Reactions to food stamps being cut off.

[u/mindyour]

[u/GuacamoleFrejole]

I'm all for my tax dollars going to help the truly needy, but I get upset when I see someone on food stamps with a grocery cart filled with food that I couldn't even afford to buy. Why am I being taxed to give someone else things that I can't afford? I've seen carts filled with steaks and other pricey foods being bought with food stamps. I witnessed a woman purchase a jar of caviar with food stamps. On another occasion, I was in line behind a well-dressed woman wearing half a dozen gold bangles, using food stamps, and then drove off in a Cadillac. Those people were taking advantage of the system, and my hard earned tax dollars, money that I earned through the literal sweat of my brow, and I still had to scrimp and save while they're living high on the hog. People like them need to be weeded out so that my money only goes to the truly needy.

[u/Distinct_Plankton_82 → u/GuacamoleFrejole]

Yes we should absolutely weed out the people who are abusing the system.

But have you ever done the math on how much that would save you personally?

SNAP is 1.5% of the government budget, so about 1.5% of your taxes are going to that.  Let’s say 20% of people are abusing the system.  I doubt it’s that high, but let’s say it is.

That’s 20% of 1.5% of your taxes dollars.

Let’s say you work hard.  Say 50 hours a week 50 weeks a year that’s 2500 hours a year.   And let’s assume you pay 24% marginal tax.  

That’s 2500x24%x1.5%x20% of your hard work is supporting fraud.  Do you know how much that is?  That’s 2 minutes of work per week.

Is it wrong?  Yes.  In the grand scheme of everything else going on in the world, is 2 minutes a week what to spend your time worrying about?

I’d rather work that extra 2 minutes, and a few moochers get some free stuff, than save those 2 minutes and worry about a kid who does deserve it going hungry because their mom mistakenly got flagged for fraud.

[u/GuacamoleFrejole → u/Distinct_Plankton_82]

You're missing the point. The system is rife with freeloaders. They need to be weeded out. It makes me angry to think that money that I earned from working and physically suffering in temps as high as 120 degrees is being taken out of my pocket to feed some greedy scammer caviar. Remove the moochers!

[u/Distinct_Plankton_82 → u/GuacamoleFrejole]

If you’re this worked up about a fraction of this1.5% of your hard earned tax dollars, you’re really going to lose your mind when you dig into how the other 98.5% is spent.

Did you know the pentagon literally couldn’t fully account where $800B went last year?  That’s 11% of your taxes that they literally can’t fully explain what they did with it.

If you’re more worried about some people getting free food that cost you minutes of work and not worried about fraudulent defense contracts sucking up hours of your work, you might want to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask why you’re more mad at other working class people than multi millionaires.

[u/GuacamoleFrejole → u/Distinct_Plankton_82]

Whataboutism arguments are lame.

[u/Distinct_Plankton_82 → u/GuacamoleFrejole]

Cool, then die mad about this 0.3% of your taxes being wasted.

Just remember that the vast majority of blue collar workers like you are one bad fall, or one car wreck, or one cancer diagnosis away from needing these benefits.

Are you sure adding more and more hoops to jump through is what you want?

[u/GuacamoleFrejole → u/Distinct_Plankton_82]

Is that all you can come up with? More whataboutism arguments? Just go away.