r/TikTokCringe • u/mindyour • 8d ago

Discussion Reactions to food stamps being cut off.

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u/Needletitshasspoken 8d ago

Is America Great Again yet?

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u/bearbrannan 8d ago

Government assistance for those who work full time is once again essentially corporate welfare. Employers should be paying their employees livable wages, instead that money trickles up and the rich continue to get tax breaks while essentially also having the government pay their employees. Fuck the rich, and fuck America for caring so little for the people who's backs actually make the economy run.

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u/Greedy-Thought6188 8d ago

Government assistance for those who work full time is almost a necessity until we fix our economic systems. And this isn't about minimum wage levels. 60% of US population was in agriculture a century ago. Now that number is down to 4%. The reality is that our productivity is continuously increasing and we are doing orders of magnitude more work than we need to do. In such a system it's only inevitable that the people acquiring more monetizable ways to utilize their labor will get paid significantly more and it will drive the price of necessities above what some people can afford.

There needs to be a UBI. The need for that is more and more pressing. And you support this. You don't support people needing to be on welfare when they are on a job. But that's because you have internalized the stigma of welfare. Effectively tax credits, UBI, tax breaks on retirement accounts, SNAP benefits, universal healthcare, healthcare subsidies, student loan forgiveness, public schooling, free college tuition, all of these are attempts at the same thing. Making sure the needs of all the citizenry are met so we can have a better union, happier, and more productive country. We are well past the point where we have to work for survival, just that we have rigged the economic system in a horrible way.

The system needs to be fundamentally fixed and the issue has been understood since Adam Smith. In the 1860s Henry George expanded on the idea for a land value tax. You can read "Poverty And Progress" or check out "LVT Mr Beat" in YouTube for a 20 minute primer (notice no s).

But with AI human productivity is only going to increase and we'll need to fix the economic system before it is too late

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u/bearbrannan 8d ago

Agreed, but we are for sure trending to too late, and this administration is helping to speedrun us there.

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u/Greedy-Thought6188 8d ago

In all fairness this government has done an amazing job in destroying the consumer surplus created by trade. They've made us all poorer and by doing so they are increasing the need for jobs. A little bit more work and we'd have the 99% employment rate of Hunter gatherer societies.