More recently, Gainesville, Florida, began enforcing a rule limiting the number of meals that soup kitchens may serve to 130 people in one dayIt's overwhelming how depressing that is to me. We can't have any sort of real social safety net in this country, and I often hear how it should be the job of churches and charity groups to help the hungry and homeless. Clearly, there are charities that are being restricted in the amount of food they're allowed to serve to the people that need it the most when they have the ability to help. I cannot fathom that. Not even one bit.
philokalia: Public institutions have a duty to look into each assistance case closely, because when you're giving something away, the unethical hordes come out of the woodwork. A shining example: the former mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick (now just released from prison, but stlll under federal indictment). He boasts in his new book about taking advantage of the food stamp "hookup" when he was in college at Florida A&M. At the time, his mother was a Congresswoman, his father a ranking county official: not only did he NOT need the help, he of all people should have known better than to take it.This seems a little like Reagan's (fictional) "welfare queen"; a singular anecode to justify a widespread bad practice. Kilpatrick is probably a subclinical sociopath, as his political career suggests; that he also scammed the food stamp system doesn't mean the food stamp system should have draconian review policies and an antagonistic treatment of their clients. Yes, some poor people are assholes or even sociopaths; the same is true of Wall Street traders (probably more so, honestly) but god forbid we have any auditing or oversight of their activity.
The Kilpatricks are surely not the only ones who've wrongly taken money meant for the poor. They should be ashamed of themselves; but no, this is considered an "exploit" deserving of publication.
Look, the "waste" in these systems is minimal compared to the net good, and infinitesimal to the waste that goes on in the parasitic investment "industries", in government pork barrel spending, or the ceaseless spending of the American War Machine. Throwing up a Kwame to justify treating people like shit, or cutting spending while people are out of work, is a pointless distraction.So true. I think of it this way:
You really think Burger King or 7-11 is going to employ less hourly people to do the work? If they could get away with employing a smaller number of people they would have done it already.If you haven't seen minimum-wage jobs replaced by capital expenditures or outright lost lately, you need to look more closely. Yes, that includes fast food and convenience store jobs.
The fact that TANF, i.e. what we used to think of as welfare, costs $17 billion or 0.45% of the federal budget never seems to sink in. Indeed, the entire top level 'Welfare' category of the budget, including TANF, Food Stamps, SSI for disabled people, all Federal housing assistance programs (including the Home Affordable Modification Program [portion of] TARP), and every other way our tax money goes to relieve the suffering of our fellow citizens who are poor, hungry, homeless, or disabled amounts to 13% of the budget. This is nevertheless a substantial amount of money, nearly half a trillion dollars.People, especially the kind of people who post on Facebook about how they claim millions of crackheads as dependents1, seem to vastly overestimate how much of their
hard-earned tax moneygoes to try and relieve the suffering of their fellow citizens. What I left out the other day is that $495 billion/13% is just for FY11. The next five years look like they're going to be even harder on the people who are just barely making it.
FY11 FY12 FY13 FY14 FY15 FY16
Budget 3818.8 3728.7 3770.9 3977.1 4189.8 4467.8
All Welfare 495.6 431.5 405.4 389.0 378.7 380.3
12.9% 11.6% 10.8% 9.8% 9.0% 8.5%
TANF 17.0 17.2 16.9 16.7 16.7 16.7
0.5% 0.5% 0.5% 0.4% 0.4% 0.4%
SNAP 78.5 80.2 77.9 70.7 63.8 60.6
2.1% 2.2% 2.1% 1.8% 1.5% 1.4%
They sent my Census form back! AGAIN!!! In response to the question: "Do you have any dependents?" I replied - "12 million illegal immigrants; 3 million crack heads; 42 million unemployable people, 2 million people in over 243 prisons; Half of Mexico; and 535 idiots in the U.S. House and Senate. Apparently, this was NOT an acceptable answer.
texorama It's not so much the Calvinists ... the rise of what major American institution coincides with these developments? Ten letters, beginning with MI can't figure this out... it's not "Military", "Medicine", or "Microsoft", those are only 8, 8, and 9 letters. "Malthusian" is ten, but that's not a major American institution.
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However, back in 2001, a community political group with which I was involved was thinking about bringing Ehrenreich to speak. Cost? $8000. My response: That's a lot of nickels and dimes...
posted by dhens at 7:59 AM on August 11, 2011 [8 favorites]