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  • Trykflyr_1Trykflyr_1 Posts: 2,514 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Farming 101: Fertilize the weeds, you’re gonna get more weeds.

    This country will simply get more of what it subsidizes. IMHO, all these people aren’t pouring in for the freedoms we used to have or from any sense of reward for effort put forth. They’re coming for all the free sh*t.

    I'm still troubled by what I did for that Klondike bar...
  • ShawnOLShawnOL Posts: 9,454 ✭✭✭✭✭

    That's the Dem m.o. trading free **** (at the working man's expense) for votes. Sleazy, but it works.

    Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.

  • VegasFrankVegasFrank Posts: 18,004 ✭✭✭✭✭

    🙄

    Disclaimer:  All trolling is provided for the sole entertainment purposes of the author only. Readers may find entertainment and hard core truths, but none are intended. Any resulting damaged feelings or arse chapping of the reader are the sole responsibility of the reader, to include, but not limited to: crying, anger, revenge pørn, and abandonment or deletion of ccom accounts. Offer void in Utah because Utah is terrible.
  • d_bladesd_blades Posts: 3,959 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2021

    I remember the government cheese and PB, my relatives got from commoditys. They had 6 or 7 kids, but worked full time as well, didn't get any money from the G.

    Don't let the wife know what you spend on guns, ammo or cigars.

  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 20,712 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @ShawnOL said:
    That's the Dem m.o. trading free **** (at the working man's expense) for votes. Sleazy, but it works.

    Both parties do that. Basic power move.

  • VegasFrankVegasFrank Posts: 18,004 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @d_blades said:
    I remember the government cheese and PB, my relatives got from commoditys. They had 6 or 7 kids, but worked full time as well, didn't get any money from the G.

    So I wonder if everyone around here thinks that taking government cheese is okay but receiving welfare or wic or snap or food cards/stamps is not okay?

    When I was in the military, anyone under the rank of E5 who was married and had one or more children qualified for WIC. I wonder if we were also the blood suckers of society back then.

    Disclaimer:  All trolling is provided for the sole entertainment purposes of the author only. Readers may find entertainment and hard core truths, but none are intended. Any resulting damaged feelings or arse chapping of the reader are the sole responsibility of the reader, to include, but not limited to: crying, anger, revenge pørn, and abandonment or deletion of ccom accounts. Offer void in Utah because Utah is terrible.
  • 0patience0patience Posts: 10,665 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @VegasFrank said:

    @d_blades said:
    I remember the government cheese and PB, my relatives got from commoditys. They had 6 or 7 kids, but worked full time as well, didn't get any money from the G.

    So I wonder if everyone around here thinks that taking government cheese is okay but receiving welfare or wic or snap or food cards/stamps is not okay?

    When I was in the military, anyone under the rank of E5 who was married and had one or more children qualified for WIC. I wonder if we were also the blood suckers of society back then.

    I grew up dirt poor. Never was on food stamps or assistance.
    Not sure what wic or snap is, but evidently didn't have that either.

    I don't think anyone is saying folks who were working and getting assistance are leeches. But right now, there are millions who could be working, that aren't and soaking up revenue.

    On the flip side, I do get some medical from the tribe, but every registered native of a federally recognized tribe is entitled to it and I didn't utilize it until I was in my 40s.
    Is that the same thing?
    Possibly. But people not working, getting state medical are offered far better health benefits. So maybe I'm a hypocrite.

    In Fumo Pax
    Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.

    Wylaff said:
    Atmospheric pressure and crap.
  • ShawnOLShawnOL Posts: 9,454 ✭✭✭✭✭

    There's a big difference between accepting free food for your family and being a professional welfare breeder. Unfortunately I've lived in places where there were way too many of them.

    Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.

  • VegasFrankVegasFrank Posts: 18,004 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2021

    I don't think you're a hypocrite Tony @0patience . Assistance is designed to assist people when they need to be assisted. Nothing wrong with it. It's funny that you say that you were entitled to it. I'm sure that that's what the welfare people would say too. They are entitled to it.

    Wic is a government program and it stands for women infants children. Basically if you are in a certain income bracket, you get free items using an EBT card at the grocery that are considered essential for expecting mothers, infants, and children. Most of these are bread, eggs, milk, and other like items. You can't buy candy bars with it.

    Interesting comment on the professional welfare breeder @ShawnOL . The last statistics that I looked up on this, which I don't have off the top and I am too lazy to reGoogle said something like 19% of all Americans have had some sort of assistance in their life from the government, and 5% of those, which equates to about 1% of the population, have had assistance for more than 1 year. 1% of our current population of course is about 3.3 million.

    Of those, you would think that more than half of them are children who are either in the DFS system or have parents who are on aid for more than a year. So if we notionally cut that to about 1.5 million people, we are essentially trying to solve a problem that affects a third of a percentage point of all Americans.

    The juice isn't worth the squeeze in my opinion. Every single government program in the world, from income tax to defense to welfare to social security has cheaters and liars who take advantage to maximize what they get. Take Donald Trump for instance. The guys are self-proclaimed billionaire who lives amongst plated gold and sparkling diamonds, yet I pay more at the end of the year than he does. If we went after the 1% of the cheaters in that field, we have a lot more money at the end of the day.

    My opinion on this is rooted in the fact that you can't make a universal program for every situation and expect it to fit perfectly. If you take away something like snap, food stamps, or welfare, all you're doing is giving the death sentence to those who really need it. The cheaters will find something else to cheat.

    Disclaimer:  All trolling is provided for the sole entertainment purposes of the author only. Readers may find entertainment and hard core truths, but none are intended. Any resulting damaged feelings or arse chapping of the reader are the sole responsibility of the reader, to include, but not limited to: crying, anger, revenge pørn, and abandonment or deletion of ccom accounts. Offer void in Utah because Utah is terrible.
  • 0patience0patience Posts: 10,665 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @VegasFrank
    Understanding how taxes work for corporations, it's easy to see how a billionaire pays out less in taxes than you.
    If they don't, then it's not likely they are investing their money into improvements, the company and things like that.

    When I had a business, my returns were 3 times what they were when I did not.
    I was constantly having to buy new equipment and vehicles to offset the income.
    Normal people don't have those write offs, so I would say that if a person has a business or corporation, if they aren't paying out little, they are doing something wrong.
    When you see a business making smaller profits, they are doing so, to offset the taxes. I would think that if Trump were cheating, they'd have nailed him in an audit.
    They IRS likes fining people, especially people it knows can pay.
    It's the game that was created in the tax system.

    In Fumo Pax
    Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.

    Wylaff said:
    Atmospheric pressure and crap.
  • 0patience0patience Posts: 10,665 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @VegasFrank

    It's funny that you say that you were entitled to it. I'm sure that that's what the welfare people would say too. They are entitled to it.

    Entitled as part of a payment to the tribes.
    This was something that the federal govt was required to pay as penalization.
    So no, it is not even the same.

    In Fumo Pax
    Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.

    Wylaff said:
    Atmospheric pressure and crap.
  • Amos_UmwhatAmos_Umwhat Posts: 8,757 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2021

    @VegasFrank said:

    @d_blades said:
    I remember the government cheese and PB, my relatives got from commoditys. They had 6 or 7 kids, but worked full time as well, didn't get any money from the G.

    So I wonder if everyone around here thinks that taking government cheese is okay but receiving welfare or wic or snap or food cards/stamps is not okay?

    When I was in the military, anyone under the rank of E5 who was married and had one or more children qualified for WIC. I wonder if we were also the blood suckers of society back then.

    You were in the military, a productive member of society, in need of help from the society you contributed to. I'm positive that you're not the negative that these guys are talking about.

    There was a guy in my basic training company, wouldn't do a damn thing. Since they put him in my squad, I was getting frustrated and asked him one day:
    "Why the hell did you join? What did you think you'd be doing?"
    His reply: "I want to draw."
    I naively thought he was talking about art, guessing that he just wanted the college money to further himself in a field of his choosing.
    "So, you want to go to school?" i asked, "You've got to get through this enlistment you signed up for first."
    "School?! Hell no I don't want to go to school. I need to get kicked out of the Army so I can draw Welfare." was his reply.

    I won't say what happened next, but I think that's the guy they're referring to, not you.

    You make a really good point about the cheaters will find a way to cheat. Also that there are those who REALLY need these programs, and deserve them as long as we can afford it. I never took it, but I have no resentment to those who did.

    I've told this before, but there was a time when my son came to me asking why we didn't get all those assistance programs. I told him because we didn't need them, and he replied that he knew LOTS of people who had LOTS more money than we did, and they were getting it. I said that I wanted that money to be there for those who needed it, we could eat from the garden.

    Poor child was tired of living on mustard greens, ramen, oatmeal and pinto beans. I splurged and got us a pizza. :)

    WARNING:  The above post may contain thoughts or ideas known to the State of Caliphornia to cause seething rage, confusion, distemper, nausea, perspiration, sphincter release, or cranial implosion to persons who implicitly trust only one news source, or find themselves at either the left or right political extreme.  Proceed at your own risk.  

    "If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed.  If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." --  Mark Twain
  • VegasFrankVegasFrank Posts: 18,004 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @0patience said:
    @VegasFrank
    Understanding how taxes work for corporations, it's easy to see how a billionaire pays out less in taxes than you.
    If they don't, then it's not likely they are investing their money into improvements, the company and things like that.

    When I had a business, my returns were 3 times what they were when I did not.
    I was constantly having to buy new equipment and vehicles to offset the income.
    Normal people don't have those write offs, so I would say that if a person has a business or corporation, if they aren't paying out little, they are doing something wrong.
    When you see a business making smaller profits, they are doing so, to offset the taxes. I would think that if Trump were cheating, they'd have nailed him in an audit.
    They IRS likes fining people, especially people it knows can pay.
    It's the game that was created in the tax system.

    I'm going to reply to these one at a time just so everybody knows that I read everything. In the case of a guy like Trump, not even talking about Trump specifically, he's living at the top of a skyscraper in the most expensive or second most expensive city in the world. He had to buy that with money that he personally had. Yeah there are ways to do it, dividends and business expense etc, but I fork over 40% of every dollar I earn in a state with no state income tax.

    All of that aside though, it's estimated that our income tax system at the federal level is shorted every year by about a half a trillion dollars. That's a quarter of all military spending.

    Conversely, the GAO estimated in one year that overpayment or wrong payments for welfare recipients totaled about 70 million bucks. That must have been like 2014 or something.

    In those terms, we seem to cry out about the injustice and travesty that is a couple of poor people buying beer with a snap card and collecting grandma's welfare after she dies, while the rich guys who don't pay their legal share, never mind their fair share, just go on and on with our apparent support.

    Disclaimer:  All trolling is provided for the sole entertainment purposes of the author only. Readers may find entertainment and hard core truths, but none are intended. Any resulting damaged feelings or arse chapping of the reader are the sole responsibility of the reader, to include, but not limited to: crying, anger, revenge pørn, and abandonment or deletion of ccom accounts. Offer void in Utah because Utah is terrible.
  • VegasFrankVegasFrank Posts: 18,004 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2021

    @0patience said:
    @VegasFrank

    It's funny that you say that you were entitled to it. I'm sure that that's what the welfare people would say too. They are entitled to it.

    Entitled as part of a payment to the tribes.
    This was something that the federal govt was required to pay as penalization.
    So no, it is not even the same.

    As for this one, we use an adjectival noun (penalization) to justify it in other ways. That's fine. We could deep dive into semantics about who was the injured party and when they were living and all the other stuff but we'd get nowhere. Sounds like you're for reparations by the descendants of slave owners to the descendants of current blacks in the United States using that model. Maybe you're not. Hell it's not worth finding out.

    All I'm saying is that you used the word entitled for whatever reason personally you used it. The poor uneducated people who collect welfare or food stamps or social security disability or unemployment or any of the other government programs use the same word for what they think is the same meaning. Hey my job laid me off, I'm entitled to it even if I don't need it. Maybe we all have more in common than we thought!

    Disclaimer:  All trolling is provided for the sole entertainment purposes of the author only. Readers may find entertainment and hard core truths, but none are intended. Any resulting damaged feelings or arse chapping of the reader are the sole responsibility of the reader, to include, but not limited to: crying, anger, revenge pørn, and abandonment or deletion of ccom accounts. Offer void in Utah because Utah is terrible.
  • VegasFrankVegasFrank Posts: 18,004 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2021

    @Amos_Umwhat said:

    @VegasFrank said:

    @d_blades said:
    I remember the government cheese and PB, my relatives got from commoditys. They had 6 or 7 kids, but worked full time as well, didn't get any money from the G.

    So I wonder if everyone around here thinks that taking government cheese is okay but receiving welfare or wic or snap or food cards/stamps is not okay?

    When I was in the military, anyone under the rank of E5 who was married and had one or more children qualified for WIC. I wonder if we were also the blood suckers of society back then.

    You were in the military, a productive member of society, in need of help from the society you contributed to. I'm positive that you're not the negative that these guys are talking about.

    There was a guy in my basic training company, wouldn't do a damn thing. Since they put him in my squad, I was getting frustrated and asked him one day:
    "Why the hell did you join? What did you think you'd be doing?"
    His reply: "I want to draw."
    I naively thought he was talking about art, guessing that he just wanted the college money to further himself in a field of his choosing.
    "So, you want to go to school?" i asked, "You've got to get through this enlistment you signed up for first."
    "School?! Hell no I don't want to go to school. I need to get kicked out of the Army so I can draw Welfare." was his reply.

    I won't say what happened next, but I think that's the guy they're referring to, not you.

    You make a really good point about the cheaters will find a way to cheat. Also that there are those who REALLY need these programs, and deserve them as long as we can afford it. I never took it, but I have no resentment to those who did.

    I've told this before, but there was a time when my son came to me asking why we didn't get all those assistance programs. I told him because we didn't need them, and he replied that he knew LOTS of people who had LOTS more money than we did, and they were getting it. I said that I wanted that money to be there for those who needed it, we could eat from the garden.

    Poor child was tired of living on mustard greens, ramen, oatmeal and pinto beans. I splurged and got us a pizza. :)

    Nice anecdotes! I didn't have kids in the military until I was an E7 so I never applied for the assistance. I probably wouldn't have applied for it anyways because I'm too lazy to do paperwork and such things.

    As for the kid in the army who wanted to draw, we could spend millions of man hours trying to fix that situation, and we'd fix it for the five people in the military currently thinking that way. Or the 500 or whatever. That's like spilling a gallon of milk on the floor and hurrying up to clean the drops that splattered 10 ft away. Hello, McFly! You have a gallon of milk in the middle of the puddle over there. I guess that's my point.

    And in that regard, even though I read your whole post and I don't necessarily disagree with anything that you said, I find it maddening that we're worried about the faint few who abuse the system. We are okay with an E4 who takes assistance because we think that that one is contributing positively to society. Maybe that E4 is a dirtbag. I've known many. Maybe he's not trying to draw, as you say, but he's there to collect a paycheck and does slightly less than the bare minimum to just get along. Is it okay then for him to collect assistance? Maybe he's a high-performing e-4 with four kids. We're okay with him collecting assistance, but maybe he should put a f****** cover on his **** fun wand when he has clearly and repeatedly demonstrated that he can't afford these little people he created. Why should I pay out of my tax dollars for a guy who likes to watch a baby's head crown in his wife's v@gina?

    If it really is all about context, And the angry will always be angry because the national system will never be perfect. Like you said that I said, cheaters are going to cheat.

    Disclaimer:  All trolling is provided for the sole entertainment purposes of the author only. Readers may find entertainment and hard core truths, but none are intended. Any resulting damaged feelings or arse chapping of the reader are the sole responsibility of the reader, to include, but not limited to: crying, anger, revenge pørn, and abandonment or deletion of ccom accounts. Offer void in Utah because Utah is terrible.
  • 0patience0patience Posts: 10,665 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @VegasFrank said:

    As for this one, we use an adjectival noun (penalization) to justify it in other ways. That's fine. We could deep dive into semantics about who was the injured party and when they were living and all the other stuff but we'd get nowhere. Sounds like you're for reparations by the descendants of slave owners to the descendants of current blacks in the United States using that model. Maybe you're not. Hell it's not worth finding out.

    All I'm saying is that you used the word entitled for whatever reason personally you used it. The poor uneducated people who collect welfare or food stamps or social security disability or unemployment or any of the other government programs use the same word for what they think is the same meaning. Hey my job laid me off, I'm entitled to it even if I don't need it. Maybe we all have more in common than we thought!

    Mostly, tldr;

    The word entitled was used, because it has been over-used by the current generation. It is now a demeaning word. So it fit.
    They expect everything handed to them and not have to sacrifice for it.
    As I stated, I grew up poor, so I know what it is like to not have and have to work hard for everything, including one meal a day.

    How do you even get that I am for reparations for descendants of slave owners to current people? What you are talking about and payment to the tribes are 2 completely different things. My grandfather was forced into white schools and the language beat out of him. My father joined the military at 16 to get away from it.

    I'm always amazed that people read more into words, than is actually there.
    Kind of like saying that science is fact. Not open to interpretation, yet folks always find a way to interpret it the way they want to see it.

    In Fumo Pax
    Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.

    Wylaff said:
    Atmospheric pressure and crap.
  • VegasFrankVegasFrank Posts: 18,004 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I qualified that statement, @0patience, by saying "maybe you're not," but like you said, you mostly didn't read it ("mostly tldr").

    But since you ask and since you told the tragic story of your ancestors, let me describe slavery to you. Black people were "forced into white" society and weren't even allowed to go to school, and then "had the language (and culture, and family, and freedom, and happiness) beat out of them."

    Virtually every single black person in the US today is here because they are specifically descendants of slaves, either brought here from Africa or systematically bred from slaves who were kidnapped from Africa.

    But, I take it from your response that reparations are not good for the gander. To each his own brother! Don't get triggered.

    Disclaimer:  All trolling is provided for the sole entertainment purposes of the author only. Readers may find entertainment and hard core truths, but none are intended. Any resulting damaged feelings or arse chapping of the reader are the sole responsibility of the reader, to include, but not limited to: crying, anger, revenge pørn, and abandonment or deletion of ccom accounts. Offer void in Utah because Utah is terrible.
  • 0patience0patience Posts: 10,665 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2021

    @VegasFrank
    I never take offense, so I never get triggered.
    You made a comment, I replied to it. Nothing more.
    Why do you do that? Why do you assume a person is pissed or triggered?
    I do not understand that train of thought.

    It is evident you do not know true native history.
    Most people know what they have been told, not what the reality is.
    A while back, the indian schools were in the news and those schools were open not that long ago.

    So if we make reparations to one, we need to make reparations to all, right?
    Jewish, asian, irish, african and all those who have faced atrocities.
    So why not pay everyone reparations?
    If you think that only one race has been enslaved in the US, you would be mistaken.
    I know, written history teaches you otherwise, but written history is quite wrong.

    Oh yeah, when did we get into the my d!ck is bigger than yours discussion anyways? :D

    Post edited by 0patience on
    In Fumo Pax
    Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.

    Wylaff said:
    Atmospheric pressure and crap.
  • VegasFrankVegasFrank Posts: 18,004 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Well @0patience since words matter, I said to not get triggered. I didn't say that you were. But that's just semantics.

    I also didn't say that native Americans were receiving reparations. I didn't say that you were pro reparations either. I definitely didn't say that everyone who was ever wronged should get them. I don't say that blacks were the only race to be enslaved, either in this country or in the world. I definitely didn't say that I agree with reparations, especially not generations after those wronged have left the earth. Of course, I'm not saying that I'm against it either because frankly, I don't know enough about it.

    Now that we got that out of the way, what I did say was that the entitlements that you have received sound an awful lot like a reparation model. The fact that your people were also enslaved just makes the situations more parallel. I do think that if a model fits one and we do it, then we should do it for all of those who fit the model.

    I'm pro consistency.

    In fact, from what I gather from this post, the main difference between your people's situation and black Americans is that your reparations are codified by law and sanctioned by the government. That's all fine with me.

    Of course, the other difference is that the European white man took your land from you, which didn't happen to blacks, but that might be a non sequitur because as you mentioned above, your entitlements come from the standpoint of forced integration and the systemic dissolving of your heritage. If that's the case, black people have a case with the feds too.

    Disclaimer:  All trolling is provided for the sole entertainment purposes of the author only. Readers may find entertainment and hard core truths, but none are intended. Any resulting damaged feelings or arse chapping of the reader are the sole responsibility of the reader, to include, but not limited to: crying, anger, revenge pørn, and abandonment or deletion of ccom accounts. Offer void in Utah because Utah is terrible.
  • 0patience0patience Posts: 10,665 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @VegasFrank
    Actually, a large part of the deal with the tribes was payment for the land they lost and treaties that were broken.
    Similarly, if a country breaks a treaty with another country, there are penalties to pay.
    The US govt made treaties with several indian nations and broke them. So they had to pay penalties for it. Unfortunately, they made no such treaties with african americans. Had they done so, penalties would have been paid already.

    It's odd that the Chinese, which were also treated very similar are never brought up on the same topics. The Irish, which probably 20% were brought here as indentured servants, (see slavery), are never brought up. The American Japanese that were imprisoned during the war. The list goes on and on.

    No one even talks about any of that. It's always the one race that needs reparations, because people only see them as being enslaved.

    Not saying that they didn't go through anything less worse.

    In Fumo Pax
    Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.

    Wylaff said:
    Atmospheric pressure and crap.
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