Job-hunting while hungry: Why a clueless new political decision will ruin lives

[xchrom]

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/20/job_hunting_while_hungry_why_a_clueless_new_political_decision_will_ruin_lives/



It’s really hard to find a job when you don’t have a high school degree, suffer from undiagnosed mental illness, or have few marketable skills to advance any type of career. It’s even harder when you have to do it hungry. Returning to school takes money, as does any sort of job training or apprenticeship, so when states repeal the food stamp waivers this year, giving childless adults only three months on the program before they have to find a job, many of the nation’s poorest will find themselves out of luck — and out of food.

Indeed, a new in-depth report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that more than a million people will be left without benefits under the SNAP policy reversal. The Center states that these people are the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable, living a full 19 percent below the poverty line, often pulling in less than $2,500 a year.

On the surface, it makes sense to pull the extension waivers, which were put in place after the Great Recession when unemployment was high. With that rate steadily dropping, however, the number of SNAP applicants has been dropping as well, naturally. As people are able to find work, they are able to get off public assistance. The time limit on the benefits is meant to encourage people to get jobs, to deter them from perhaps attempting to live off the government.

But the population culled by these restrictions are already receiving the least amount of government help, as they have no dependents or disabilities and thus are not eligible to receive much else in the form of assistance. And the $150 a month SNAP provides these individuals is hardly enough incentive to tempt someone to try to live off it. What that $150 a month does instead is feed the people who have very little in the way of job prospects and hardly any capability to improve those prospects.

[ck4829]

1. All a part of a vicious circle (Poverty and hunger)

Last edited Tue Jan 20, 2015, 02:21 PM - Edit history (1)

It needs to be cut.

(I made a very quick post, when I wrote this I was not referring to food stamps, the vicious circle of poverty and hunger needs to be cut and programs like food stamps needs to be defended.)

[antiquie]

2. !!! How do you think they should eat?

[Jackpine Radical]

5. We need a minimum guaranteed income in America.

It's so much cheaper just to give people enough to live on, rather than dribbling out a few resources through our various entangled, inefficient and rule-bound bureaucracies.

[antiquie]

7. I agree but, meanwhile, we shouldn't cut SNAP.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Oh--I just figured out why you think I disagree with you.

In the post to which I responded, the writer said "it" should be cut. I took "it" to refer to the "vicious cycle," and you took "it" to refer to SNAP. On re-reading, I see that "it" is totally ambiguous and you read it one way, while I read it the other.

No, of course SNAP shouldn't be cut, but the vicious cycle that traps people on the bottom by providing them with grossly inadequate resources most assuredly does need to be cut. I was suggesting GMI as a way out of the cycle.

[antiquie]

19. Aha, the old failure to communicate.

I don't think I've ever really disagreed with one of your posts.
I totally agree with GMI!

[truedelphi]

30. Sadly, the situation with poverty is going to increase -

And probably the increase will be exponential.

Already big corporate giants like Amazon are turning to robots to do the shelving of products in their wrehouses.

And drones will be replacing the delivery drivers.

[erronis]

9. A minimum guaranteed income implies a job of some type

If you mean a monthly stipend that allows a family to survive, then I'm definitely in agreement. That stipend ($1,500/month for an individual?) would be recouped if the person is employed.

Unfortunately so much of what 'merkins call "benefits" are tied to some form of full-time employment. Health insurance? yes. Disability? yes. Social Security? yes.

Most of the proposals that I've seen floated left/center to right/right talk about improving tax relief for our poor working families. Once again, this implies that only the employed get the benefits.

This economy is probably going to need fewer and fewer employees over time. What should we do with the unemployed?

[Jackpine Radical]

11. I don't think GMI implies a job. At least I didn't think so when I wrote that.

I meant something more like what you're calling a stipend. I'm not just talking about working families.

I guess it has become politically poison to notice that there are unemployed and homeless people in America who desperately need help. That awareness is very deep in me; I was at one point in my life living in a car, a homeless vet with raging PTSD. I have also known these people from "the other side" for the past 35 years or so, as a psychologist working with Correctional parolees and probationers, as well as with pretty much the gamut of mentally ill and cognitively disabled people.

Many of them cannot work. Many apparently able-bodied people carry deep psychological injuries that prevent them from functioning just as the clueless and compassionless observer might prefer them to do.

[erronis]

21. Thanks. I'm with you in as many ways as I can be.

[Sparhawk60]

25. At First

At first, I was dead set against the idea of a minimum guaranteed income. But the more I find out about it, the more it make sense. In a different article, I read that we spend an average of $33,000 in welfare expenses per family, but the family only actually sees about $11,000/year.

Why not just cut them a check for $25,000/year? The families will be happy because their income more than doubled, and tax payer would end up paying less. The only ones who lose out would be the government workers who process the $33K and turn it in to $11K for the poor.

[Jackpine Radical]

28. Nicely put:

"The only ones who lose out would be the government workers who process the $33K and turn it in to $11K for the poor."

Bureaucracies have a tendency to take on a life of their own, and to grow as they go into a feedback loop in which inadequate services generate more need, which causes the bureaucracy to grow, which causes the bureaucracy to deliver even worse services, since they have learned that inefficiency and ineffectiveness are rewarded.

A GMI/stipend/whatever would cut through so much crap. This, coupled with universal health care and increased funding of Social Security could go a long way toward turning this nation into a civilized part of the world.

[ck4829]

23. The circle needs to be cut, not the program itself

The program is fine, I was referring to the circle of poverty, not having food will only lead to more poverty.

When I wrote that something needed to be cut, I failed to realize that it could mean I could be seen as referring to the program being cut. Sorry.

[antiquie]

27. Gotcha now (Jackpine Radical 'splained it to me)

Apologies

[chervilant]

8. Really?

I suppose you have a job? Plenty to EAT?

I have SNAP at present, having been wrongfully terminated the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. If I didn't have SNAP, I wouldn't be able to afford groceries, since my unemployment only covers my rent and utilities--oh, and gas for my 12 YO car, so that I can go on myriad and relentless job searches and interviews.

So, would you--like so many here where I live--look at me askance when I whip out my EBT card to buy my groceries? Would you sniff or grunt at me, in your disgust, as I squelch my embarrassment to use SNAP so that I can EAT???

I don't know what this nation has become...

[Gormy Cuss]

15. You should rely on charity for your food.

There must be food pantries and soup kitchens within driving distance. If you're really careful about planning job interviews you can get all your food needs met this way. Now if you were really willing to bootstrap yourself, you could freegan all the food you need from dumpsters.

[chervilant]

17. Well, here's the "icing on the cake":

(An apt metaphor, don't you think?) I am a vegan, and shop for mostly organic foods. Talk about the dirty looks!

[Gormy Cuss]

18. At least you're an adult.

When I had to deal with the dirty looks I was a child. It takes a special kind of coward to glare and tsk at a 12 year old because you don't like the food choices in her cart.

[Sparhawk60]

26. Or, Feed the Homeless

to the hungry. Two problems solved. Any has to be better than actually acting like a First Wolrd nation and caring for our poor.

/sarcasm

[ck4829]

24. Was thinking about the chain of poverty leading to more hunger, more poverty

Except I didn't put that in my post, when I said 'cut', I did NOT mean the program itself.

Major, major, mistake on my part.

(In short with my other reply above, the circle needs to be cut. I actually think we need a guaranteed minimum income and much stronger safety net programs)

[chervilant]

29. Thank you for this post.

And, for clarifying your position. I appreciate that we're on the same page.

[merrily]

3. Clueless, my ass. THEY KNOW.

We have to stop letting them off the hook by imputing cluelessness, fear, desire to compromise, etc. And we have to stop assuming that people who know enough to get elected to office, even the US Senate, can't figure out as much as the average DUer can.

If you know that lack of home heating fuel subsidies, lack of food stamps and cuts to OASDI combined is likely to kill people, so do they.

If you know that hungry people don't perform well, so do the people who created and, at least once a year, fund school lunch (and breakfast) programs for that very reason.

News flash: They also know it's cheaper to house the homeless than to leave them homeless. And that homeless who get houses not only cost society less money, but are more likely to get jobs, at least those who aren't beyond help in that respect for some reason.

[Jackpine Radical]

12. I think "compassionless" is the operative word.

The cluelessness arises from an unwillingness to see.

[merrily]

14. I am going to stick to they know (and probably a hell of a lot more than we DUers who are

not insiders do).

I appreciate your comment, though.

[turbinetree]

4. Campfires

The next act of the Paul Ryan budget fiasco will see people eating the leather off there shoes around the campfires of the homeless and all of us basically, and having grass tea boiling on the campfires, and will the "media" darlings like CBS, ABC, NBC, Fix Noise, CNN, and others report this-----no chance, no rating, unless its a gotcha show.
Better yet lets send boiled leather shoes and boiled grass to Paul Ryan and his band of merry men and women and ask them to eat this mess in there Ayn Rand world mission accomplished slogan of hypocrisy and disdain for the society and then ask him and others what next, after the shoes and grass have been boiled down.

nuke:

[rbrnmw]

6. they aren't clueless they are heartless

they know exactly what they are doing

[TBA]

13. Serious question: What are they doing?

What do they think the end game is? What is is it for them if we continue to become more "third world" with little or no social safety net?

Is it just money? Do they really want poor people to suffer and die? Are they into social Darwinism?

For the life of me I cannot understand what their vision for the country really is.

[closeupready]

20. Greed = grabbing more wealth for yourself, no matter what.

If that means, from a macro perspective, the poor and elderly get smaller checks, who fucking cares.

Even people on this board have stated that they don't care about wealth inequality. When even DU's membership gives up on basic humanity, then you know that our world is going to hell in a handbasket.

[erronis]

22. The in-operative word is "think"

There is no rational thinking going on in the moneyed classes, in the black limousines and gated communities.

It's all "I need to horde more, get more, score more" than the other a-hole in another gated community.

Frankly my dears, they don't really "think" about us. Minor little inconveniences. Reasons to not travel to the inner cities. Reasons to vacation on rich-men islands/yachts/preserves. Reasons to have private security forces (local police?) to keep "their" peace.

[AZ Progressive]

16. Once again, America punishes the weak, one must make money at all costs in this country

And that may even force people to choose between their ethics and being able to eat.

[Pooka Fey]

31. K&R