And not only is it wrong, it puts a strain on relationships.

I would like to tell her how wrong it is to collect $300+ off her SSDI and food stamps on top of that, while she is working FULL TIME paid cash under the table. Wrong wrong wrong.

Get off your fat lazy asses America, lose weight, and get educated. Stop bitc*in and moaning and crying. Find a job or go make your own job. Use the internet for your job hunting like careerbuilder.com and look outside the most commonly available jobs…

Economy grew 2% in 2011…It’s NOT that bad out there. Relocate to a better state. Each state and local city has a different population and demands. Some areas of this country have terrible unemployment… Pick up your shit and quit complaining, move. The north has plentiful jobs, great schools and healthcare.

I was unemployed at one point in time and also owned my own business. Never have I EVER needed foodstamps.

http://www.ucan.org/telecommunications/landline/california_lifeline_requirements_for_universal_lifeline_telephone_service

You’re doing this experiment wrong.

It’s not your fault though, you’re doing it the way I would have done it if I didn’t know how to game the system. And I didn’t until I started working with people who’ve been on food stamps for a long time (that whole generational poverty thing we hear republicans talk about and then roll our eyes at, right). If you do the experiment the way that you’re doing it, you’re right, it IS difficult to live off of foodstamps.

However,

Consider this: A woman with a few kids (no legal father in the picture or the home) gets food stamps. The amount she gets is based on how many dependents she has, and the disposable income coming into the home. It may only be her income officially coming into the home because she’s the only one on the lease with real custody of the kids, but men that she dates either stay with her but are on a lease somewhere else (family, friends). Sometimes they have jobs or sometimes they get their own food stamps (note food stamps are only given to one person per household so if they both lived as lease holders in the same household, only one person could receive foodstamps for that address. See how that leads to illegitimate kids and less marriage!) So, you can have actually two incomes going into the household, only one being counted and get a lot more food stamps! I didn’t even mention getting paid under the table for work where you don’t have to report any income or signing up for TANF (cash payments) at the same time. Sadly though you can only get that for five years now because some jerk welfare reformers thought the system was being abused. Add all this together with unemployment and you my friend will have yourself a FAT stack o’ cash to play with. Now that is how you live off welfare and being a case manager in social service I see it happen every day of my life. Maybe not every element of it, but definitely a good mix of all these things. At first it was difficult to admit because I’ve been a hardcore liberal since I’ve been politically aware. But, the area that I work in is workforce development and with people knowing how to milk social programs like this, you can imagine how difficult it can be to make people see the incentives to work. Imagine, a few hundred dollars in food stamps, TANF, undocumented income (either being paid under the table or only one adult being counted as contributing to the household), and unemployment.

Oh! I forgot about SSI or SSDI payments as well. Count those too. Sometimes a good $600 a month. Scramble some of these into your experiment and then maybe you’ll be making a better point though I’m not sure it’ll have the result you’re looking for.

Also, whatever anyone says, food stamp fraud isn’t cleared up by link cards. What people do is just lend their card to someone and tell them their pin number in exchange for a rate for cash. Someone told me today 0.70 cents on the dollar. So, don’t think that money is all going to a good purpose.

Also, don’t paint me as totally against food stamps or a safety net. I’m still a liberal in spite of all this. It’s just the wool has to come off your eyes sometime.

End rant.

I think that people on foodstamps should be educated on food preperation and budgeting. I have a friend who runs a mission and a food pantry and he said that people with foodstamps run out sometime during the third week. I have never had that problem because I am very careful and I use coupons and shop for sales. I would love to run a program someday to show people how to do this.

You never know what type of situation someone is in and not everyone is a dead beat.

Our economy is sick. Capitalism is sick, and the sickest of all is the medical monster which will destroy this country. I don’t care if needy people can return the favor or contribute to our illusional economy. My belief is that we should concern ourselves with human needs, dignity and compassion. Without everyone doing at least well enough, we are impoverished indeed.