Obama school lunch debacle (Page 8)

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Which is surprising because the way people make it sound, when you're on welfare you're rolling in a sweet ride and talking to all your friends on your iPhone5 while drinking expensive booze-a-hol. It's not like living in a music video?

Didn't say growing up on welfare was glamorous or easy. Didn't even mention welfare. I said I worry that government "freebies" that aren't free to taxpayers set people's expectations that government will always be there to provide for them and SHOULD always be there to provide for them. I think that's an imprudent philosophy, particularly for a country that borders on having more net takers than net contributors with equal voting rights.

Congratulations to you and mehaner for rising above your circumstances. For every story like yours, I'll bet there's dozens of others of people who went on to live a life of basic subsistence on the public dole that was just comfortable enough to not encourage them to aspire to anything greater.

In the grocery store yesterday... Lady tries to buy dog food with food stamp... Cashier says food stamps won't cover it... Lady takes dog food back and gets a pack of chuck roast...

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Edited by AcesFull 2012-09-28 9:29 AM

Not hard to find "extreme" stories on both sides.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/receipt.asp

I can also share stories from people I know who work in grocery stores, schools, rent homes, etc., but what does it prove? That abuse goes on? Tell us all something we don't know.

She made a smart remark when she came back about the dogs eating the roast. Those people make it hard for these people.

http://gma.yahoo.com/slammed-using-food-stamps-ga-woman-seeks-apology-121005811--abc-news-savings-and-investment.html

Not saying abuse doesn't happen.  Of course it does, and frankly, that wasn't the point of the story I linked.  Of course it happens in every aspect of every day life.  People abuse the tax code, speed limit, walking signs and just about every other single friggen law that is on the books.  Does that mean that we should just do away with it?

 ETA: and did you ever think that maybe the abuse is due to the fact that it is difficult to actually survive on the food stamps without abusing it?  Not saying it is right, but might be an explaination.

Edited by crowny2 2012-09-28 9:40 AM

It SHOULD be difficult to survive on food stamps.

We're way off topic now.

I wonder why kids with free or reduced lunch buy $5 worth of soft drinks and chips everyday from the vending machine wtf

What is your motivation to improve your station in life? Or are you comfortable enough in your life now that you feel no need to improve?

What makes you think that there are a dozen people out there for every one of me and Meh who don't want to improve? How are these people different than any of us?

Are there people out there who don't want to improve? Sure. But I'm guessing it's not the dozens for every one you contend. I would say if anything that you have your statistic backward, that for every ONE person who doesn't strive to make their life better, a dozen DO get out of poverty and make something of themselves.

I find it interesting that both of you above, tony and gearboy, are essentially arguing that the level of entitlements we had 30 - 50 years ago were effective in supporting people long enough to provide the opportunity to rise above their circumstances. In fact, you offer proof.

Yet in the last 50 years, we've seen entitlement spending grow by 727%, even accounting for population growth and inflation.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/heatherginsberg/2012/09/02/entitlement...

Clearly, it's time for reform.

At least we agree on one thing -- it's time for reform. And has been for a while.

Now without even digging for data I can say off the top of my head since I've heard this argument 100 times that most of the entitlement increases have come because of increased payments to Social Security and Medicare for the elderly.

I'm back. Had to put out a few fires and dig up this study you cited. Before I go into it, I would like to reiterate that I believe reform is needed.

OK, here we go:

The data from townhall, an admittedly proud conservative website, is of course taken out of context. Let me offer another counterpoint from the SAME STUDY YOU BROUGHT UP that says:

``Poverty- or income-related entitlements—transfers of money, goods or services, including health-care services—accounted for over $650 billion in government outlays in 2010. Between 1960 and 2010, inflation-adjusted transfers for these objectives increased by over 30-fold, or by over 7% a year. Significantly, however, income and benefit transfers associated with traditional safety-net programs comprised only about a third of entitlements granted on income status, with two-thirds of those allocations absorbed by the health-care guarantees offered through the Medicaid program.

For their part, entitlements for older Americans—Medicare, Social Security and other pension payments—worked out to even more by 2010, about $1.2 trillion. In real terms, these transfers multiplied by a factor of about 12 over that period—or an average growth of more than 5% a year. ''

So it's not just the poor who are on the government dole, it's old people, to the tune of $1.2 TRILLION!!! Double the $650 billion given to the poor.

As an aside, the report that you cited also says:
``In current political discourse, it is common to think of the Democrats as the party of entitlements, but long-term trends seem to tell a somewhat different tale. From a purely statistical standpoint, the growth of entitlement spending over the past half-century has been distinctly greater under Republican administrations than Democratic ones. Between 1960 and 2010, the growth of entitlement spending was exponential, but in any given year, it was on the whole roughly 8% higher if the president happened to be a Republican rather than a Democrat.

This is in keeping with the basic facts of the time: Notwithstanding the criticisms of "big government" that emanated from their Oval Offices from time to time, the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush presided over especially lavish expansions of the American entitlement state. Irrespective of the reputations and the rhetoric of the Democratic and Republican parties today, the empirical correspondence between Republican presidencies and turbocharged entitlement expenditures should underscore the unsettling truth that both political parties have, on the whole, been working together in an often unspoken consensus to fuel the explosion of entitlement spending.''

The study was done by:
http://www.aei.org/scholar/nicholas-eberstadt/

Who works for the AEI, often referred to as a ``conservative thinktank,'' at:
http://www.aei.org/

Two double cheesburgers for a school lunch.....that's all I'm asking.

Edited by Left Brain 2012-09-28 12:08 PM

Now it's two!?