along the way (I only buy property from people who are desperate to sell...)
Having said that, I got into the rental business right as the bottom fell out of the whole idea of owning your home and having financing pay for it all. There was some luck or providence that helped me along. But luck smiles on those that help themselves.
I disagree with cutting funding to these benefits. If anything, more should be invested to improve administration, retraining, counseling and assistance to help people get back to work. Yes, tighten restrictions on who can qualify, make recipients more accountable, but MORE investment in these programs is need to do that, not less. Cutting funding will do nothing to help these people, in fact I expect crime and violence will increase as a result. Where is the money for these programs going to come from? How about corporate profits? Can anyone explain why it makes sense that corporate profits are off limits but we can cut programs that actually help people? It's a sad joke, really, but that is what I've come to understand the republican party is about, and American conservatism in general. These days, conservative seems to mean "to conserve for ME".
I have to say I am pretty disappointed, appalled even, at the callousness and well, frankly the naïve and clueless responses I'm seeing in this thread. 2 years is a long time to be unemployed, but none of you know what his situation is. You can talk the tough talk now but I'm quite sure that 99% of you would be lining up for government assistance if you were suddenly out of work with a family to take care of. Walk a mile in another man's shoes before you judge him.
I mean, some of these posts are laughable. I wouldn't wish bad luck on anybody, but some of you need your perspectives checked. Good day!
I have to say I am pretty disappointed, appalled even, at the callousness and well, frankly the naïve and clueless responses I'm seeing in this thread. 2 years is a long time to be unemployed, but none of you know what his situation is. You can talk the tough talk now but I'm quite sure that 99% of you would be lining up for government assistance if you were suddenly out of work with a family to take care of. Walk a mile in another man's shoes before you judge him.
I mean, some of these posts are laughable. I wouldn't wish bad luck on anybody, but some of you need your perspectives checked. Good day!
I was mostly responding to the opinion that people with long term unemployment were deemed worthless as a job seeker, but XBoxNeo's new post makes some other interesting points.
I think about this a lot as I'm finishing the last quarter of my Associates Degree. I have come to think of the Economy as being just another example of Darwinian Natural Selection. That is not to say society should only be about Survival of the Fittest and that the weaker people should be kicked to the curb.
I think there is a potential problem in Capitalism where Survival of the Fittest Individuals can come at the expense of having an overall Fitter Society. We need to find a better way because discarding talented people is wasteful and I think this kind of society is likely to see a prosperous Middle Class disappear.
I think about this a lot as I'm finishing the last quarter of my Associates Degree. I have come to think of the Economy as being just another example of Darwinian Natural Selection. That is not to say society should only be about Survival of the Fittest and that the weaker people should be kicked to the curb.
I think there is a potential problem in Capitalism where Survival of the Fittest Individuals can come at the expense of having an overall Fitter Society. We need to find a better way because discarding talented people is wasteful and I think this kind of society is likely to see a prosperous Middle Class disappear.
I would take it a step further and say there is an EXISTING problem, not a potential problem. Wealth continues to be trend towards the few, the statistics are certainly there to back that up, and while I am not advocating straight up wealth redistribution, I do think the burden to help support the (largely poor by comparison) population should increase along with wealth. Thus the progressive tax code, which of course is a sham when you're wealthy and can afford to choose from any number of loopholes, dodges and shelters to avoid contributing.
There is an alternative to this I'm intrigued by that would be a Progressive Consumption Tax.
Or "The X Tax"
This should reward people who are responsible and trying to save by not taxing income. However, the Consumption Tax would be Progressive and tax big spenders.
The concern I would have with that approach is government revenues being at the whim of whether people decide to spend their money or not. I think that would wreak havoc on budgeting, and the consistency and effectiveness of public programs. Not that we do it now but in that scenario we could kiss goodbye any hope of ever having a balanced budget again.
Would conumption tax be different from sales tax? I feels like it would be similar.
The version I heard would still use a lot of the same tools of the Income Tax and you would probably still have to submit most of the same forms. Basically, by seeing your Income and Savings for that year, they could simply workout your Consumption figure.
http://www.democracyjournal.org/8/6591.php
Wow, so many misconceptions...
High taxes decrease the tax base. Lower taxes increase the tax base. You have to lower taxes to increase revenue. We have a crystal clear case of this principal in action right now. Obama care is causing companies to reduce their number of employees and correspondingly the amount of hours people work. Thus lowering the tax base, and ultimately decreasing revenue.
High taxes and lot of regulation cause companies to go underground to avoid paying taxes. Particularly the small mom on pop businesses. The bigger businesses simply leave the country for a country that doesn't charge as much taxes.
High taxes decrease the tax base. Lower taxes increase the tax base. You have to lower taxes to increase revenue. We have a crystal clear case of this principal in action right now. Obama care is causing companies to reduce their number of employees and correspondingly the amount of hours people work. Thus lowering the tax base, and ultimately decreasing revenue.
High taxes and lot of regulation cause companies to go underground to avoid paying taxes. Particularly the small mom on pop businesses. The bigger businesses simply leave the country for a country that doesn't charge as much taxes.
