I got into an argument with an old friend who is convinced Obama is trying to enslave America, and his proof was that food assistance and other benefits have skyrocketed the last few years. I just sighed.
Why don’t people understand the concept of the safety net? A tightrope walker doesn’t need a safety net when he is perfectly balanced on the tightrope. Likewise, welfare benefits and food assistance programs and other safety net programs cost the government less when the economy is doing well.
But when the tightrope walker falls, and the economy crashes, that is when the safety net is the most important and, of course, the most expensive. When unemployment is between 7-10% for 6 years, the fact that food assistance and other social benefit programs cost more isn’t a sign of them being out of control spending, it just demonstrates that the programs are working PRECISELY the way they should.
I simply don’t understand people who don’t get this. I don’t have band-aids and gauze and peroxide for when I am not injured, but for when I am. Coincidentally, I use more (and, as such, spend more) on band-aids and gauze and peroxide when I cut myself.
Why is this so god damned hard to understand?
kc
Tell your friend that if corporations would pay workers better wages, instead of hoarding profits and giving obscene executive compensation, it would be much harder for Obama to enslave us.
Chickamin Slam
Safety nets benefit “Those people.” IYKWIMAISTYD
Unless of course you are Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan, or that Burke guy … then by God someone help them, they deserve it.
That’s what I have discovered in arguing with my conservative friends. The old “some people are more deserving than others” BS.
John Cole
I guess as a new front pager I can’t complain that Anne only gave me two minutes before STOMPING ON ME.
PsiFighter37
I’d like to see evidence that assistance ‘skyrocketed’. Last I heard, Republicans were trying to cut food stamps entirely from the budget.
Methinks your friend views it this was because a black man was elected president; all of a sudden, he’s now giving free handouts to his fellow coloreds. Kind of the same way all Teabagger folk think.
PeakVT
Why don’t people understand the concept of the safety net?
A lot of people just don’t have empathy for strangers. We see this constantly when some politician’s kid or wife gets sick. Then health care or cancer research is important. But not until then.
ruemara
They either do not care because it is not happening to them or they cannot bear to comprehend something that works against what they want to believe.
Quit whining, Cole. You’re still the main name on this blawg.
April
They don’t want to understand until they need it.
Anne Laurie
@John Cole: Sissy. I rescheduled when I saw your off-site composition allowed you to slip in between my proofreading & hitting “post”.
Baud
If your friend is talking about Obama “enslaving” Americans, then he is not in a state of mind to follow your simple logic.
Gin & Tonic
@John Cole: Now you’ve made her feel bad and pull the post.
Yatsuno
@John Cole:
There. She pulled it. Happy ya jackass?
MomSense
@ruemara:
Yes!
PeakVT
@PsiFighter37: Snap enrollment has gone up substantially. But that’s okay. The job market is awful and inequality is skyrocketing. We (liberals) want enrollment to stay high as long as Repukes are sabotaging the economy. Otherwise the suffering would be much worse.
Just Some Fuckhead
Someone should enslave your friend for a few years so he understands the difference between forced labor and meager food assistance.
cathyx
That was a quick switcheroo on the posts. 2 comments and it was gone.
MikeJ
It’s ok. We all know how to read her posts even before they go up.
https://twitter.com/billmon1
Redshirt
Way to go, Cole.
gbear
It’s easier to explain this to your friend if you punch him in the face before you start.
Mary G
What, no McCarver hate?
schrodinger's cat
@John Cole: I read this on right wing Catholic blog that I sometimes check to see what the crazies are thinking. The new meme, grocery store prices are high because of food stamps.
EriktheRed
It’s likely because he doesn’t want to understand.
Gin & Tonic
@Mary G: A whole threadfull yesterday.
Ruckus
A number of reasons.
They don’t want to understand.
They have no empathy.
They are conceptually stupid.
No one has ever explained how life works for others. and how they could easily be in the same boat.
They are actually stupid.
These are not mutually exclusive.
Pooh
Your friend probably thinks of people on SNAP as not only unemployed, but never employed (and uncharitably, blahs). Therefore Obama has made more takers!
raven
Rut Ro, here comes what’s its name! Gotta take off at O Dark Hundred for a run up the Blue Ridge Parkway. AMF!
reflectionephemeral
“Soup kitchens caused the Great Depression,” is Paul Krugman’s line, maybe borrowed from some commenter somewhere.
My grand theory is that the Southern Strategy, as described here, explains roughly everything about today’s movement conservatism/Republican Party.
Hal
One of the most common shared Facebook posts I see is the one about drug testing people on welfare, because you know, If I have to get tested at my job, shouldn’t you have to get tested for getting assistance I pay for? I’ve seen people who I thought were very liberal liking posts like that. Welfare is a four letter word to many people in America, even if millions of them will use it at some point in their lives.
Omnes Omnibus
People don’t understand the concept of insurance. People don’t understand marginal tax rates. People don’t understand a lot of shit.
Just Some Fuckhead
Only white people can make slavery = free food. Goddamn but white people suck.
Pooh
@Mary G:
So far tonight “how could 18 teams have passed on Wacha?” Because drafting pitchers is a crap shoot, idiot.
“The cardinals are a great base running team”. Actually, they were below average this year.
I can’t wait til this twat goes away.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Pooh: Yeah, I’m thinking this guy (?) may have other issues about Obama and the safety net. And can I say that in my almost half century on this earth, from big cities to college towns to small towns, I have never seen a single person buying crab legs, steak or other luxury goods with SNAP cards. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve noticed that someone was buying with SNAP cards, I guess I’m not enough of a nosy fuck.
and the toenail fungus ad has been replaced with one about an intestinal parasite. Anybody else seeing that? I wonder what ad matrix I’m in.
raven
@Just Some Fuckhead: Careful, the grand lecturer is just around the corner.
Dee Loralei
@Omnes Omnibus: How do magnets work?
schrodinger's cat
@raven: How old do you think he is? 16?
scav
Banks only lend money to people that don’t need it (and thus have the credit ratings needed to get loans). In Free-market Nirvana, Food banks work the same way, giving out three-martini lunches to the obese and well-fed. Just as doctors medicate and treat the healthy and migrate into niche specialties like plastic surgery and smile enhancement because that’s the all health care is any more, appearence-management. Politicians politic for their class interests and electioneer as a full-time occupation and the media reports on itself incessently. Seems to hold together in a self-reflecting sort of fashion.
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: No, I’m convinced it’s grad school speak. I’ve been out many years but I still recognize it.
eta I said earlier, real people don’t talk like that.
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
Having been raised Catholic, it still enrages me every time I see one of these people bleating Randroid memes in defiance of their own church’s teachings.
(And the bishops, of course, say little and do less. Deviating from Catholic teaching is perfectly okay when it suits their Republican and assorted 1%er pals).
Burt Hutt
For the life of me I will never understand the concern about “bigfooting” a post. If there were regimented posting times for each front pager, sure. But in this awesome free-for-all blog it’s a little wingnutty.
Cole’s hyperbolic response was lampooning people who bitch about it.
Put your post back up, Anne. Please.
Or I’m taking my lurking ass back to lurkville, population: me.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Hal: I always ask those idiots why they should have to be drug tested at their workplace.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Bingo. Grammar and sentence structure are too good for high school.
Redshirt
@Dee Loralei: The Force.
Bobby D
Why? Because BENGHAZI!!! arglebargle, SOSHULIZM arglebargle! That’s why.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: And all that fucking bullshit jargon.
Dee Loralei
@efgoldman: The tide goes in, the tide goes out. Who can explain it? Huh?
Baud
@Dee Loralei:
So how do magnets work?
Checkmate, libtard!
raven
@Dee Loralei: Ding!
Chris
@Hal:
You know, maybe the problem there isn’t that people aren’t getting drug-tested for welfare, but that they are getting drug-tested for their jobs.
artem1s
@PsiFighter37:
not just the coloreds, the whole freaking 47%. How come I haven’t gotten my stuff for voting for the blah guy?
Redshirt
Satan. And his minions.
Satan mixes lies with the truth, so you can’t trust anything.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dee Loralei: Someone should just tell it to stop.
Davis X. Machina
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: .
Arizona experimented with making its EBT cards international safety orange, to make your job in the checkout line easier. I don’t know if it caught on.
Gian
Trying to think back to undergrad and this was part of basic econ. Unemployment benefits buffer an economic downtown and paying the govt accounts back help prevent an overheated economic rebound.
The whole thing serves to help get a Goldilocks like economy. Its not that complicated but people who aren’t taught it try to extrapolate their personal experience onto the national government and politicians of all stripes cater to this way of thinking when they compare the federal budget to a family budget.
This ought to be high school stuff
Gin & Tonic
@Dee Loralei: For reasons too obscure to explain I recently came across stuff like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZvVxt3TFpU on YouTube. This is the tide going in – at 14-15 knots.
raven
@Davis X. Machina: The have a big ass Peach on them here, pretty hard to miss.
schrodinger's cat
@Dee Loralei: It has all to do with electron spin and Pauli’s exclusion principle.
Anne Laurie
@Burt Hutt: Don’t worry, it’ll be back in a bit.
scav
@raven: Vocab, tone, and sheer volubility. Appeals to eternal collective guilt by immediate assumption of audience melanin content and class structure while decrying prejudice. Public Polishing of Personal Privileged Perspective and enlightenmentsplaining. Entirely flashbacks to certain colloquia.
schrodinger's cat
@Dee Loralei: Gravity, stay away from me.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: So you are saying they have a grabby end and a pushy end?
SiubhanDuinne
@artem1s:
Yes, and my Soros Subsidy!
Ash Can
More like it.
Dee Loralei
@schrodinger’s cat: I believed in gravity before they went and made a movie about it.
Citizen_X
Huh. Clause A does not connect with Clause B.
@gbear: I was gonna say Cole’s friend’s thinking process is faulty. A knee to the balls should help.
maya
Foods stamps and other safety-net welfare go immediately back into the economy as opposed to another 1%er tax cut, which winds up in a Grand Bahama vault.
Redshirt
@Dee Loralei: No one knows what gravity is. Really.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Hal: One of the most common shared Facebook posts I see is the one about drug testing people on welfare…
God, I hate that. I always respond “let’s stop the piss-testing for work instead.”
aimai
@Chris: I agree with this, absolutely. But in the hive mind the two kinds of drug testing are actually for different reasons. People get drug tested on the job because the employer wants to make sure that he isn’t liable for damages done by a drugged individual. Its a liability and control issue. The people who wnt to see welfare recipients get drug tests are under the impression that food stamps and other assistance should be absolutely the bare minimum needed to keep a totally impoverished and immiserated person barely alive. The drug testing is really a kind of means testing–the idea (and people will even tell you this directly) is that if someone can afford the drugs they should/could be affording the food or the rent on their own. The idea is that if you had the money for drugs you were no longer truly deserving because not even truly poor.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can:
Refixed.
FlyingToaster
“It’s called a social contract.”
If you want to live in civilization, then you agree to abide by that civilization’s tenets. In ours, it’s supposed to be, work hard, pay into the system, and when something goes wrong we’ll hold you up until the tide shifts again.
These asswipes aren’t even libertarian; they’re anarchists who want government protection from their serfs/slaves.
Gin & Tonic
@Redshirt: Cole does.
aimai
@Ash Can: Beauty. Sheer Beauty. I’ve been around here long enough to remember the origins of several parts of this tale of Colian woe.
Citizen_X
@Dee Loralei: So is Hannity going to do like he did with Gore and global warming and start talking about “Sandra Bullock’s gravity theory?”
Burt Hutt
@Anne Laurie: Then I will read it.
Deal?
Dee Loralei
@Gin & Tonic: wow
Gin & Tonic
Does Ortiz take it to 3-2 just to make the HR extra-dramatic?
Chris
@FlyingToaster:
How is that not a libertarian? :D
Dee Loralei
@Citizen_X: HA! More likely he’ll say something about what that mean Hollywood Liberal did to that nice Texas girl, Sandra Bullock with the evil gravity.
MoeizW
Because the wrong people are getting food stamps, Cole.
FlyingToaster
@Xecky Gilchrist: One contract I had for (unnamed financial entity) was adapting a very old perl program for web deployment. I was on the phone with the programmer in LA when he excused himself, saying, “sorry, they’re telling me I have to go pee in a cup.” A few days later, at the successful end of the project, he asked me why I wasn’t interested in a full time job, and I told him flat out, “Look, buddy, your company is insane. Having railroad engineers and airline pilots get their pee checked seems sane to me; drug-testing perl programmers at a bank is fucking ludicrous.”
Gian
@aimai:
I do think some jobs ought to have drug and alcohol testing. Airline pilots cruise ship captains. Basically if you’re doing the job under the influence people can get killed.
Drug testing for welfare is often a give away to the private contractor who does the testing.
Cervantes
From Glenn Beck’s show, May 28, 2009, Craig Nelson speaking:
No one helped him out when he was on food stamps and welfare.
And you ask: “Why don’t people understand the concept of the safety net?”
different-church-lady
Obama is trying to enslave people by… giving them food.
Interesting understanding of how the world works your friend has.
karen
@efgoldman:
Actually I’ve come to believe that the TeaHadi are really Daleks.
ranchandsyrup
@Hal: When my idiot fb friends post about drug testing from welfare I ask them what % of people on welfare they think would test positive then show them the FL results. 2.6%. Highest guess so far? 65 % and he was serious.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/29/gop’s_inane_money_eating_sham_drug_tests_for_welfare_a_huge_failure/
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes magnets do, and you need quantum mechanics to explain why.
schrodinger's cat
@Dee Loralei: We should tell wingnuts to test it, because it is just a theory.
Cervantes
@ranchandsyrup: How’s Michaela doing? And Mrs. R&S? And you?
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat:
Those are the guys who repair and service quanta, right?
Dee Loralei
@schrodinger’s cat: Exactly!
Pooh
@maya: stimulus is impossible unless it’s in the form of a tax cut for the wealthy.
Matt McIrvin
When you were a Republican, what did you think about safety nets then?
(I mean this sincerely, not as a smear: if you were opposed to safety-net programs at the time, maybe you can remember the reasons why and start from there if you want to understand the mindset of today’s conservatives. And then think how you reasoned yourself out of them, to get counterarguments that might actually be effective on somebody.)
I’m guessing that conservatives think social-welfare programs actually create poverty and unemployment by removing the incentive to work. While there’s little evidence that they do any such thing under today’s conditions, I’ve found that for these subjects conservatives and libertarians often rely more heavily on abstract, “Econ 101”-type theorizing, maybe augmented by a few anecdotes about a lazy person who decided to go on the dole.
Redshirt
@efgoldman: Charmed, I’m sure, by the mechanic receptionist.
kc
@Cervantes:
A classic.
Gian
@efgoldman:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/113/the-story-of-schroedingers-cat-an-epic-poem
Not grease monkey… quantum mechanic
FlipYrWhig
@efgoldman: I would take mine in more often if not for the overriding problem of trying to fix the location and the velocity at the same time.
nastybrutishntall
@efgoldman: It’s like they are made into cybermen, but instead of the silly earpiece thingie on their heads they get fitted with a tricorner hat and a misspelled placard.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@John Cole: You could at least refer to her by her actual name as it’s given/used on the front page. It’s Anne Laurie, not Anne. Hence AL as the abbreviation. Kinda like Betty Sue or Mary Lou I believe. If she wanted to be Anne, she could use Anne L or Anne J or Anne F.
chrome agnomen
fuck you, breslow.
Jebediah, RBG
@John Cole:
Welcome! Let’s see how you fit in.
Redshirt
@efgoldman: We’re doomed. I ruined everything!
pseudonymous in nc
@Hal:
The number of Americans who make that argument instead of thinking, “hey, why are the conditions at my job so shitty?” (usually when moaning about unions) is really fucking sad.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: That’s why I prefer my mechanics to be classical.
ranchandsyrup
@Cervantes: We are all doing great! Little M is sleeping on my chest right now and this took 5 minutes to type on the tablet Hope all is well with you.
GregB
Jesus Christ Cole, you should know the correct answer is Benghazi, Acorn, Bill Ayers, anti-colonial Kenyan socialist terrorist fist bump.
? Martin
Dude, you spent two decades not understanding it. You tell us!
Narcissus
People are stupid.
AxelFoley
I have to shake my head every time I hear a white person assert that President Obama “is trying to enslave America”. Tells you what this is all about–white fear of retribution.
Yatsuno
@Gian: Theoretically I’m supposed to be drug tested as a condition of my employment. I’ve worked here three years and I’ve never had to pee in a cap, plus I’m on a low-level opiate so I have a waiver on that point. Of course I also live in a state where pot is legal.
Lurking Canadian
@schrodinger’s cat: I’ve been thinking ever since I saw the “fucking magnets, how do they work?” meme, that magnets are frickin complicated! Not knowing how magnets work is nothing to be ashamed of. I know electrical engineering PhDs who couldn’t tell you how magnets work.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: O
Won’t save you from the Feds. Just sayin’.
xenos
I am starting a new job in a couple weeks and one of the requirements is a medical exam to prove I am fit for the job. Said job being the local lawyer who is responsible for hosting board meetings for the corporations set up here (a tax haven of sorts) from other jurisdictions. It is the sort of job that could be done from one’s deathbed, but there is no getting around this requirement, which is written into the law.
Apparantly, this sort of requirement has been a long-standing obligation for the working class. The last time the law was updated the ruling coalition included the Sockialist Party, so now all the lawyers, executives, and doctors themselves have to go in for a physical exam whenever a new employment contract is established. It is obviously a wast of money and resources, but it makes a worthy point.
Omnes Omnibus
@xenos: Also, it forces people to go to a doctor. I’ll admit that I am the type that skips routine exams and only goes to a doctor when I have a problem that can’t be fixed by ice, bandaids, OTC allergy meds, and booze. That doesn’t leave much.
workworkwork
@FlyingToaster:
This, exactly.
I put it like this: If you want the benefits of being a member of a community, you have to accept the responsibilities of being a member of that community. To do otherwise is to be a moocher and parasite.
John Cole
Please, people. Stop trying to gin shit up. I was just teasing AL and if I had wanted the post delayd I have the admin privileges to do it myself. I was making a joke, fer fucks sake.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole: You are bringing this up now? Really? No one has talked about it for hours.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: He feels guilty that some people think he was trying to make me feel guilty. Eldest-child syndrome!
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: Okay. I am an elder child and I really do get the weird protective dynamic. But why wait this long to jump into your defense? Timeliness matters.
Bobby Thomson
Why is this so hard to understand? I’ll tell you why. People are really fucking stupid.
Just remember that and most things will make sense – especially the things that don’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bobby Thomson:
From Men in Black.
Dream On
What you’re saying is too hard to believe – Obama is trying to enslave America, and my proof is that food assistance and other benefits have skyrocketed the last few years.
Group mind…
fuckwit
@AxelFoley: DING DING DING DING!! It’s guilt, via projection.
Maybe we need a Truth And Reconciliation Commission like South Africa had. And air out all the atrocities, make official apologies and amends, and then move on.
fuckwit
@Gian: NO!!! It is HUMILIATION. The whole point of drug testing for welfare, like means testing, is like tipping: it’s POWER and HUMILIATION. Here, jump through this hoop for me. Dance! Dance for my amusement! Hhahaha. That’s all it is. It is a boot stepping on a face. It’s demanding supplication. It’s sadism pure and simple.
Lector Peregrinus
@karen:
IM-MI-SE-RATE!
Paul in KY
@Chris: Hippy Pope Francis will put the kibosh on that.
Paul in KY
@aimai: I guess they never consider that the poor person may have had the drugs given to them or they may have stolen them.
Waspuppet
It isn’t, but like Lee Atwater said you can’t just come out and say n!&&@r anymore.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@PsiFighter37:
28 million in 2008. 45 million in 2011. It is a pretty substantial increase.
That being said, I’m glad more people are getting nutritional assistance, meager as it may be.
link
Original Lee
@different-church-lady: Will vote for food.
Apparently people are so grateful for not starving to death that they will vote for any handy Democrat.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m in the same ad matrix and I think it’s the one for those of us turning the corner into middle age (I’m having a “get off my lawn” day today so intestinal parasites feels just about right for my mood). Bah effing humbug.
Anna in PDX
@Chris: Yeah I also think we should push back on “race to the bottom” arguments. I am sorry your job is violating your civil rights. I want your civil rights to be inviolable. Why do you not want the same for me? The same applies to pension envy (is it related to another sort of envy, I suddenly wonder) – I am sorry you don’t have pension benefits. I want us all to have them. Why are you angry because other people still have them? People who generally spend their prime working time making less in their sector and this is the main compensation they get for it?
LanceThruster
“Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.” ~ H, L. Mencken
schrodinger's cat
@Lurking Canadian: I has to agree.
Mnemosyne
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
You’d almost think we had a massive financial meltdown that nearly led to a depression worse than the one we had in the 1930s.
Nah, if something like that had happened, I’m sure we would have heard about it on the news.