West Virginia Sucks

[Aeson]

As Elok pointed out, sure, it's a lot in a third world slum where costs are much lower but in the US? Not so much, it's well below poverty line so it really is just a basic support for people who really do have serious medical issues. Just enough to keep them alive but not nearly as much as someone is likely to make with a full time job so it's hardly a disincentive to work so much as a very minimal social safety net.

I've only made more than $14k one year of my life (and that year I had to pay for an accident and most of a surgery... no insurance), most of it under $8k while living in the US.

I'm not saying people should quit their jobs to go take the SSI... but it's a much better lifestyle than you guys seem to think. If you really wanted to milk it, it's probably a better lifestyle than most middle class workers live once you take free time and not being tied down to a job location into account.

[Elok]

Al has a very reasonable perspective (in regards to the value of the money) in this case. That's vacation on a tropical beach for the rest of your life money.

If these people somehow used their foodstamps and such to escape to a poor but peaceful country where a dollar buys you a whole chicken, I'd acknowledge their lifestyle as perfectly valid, albeit immoral. But they don't. They're living in urban squalor off an unhealthy diet, and it sounds like they're going through an inordinate amount of effort for it. If you're clever enough to make a good deal less than $20K a year work for you, you're probably also clever enough to get past minimum wage and start earning real money so you can live a decent lifestyle in a nice place.

[Aeson]

If these people somehow used their foodstamps and such to escape to a poor but peaceful country where a dollar buys you a whole chicken, I'd acknowledge their lifestyle as perfectly valid, albeit immoral. But they don't. They're living in urban squalor off an unhealthy diet, and it sounds like they're going through an inordinate amount of effort for it. If you're clever enough to make a good deal less than $20K a year work for you, you're probably also clever enough to get past minimum wage and start earning real money so you can live a decent lifestyle in a nice place.

A lot of people actually do that.

That aside, I don't agree with you that it's as easy to earn $20k+ per year as to live (well) on a freebie of $1200/mo. The first means you're going to work most of the year, trading your time for money. If you value your time similarly to what you get paid for it (which accepting a wage and having a wage offered to you tends to suggest), really you haven't "made" anything. You've simply transferred one type of value for another. People do this because they have to of course to continue to enjoy their time off ... but when you have your living expenses (and more) paid for you without any effort, there's little incentive to trade your spare time for money. This is why Z finds it so hard to get workers who will bust their asses to get that extra $4k/mo incentives... since they already have enough to go enjoy their free time.

In this case it's even worse, because what money someone on SSI does make from such a trade of time for money, they lose at least part of if from the freebie.

Sure, if you could just snap your fingers and be making 6 figures, most people would do that rather than be on SSI. But the reality is going from on SSI to a good income is a very difficult process that will cost you 40 years of your life, and the first steps (and generally much further) will mean you are taking a value hit to your lifestyle anyways.

[Dinner]

I've only made more than $14k one year of my life (and that year I had to pay for an accident and most of a surgery... no insurance), most of it under $8k while living in the US.

I'm not saying people should quit their jobs to go take the SSI... but it's a much better lifestyle than you guys seem to think. If you really wanted to milk it, it's probably a better lifestyle than most middle class workers live once you take free time and not being tied down to a job location into account.

You need to apply yourself young man and stop coasting through life. Aren't you engaged to be married? Don't you want to have a family some day? You're going to need money to do that if you want to support your family in a manner you can be proud of. [/nosie old geezer]

Honestly, I made more than $8k per year as a 16 year old high school student working part time. With 2080 hours a year (assuming 40 hours per work week) that comes out to $3.85 per hour full time or only $7.70 per hour working 20 hours per week. If I could do that as a 16 year old in 1992 there really is no excuse for someone making that these days especially if they're not in school and can work full time.

[Al B. Sure!]

So at the standard food stamp amount of $155 per month for a family of four we have $38.75 per person per month or $1.29 per person per day or $0.43 per meal. Yeah, that's the ****ing high life right there! I'm quitting my job so I can eat steak and lobster all day with my $0.43 per meal in food stamps!

Dude you idiot. That $155 for a family of four is the deductions allowed subtracted from the household income to determine eligibility. It's not the AMOUNT you get in food stamps.

Holy crap are you always wrong.

HERE'S THE BENEFIT AMOUNTS:

http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/hhsa/programs/ssp/food_stamps/benefit_amount.html

Your family of four gets $668/month. That comes to $5.56 a day per person.

$5.56/day is adequate to feed people who live normal lifestyles (ie- not hipster douches)


It never fails with you.

And like I said, in Philly, it's $200 for 1 person with no dependents, same as in San Diego. Shows that I truly do know what I'm talking about.

[Al B. Sure!]

You need to apply yourself young man and stop coasting through life. Aren't you engaged to be married? Don't you want to have a family some day? You're going to need money to do that if you want to support your family in a manner you can be proud of. [/nosie old geezer]

He lives in the Philippines and is doing relatively well for himself there.

[Elok]

Okay, they're lazy, I get that. Really fricking lazy, and immoral, and it sounds like they get some kind of deranged pleasure out of being shysters, since apparently they're bragging about it. Thing is, there are much better ways to get by as a lazy rat. A little online inquiry, for example, will allow them to become proud owners of a shiny new botnet that will make money for them--potentially a good deal--without their having to BS four different petty bureaucrats every month. Or, if they go for glamour, they could become bona fide con artists, whether the traditional variety or your more modern 419 or phisher. That's a very fulfilling lifestyle for someone who gets his rocks off on cheating and minimal effort. And if they don't have the guts to be real criminals, a genuine talent for laziness and evil will get you quite far in a collective unskilled labor environment. Not as far as actual crime, but a little lying, backstabbing and ass-kissing will get you to manager, whence you can "delegate." Move on to the next store with your management experience if it looks like there might be trouble. And I know there have to be better schemes than that. I suck at thinking this way.

But these people are, in essence, hobo squatters on a sinecure. Because they have no discipline, ambition, or concept of delayed gratification.

[Dinner]

Of course, the absolute sweet spot wrt welfare/SSI fraud is to make $1099.99 in SSI benefits so you can still qualify for food stamps but you want to be single with no dependents so you don't have to share your food stamp plunder of $147 per month. That's the absolute creme de la creme as good as it gets, folks. That would mean you could spend the dream like amount of $1.63 per meal just in food stamps then if you live in a card board box so you don't have to pay rent and maybe you could even steal electricity to charge your $10 per month income calls only cellphone with no long distance! That would leave you $1099.99 a month to blow on your coke habit or to buy an extra jacket since you're living in a cardboard box in Ohio in the winter.

It just doesn't get better than that, my friends. I'm willing to bet SSI would turn down your claim though as, from personal experience, my parents had to hire a lawyer to win an SSI disability claim after she had a massive stroke which disabled 100% of her right arm from the shoulder down & 80% of her right leg from the hip down. She was also dying of cancer at the time, had worked continiously since she was ~16 years old, and was 60 years old having been paying into the system for ~44 years. Fortunately, my parents had money saved up, my dad was an electrical engineer with his own private consulting business so they could afford to hire lawyers and dispute the judgement. They eventually did win... About six months prior to her dying of cancer (though the judgement also awarded back payments to the date originally applied for). After court fees and lawyer costs they came out ever so slightly ahead.

How many poor people can afford to blow $20,000 or $30,000 to fight a judgement in court? While paying for very expensive cancer treatment at the same time (remember the life time benefit caps, people)? Not many I suspect.

One of the few really good things about Obama's health care reform compromise is that it removed life time benefit caps (which is key for people with expensive to treat illnesses like cancer) and the removal of the pre-existing condition blacklist. My parents had to keep paying the COBRA for my mom's old insurance because my father, being self employed, didn't have insurance as they relied upon my mother's insurance paid for by her employer. That insurance goes away as soon as someone has a major health problem and can no longer work so you have to pay the cobra which is your previous premium amount plus the employer's share (often 3-10 times the employee's premium). Yeah, they had the money and paid it but paying COBRA premiums, co-pays for every service at the hospital, and court fees gets expensive fast so most people can't come up with that kind of money much less someone on welfare.

[Al B. Sure!]

So is $5.56/day too little too feed someone well?

Well let's check some prices at the market:

Meat/protein:
whole chicken $0.99/lb
10lbs of whole chicken leg quarters $5.99
6oz can of tuna $0.70
Ground beef $2.49/lb
Dozen medium eggs $1.00

Carbs:
22oz of whole grain bread (13 2-slice servings) $2.99
Potatoes $0.60/lbs
A pack of 6 whole grain wraps (11oz) $2.00
1lb bag of rice $1.19

Fruit:
Bananas $0.50/lb

Veggies:
Collard greens 4lbs/$1
15 oz canned mixed vegetables $0.70
15 oz canned beans $0.70
1lb Dole bagged cole slaw $1.50


I can't fathom how $39/week for one person isn't adequate.

What you living on, Oerdin? A 5000 calorie diet?

[Al B. Sure!]

Stupidity

Are you a ****ing idiot? It's $200/month in stamps for no dependents. I already showed you're an idiot.

[Elok]

What an exciting diet, Al.

[Dinner]

If these people somehow used their foodstamps and such to escape to a poor but peaceful country where a dollar buys you a whole chicken, I'd acknowledge their lifestyle as perfectly valid, albeit immoral. But they don't. They're living in urban squalor off an unhealthy diet, and it sounds like they're going through an inordinate amount of effort for it. If you're clever enough to make a good deal less than $20K a year work for you, you're probably also clever enough to get past minimum wage and start earning real money so you can live a decent lifestyle in a nice place.

+1 for that post.

If you're smart enough to game the system for so little actual monetary gain then you're smart enough to know you can make much more than that doing some crappy office job. I mean, come on! You can get a mail room job at some office building for $10-$12 per hour as long as you can read, show up on time, and act like a reasonably professional person at work or you can get $18 per hour working for UPS delivering packages on a bike but if you can get a class C driver's license (which isn't hard at all) then UPS will pay you $20-$24 per hour. Why eat mystery meat and live in fear of being shot in a ghetto?

[Al B. Sure!]

What an exciting diet, Al.

Elok, I'm just thinking of things I know the prices of off hand. There's equally cheap alternatives to everything.

On top of that, you can spruce things up.

The other day, I got 4 whole chicken breasts on sale for 99 cents/lb. What I do with it?
$2.00 Tuscan Sun-Dried Tomato marinade
$1.00 can of stewed tomatoes
1 whole green pepper (like 40 cents, if that)
1/4 Spanish onion (I don't know; pennies)

I marinaded the chicken breasts overnight. I placed the chicken in a glass pan with the stewed tomatoes, diced green pepper, and diced onions.

It was freaking delicious and lasted me two meals and I eat a lot. Hell, I ate two whole chicken breasts per meal. Total cost was like $6.

I could have used about 20 cents worth of rice for a side and a 70 cent can of mixed veggies and it would have carried me longer.

[Al B. Sure!]

Today's dinner:

1lb Ground beef $2.49/lb
1 can diced tomatoes on sale for 50 cents
1 can chili beans 60 cents

So I have a pound of chili for $3.59. This will last me 2-3 meals.

Maybe I can cook up some pasta or rice to eat with it tomorrow. Both are pennies on the serving.

[Elok]

I see your chicken recipe and raise you a properly-grilled porterhouse steak, which is like eating an orgasm and which none of your government teat-sucklers will likely ever eat. Not even on special occasions. Forget about going out to a nice place, forget about good booze, forget about all the more exotic foods unless they happen to be very skilled cooks who know all the local specialty stores. Which I doubt, because becoming a good cook takes commitment and dedication and all that stuff they've demonstrated they don't have.