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The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
#1
The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
The article:

This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food vouchers

Many people are expressing the opinion that she(and her husband) should have sold the Mercedes. I disagree. The couple decided they would be better off keeping it. I trust their judgement.

This is however, a good example of why should toss out all these government aid programs and replace them with a universal basic income or negative income tax. There is no reason to think this woman would not have purchased the formula her babies needed if she was given money instead of vouchers.

Money would have made her and others happier. Consider the incident she describes where she buys some root beer. If she were given money, she would not be embarrassed by having to use vouchers for the formula she purchased at the same time. If she were given money, the other customer would not be pissed off that she was buying soda while on the government dole. If she were given money, the cashier wouldn't be pissed off at the customer playing "soda police". One government program made three people upset. The government should be about maximizing peoples freedom and happiness not telling them what the must purchase.
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#2
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
Actually, it seems to make you upset.... and that's a good thing.
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#3
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
Personally I think a universal basic income would be sweet. It possibly could motivate some people to not work, but most peoples jobs are a bunch of shit anyway. People need to learn to live with less. We are going to have to anyway. If you can't live off of 25000 dollars a year without help to buy food (as the woman in the article states) you are a moron. Also sometimes these programs are just used to replace income anyway. Say you get 200$ a month on food stamps. That's 200 dollars less of your regular money that you have to spend on food (obviously you will spend money on food before anything anyway.) That just means 200 dollars more one way or another.
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#4
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
I'm not sure about universal income, but I do know that article left a bad taste in my mouth. The contempt she has for WIC and the people who use it is dripping from the descriptors she uses:

Quote:No one spoke to me, but they did stare. Mouths agape, the poverty-stricken mothers struggling with infant car seats, paperwork and their toddlers never took their eyes off me, the tall blond girl, walking with purpose on heels from her Mercedes to their grungy den.

Ew.
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#5
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
(July 19, 2014 at 4:12 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote: .....Also sometimes these programs are just used to replace income anyway. Say you get 200$ a month on food stamps. That's 200 dollars less of your regular money that you have to spend on food (obviously you will spend money on food before anything anyway.) That just means 200 dollars more one way or another.

What if you are a super shopper/couponer and only need $100 a month for food? Food stamps require you to buy $200 worth of food. So you lose a $100 dollars you could have used to buy something else to improve your lot even further(like diapers for instance). Just give the poor person $200 cash instead of food stamps and this waste goes away.
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#6
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
The reason that the vouchers are explicitly tied to goods (and further - specific brands of goods) has nothing do with what people may (or may not) use them for and everything to do with the fact that it's tied to the farm bill. It's corporate welfare firstly, welfare for the impoverished as an afterthought. If you "super shopped" those entities with the funds and pull to be included (read: those who can afford to lobby the relevant committees) couldn't make the returns they paid for.

It only seems absurd because you misunderstood the primary focus of the programs. It's understandable that you misunderstood - because they spend alot of pr effort -not- explaining this.

A universal basic income would not accomplish what these programs accomplish, so gl, I really mean it, gl.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#7
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
I'm always of so many minds about this sort of thing I don't know where to begin. No one has a right to a basic income just for existing. Welfare is a form of charity

When we give out of charity whether we are individuals, an institution, or the government, we have the right to limit or direct that gift. It is after all a gift. Whether the particular limitations on the gift make sense is open for debate when the government is doing the giving. But before we decide whether the limitations make sense, we first have to decide what the objective of the gift is. If it's producing healthy babies, WIC is much better than cash. Ditto if it's making sure children are fed.

However making or allowing someone to become dependent on charity forever should not be the purpose of charity. What this woman is saying is that it hurt her pride to be on welfare. Well, it should. It would hurt mine, whether the circumstances were my own making or not. If accepting charity doesn't hurt your pride, there's something lacking in you. It's one of the reasons good people prefer to support themselves.

But, I don't think that anyone should question what a person does with a gift, provided they are following the dictates of the giver. The government gave her the food stamps with certain restrictions. She wasn't violating those. Anyone who has a complaint should address it to the government and not the recipient woman in the check out line. Certainly no one has a right to tell her what to do with her other possessions.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god.  If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
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#8
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
Oh, IDK, my wife and I were on assistance for a few years after a particularly bad year for my business. No man's an island, and there's no shame in admitting that you reached - and ultimately faltered. It's a rough world out there. Chances are you aren't really "taking care of yourself" quite as much as you think you are anyway. I can say with certainty that if you're an american, a great many people are subsidizing every level of your existence.....so any pride you have in that, and any shame you feel is appropriate when one fails to take advantage of that; shaky - at best. Downright shitty, at worst.

How many here feel that they could "take care of themselves" if they had to pay the full price for their food, clothing, shelter, and energy?
(stuffs his hands in his pocket - and I make the fuckin food)
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#9
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
I get people bitching and moaning at me that they need welfare. They need benefits. They need help. What am I gonna do about it?

And they're getting more monthly income on just half their occupational-sick-pay than I do annually in my F/T dead-end job. Angry

These people's living standards are too... damn... high. They need to come back down to reality and reassess their daily living needs.

Ask yourself? Do you really need to throw out your entire wardrobe every week? Do you require a new car when the old one is no longer fashionable? Do you really need a round-the-world trip every 3-6 months?

No, you don't. Welfare is your safety net to avoid starvation. Total destitution. Its for the essentials. Its not a passport to luxuries you've become accommodated to and take for granted. Angry
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#10
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
(July 19, 2014 at 5:09 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I'm always of so many minds about this sort of thing I don't know where to begin. No one has a right to a basic income just for existing. Welfare is a form of charity

There was a time in my life when I shared your opinion....that no one has a right to a basic income just for existing. However the world is changing and it is changing faster everyday. Automation is eliminating the need for people to work. A future is coming soon where most people simply will not work because most jobs will be done by intelligent machines.

Now that future can take on two faces. One face looks very ugly to me and it is the one I think we are headed for. It is a world in which the government tells you how to live. The government tells you how much to spend on food, how much to spend on housing, how much to spend on utilities, etc. The other is the world I would like to see. People making their own choices and spending the wealth the civilization creates as they see fit. The elimination of government programs(and the bureaucracy that goes with them), and the implementation of a universal basic income, would put us on the road toward people leading their lives instead of the government leading it for them.

(July 19, 2014 at 5:09 pm)Jenny A Wrote: When we give out of charity whether we are individuals, an institution, or the government, we have the right to limit or direct that gift. It is after all a gift. Whether the particular limitations on the gift make sense is open for debate when the government is doing the giving. But before we decide whether the limitations make sense, we first have to decide what the objective of the gift is. If it's producing healthy babies, WIC is much better than cash. Ditto if it's making sure children are fed.

This is basically you saying you or the government know better how people should spend money then the people themselves. It is an elitist view. Government should empower people not run their lives for them. Government exists for the benefit of the people....people shouldn't exists for the benefit of government.

(July 19, 2014 at 5:09 pm)Jenny A Wrote: But, I don't think that anyone should question what a person does with a gift, provided they are following the dictates of the giver. The government gave her the food stamps with certain restrictions. She wasn't violating those. Anyone who has a complaint should address it to the government and not the recipient woman in the check out line. Certainly no one has a right to tell her what to do with her other possessions.

For this woman to be eligible for SNAP....she probably would have had to sell the car. She was collecting WIC which has less stringent eligibility requirements. So apparently no one has the right to tell her what to do with her possessions except the government.....and I think that is wrong.
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