But on a serious note, that sounds like a decent idea, though I suppose you might as well just give people the money. Idk why they would only allow it to be soent on food.
Well, they also believe that the poor are all idiot layabouts, and if anyone is poor in the most amazing awesome doublemost mcbestest country on earth, it must be their own fault. So, a lot of aid is engineered to be uncomfortable to get and uncomfortable to be on, like financial homeless spikes.
One of the worst aspects of this for me is how brutal the means testing is for many assistance programs. They often turn eligibility into a sheer cliff face where the second you make even a dollar more than the cutoff you lose the whole benefit. But even if they don’t and there’s a more gradual reduction you’re often on multiple assistance programs if you’re poor and the reduction to all of them often puts you in a worse place than you stated in.
My partner is fully disabled, she’s got neurological issues where she’ll be pretty much fine one minute but with maybe like an hour at most of warning she could be fully incapacitated from a migraine brought on by pseudotumor. Not even because of the pain, she starts having trouble walking, standing up straight, remembering what she was doing. Sometimes she temporarily loses access to years of her life like the Cosmic Dungeon Master said “Roll 2d20, that’s how old you think you are for the next 2d4 hours”
So obviously that makes having me work right now basically impossible. Very few jobs are cool with your availability being subject to that kind of rapid change. So I stay home to take care of her and our kids. But back when her symptoms weren’t so severe and I could work I had to be very careful what kind of jobs I found because depending on how much I made we actually ended up losing more in assistance than what I made that caused us to go over.
Fantastic example, our oldest just got approved for SSI because they relaxed some of the asset/income restrictions and now my wife’s disability benefit isn’t too much money for him to qualify. We get Section 8 so our portion of rent is based on our income so our rent went up when he got SSI. Our SNAP amount also went down because our income went up. He got approved for like 200 something in SSI and between the rent going up and SNAP going down at the end of the day we get like $10 dollars more a month than we did prior to him getting it. This shit happens everywhere with these kinds of programs and is one of the many reasons people get trapped in poverty.
I think a unified UBI is a lot more efficient than segmenting aid between housing assistance, bill assistance, and food stamps, and I think if somebody really wants to waste their small monthly UBI stipend on drugs and booze, they should be allowed to. It’ll be a pretty small fraction of a percentage of the program participants that would do such a thing, and in a morbid sense it’s a problem that sorts itself out.
Keep in mind business vendors ring up non-food and alcoholic beverages under food stamps all the time. There’s always a gas station or food mart ringing up beer as gatorade and such anyway.
Our lawmakers just tend to refuse to regulate or punish business overall and displace everything onto consumers as means testing for resources.
Restricting it to food is probably what allowed it to get passed in the first place in this country. And likewise, it is way easier to get food stamps than any kind of “cash assistance” welfare.
Like in my case, I have a good job and my previous good job got eliminated during the first year of COVID. When temporarily having no income, we could easily sign up for food stamps to help while looking for the next job. It’s nice to help stretch any money you might still have in the bank, or be able to feed your family day to day if you don’t really have anything in the bank. Like others said it’s a debit card that works at the grocery store.
But if you want medical coverage or cash assistance to bridge the gap? Not until you have lost everything substantial that you own except for a place to live and a vehicle if it’s necessary to get to work.
Have a family with two parents and a couple of kids, in a typical US neighborhood where leaving your house to go any real distance away is via car and nothing else? I hope your cars weren’t made in the past 15 years or else you’ll probably have to lose one of them.
And if you’ve been trying to save for a purchase or just be financially responsible? Nah we’re going to need you broke and penniless first. You don’t have to be literally at $0, but in my state I think the asset limit is $2000 and that includes any cash, your second vehicle, your first vehicle if it’s not “necessary” to get to work, and I think even retirement accounts.
A lot of people who are really poor have shit spending habits and/or abuse substances. Not even majority, but a lot. These programs should aim to helo you up, not allow you to spiral lower on welfare money.
This type seems great for me honestly. Where I live, from what I’ve seen, poor simply receive care package. There at least you get choice, while still being somewhat denied ability to screw up.
I get the sentiment, but this comes across as patronizing and unscientific. A move to universal basic income would require cutting practically all of these programs in favor of just giving people the autonomy to decide for themselves. That works well when you couple it with universal healthcare and harm reduction programs like safe needle exchange sites.
People that want to abuse the system will do so no matter the red tape you put around it, and what good does that do for the overwhelming majority that rely on it in good faith? Unless you have data to suggest abuse is rampant, which afaik is not the case. You made the initial claim, so please provide sources.
Universal basic income would probably solve it, I agree. But the amount of money sent for food is not UBI, nowhere close. I solely commented on letting food welfare loose.
I do not have data on hand and after a quick search I am growing dubious whether may country even publishes that, so all I can lean on is experience. A lot of homeless consciously choosing alcohol over shelter, stories of people trading care packages for alcohol (seen this once myself, didn’t believe before), housed people I know who are poor just rabidly splurging every time they got slightly more money and thus spiraling back down.
It’s all my experiences, not propped up by any other data (will check later if I can find more with deeper search), but in this case the patronizing method of welfare seem actually better. At least if UBI isn’t an option.
Research on UBI is available with a quick search, with data on what participants are selected and what they prioritize. We can make some speculations from there. Try again.
Richest country in the world!
But on a serious note, that sounds like a decent idea, though I suppose you might as well just give people the money. Idk why they would only allow it to be soent on food.
Because they think poors will use cash money on drugs and booze.
No, seriously. That’s the reasoning of those that limit aid. They think anyone in poverty is there because of drug addiction.
Coincidentally, they also believe that drug addicts don’t deserve help. It’s all awfully convenient (for those who don’t want to help others.)
Well, they also believe that the poor are all idiot layabouts, and if anyone is poor in the most amazing awesome doublemost mcbestest country on earth, it must be their own fault. So, a lot of aid is engineered to be uncomfortable to get and uncomfortable to be on, like financial homeless spikes.
One of the worst aspects of this for me is how brutal the means testing is for many assistance programs. They often turn eligibility into a sheer cliff face where the second you make even a dollar more than the cutoff you lose the whole benefit. But even if they don’t and there’s a more gradual reduction you’re often on multiple assistance programs if you’re poor and the reduction to all of them often puts you in a worse place than you stated in.
My partner is fully disabled, she’s got neurological issues where she’ll be pretty much fine one minute but with maybe like an hour at most of warning she could be fully incapacitated from a migraine brought on by pseudotumor. Not even because of the pain, she starts having trouble walking, standing up straight, remembering what she was doing. Sometimes she temporarily loses access to years of her life like the Cosmic Dungeon Master said “Roll 2d20, that’s how old you think you are for the next 2d4 hours”
So obviously that makes having me work right now basically impossible. Very few jobs are cool with your availability being subject to that kind of rapid change. So I stay home to take care of her and our kids. But back when her symptoms weren’t so severe and I could work I had to be very careful what kind of jobs I found because depending on how much I made we actually ended up losing more in assistance than what I made that caused us to go over.
Fantastic example, our oldest just got approved for SSI because they relaxed some of the asset/income restrictions and now my wife’s disability benefit isn’t too much money for him to qualify. We get Section 8 so our portion of rent is based on our income so our rent went up when he got SSI. Our SNAP amount also went down because our income went up. He got approved for like 200 something in SSI and between the rent going up and SNAP going down at the end of the day we get like $10 dollars more a month than we did prior to him getting it. This shit happens everywhere with these kinds of programs and is one of the many reasons people get trapped in poverty.
Do you think you should be able to buy drugs and booze with food stamps though?
I think a unified UBI is a lot more efficient than segmenting aid between housing assistance, bill assistance, and food stamps, and I think if somebody really wants to waste their small monthly UBI stipend on drugs and booze, they should be allowed to. It’ll be a pretty small fraction of a percentage of the program participants that would do such a thing, and in a morbid sense it’s a problem that sorts itself out.
Keep in mind business vendors ring up non-food and alcoholic beverages under food stamps all the time. There’s always a gas station or food mart ringing up beer as gatorade and such anyway.
Our lawmakers just tend to refuse to regulate or punish business overall and displace everything onto consumers as means testing for resources.
Restricting it to food is probably what allowed it to get passed in the first place in this country. And likewise, it is way easier to get food stamps than any kind of “cash assistance” welfare.
Like in my case, I have a good job and my previous good job got eliminated during the first year of COVID. When temporarily having no income, we could easily sign up for food stamps to help while looking for the next job. It’s nice to help stretch any money you might still have in the bank, or be able to feed your family day to day if you don’t really have anything in the bank. Like others said it’s a debit card that works at the grocery store.
But if you want medical coverage or cash assistance to bridge the gap? Not until you have lost everything substantial that you own except for a place to live and a vehicle if it’s necessary to get to work.
Have a family with two parents and a couple of kids, in a typical US neighborhood where leaving your house to go any real distance away is via car and nothing else? I hope your cars weren’t made in the past 15 years or else you’ll probably have to lose one of them.
And if you’ve been trying to save for a purchase or just be financially responsible? Nah we’re going to need you broke and penniless first. You don’t have to be literally at $0, but in my state I think the asset limit is $2000 and that includes any cash, your second vehicle, your first vehicle if it’s not “necessary” to get to work, and I think even retirement accounts.
Gonna get downvoted~
A lot of people who are really poor have shit spending habits and/or abuse substances. Not even majority, but a lot. These programs should aim to helo you up, not allow you to spiral lower on welfare money.
This type seems great for me honestly. Where I live, from what I’ve seen, poor simply receive care package. There at least you get choice, while still being somewhat denied ability to screw up.
I get the sentiment, but this comes across as patronizing and unscientific. A move to universal basic income would require cutting practically all of these programs in favor of just giving people the autonomy to decide for themselves. That works well when you couple it with universal healthcare and harm reduction programs like safe needle exchange sites.
People that want to abuse the system will do so no matter the red tape you put around it, and what good does that do for the overwhelming majority that rely on it in good faith? Unless you have data to suggest abuse is rampant, which afaik is not the case. You made the initial claim, so please provide sources.
Universal basic income would probably solve it, I agree. But the amount of money sent for food is not UBI, nowhere close. I solely commented on letting food welfare loose.
I do not have data on hand and after a quick search I am growing dubious whether may country even publishes that, so all I can lean on is experience. A lot of homeless consciously choosing alcohol over shelter, stories of people trading care packages for alcohol (seen this once myself, didn’t believe before), housed people I know who are poor just rabidly splurging every time they got slightly more money and thus spiraling back down.
It’s all my experiences, not propped up by any other data (will check later if I can find more with deeper search), but in this case the patronizing method of welfare seem actually better. At least if UBI isn’t an option.
Research on UBI is available with a quick search, with data on what participants are selected and what they prioritize. We can make some speculations from there. Try again.