Remember that one?
The government assistance program that issued Food Stamps that could be used to obtain basic staples – such as cheese (as well as bread and milk) to people who’d fallen upon hard times and otherwise might not eat? The idea being particularly to make sure children and older people who couldn’t provide for themselves would not starve.
Maybe it is just a memory.
Somewhere along the line, Food Stamps became SNAP – Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – and instead of Food Stamps, people (including abled-bodied men) were issued a credit card (or at least, one that looked like it was that) and it could be used to buy soda, potato chips – even sushi.
Instead of not starving, people got obese. And entitled rather than grateful.
Now – tomorrow – the free lunch (and breakfast and dinner) is going to end, apparently – and there are predictions of mayhem and even cannibalism. Maybe some of the able-bodied men who can no longer buy sushi will do the unthinkable and get a job. This latter – the italicized words – are regarded as harsh by some tender-hearted folk. Why? Is there any legitimate excuse for a man – a young man, especially – who is physically and mentally capable of doing work not working?
It is one thing to have compassion for women with children – and of course men and women who are literally unable to work on account of age or physical/mental disability. This is not a defense of forcing anyone to “help” those who need help. Charity ought to be just that. Government “help” is not charitable because it involves the use of coercion to extract money from A to “help” B. Whether “B” is legitimately “in need” is beside the point. The use of violence – coercion – except in self-defense is always immoral, regardless of the supposedly “compassionate” ends.
The point is that compassion for those who have fallen on hard times is a perfectly human sentiment. No one wants to see anyone – especially children and the elderly – going hungry.
That compassion, however, has been greatly abused. If you have ever been waiting in a supermarket checkout line behind a young man using his SNAP card to get food you can’t afford – such as sushi – or an obese woman buying 12-packs of soda and chips – you have been a witness to the abuse.
Some will say it is unkind to deny folks in need sushi – and soda and chips. This is incredibly effronterous as well as cruel. Effronterous, because when you are not picking up the tab for lunch, it is effronterous to order extravagant, expensive items that go way beyond necessities. Particularly when you know the party paying the tab is not paying it willingly. If it’s legitimate to subsidize sushi for “the needy,” then why are these poor people made to ride the bus? They deserve – are entitled to – a car, just like everyone else! And not just a basic car, either. That would be degrading – like only being allowed to get basic staples such as milk and bread (and cheese) with government Food Stamps.
We don’t want to embarrass anyone.
Cruel? Yes. Because it is cruel to enable the indolence of young men by rewarding it. There is a window for young men – from roughly the late teens to the late ’20s – for them to establish themselves as men, by providing for themselves. A young man capable of honest work who does not work is something less than a man – and that is a degradation. Let this etiolate for long enough and by the time the man is middle aged, he is a loser who will likely be a dependent for the rest of his days.
This is cruel.
It is also cruel to feed people “food” that isn’t healthy. Especially children. Kids need staples such as milk, bread and cheese to be healthy. Hamburger also. It is both effronterous and cruel to facilitate the mass-consumption by children of potato chips, soda and other such crap, especially when others are made to pay for it all.
The predictions of imminent rioting – and even cannibalism – over the possible withholding of SNAP benefits is probably mostly manufactured, meant to instill fear in those who work about the consequences of denying “help” to those “in need.” The issue is easily addressed by simple reforms. The first being that able-bodied men either get a job – or go to work for us, as by cleaning the streets or some other form of productive activity, in order to qualify for government cheese. That’s right. We’re not going to let you starve. But we’re also not going to let you eat sushi unless you pay for it yourself. This would serve as an incentive to get a job, a thing sorely lacking when you can just get a SNAP card and enjoy some fresh sashimi without having to work for it.
The government could actually do a service (if you forget for a moment about the coercion behind the funding of it) by limiting what women with kids are able to get via government assistance to healthy foods rather than junk food. Obesity and the attendant serious chronic health problems are much more serious problems than starvation in this country.
And enabling the indolence of young, able-bodied men is nothing less than vicious. To them – as well as the rest of us who are made involuntary complicit via the financing of it.
. . .
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Food stamps or whatever they are calling it today is welfare, and welfare is unconstitutional. It is not charity when the government steals from those who are productive through taxation to give to those who refuse to work for themselves or are irresponsible with their money. Of course this is the same government that gives billions of our dollars to foreign countries and gets us involved in unnecessary wars while devaluing the dollars that we are working for. The government is not and never will be charitable.
Someone here, I forget who (forgive me), recommended the book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph A. Tainter — a survey of major government failures throughout history. It’s an academic treatise, so it’s a bit anodyne, but it contains a few gems. A couple of pertinent points are worth sharing:
1. The author notes that there’s a “minimum threshold” of popular support under which no government can survive. He writes, “No societal leader is ever far from the need to validate position and policy, and no hierarchical society can be organized without explicit provision for this need.” It occurs to one that this is where the institution of voting comes into play in “democratic” societies. It’s not that voting is used to determine leadership; rather, voting allows the ruling class to gauge their current level of popular support.
2. He emphasized the absolute necessity for “generosity” if a ruler wishes to acquire and maintain power: “The route to an elevated social position is to acquire a surplus of subsistence resources, and to distribute these in such a way that one establishes prestige in the community, and create a following and a faction.”
Also, in both complex and simpler governments, rulers must “establish and constantly reinforce legitimacy” since the support that members are willing to extend to a political system is essential for its survival. And how is this done? By distributing “gifts” and largesse (i.e. welfare) to a certain number of the populace. This is why our government can never stop doling out welfare to the underclasses; failure to do so would be its demise.
Morning, Jason!
Yup. And I think we are pretty much at that point; i.e., the point at which a majority no longer regards the systems as legitimate. The question then becomes – what comes after? If history is any guide, it will be something much worse. because desperate people will support desperate “solutions.” The Communists feast on this. They exploit the misery they often created in the first place, promising their victims relief – but giving them the most Hellish tyranny imaginable.
Your statement about government cheese made me remember my youth. Not long after we came to the US, the S&L crisis hit, and my parents both lost their jobs. We were completely broke since we were penniless immigrants, and couldn’t afford food or rent. We were able to get assistance, in the form of giant blocks of government cheese (that said US Government on it), which were some kind of processed cheddar, some wonder bread, and milk. That was is, that was government assistance in the 1980’s. My dad felt embarrassed for needing help, so he eventually went to the agency to pay them back, but they had no way of taking money. That horrific cheese, and bread which doesn’t seem to spoil, saved our butts during a rough patch. (we paid rent by taking various odd jobs under the table, all of us, teenage kids included). Poor people seem to have it quite a bit better today.
Indeed, OL –
The “poor” often eats better than those who are not, but also not far from it. Most of us can’t afford to eat steak or sushi except as an occasional treat. But when it’s “free,” it’s easy to afford.
The people on “welfare”, SNAP/EBT, section 8 housing and such are actually the systems’ victims.
Think about this for a minute, we have Generational Welfare Families in this country. Imagine growing up in such an environment. This has been going on for three generations or more. Imagine being trapped in a system that, should you start to improve your lot ALL your benefits are gone. Years ago it was bandied about that a Mom with several kids on welfare was getting benefits equating ~$80k. It was true. Do you think that this single woman has the skills to demand a job NETTING 80 large? She and her kids are slaves to The System.
It is as our then County Health Director stated about 30 years ago, “If everyone in the county were on MEDICADE his department would be rolling in dough.” I asked him if he was serious. He told me, “Mark, you don’t understand. It’s my job to get as many people getting services and keep them there as long as I can.” He was good at it. But, the bottom line is The System needs recipients and once someone gets in The System those that operate The System see to it that they never leave. It’s downright criminal enslaving people so you can have a job.
And, the “education” that is “provided” to the chilliness is outright fraud. But, it keeps the people in The System too ignorant (not necessarily stupid) of the fact that they’re enslaved.
It’s also resulted in the destruction of the two-parent family in the society as a whole.
The Welfare State is one of the most destructive endeavors aimed toward Western Civilization.
There is a reported 40 million people who will be impacted by a lack of food stamps. 11.7% of the country is at a level that grants them food assistance. That is a sad commentary on something. Perhaps it is the system itself.
So long as one between 16-59 doesn’t work too much, they will continue to receive benefits. The average is $404/month.
Workers would have to earn between $3 & $4 for every loss of $1 in food stamps. It is graduated up to that level with pay increases, so essentially, once a worker earns and extra $1212 / month to break even (extra taxes not included in calculation). Who wants to work their way up to be in the same place at the end of the day?
Like the rest of the welfare system, recipients are dis incentivized to work their way out of the program, keeping them as useful pawns in the great game of using tax money to buy votes.
James Madison said that charity is not the legislative duty of government. He was right. It is a perverse system that confiscates money, making everything cost more, and harder to pay employees better. The rich and powerful love this as it keeps the economic and societal competition at bay.
When they make society dependent on this charity, those dependent are more easily controlled. Get out of line = lose benefits. Do better for oneself = lose benefits. Vote wrong and you could lose benefits.
People put their hand out and get the invisible chains of slavery bound on them.
“This is the way he wants it… well, he gets it”
That 11% of the country is enough to keep food prices high. If suddenly those people weren’t buying food, it would either sit on the shelves and rot, or prices would drop to an amount everyone, including that 11%, could pay. As it is now, those 11% get to cut ahead of the rest of us, and even better, don’t really need to pay attention to the price.
The truly indigent would live on charitable donations. Americans are great in that we’re far more generous than most nations, which is how we got ourselves into the whole EBT/SNAP mess to begin with. Some shyster politicians said the scientific and nonjudgmental bureaucracy would do a better job of wealth redistribution than the churches and fraternal organizations. Of course they didn’t, and had no intention of doing better. No bureaucrat ever took a vow of poverty, no politician ever had to answer to God.
I don’t get any gov’t benefits, so when I get groceries I have about 1 grocery bag of stuff for the week. But in line I see illegals, usually Mexicans, with one or two grocery carts full. Some gov’t agency is giving them HUGE food allowance, and it might even be the state, not feds.
But if you think that is unfair, all those Ukrainians who came to Amerika get Social Security benefits – even though they never paid a cent into them. Trump/DOGE may have stopped it cause I see those people protesting.
—————–
But that is not all, the Federal government is currently paying all the gov’t and retiree salaries for Ukraine, now a collapsed state with no tax income.
2,000,000 dead and wounded is usually 2-3 times that. Total catastrophe – and over half of the population has left.
——————
So why is the United States involved in Ukraine? The Pentacon says it is to enforce the rules based order and protect people from aggression – which directly contradicts the USA support for the Israeli genocide against Palestine.
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3671938/dod-official-restates-why-supporting-ukraine-is-in-us-interest/
“While supporting Ukraine is the right thing to do, U.S. support is about more than just Ukraine, Wallander said. “[Our support] is about the international order that keeps all countries and all populations safe, including Russia,” she said.
Putin is seeking to “shred” the international order, the assistant secretary said. Putin wants the ability for large countries to intimidate and dominate smaller neighbors.”
Uh huh. The USA is protecting the rules bases order … not in Venezuela or Gaza.
So why is Trump risking nuclear war by giving Ukraine Tomahawk cruise missiles? Why is Trump demanding Russia obey rules based order while Trump flaunts international law in Gaza and in Venezuela? Trump has reversed his pre-election anti-war stance. Obviously Trump is a huge liar and is a warmonger, not a peace candidate as he presented himself. So what is really going on inside the Jewish infested Trump administration? Jews are at war again with Russia, and Trump is the willing mad psychophantic lunatic carrying out marching orders of international Jewry.
It’s the Jews who covet Russia land and resources. Jewish asset and Rothschild agent Trumpenstein is making war on Russia to stop BRICS as an alternative petro-dollar trade. Trump is going after Russian oil, making it unavailable while at the same time going after Venezuela oil, which has the world’s largest proven reserves, mostly untapped. Trump wants cheap oil, but not cheap Russian oil. Like Biden who blew Nordstream, Trump wants Russia isolated and bankrupt.
————
The national debt is now past 38 trillion. Back in 1982, the national debt exceeded 1 trillion for the first time. If you remember, Arizona threatened to leave the union if it went past 2 triilion. LOL
What’s more, SNAP acts as a wage subsidy to companies like McDonald’s and Walmart who employ a lot of people earning minimum wage. In fact, McDonald’s and Walmart have information on their employee websites on how to apply for SNAP.
The ultimate wage subsidy is universal single payer health care: It’s one reason why European and Japanese car companies cleaned our clocks in the small car market: Try building a small car when 10 percent of your car’s sticker price goes toward employee benefits.
I’m going to take a contrarian view on this. Of course taxation is theft and coercion. We shouldn’t be foreced to pay for someone’s meal if it isn’t voluntary, however, Food Stamps make up about 1% of the overbloated federal budget, a cheap price to keep people off the streets.
I am more concerned about our expenditures on foreign aid and the deparment of war. Nevermind the funding of the internal secret police known as ICE and the department of homeland enslavement.
Small amounts given to rouge departments have a multiplier effect amounting into the trillions.
I don’t give foods stamp a second though. They dont deserve it
I agree.
It’s that there aren’t problems here, it’s that there are much bigger problems to solve first.
That said…charity begins at home, let the states handle it.
Hear, hear on that, Swamprat. There are much bigger fish to fry. Food stamps are largely a method of control, but a relatively docile one. Local solutions such as food banks are a good way to short the government circuit and help with keeping the needy fed and healthy.
Well, except that food stamps result in an increase in grocery prices. Hence the $58 rib eye steaks at Walmart I mentioned below. Another government caused economic distortions that non-subsidized customers have to endure.
A valid point, Mr. Liberty. And there are a great number of these distortions. To my chagrin, a local gas station began dispensing E15 in everything besides “super” unleaded, which is the only way to buy E10. I’m not sure how healthy that is for my vintage vehicles, so I’ll do my filling elsewhere.
It’s not healthy. There is a warning for many gasoline powered things “warning max 10% alcohol content (E10)”
My snowblower is one, warning right on the gas tank.
I’m fortunate we have a local co-op with pure gas 87 and 92
It’s amazing how many people support slavery- especially the descendants of former slaves and those who verbally decry slavery. If they believe they have a “right” to any service or product which has to provided at expense of someone else’s money or labor or goods, they condone (and even demand) slavery.
For instance, if they believe they have a “right” to free health care, then they are advocating that either doctors must be forced to render services to them at the point of a gun, for free; or that others must be forced at the point of a gun to pay for said services.
Yes. If a “human right” relies on someone else’s labor or property, tt’s not an actual right.
Veterans and Military service men are receiving SNAP. They won’t get their food but those going to college will get their “housing allowance” as long as they are going to school “full time.” And service men will get ‘free” college tuition assistance — just no food to the poor in November. Happy Thanksgiving!
https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-helps-12-million-veterans-with-low-incomes-including-thousands-in
https://www.military.com/daily-news/headlines/2025/10/29/military-families-prepare-empty-fridges.html
(all services have followed suit — apparently they have funds through the big beautiful bill)
https://www.navycollege.navy.mil/
Then we got the taxpayer loan forgiveness programs – guess dept of Education is still working/issuing press releases.
https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-announces-final-rule-public-service-loan-forgiveness-protect-american-taxpayers
Just no money for food stamps which is 1.5% of the budget.
If only we could cut the feral gov’mint budget by 1.5% about 60 times, we’d have actually accomplished something.
“ Instead of not starving, people got obese. And entitled rather than grateful” – Eric
This is exactly the problem, I have no problem helping someone who is struggling to feed their family, but it ought to be temporary and they should definitely be grateful. Years ago the firehouse down the street from us housed the local food bank, and people could come on Saturday morning to pick stuff up. Every single car parked there was way newer and fancier than our cars. These people need to get their priorities straight, and should definitely be doing some form of “community service” – i.e. picking up trash in the park or whatever, if they are physically able.
Yes, I saw this with the “Covid” drive-through food banks. The massive lines were filled with much nicer cars than mine.
Welcome to the Larry/David Ellison/Jew owned tiktok. Before the black woman (who hasn’t been shut down for violence/hate speech) video played there was an indoctrination PSA from Israel about how Hamas is breaking the ceasefire (meanwhile Israel has murdered over 200 Gazans with airstrikes (bombing unarmed civilians in tents).
Trump and his billionaires are playing a dangerous game. First the Zi-owned Mike Johnson and Trump deprive all the federal workers or jobs and paychecks (except for the military). Then no EBT. Then no food stamps. Amazon announces it is laying off 30,000 (they laid off 14,000 already). Then David Ellison announces he is going to lay off 20,000 at Paramount.
Record job cuts at Amazon and UPS as AI and reorganisation reshape logistics
https://trans.info/en/ai-amazon-ups-434550
Also “A trade dispute between the US and China has left automakers scrambling. The Dutch government’s seizure of chipmaker Nexperia and Beijing’s swift retaliation have severed supplies of essential semiconductors, threatening production halts across Europe and North America.” (Honda is already suspending production at Mexican plant and Nissan is forecasting $1.8 billion loss partly due to chip shortage)
https://www.automotivemanufacturingsolutions.com/editors-pick/nexperia-standoff-imperils-global-auto-production-within-weeks/1590908
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/nissan-mercedes-sound-alarm-over-chip-supply-crisis-2025-10-29/
In conjunction with the ICE/National Guard violence and threatening to
arrest democrats (which is being covered by Murdoch owned newspapers “The Mirror” and now NY Post) I think the whole thing is staged to take over the U.S. (world/WEF):
67 year-old US citizen
https://nypost.com/2025/10/29/us-news/us-citizen-suffers-broken-ribs-after-border-patrol-agents-drag-him-out-of-car-while-driving-into-blocked-off-street-in-immigration-operation-during-chicago-childrens-halloween-parade/
https://www.thejc.com/news/world/media-tycoon-rupert-murdoch-marries-jewish-scientist-d9br7uzg
More videos like Eric posted (last segment “ebt cancelled’) since Jews bought tiktok no videos on Gaza – white people are entertained to look down on and hate black people and talk about the junk food they are eating (instead of criticizing Jews for genociding arabs and freeloading on us; we criticize black for freeloading on us).
https://odysee.com/@KnowMoreNews:1/Prince-of-Peace,-Alex-Jones-Seething,-Tommy's-Israel-Trip,-EBT-Canceled—Know-More-News—Adam-Green:7
1:43:50 to 1:51:30 “AI’s getting too crazy wondering if everything is AI” – videos of a black pastor parking a gold bentley in their church — except there are 2 different black pastors in 2 different videos w/exact same script
https://odysee.com/@KnowMoreNews:1/Tucker-Takes-Questions,-Ted-Cruz-at-CUFI,-Israel-'Above-the-Nations'—Know-More-News—Adam-Green:7
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/29/fact-checking-a-viral-chart-on-us-food-stamps-recipients-race-ethnicity
“86 percent of all SNAP benefits go to households that include a child, elderly person, or person with disabilities..92 percent of all SNAP benefits go to households with income at or below the federal poverty line. SNAP recipients… White: about 37 percent; African American: 26 percent (but all the tiktok videos are blacks!); Hispanic: 16 percent; Asian: 3 percent; and Native American: about 2 percent. (About 16 percent of participants are categorized as “race unknown.”) …one-third of SNAP households have earned income, though only 20 percent of households have gross monthly income above the federal poverty line. The average SNAP household’s monthly gross income is $872 and net income is $398.
https://frac.org/blog/new-usda-report-provides-picture-of-who-participates-in-snap
In case you missed it – the Jews have also taken control of ICE and more than half of the states’ National Guards. The operational orders are now issued by the same general who occupied Gaza and who is Larry Ellison’s cousin (or Miriam Adelson’s, I forgot which). He personally slaughtered more than 100,000 Gazan babies with his American paid M-4 so be scared. Be very scared
Hasbara AG, the Ziobot, makes his appearance right on cue. Trying to make a mockery of (and thereby minimize) legit concerns that the Zionists are engaged in a psyop and taking extraordinary measures to take control to put out their preferred, warped narrative.
Hey Ziobot, are you purposefully trying to conflate “The Jews” with Israel? This hand has been played for nearly 80 years now. It’s just not working anymore.
Since you make appearance on my cue, here is a piece of my Mossad inside baseball.
The reason you saw a $58 ribeye steak at Walmart is that Netanyahu made a deal to buy out 80% of Walmart beef inventory and send it to Israel, so Israel can re-sell it to the starving Gazans with a 500% markup. Half of the proceeds are recycled back to buy off all 535 members of Congress. And the money for the deal comes out of the US government aid to Israel.
See how devilishly cunning and bad Israel is? You are being fleeced from both ends.
Feel better now?
I think you are enjoying this too much, AG. I admire your sense of humor though. 🫢
My dear Raider Girl,
I wish ericpetersautos.com was free of all this incessant stream anti-jewish/anti-israel mental sewer. In comments on any subjects, not even remotely relevant to Jews, or the ME wars, or US government policies.
I know I am playing whack-a-mole here. I just like this site a lot (or at least the way it used to be), and I think that turning it into a more cringey version of Coast-to-Coast radio greatly diminishes its value.
I will take the rest of your comment as a compliment. I would like to return the compliment and say that you are one of the most levelheaded people here, and I always read your comments with great interest.
AG
Hasbara, AG: You’re getting much closer to the truth with your posts lately. But buy Walmart beef out? I doubt that. Mossad just made a call to the executives that happened to have “visited” Epstein island. Somehow the beef was sent to Israel for free. 🙂
Israel wouldn’t let good food like that any where near Gaza. They just use the CIA cut-out, “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”, to bring in some shitty table scraps to the starving Gazans so the IDF can engage in some sporting target practice as they clamor for calories. It’s good for IDF morale, you know.
STFU
There are reports that the soda industry get approx. $10 billion in annual revenue from SNAP. It might be in their best interest to spend some of that on a pro-SNAP propaganda campaign, no?
Also, I was in Walmart last week. They had $58 rib eye steaks. WTF?
In the same breath I walked into Lidl yesterday afternoon to find organic grass fed beef on sale for $6.39 lb. Nobody was touching it. I purchased a few pounds to freeze and use later. The Farmer Markets want $12 lb.
I remember complaining in 2021 when Delmonico steaks increased to $20 lb…wish I had those days back.
Yeah, I bought the Walmart $6.66 per pound organic, grass-fed ground beef.
“It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.” Alexis de
Tocqueville
“Is there any legitimate excuse for a man – a young man, especially – who is physically and mentally capable of doing work not working?”
Yes. The global capitalist system is designed to reward the oligarchs by pitting you against Chinese coolie labor, Bangladeshi and Honduran seamstresses, Vietnamese, Indians, Mexicans etc. working for a fraction of what it takes to be middle class in this country. Look at the labels on your clothing and your shoes sometime. Look that origin of 99% of your auto parts.
All of this is by design. It is not a truly “free market.” Raider Girl talks about how her and her husband got screwed in 2008, but that was a crisis manufactured by government policies.
When this country was founded, there was truly no excuse for a man to not work. But the “means of production” were freely available to anyone. They gave away FREE land that was abundant in natural resources and latent productivity. Even land that was not given away for free was “dirt cheap.”
It’s not like that any more. This is not Jefferson’s America populated by sturdy, self-sufficient white yeoman with an axe in one hand and a rifle in the other. You live under a globalist oligarchy that wants you slaving away in your urban cubicle for minimum wage and enriching oligarchs like Bloomberg and Ackman, who give the money you earn for them to Israel.
It was just announced that UPS cut almost FIFTY THOUSAND jobs — and their stock price shot up. What are those 50,000 people going to do — get their 40 acres and a mule and put the plow into the ground? Of course not. Maybe they can work for Walmart for $12 an hour?
Face it, in urban, post-industrial society, you cannot expect everyone to be able to work, and of the jobs that are available many are insufficient for a decent living. Jobs that DO provide a decent living often require political and social connections, expensive credentials, training and experience, etc. etc. and sometimes just pure dumb luck. Yes, the EBT and SNAP are frequently abused by the permanent (often, but not exclusively) nonwhite underclass. i get that. But in many ways that is a distraction from the real problem.
This is why I have become a national socialist (lower case). It is necessary for the government to follow economic policies that maintain the standard of living of our nation’s workers — not the global oligarchs.
The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter understood this in his famous work “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.” Schumpeter was not a Marxist or a socialist, but he understood that at least some of their criticisms were valid, and he understood that in industrial democratic society, if people could not advance their economic interests under the capitalist system, it was logical to expect that they would vote for government to advance their interests in a socialist system.
Hi X,
Your points re foreign labor are not invalid. Yet I do not agree that they invalidate the obligation for a man – especially a young man at the peak of his physical powers – to work. Construction jobs abound – and they pay well. A young man – without a wife and kids – can live very inexpensively. I did when I was that age. I did UPS at night; later did roofing with a friend. Is it harder today? Yes. That doesn’t mean young guys are morally absolved from the obligation to work. It puts the onus on others to support them and that’s not right. I still get out of bed at 4 a.m. every day and I work every day, including weekends. Maybe not eight hours every day; but I have not taken a day off in years. I’m pushing 60, too. So, when I see a young guy declining to work while I work to pay taxes that go to support his indolence, I don’t like it.
“I did UPS at night; later did roofing with a friend.”
Yep. Weren’t those UPS jobs four-hour shifts in the middle of the night, and fairly back-breaking? Fast-paced and a lot of injuries? But weren’t they non-union temp jobs, unlike the full-timers? They were taking advantage of you. I did roofing and construction labor for $7 an hour. No benefits, no comp, no Social Security, no guaranteed hours, no paid time off.
Those jobs exist so that other people can make bank off of YOU, and if they can replace you with a Mexican or, even better, with a machine, they will.
I am 100% for productive, useful work where you accomplish stuff (preferably for yourself) but I am not for wasting my precious short life on God’s green earth making someone else rich. If I am going to work I expect to get paid a decent wage.
Of course you object to seeing other people get paid to be indolent. But that’s exactly what the capitalists are — indolent on the back of YOUR labor. Especially the ones with inherited money. You can bust your ass roofing for some contractor — so he can make his boat payment and take his wife to Vegas in his $80k truck and go gambling and lounging in the hot tub and giving the money YOU earned for him to Sheldon Adelson’s wife.
Fuck. That.
Hi X,
I have been on both sides of this coin…been the employee and been the employer. I have yet to meet a business owner who didn’t believe he/she wasn’t paying enough and I have yet to find an employee who believes they make enough.
Most business owners start from the bottom. There may be a few who inherited wealth and the company (the daughter from Public Storage, for an example), but most start with one guy/gal, a few bucks, and a dream. No business will be successful where the owner does not understand what he/she is doing and hasn’t been on the bottom rung of the ladder. Employers take a lot of risk and the days are 24/7.
I am the daughter, niece, and a wife of tradesmen. The hours that these guys put in, the toil on their bodies, the sleepless nights I have seen first hand. I don’t blame any man or woman for starting a business, becoming successful at it, and then rewarding themselves for it later on whether it be with boats, cars, houses, or anything else that they enjoy. Business owners, myself included, have gone many times without a paycheck so our employees could be paid and our rent was timely.
Are there asshole employers out there? Absolutely. Do some take advantage of a broken system? Yes. But, at the end of the day the employer and employee have agreed at a price, benefits (or lack there of), and the work that is to be completed. If the employee believes that the deal is not fair they have the right to quit and move on at anytime. They also have the opportunity to start their own business and run it as they see fit.
Truth!
Hi X,
Yup – re UPS. I unloaded trucks for four hours straight. Hard work but it went fast because I was young and could do that sort of thing when I was 21. Made good money, too – for a young guy without much of a resume. As far as the rest: There’s a reason why I am not unloading UPS trucks at night – or breaking my back on a roof – now that I am no longer 21. I had the gumption to get better-paying gigs. Anyone who expects to make a “living wage” doing menial labor isn’t thinking straight. Menial labor is honest, honorable labor. But it should be a step on the ladder – not the final rung. Be the manager, or foreman. Be something else that pays better. I worked part-time stringer jobs at local papers for very little pay, but it gave me experience as a reporter and helped bulk up my resume. I kept at it and eventually got a salaried job as an editorial writer at The Washington Times. This was not a job I deserved to get right out of college. It was a job I earned by working toward it. I then worked diligently to get to the point that I could go off on my own and now I am my own boss. Not rich, but my own boss – which is priceless to me. The point is, it can be done. And no one gets it done by giving up and collecting a government check.
Brilliantly worded…two thumbs up.
I think it is pretty cool that you did roofing and unloaded UPS trucks at night. It says a lot about a person on what kind of jobs they took starting out in life.
Being your own boss is priceless. Don’t know the percentage of self employed. But I always considered it a great blessing. So glad I made that choice relatively early in my career.
The best part is I get to calculate how much I send DC slavers every quarter. There is no automatic withholding. For those of us who still pay taxes, I wonder, should we calculate the time DC is closed, and reduce our burden by the same percentage?
I’m learning this now (better late than never).
Get the best steady job you can, doing anything. Doesn’t matter what. Now that you have that, use your spare time to chase gigs doing things that you want to do. Because you have a day job, you can work for free or for very little, and use that to work your way into the next gig and pretty soon you’ll have a deep portfolio, and a reputation, and decent pay, and people will be beating down your door to do stuff do you can pick & choose who you want to work with.
And that is how you declare independence from the corporate machine.
No one said it would be easy.
Your world is just not possible and not necessary with all the improvements in productivity.
The idealized vision you have was true in the 18th and 19th century but they were using horse-drawn plows and manual tools. So working 40 acres was a full time, year-round endeavor. In the 21st century I can do my day job as a civil engineer and still keep 18 acres that has a food plot and nearly professional-level machine shop as hobbies. It would be absolutely mind blowing to Jefferson what one man can muster with a Deere 3038 (with a few PTO implements), a tired 7.3L Power Stroke and gobs of modern tools.
Schumpeter recognized this implicit issue, since it is ultimately the ideal libertarian economic reality that labor value will find it’s lowest common denominator. So turning sod, swinging hammers and turning wrenches as your primary speciality pits you in competition with robots and machines. There’s just no reason to pay a crew of people minimum wage to do manually what one guy with a machine can do.
The reason we still have some jobs is artificial, such as unions preventing adoption of improvement. One of the reasons China cleans our clock isn’t cheap labor (which is part of it, slave labor is in fact cheap) but that their factories aren’t a century old. A modern Chinese factory or mill isn’t crumbling, full of used up equipment run by people working just hard enough not be fired. Their quality can be world class. We don’t see this because the western companies outsourcing aren’t asking for high quality they are asking for cheap shit they can mark up wildly, so that’s what they make for us.
The brutalist libertarian would not advocate doing menial work that could and should be done cheaper, faster, better with technology. At some point we have to decide we want evolving technology world or the pre-industrialized world. I can’t suggest one or the other is right, I think I could survive in either world. I’d have to learn to skin mules I suppose.
But you can’t pick technology a’la carte in a free market. That can sort of happen in a command economy but even in them black markets thrive. You either have a technologically evolving world or you don’t. It’s not a genie you can put back in the bottle. I, and I suspect most everyone here, would not want to go back to a world where you literally work sun-up to sun-down, the idea of leisure and vacations being as foreign as having more than an oil lamp after the sun goes down. Once we started down this path the laws of competition and supply and demand ran the show as far as what was invented and what the market decided it wanted. No one had to force adoption of the TV or cell phones, people lapped that shit up willingly.
It is called “the heights of laziness “ as my long departed gramma stated. You eventually run out of other people’s money. The useless cunts can all take a long on a short pier.
I do hope there is a higher power, judgment day …. can you say karma.
Walk
Government cheese was a by-product of dairy subsidies gone wrong, like a sorcerer’s apprentice. Great bread loaf-sized hunks of it were omnipresent, especially among single women. It wasn’t very good cheese, so I kept buying better stuff at the grocery store. (Man, I miss the cheese carts they roll out in French restaurants — woof!)
What’s on the table right now, with the House on strike against the American people, is restarting SNAP or not — an A or B choice. Clowngress is so dysfunctional it can’t even pass constitutionally-mandated appropriations bills on time. Discretionary activities such as reforming SNAP — a herculean task, given the ideological rigidities of both parties on the subject — are unthinkable until next year, and probably not even then. Libertarians bark, but the SNAP caravan rolls on.
To the ranting black lady in the red hoodie, I respectfully suggest that Congress Clowns are the best meat to consume in her ‘crackers and cheese’ diet. Hell, if she would serve up Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Israel) diced into fondue cubes, I might even venture a taste myself.
Bon appetit! 🙂
Calling the con-gress as Clowngress is insulting … to real clowns.
D.C. has proven it’s worth.
NIFO Nuke It From Orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
I know people who think that many of us cannot sympathize with their plight as they try to scrape together enough money for food, clothing, and housing. The thing is we can, because many of us have been there.
Hubby and I got caught in the 2008 madness. We were two young 30 year olds with two babies working for ourselves. Everything was going along swimmingly until September 2008 and the entire bottom dropped. After the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers I remember the banks closing our lines of credit or reducing them, customers stopped paying, and work dried up immediately. We spent the next three years paying our mortgage and credit cards with whatever credit cards we could borrow money from.
Hubby and I took whatever small jobs that came along. Things got so bad that whenever I would sit down and pay bills hubby would leave the house because it would end with us fighting. If we had $20 in our wallet it was a miracle. I remember sitting down and wrapping coins in those brown paper wrappers to take to the bank so we could buy groceries and diapers. At our highest point we owed almost $580k of debt. We never asked for money or assistance…we were too embarrassed to. I will never forget the time when I filed our 2010 tax return and we qualified for EITC. I cried.
It was the worst of times but we came up with a plan. It took several years and going without anything to climb our way out, but we did. I am sure many of us have been here, where we didn’t have two pennies to rub together. I think it is difficult to try to comprehend why others choose to continue down a path, where freebies are considered a way of life rather than pride and self sufficiency.
My dad spoke of hobos knocking on their door, asking for food. His dad’s rule was that his six kids had to eat first. But they would share any leftovers with those who asked.
My mom’s first cousin spoke of delivering beef carcasses, that were supposed to buried under Frank Roosevelt’s ag program, to poor hungry black families. Now I don’t know whether this heartwarming story of interracial compassion during the Jim Crow era got embellished over the decades, but that’s how it came down to me.
Yesterday we learned that Nvidia is the first $5 trillion company by market cap. The top one percent owns 50 percent of all market cap. Does sufficient wealth inequality ignite a revolution? Beats me. But when this monstrous, fulminating Everything Bubble finally meets its pin (house prices have already dropped 20 percent in Austin) we’re gonna find out.
Well, it’s a dog eat dog
Eats cat too
French eat frog
And I eat you
— AC/DC, Dog Eat Dog [1977]
Hi Jim,
I don’t believe a revolution will occur only because history continuously shows that uprisings are few and far. Yes, the French Revolution was satisfactory to read about, but look how many countries and governments squash any talk of a potential revolt. The North Koreans are literally starving. Fear is the constant reminder from the elite that the plebs are no match for their wealth and power.
We know TPTB are out of touch with any concept of reality. What pisses me off is the everyday people that work for these bozos.
Back in those days hobos usually offered to chop wood or do some other kind of work, in exchange for a meal. Some of them just wanted a handout, of course, but by no means all. Society’s expectations were very different than they are now.
Lean years at my house as a kid mid to late ‘60s. Dad was a boat salesman, mom always worked late ‘50s and on. The boat salesman job went away in ‘65, dad ended up working at a gas station for a year or two until another sales job showed up. No ups, no extras at our house for quite a while. Yep, being broke and getting back up is quite the life lesson. I do think it was easier then to do at least something productive to keep a roof, mom & dad house payment then was $75 however even then the property tax was a burden.
When we got married, we spent the first few years dirt poor. We both remember those times as some of the best times of our life. We both realized our then current low paying jobs weren’t going to cut it. She went into banking as a teller and worked her way up. I took a drafting class in the evenings and soon got a good paying job. 20 years later, we are both experts in our fields and paid appropriately.
Why did this play out this way for us? What did we do that others are seemingly incapable of?
I have my theory and it’s a big fat elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about…
The Dems want this chaos soooooo bad. Who needs a drug-addled wife beater to OD on fentanyl to trigger riots and chaos when they can get the hood to charge each store to steal and loot. What great TV this will make and think of all the sob stories that the media has queued up! The Party of Chaos will get its revolution on the backs of the welfare queens it created decades ago. Uh oh, poor people are leaving the party, better gin up some angst to get them back on the plantation!! This is a calculated move. Get your popcorn and stay safe
It’s not like the country has $38T of debt or anything. Good grief.
It’s part and parcel of the FDR farm programs that upset the market’s apple cart (pun intended). Did you ever wonder why cherries are so expensive yet schools have cherry cobbler on the trays on a weekly basis? Federal cherry subsidies is the answer.
We’ve long since abandoned any semblance of a free market economy and now, with EBT/SNAP handing out plastic instead of scrip we’re on the way to CBDC or, the new E-Con O’Me.
That is the key, until enough people realize that this isn’t a free country, that we had a soft coup in 1913 and were thoroughly infested with communism by the 1930’s, there will be no curing the disease.
The only reason it worked better here than in Soviet Russia, China, Cambodia, etc was the propagandized belief that we were free, and so we continued to work hard and produce while not noticing the steadily increasing amount of our lifeblood being sucked off by inflated fiat currency and taxes. That has been over for decades now.
Two things I learned living in SW WA State/Portland Metro area for four years, where ~ 25% of the population was on some form of food assistance:
1. The EBT cards are reserved for use at Whole Foods, and the chain’s expansion prior to the Amazon acquisition closely tracks the growth in the various government food assistance programs if you look carefully enough.
2. The national “Take and Bake” pizza chain, headquartered in SW WA State, takes the EBT cards in payment. It took me a while to figure out why the lines were always out the door in the Portland Metro, especially on school nights where I had never seen the stores that busy in other places. Granted, pizza is better than chips, but I’d argue the point on certain types, especially the deep dish variety which cooks in a lake of butter in its pan.
“ The national “Take and Bake” pizza chain, headquartered in SW WA State, takes the EBT cards in payment “
When our local unit of this chain put that sign up in the front window, my daughter was so enraged she went in and raised hell with the manager – “oh lady it’s perfectly legal per the State of WA!” Disgusting.
If only those pizzas were cooked in actual nutritious butter.
More likely it’s unhealthy seed oil.
The reason that the SNAP program allows for the purchase of processed foods is due to the “food” industry lobbyists.
Especially if you are not working it is possible to prepare simple meals from staple ingredients like rice, potatoes, pork, chicken, spices and raw vegetables. Sure it takes a little effort but I find that made from scratch tastes better than higher priced processed foods. Sadly lots of people don’t know how to cook and I don’t know whether to blame their parents or the schools but it’s never too late to learn. As Voltaire said “Hunger is the best spice”.
The voters have more than enough choice!
At any grocery store, they can choose from a plethora of sugary drinks or breakfast cereal’s…
Thanks, Landru, for that bit of (un)common sense.
When I hear how much ordinary (employed) people spend on processed food, I’m flabbergasted.
We do cook here and our food budget for 2 people is about $230 per month.
Virtually none of that is for processed food, although there are some unhealthy items, e.g., soft drinks.
It does take about an hour a day to prepare the food from scratch, but it’s well worth it.
Hi John.
I recommend batch cooking, freeze the meat or what have you in two portion bags and that way it just a matter of thawing/ reheating the prepared portions reducing the time it takes to get a meal ready. This will also cut down on cleanup time.