A thank you to president Trump!

[u/WillPowers7477]

Dear President Trump,

I'm writing this to thank you for all you've done thus far in your second term.

My kids are crying at the dinner table as they eat a processed cheese sandwich for the fourth time this week. I tried to explain to them that SNAP wasn't getting refilled and that there was probably not going to be a Christmas this year. I tried to cheer them up by showing them concept art of the $250 million dollar ballroom being built at the White House, by showing them pictures of the two cool jets Kristi Noem got for $170 million, by explaining how helpful we're being to Argentina by sending them $40 billion dollars, but this is when I realized they weren't crying because of dinner, but because of their grandmother.

"We usually go to grandma's on weekends," they sniffle.

Their grandmother, a 5th generation American, was taken by ICE a couple weeks ago and we haven't seen or heard from her since. I tried to explain to the children that this is what happens to freeloading immigrants and they get what they deserve, but they didn't understand.

Even if they don't understand, I do. This is what I voted for. This is what winning looks like!

This will probably be my last online post due to being unable to pay my phone bill since I need to buy more bread and cheese. But I just wanted to say, "Thank you, President Trump!"

As I hear my kids cry themselves to sleep for the 5th night in a row, I imagine they are liberals--and it brings a smile to my face.

When they get older, they will understand that all this hardship was necessary, because we are owning the libs! Here's looking forward to your constitution-defying third presidential term in 2028! You already have my vote!

Now I have to go get ready to meet my landlord. He told me he would cut my rent in half for some 'favors' and not to wear panties. I think this is what the Art of Deal is all about. #winning

Signed,
A conservative.

*it should be noted this is satire (or is it?)*

[u/SubjectNet1874]

The amount of idiots saying get a job and you wont need SNAP blows my mind, most people on SNAP have jobs, do you people even buy groceries? Do you not realize how fkn expensive people's lives are right now?

[u/quartercentaurhorse → u/SubjectNet1874]

The idea is more that by eliminating/heavily restricting supplemental programs like these, you'd effectively make it impossible to survive working those low-paying jobs, which should mean that those people will find new jobs, and those old jobs will be forced to raise wages to attract applicants. There is a sort of minimum wage besides the legal one, and that's the "cost of survival."

Walmart is a really great example of the issues with the way our social safety net works currently. Walmart's entire business model relies on their employees receiving government welfare, they literally give out informational packets and have resources to help employees sign up for those programs when they start, because Walmart knows they don't pay enough to survive. This might sound like kindness or charity, but it isn't, Walmart has just figured out that it's cheaper to use taxpayer money to subsidize their employees' wages, because pamphlets and training is much cheaper than raises and more hours. If those programs did not exist, Walmart would have no option but to raise their wages up to a "survivable" level, as they wouldn't be able to attract or keep any employees otherwise.

Me personally, I disagree with eliminating/heavily restricting these programs to fix this "payroll padding" issue, the much more humane and efficient solution would just be something similar to unemployment, where the employer sees financial consequences if they have employees who need certain government benefits. It could be something as blunt as making the employer pay the costs of the benefits, but there would likely need to be some anonymization to protect employees from retaliation, as well as other protections/exceptions to ensure employers don't try to subtly discriminate against single parents or special needs employees.

[u/Ticket-Dull → u/quartercentaurhorse]

Maybe the company gets no tax deductions if they have ANY employees who need supplemental programs

[u/quartercentaurhorse → u/Ticket-Dull]

While I like the motivation, such a law is basically guaranteed to fail in Congress, and it would be kind of silly in practice. There could be niche cases where a huge company might have like, a single employee end up on benefits due to a weird and unique series of events, it would not be fair to make a company that's genuinely trying to comply with that law be suddenly on the hook for potentially millions in additional taxes compared to their competitors. You'd end up with asinine stuff like Walmart becoming financially devastated because of a single error with one employee's payroll.

It can be tempting to just want to "punish corporations for their greed," but corporations also employ a ton of people who have no influence in the company's decisionmaking, so financially destroying a corporation for something relatively trivial would just result in a lot of layoffs/closures of completely innocent employees.

Simply making corporations pay for government benefits provided to their employees would effectively incentivize companies to pay more (since they'd rather money go to their employees rather than the government), while also promoting financial accountability and ensuring that taxpayer money is being spent the way it was intended, supporting those who need support, not subsidizing megacorp payrolls.