Boom Times: Wall St. Luxury Spending Rises. So Does Food Stamp Use!
By Susie Madrak Monday Nov 30, 2009 10:00am
From the New York Times, we find out just how many Americans now qualify for food assistance:
MARTINSVILLE, Ohio — With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.
With millions of jobs lost and major industries on the ropes, America’s array of government aid — including unemployment insurance, food stamps and cash welfare — is being tested as never before. This series examines how the safety net is holding up under the worst economic crisis in decades.
It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.
Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare.
But look, not everyone's doing poorly. In fact, the Masters of the Universe are back to their old free-spending ways, thanks to the massive government bailout funded by our tax dollars:
Conspicuous consumption is making a comeback on Wall Street. But no one wants to admit they're doing it.As traders and investment bankers near the finish line of what looks like a boom year for pay, some are spending money like the financial crisis never happened. From $15,000-a-week Caribbean getaways to art auctions to $200,000 platinum wristwatches that automatically adjust for leap years, signs of the good life are returning.
"What we're seeing in the last four to eight weeks is a fairly substantial uptick" in demand for extravagant purchases as Wall Street employees grow more confident that the market's steep rebound so far in 2009 will soon bring them fat bonuses, says David Arnold, senior vice president at Robb Report, a magazine targeted at the super-wealthy.
Isn't that heartwarming? We can be glad that someone's doing well, even if it's at our expense!
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to go on Food Stamps but only if it helped the wealthy make a few more bucks. I mean, afterall, isn't that what I'm here for? To make more money for the wealthy no matter how poor it makes me?
Thank the taxpayers for Welfare! We got our EBT card today and now we can eat again!
Our family of five have a good lower Middle Class life. I used to have five part time jobs and no health insurance, now I am down to one. According to the Fed my family is now 50% of the official poverty level. We got more than $500 a month for food starting today (pro-rated to the end of the month).
Which means that instead of 'drowning' quickly we are barely making the bills.
Millions of your next-door neighbors would be starving if not for Public Assistance programs.
And why am I taking welfare for the first time in my adult life (my mom was on food-stamps when I was 11)?
Because the Conservative philosophy killed the economy.
Recorded historical record proves the economy does better under liberal presidents and gets worse under Republican ones, as if the Republican's having carefully engineered the 1929 crash was enough of a reminder.
100 years of history are clear, Republicans always ruin the economy when they have power.
This mess was no accident.
fuck the whimpy self-entitled bastards
on wall st. too many people including
an outrageous number of children are going
hungry in this country. these inconsiderate
asswipes won't contribute to any of the foodbanks
or charities. may they suffer soon from their
avarice....their karma will be a heavy bitch.
...will come only when the workers will rise up and put these thieving capitalist pigs up against the wall. Come to your senses, American workers--it is YOUR money these pigs are stealing! The workers are the only ones who actually create wealth.
wall st bonuses and food stamps have one thing in common: they are both paid for by the taxpayers.
one is a critical social service the other is an overt handjob to those that help fund political campaigns... guess which is which
Now back to work making holiday presents for the kids out of twine and sticks.
Twine!!??!! Looxury!
That watch is fugly.
wearing that watch, I'd beat his ass for being such a tool. Then I'd steal the watch, fence it and donate the money to homeless families.
Money doesn't necessarily mean taste, do it?
Knuckles, I believe you might. ;) (Need any help?)
Oooh...and the public is SOOO angry.
All those Americans sitting in the corner, holding their breath.
It's true - just look at the attendees at all those teabagger events.
Why is it true? Because Americans continue to believe in the American Dream, long relegated to myth status. If Lincoln could rise from a log cabin birth to be president, everybody has a chance, right?
The facts just don't bear that out. In fact, 'classless' America has a more rigid class structure than most European countries.
Source: American Progess: Understanding Mobility in America
I suppose a lot of Americans think that they are just about to win the lottery or maybe clean up in online Texas Hold 'em.
We need that man of the people, Harry Reid and his sidekick, Pelosi the girl blunder, to get right on this!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vpl-eO6Tik
I replied to the wrong comment. D-d-durr!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF20B8p4F08
No healthcare for you, America. Wall Street financiers need that tax money to buy baubles for their mistresses.
Suck it, rubes!
The saddest part about all this:
Historically, this kind of blatant greed and oppression would have triggered a revolt against the ruling elite (and I'm not talking about some leftist socialist revolution - even if you're a hardcore capitalist you should be pissed off at the corruption that is neither socialism nor capitalism). But your retarded cousins on the far right are already revolting against the "ruling class" that is trying to force improved living conditions (accessible healthcare) upon them with their bullshit tea parties. Every time they rise up to speak out against the inequality they see, they just reinforce it.
Hypocrisy and stupidity.
And they say we don't have any growth industries in this country. HA!
Here ya' go!
What's with all the complaining? America got it's break...the PS3 was dropped to $299 and there are lots of under $99 DVD players to buy.
Christianity dont they get
-They are entirely reactionary Old Testament folks. They'd be right at home murdering everyone in Jericho.
They only worship the once mighty dollar.
Religion - opium for the masses.
A lot of people think that the doctrine changed around the time of Constantine the Great, but I think it was the pro-Roman Paul. Why do you think he was put to trial by the true leader of the primitive church? (St. James the Just, who was Jesus' brother.) Why do you think the Roman legions had to rescue Paul in Jerusalem, and gave him protection and freedom in Rome?
It's funny how the Roman church later rehabilitated Paul's reputation by claiming that he was in fact executed by the Romans. There is NO evidence for that in the bible, neither in Acts of the Apostles nor in any of Paul's letters. There is no indication from whence this bit of traditional history came from either, but it is widely accepted as fact.
Paul was Saul, and Saul was a huge detractor of that upstart long-haired anti-establishment hippy freak.
My theory is that Saul/Paul was an undercover agent sent in by the Romans or the Jewish High Priests to co-opt the nacent movement. Once he set Jesus up and got him killed, also setting up Judas to be the fall guy, Paul clearly takes the new religion in a non-Jesus direction, more inline with the status-quo, you know, women are property and not actual human beings...
Check it out, Jesus never actually existed:
http://jesusneverexisted.com
Christianity have been twisted in these peoples mind to be for the rich and only the rich. Jebus took moeny from the poor and gave it to the ruleing rich. God loves you more if you have more and all that other bullshit.
There was a financial coup d'Etat in September of 2008. Paulson the Plunderer (R-Government Sachs) handed the Congress a three page ransom note. They proceeded to start handing over trillions to the Banksters almost immediately.
The only mistake the Banksters made was only coming up with a three page note. In Washington DC when you are robbing the Treasury blind it is normally done with legislation in hundreds if not thousands of pages. Had they done that the nature of the heist might not have been so readily apparent.
This has been the greatest plunder in the history of the world. $17 trillion thus far and counting.
Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan, they were pikers.
The election of November '08 was a mere formality. The Oligarchs had already spoken.
Now they're just picking up the door prizes.
"I used to think that only America's way was right,
But now the holy dollar rules everybody's life.
Gotta make a [b]illion doesn't matter who dies.
There's a Revolution coming..."
... about taxing these thieves.
Remember that windfall profit tax? Perhaps, the food stamp recipients can bask in the memory as they pay their cigarette tax every day.
Coming soon.
Tax on Soft Drinks.
if it to pay for healthcare for all, But for one it's not the tax will be paying for this Health Insurece company bailout bill. And two they are trying to make it per can which is bullshit, If I buy a 12 pack of store brand root beer I should not pay a tax for every can in the 12 pack.
Write your Congressman.
My congressmen could care less. They are worried about Ga going progressave and not being able to win election simply by haveing a (r) by there name. Makes me happy that GA might becomeing a toss up state or even a blue state, But I doubt that's going to happen if Obama keeps compromiseing with the croupt out the ass GOP.
BTW I've already wrote my congressman many time over many issues they send back a standard "We would like to thank you for you opinion here a Stamped Signature photo of the congressman you just told is wrong"
on caviar?
illegal Cuban cigars?
My family just got our foodstamp debit card today. Yay! Now we can eat again!
No, we do not buy cigarettes!
I recommoed Gauloises Brunes, non-filtered.
I even know what those are!
And if I recall correctly those are the cigs that they smoked in Blade Runner.
Camel unfiltered killed my grandpa at age 62...
What do you do when your company is on the verge of bankruptcy? If you're L. Dennis Kozlowski, former head of Tyco, you spend two million dollars on a gigantic week-long birthday party for your wife in the middle of the Mediterranean. Jurors in Kozlowski's grand larceny trial saw 21 minutes of a four hour videotape last week, which featured Kozlowski welcoming partygoers to the island of Sardinia, along with "five young women in scanty, diaphanous frocks cavorting around a swimming pool, half-naked male models posing in snapshots with female guests and a performance from a pop star [Jimmy Buffett]." What the jurors didn't get to see apparently included "an anatomically correct ice sculpture of Michelangelo's 'David' urinating vodka," and, "two men dressed as ancient Romans carrying Kozlowski's wife over their heads." The clever part, see, is that Kozlowski managed to get Tyco to cover half the cost of the party because "Tyco business was taken care of as well." Presumably that was done while everyone was taking a break from cavorting and gang-banging. But you know, if there's one thing that makes me feel good about corporate America it's got to be the knowledge that while millions of Americans are losing their jobs, the top 1% are drinking vodka out of ice penises.
Republican operative Obama is fighting hard against the Democratic voter base to make sure that not one single American that makes over $150,000 ever notices the Bush Depression!
This is the guy who spent stockholders' money to buy a $10,000 shower curtain. That's my Social Security for the year. I still say that if some of these desperate people losing their homes and their jobs took out their anger on hedge fund managers, and directors of multinational corporations (and maybe some rotten politicians too), these thieves would be less likely to steal. If you're going to go postal, don't shoot family and friends....
...lifts all megayachts." As usual, there's no mention of what to do if you don't have a boat. Or even any indication that they are aware of the existence of non-boat owners.
How come it's always some rich douchebag saying the American Dream is still alive and everyone can make it to the top?
I wonder how many of those people now on food stamps have ever stood in line at the market and sneered at someone ahead of them for using food stamps?
Oh, I've heard it all. "Get a job" is the big one. "Deadbeat." "Loser." I guarantee that some of these people are now "mooching" off of the "taxpayer tit."
If you really have just gotten your Food Stamps, here's a little advise--if you have any ALDI's grocery stores near you, they are a good place to make your food $ go a lot further. I just rediscovered them--I hadn't used them for at least 10 years, and both the variety of the items they carry and the quality have gotten a lot better (even though I didn't have any issues with them before).
Never heard of them.
We are up in the northeast.
Don't forget that the Wall Street pigs stole the money they swim in from the workers.
The ONLY people who actually create wealth are the workers. Those who feed on interest and commissions and the blood of the people are sociopathic parasites--thieves who steal from the workers.
Rise up, dopey Americans, and throw off your chains! That is YOUR money those capitalist pigs are lavishing on each other. Take it back and get rid of those parasites once and for all.
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