North Country [chat]land

Couscous

Richy wrote: »

Couscous wrote: »

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-28/cash-better-than-food-stamps-in-helping-poor-commentary-by-edward-glaeser.html

The conventional economic logic is that cash transfers are more effective at helping the poor than in-kind gifts, such as food stamps and housing vouchers. I am grateful for the freedom I enjoy when spending my earnings; surely, aid recipients also like autonomy. They can choose the spending that best fits their needs if they are given unrestricted income. In “Free to Choose,” this logic led Milton and Rose Friedman to argue for “replacing the ragbag of specific programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash.”

This will of course never happen for various reasons.

I distrust anything that's sold to me with no rationale except that it is "conventional wisdom", and doubly so when it deals with economics.

It has been born out in some other cases.

There has been a move towards just giving people cash to buy food with instead of food aid, for example. I think the US is pretty much the only ones still doing that shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aid#Cash_aid_versus_in-kind_aid

There is a growing realization among aid groups that, for locally available goods, giving cash or cash vouchers instead of imported goods is a cheaper, faster, and more efficient way to deliver aid.[19] The World Food Program (WFP), the biggest non-governmental distributor of food, announced that it will begin distributing cash and vouchers instead of food in some areas, which Josette Sheeran, the WFP's executive director, described as a "revolution" in food aid.[19][20] Sending cash is cheaper as it does not have the same transaction costs as shipping goods. Sending cash is also faster than shipping the goods. In 2009 for sub-Saharan Africa, food bought locally by the WFP cost 34 percent less and arrived 100 days faster than food sent from the United States, where buying food from the United States is required by law.[21] Cash aid also helps local food producers, usually the poorest in their countries, while imported food may damage their livelihoods and risk continuing hunger in the future.[21]

TTODewback

I thought about downloading NW, then I remembered in a couple of days I won't have internet anymore.
That kind of rules out playing an MMO

Shivahn

Sir Landshark wrote: »

Hamurabi wrote: »

Solomaxwell6 wrote: »

...switch over to a functionally equivalent sin tax on cigarettes (which is better).

This is what we do now, though I think the amount of tax varies heavily state to state (on top of the federal and local taxes). The downside is that cigarette smoking is, iirc, the most prevalent among lower-SES people, so any further surcharges or taxes will disproportionately target lower-income people.

But anyway, do you jerks think this would make a good thread? Or would we just go in circles?

there are threads that don't go in circles?

i would follow it but i am not a super active poster so

Chat is really more of a squiggly line that spends a lot of time near dicks and boobs.

japan

syndalis wrote: »

japan wrote: »

Irond Will wrote: »

Sparvy wrote: »

syndalis wrote: »

Sparvy wrote: »

Why are people specifying brown eggs? Maybe I just came in late to the discussion but that makes no sense.

Where I live the cheapest brown eggs do cost a couple extra bucks more per dozen.

I think it falls into the same category as "they can buy store brand or breyer's ice cream, but fuck them spending money on ben and jerrys"

Except that white and brown eggs are completely, in every way, identical apart from the color. There is absolutely nothing that should make them more expensive. That is fucked up.

yeah i was just going to ask this

brown eggs were cheaper when i was a kid because people found them uglier. but they taste just the same as the white ones

i guess they're a little worse at making easter egss

Here if you buy a box of eggs they will generally be a mix of colours.

I had assumed that "brown eggs" was being used as some kind of shorthand for something like organic or cornfed.

A blend of old fashioned breeding, hormones, steroids, food selection and genetic modification have allowed us to make millions of eggs uniform in color and size without a large amount of hassle.

... okay?

What I'm trying to figure out is if, when you guys are saying "brown eggs" you're talking about eggs from a particular source, or by a particular feeding or rearing method, or whatever, or if egg farms over there just sort their production by colour and charge more for brown than the other colours.

Couscous

Even if both are kind of shit, I am going to trust the economic conventional wisdom over the common sense of the average person.

Sir Landshark

Shivahn wrote: »

Sir Landshark wrote: »

Hamurabi wrote: »

Solomaxwell6 wrote: »

...switch over to a functionally equivalent sin tax on cigarettes (which is better).

This is what we do now, though I think the amount of tax varies heavily state to state (on top of the federal and local taxes). The downside is that cigarette smoking is, iirc, the most prevalent among lower-SES people, so any further surcharges or taxes will disproportionately target lower-income people.

But anyway, do you jerks think this would make a good thread? Or would we just go in circles?

there are threads that don't go in circles?

i would follow it but i am not a super active poster so

Chat is really more of a squiggly line that spends a lot of time near dicks and boobs.

SPEAKING OF BOOBS

my favorites are the ones with nipples

Shivahn

Sir Landshark wrote: »

Shivahn wrote: »

Sir Landshark wrote: »

Hamurabi wrote: »

Solomaxwell6 wrote: »

...switch over to a functionally equivalent sin tax on cigarettes (which is better).

This is what we do now, though I think the amount of tax varies heavily state to state (on top of the federal and local taxes). The downside is that cigarette smoking is, iirc, the most prevalent among lower-SES people, so any further surcharges or taxes will disproportionately target lower-income people.

But anyway, do you jerks think this would make a good thread? Or would we just go in circles?

there are threads that don't go in circles?

i would follow it but i am not a super active poster so

Chat is really more of a squiggly line that spends a lot of time near dicks and boobs.

SPEAKING OF BOOBS

my favorites are the ones with nipples

Nipples are pretty good

but you cannot discount the appeal of the general large fattiness.

TTODewback

Actually because of always online DRM that pretty rules out most games.
Fuck.

Richy

Couscous wrote: »

Richy wrote: »

Couscous wrote: »

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-28/cash-better-than-food-stamps-in-helping-poor-commentary-by-edward-glaeser.html

The conventional economic logic is that cash transfers are more effective at helping the poor than in-kind gifts, such as food stamps and housing vouchers. I am grateful for the freedom I enjoy when spending my earnings; surely, aid recipients also like autonomy. They can choose the spending that best fits their needs if they are given unrestricted income. In “Free to Choose,” this logic led Milton and Rose Friedman to argue for “replacing the ragbag of specific programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash.”

This will of course never happen for various reasons.

I distrust anything that's sold to me with no rationale except that it is "conventional wisdom", and doubly so when it deals with economics.

It has been born out in some other cases.

There has been a move towards just giving people cash to buy food with instead of food aid, for example. I think the US is pretty much the only ones still doing that shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aid#Cash_aid_versus_in-kind_aid

There is a growing realization among aid groups that, for locally available goods, giving cash or cash vouchers instead of imported goods is a cheaper, faster, and more efficient way to deliver aid.[19] The World Food Program (WFP), the biggest non-governmental distributor of food, announced that it will begin distributing cash and vouchers instead of food in some areas, which Josette Sheeran, the WFP's executive director, described as a "revolution" in food aid.[19][20] Sending cash is cheaper as it does not have the same transaction costs as shipping goods. Sending cash is also faster than shipping the goods. In 2009 for sub-Saharan Africa, food bought locally by the WFP cost 34 percent less and arrived 100 days faster than food sent from the United States, where buying food from the United States is required by law.[21] Cash aid also helps local food producers, usually the poorest in their countries, while imported food may damage their livelihoods and risk continuing hunger in the future.[21]

International aid has nothing to do with the welfare system in the USA.

dporowski

japan wrote: »

syndalis wrote: »

japan wrote: »

Irond Will wrote: »

Sparvy wrote: »

syndalis wrote: »

Sparvy wrote: »

Why are people specifying brown eggs? Maybe I just came in late to the discussion but that makes no sense.

Where I live the cheapest brown eggs do cost a couple extra bucks more per dozen.

I think it falls into the same category as "they can buy store brand or breyer's ice cream, but fuck them spending money on ben and jerrys"

Except that white and brown eggs are completely, in every way, identical apart from the color. There is absolutely nothing that should make them more expensive. That is fucked up.

yeah i was just going to ask this

brown eggs were cheaper when i was a kid because people found them uglier. but they taste just the same as the white ones

i guess they're a little worse at making easter egss

Here if you buy a box of eggs they will generally be a mix of colours.

I had assumed that "brown eggs" was being used as some kind of shorthand for something like organic or cornfed.

A blend of old fashioned breeding, hormones, steroids, food selection and genetic modification have allowed us to make millions of eggs uniform in color and size without a large amount of hassle.

... okay?

What I'm trying to figure out is if, when you guys are saying "brown eggs" you're talking about eggs from a particular source, or by a particular feeding or rearing method, or whatever, or if egg farms over there just sort their production by colour and charge more for brown than the other colours.

The latter. They're just eggs that are brown, and the brown ones are a different price, because I don't know that part.

Deebaser

matt has a problem wrote: »

Deebaser wrote: »

Hamurabi wrote: »

That Wisconsin WIC thing reminds me of a thread I've been meaning to make:

Where do we libs (and let's be real, we're basically all dirty libs in D&D) draw the line in terms of gubmint intervention in people's lives? The specific thing that made me think of this is that apparently Obamacare in California will allow insurers to continue discriminate against smokers (read: tack on a surcharge for their health insurance). Maintaining the policy creates a situation where smokers either pay a substantially higher amount for healthcare, or go without healthcare because it's too expensive; if insurers aren't allow to discriminate against insurers, insurers are forced to foot the bill for people who iirc are statistically more likely to utilize healthcare and to some extent are not incentivized to quit smoking, which hurts not only them, but society in general when you factor in the costs that afaik they add in healthcare usage with or without insurance.

I am against this whole fucking heartedly. It's a dumb "fuck smokers, no one likes them anyway" move that gets easy support, but is much less actuarially effective than simple age banding.

Car insurance companies charge someone with an expensive car and points on their license more than someone with an econobox and no violations. The same should apply to health insurance and people who do things that endanger their health purposefully.

Health insurance is nothing like car insurance.

You slider your car around a tree without insurance and you don't get a new car.
You collapse on the street without insurance and you will be taken to a hospital and treated.

Having points on your license means you're a bad driver.
Being born with a congenital condition that puts you at a much greater risk than a smoker doesn't mean you're bad at being a person.

Smokers are easy targets because no one likes them, but 50+ non smokers are much greater health risks than <35 smokers.

TTODewback

http://www.wsfa.com/story/22137114/blue-collar-themed-amusement-park-to-be-built-in-alabama

It's like a paradise for @Ludious!

Irond Will

override367 wrote: »

Irond Will wrote: »

AManFromEarth wrote: »

Also at some point you have to let people do what they will with the rope you extend.

You get X amount of money to buy groceries every month. Bring me the research that says food stamp families are blowing it all on organic eggs and lobster and maybe I'll be a little less flippant.

Calling brown eggs junk food makes one a dumbass and the desire to change rules like this does not come from a noble feeling of protecting people but from a desire to make sure that those filthy welfare slags know just how little their lives matter.

i don't think that brown eggs were considered "junk food" in this context. they were considered "luxury food".

yeah i agree that poor people buying things of "too-high quality" doesn't seem to be a huge problem from my extremely limited perspective of standing in line behind ladies paying with food stamp cards and wic coupons.

welfare policy is, as always, shot through with patronizing and punitive elements. part of the problem is that it serves a lot of purposes - it provides temporary assistance to people who are clawing their way up the ladder or are recovering from a setback, and i totally understand why those people resent the paternalism and restrictions.

but it's also there for long-term support for people who just can't or won't ever get their shit together and are basically incapable of making even the most basic of good life decisions. and basically restricting assistance to "basics that people need" doesn't seem like a horrible thing.

My nephew is permanantly disabled, can never drive or work 80% of jobs

Why should he be restricted to basics, other than by total amount of funds, exactly?

the easy answer is that making sure that the limited resources devoted to taking care of the needy are efficiently allocated means restricting these funds to being allocated to basics.

what i think is more to the issue, though, is that many many people - probably most - see public assistance as, basically, charity. and many feel that it's immoral - or at least icky and inappropriate - for people to be getting more than the basics of what they actually need from what they see as charity.

if you don't see public assistance as in any way related to charity - and i'm not saying that i do - then it just seems meanspirited to put any kinds of restrictions in place.

Ludious

[chat] is sort of like Fox, most conversations (series) crash and burn, but a few take off, the ones that do usually end in tears and regret.

matt has a problem

Deebaser wrote: »

matt has a problem wrote: »

Deebaser wrote: »

Hamurabi wrote: »

That Wisconsin WIC thing reminds me of a thread I've been meaning to make:

Where do we libs (and let's be real, we're basically all dirty libs in D&D) draw the line in terms of gubmint intervention in people's lives? The specific thing that made me think of this is that apparently Obamacare in California will allow insurers to continue discriminate against smokers (read: tack on a surcharge for their health insurance). Maintaining the policy creates a situation where smokers either pay a substantially higher amount for healthcare, or go without healthcare because it's too expensive; if insurers aren't allow to discriminate against insurers, insurers are forced to foot the bill for people who iirc are statistically more likely to utilize healthcare and to some extent are not incentivized to quit smoking, which hurts not only them, but society in general when you factor in the costs that afaik they add in healthcare usage with or without insurance.

I am against this whole fucking heartedly. It's a dumb "fuck smokers, no one likes them anyway" move that gets easy support, but is much less actuarially effective than simple age banding.

Car insurance companies charge someone with an expensive car and points on their license more than someone with an econobox and no violations. The same should apply to health insurance and people who do things that endanger their health purposefully.

Health insurance is nothing like car insurance.

You slider your car around a tree without insurance and you don't get a new car.
You collapse on the street without insurance and you will be taken to a hospital and treated.

Having points on your license means you're a bad driver.
Being born with a congenital condition that puts you at a much greater risk than a smoker doesn't mean you're bad at being a person.

Smokers are easy targets because no one likes them, but 50+ non smokers are much greater health risks than <35 smokers.

Which is why I said "people who do things that endanger their health purposefully."

<- born with a congenital heart defect.

syndalis

Deebaser wrote: »

matt has a problem wrote: »

Deebaser wrote: »

Hamurabi wrote: »

That Wisconsin WIC thing reminds me of a thread I've been meaning to make:

Where do we libs (and let's be real, we're basically all dirty libs in D&D) draw the line in terms of gubmint intervention in people's lives? The specific thing that made me think of this is that apparently Obamacare in California will allow insurers to continue discriminate against smokers (read: tack on a surcharge for their health insurance). Maintaining the policy creates a situation where smokers either pay a substantially higher amount for healthcare, or go without healthcare because it's too expensive; if insurers aren't allow to discriminate against insurers, insurers are forced to foot the bill for people who iirc are statistically more likely to utilize healthcare and to some extent are not incentivized to quit smoking, which hurts not only them, but society in general when you factor in the costs that afaik they add in healthcare usage with or without insurance.

I am against this whole fucking heartedly. It's a dumb "fuck smokers, no one likes them anyway" move that gets easy support, but is much less actuarially effective than simple age banding.

Car insurance companies charge someone with an expensive car and points on their license more than someone with an econobox and no violations. The same should apply to health insurance and people who do things that endanger their health purposefully.

Health insurance is nothing like car insurance.

You slider your car around a tree without insurance and you don't get a new car.
You collapse on the street without insurance and you will be taken to a hospital and treated.

Having points on your license means you're a bad driver.
Being born with a congenital condition that puts you at a much greater risk than a smoker doesn't mean you're bad at being a person.

Smokers are easy targets because no one likes them, but 50+ non smokers are much greater health risks than <35 smokers.

but 50+ longtime smokers are CATASTROPHICALLY more of a risk than <35 smokers or 50+ nonsmokers, so they are using cost as a punitive measure to try and make them not smokers when they are 50.

Richy

Ludious wrote: »

[chat] is sort of like Fox, most conversations (series) crash and burn, but a few take off, the ones that do usually end in tears and regret.

The analogy was better back when we had this bug that made posts appear out of order.

Ludious

Foley

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Foley is a piece of shit but all the Riches live in Eastern Shore and Spanish Fort so they'll love nothing more than to spend their weekends fingering larry the cable guy's butthole.

Irond Will

Couscous wrote: »

Richy wrote: »

Couscous wrote: »

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-28/cash-better-than-food-stamps-in-helping-poor-commentary-by-edward-glaeser.html

The conventional economic logic is that cash transfers are more effective at helping the poor than in-kind gifts, such as food stamps and housing vouchers. I am grateful for the freedom I enjoy when spending my earnings; surely, aid recipients also like autonomy. They can choose the spending that best fits their needs if they are given unrestricted income. In “Free to Choose,” this logic led Milton and Rose Friedman to argue for “replacing the ragbag of specific programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash.”

This will of course never happen for various reasons.

I distrust anything that's sold to me with no rationale except that it is "conventional wisdom", and doubly so when it deals with economics.

It has been born out in some other cases.

There has been a move towards just giving people cash to buy food with instead of food aid, for example. I think the US is pretty much the only ones still doing that shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aid#Cash_aid_versus_in-kind_aid

There is a growing realization among aid groups that, for locally available goods, giving cash or cash vouchers instead of imported goods is a cheaper, faster, and more efficient way to deliver aid.[19] The World Food Program (WFP), the biggest non-governmental distributor of food, announced that it will begin distributing cash and vouchers instead of food in some areas, which Josette Sheeran, the WFP's executive director, described as a "revolution" in food aid.[19][20] Sending cash is cheaper as it does not have the same transaction costs as shipping goods. Sending cash is also faster than shipping the goods. In 2009 for sub-Saharan Africa, food bought locally by the WFP cost 34 percent less and arrived 100 days faster than food sent from the United States, where buying food from the United States is required by law.[21] Cash aid also helps local food producers, usually the poorest in their countries, while imported food may damage their livelihoods and risk continuing hunger in the future.[21]

domestic safety net assistance and international aid are apples and oranges

Ludious

Richy wrote: »

Ludious wrote: »

[chat] is sort of like Fox, most conversations (series) crash and burn, but a few take off, the ones that do usually end in tears and regret.

The analogy was better back when we had this bug that made posts appear out of order.

my analogies are like AIDS, 20 years ago they would have killed you, now they just make you wish you were dead.

Elendil

Ludious wrote: »

Foley

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Foley is a piece of shit but all the Riches live in Eastern Shore and Spanish Fort so they'll love nothing more than to spend their weekends fingering larry the cable guy's butthole.

using an image like that should be infractable

emnmnme

Mazzyx wrote: »

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/25/179038260/signing-up-for-food-stamps

I'm a - for 35 years I've been a certified financial planner professionally. This is what I do. And I have a double whammy when nine months ago I had to apply for food stamps because my income has dropped by 98 percent over the last six years due to the economy. And I'm still living in a beautiful gated community, which I bought 20-some years ago when I was making three and four hundred thousand dollars a year.

So I'm surrounded by very staunch conservative people who consistently talk down about food stamp recipients, and I cannot say one word out loud. Also because I am a certified financial planner, if word got out that I was on food stamps, none of my neighbors would approach me to buy retirement products or annuities or life insurance or anything.

Can you only imagine your trusted advisor himself is on food stamps? So I have a double whammy where I must remain incommunicado. I must sit and listen while they condemn others that are on food stamps, including other neighbors that word has leaked out are on them. So it's a very, very, very difficult situation.

I'm conflicted on this. On the one hand, he needs food. On the other hand, he still owns a beautiful luxury house six years after treading water.

AManFromEarth

Irond Will wrote: »

AManFromEarth wrote: »

Irond Will wrote: »

AManFromEarth wrote: »

Also at some point you have to let people do what they will with the rope you extend.

You get X amount of money to buy groceries every month. Bring me the research that says food stamp families are blowing it all on organic eggs and lobster and maybe I'll be a little less flippant.

Calling brown eggs junk food makes one a dumbass and the desire to change rules like this does not come from a noble feeling of protecting people but from a desire to make sure that those filthy welfare slags know just how little their lives matter.

i don't think that brown eggs were considered "junk food" in this context. they were considered "luxury food".

yeah i agree that poor people buying things of "too-high quality" doesn't seem to be a huge problem from my extremely limited perspective of standing in line behind ladies paying with food stamp cards and wic coupons.

welfare policy is, as always, shot through with patronizing and punitive elements. part of the problem is that it serves a lot of purposes - it provides temporary assistance to people who are clawing their way up the ladder or are recovering from a setback, and i totally understand why those people resent the paternalism and restrictions.

but it's also there for long-term support for people who just can't or won't ever get their shit together and are basically incapable of making even the most basic of good life decisions. and basically restricting assistance to "basics that people need" doesn't seem like a horrible thing.

and saying "stop buying things that are better for you" is a pretty stupid long term choice to make.

It IS a horrible thing. We should be incentivizing "high quality" food purchases, not telling those stupid dirty poors they can just be happy with our processed junk. Because they really already are. And that is a problem for society.

Especially with the coming of more government provided healthcare.

don't get me wrong - i'm absolutley all for incenting healthier or more high-quality choices through policy.

i'd be all for banning hamburger helper and canned ravioli from the food stamps/ wic program because i feel like it's worth the step up in funding to discourage people from poisoning themselves. on the other hand, grass-fed skirt steak is like $18/lb and that seems pretty extravagant for public assistance.

but there is a tradeoff with the cost of the program. ideally, the attempt would be to thread the needle of "cost-efficiency" and "incenting healthy food choices."

Well he's another thing.

And I think it's something that gets lost on people.

Poor people already have to balance budgets. I don't think you're really seeing an epidemic of people spending a large portion of their budget on grass fed skirt steak. It just doesn't happen.

So banning it means you don't think that someone is smart enough to realize they shouldn't do something.

That's what Protestant Work Ethic means here. That if they weren't dumb they wouldn't be poor.

I have been on and off foodstamps my entire life. So have most of the people I know from my hometown. If you think that we don't already shop the sales, shop bogo, buy whatever is cheapest and can last hte longest you're out of your mind.

It is an absolutely pointless and meritless argument that we Need to ban the sale of these items. Because they are simply not being purchased.

The welfare queen, living off lobster and government cheese? Doesn't exist.

Maybe occasionally people will buy themselves something nice to eat, a special treat. I bought the fixins for a homemade pizza and a cake on my birthday for instance.

But that is rare and not nearly a large enough problem to merit this kind of movement.


I completely understand where you're coming from, and I know that your heart (cold and unfeeling as it is ;P) is in the right place.

I am just saying that when we're down to having these kinds of conversations, the anti-welfare people have already won because we're buying in to their crap. That is the reality Today in American Politics.

No one who is in office is trying to make food stamps a better program for the people who need it. They are trying to make it such an insulting and difficult thing to get that those worthless poors "get off the couch and get a real job".

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot

oh my god this period is awful it came a week or two late and i am cramping up so hard including in my legs

hurgleburgle

Thomamelas

Ludious wrote: »

Richy wrote: »

Ludious wrote: »

[chat] is sort of like Fox, most conversations (series) crash and burn, but a few take off, the ones that do usually end in tears and regret.

The analogy was better back when we had this bug that made posts appear out of order.

my analogies are like AIDS, 20 years ago they would have killed you, now they just make you wish you were dead.

If only I could be rid of you by fucking a virgin.

Ludious

Thomamelas wrote: »

Ludious wrote: »

Richy wrote: »

Ludious wrote: »

[chat] is sort of like Fox, most conversations (series) crash and burn, but a few take off, the ones that do usually end in tears and regret.

The analogy was better back when we had this bug that made posts appear out of order.

my analogies are like AIDS, 20 years ago they would have killed you, now they just make you wish you were dead.

If only I could be rid of you by fucking a virgin.

Elendil is like, right there man. Try it.

Ravenhpltc24

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot wrote: »

oh my god this period is awful it came a week or two late and i am cramping up so hard including in my legs

hurgleburgle

Midol dat shit.

TTODewback

Meeting time
desssuuuuuuuuu

emnmnme

What is New Jersey's relationship with New York? The two states seem like they hate each other.

Elendil

Ludious wrote: »

Thomamelas wrote: »

Ludious wrote: »

Richy wrote: »

Ludious wrote: »

[chat] is sort of like Fox, most conversations (series) crash and burn, but a few take off, the ones that do usually end in tears and regret.

The analogy was better back when we had this bug that made posts appear out of order.

my analogies are like AIDS, 20 years ago they would have killed you, now they just make you wish you were dead.

If only I could be rid of you by fucking a virgin.

Elendil is like, right there man. Try it.

man if sets up one of his romantic dates

i'll probably roll with it

Ludious

Elendil wrote: »

Ludious wrote: »

Thomamelas wrote: »

Ludious wrote: »

Richy wrote: »

Ludious wrote: »

[chat] is sort of like Fox, most conversations (series) crash and burn, but a few take off, the ones that do usually end in tears and regret.

The analogy was better back when we had this bug that made posts appear out of order.

my analogies are like AIDS, 20 years ago they would have killed you, now they just make you wish you were dead.

If only I could be rid of you by fucking a virgin.

Elendil is like, right there man. Try it.

man if sets up one of his romantic dates

i'll probably roll with it

dates are about love

this is about fucking

Thomamelas

So

emnmnme wrote: »

What is New Jersey's relationship with New York? The two states seem like they hate each other.

New York dumps all of it's trash in Jersey. Jersey dumps all of it's lawyers in New York. It's the kind of exchange to make people bitter.

matt has a problem

Ravenhpltc24 wrote: »

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot wrote: »

oh my god this period is awful it came a week or two late and i am cramping up so hard including in my legs

hurgleburgle

Midol dat shit.

Or drink a Coke and take a Tylenol, because it's the same damn thing.

Ludious

matt has a problem wrote: »

Ravenhpltc24 wrote: »

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot wrote: »

oh my god this period is awful it came a week or two late and i am cramping up so hard including in my legs

hurgleburgle

Midol dat shit.

Or drink a Coke and take a Tylenol, because it's the same damn thing.

or snort some coke and take some oxy

go big or go home

Irond Will

emnmnme wrote: »

Mazzyx wrote: »

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/25/179038260/signing-up-for-food-stamps

I'm a - for 35 years I've been a certified financial planner professionally. This is what I do. And I have a double whammy when nine months ago I had to apply for food stamps because my income has dropped by 98 percent over the last six years due to the economy. And I'm still living in a beautiful gated community, which I bought 20-some years ago when I was making three and four hundred thousand dollars a year.

So I'm surrounded by very staunch conservative people who consistently talk down about food stamp recipients, and I cannot say one word out loud. Also because I am a certified financial planner, if word got out that I was on food stamps, none of my neighbors would approach me to buy retirement products or annuities or life insurance or anything.

Can you only imagine your trusted advisor himself is on food stamps? So I have a double whammy where I must remain incommunicado. I must sit and listen while they condemn others that are on food stamps, including other neighbors that word has leaked out are on them. So it's a very, very, very difficult situation.

I'm conflicted on this. On the one hand, he needs food. On the other hand, he still owns a beautiful luxury house six years after treading water.

it's generally a lot more efficient to give support to someone who hit a setback and wait for them to get back to their original, tax-paying state rather than force them to sell their house and start over.

this was the idea of temporary rental assistance programs - minimizing disruption was really efficient from all sorts of standpoints. it's also why we have unemployment insurance.

basically, it's the smartest way to run assistance programs. if the guy was on assistance for a really long time - if his setback was truly non-recoverable and he was sitting on a ton of assets, then sure; maybe they should reassess the assistance.

emnmnme

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot wrote: »

oh my god this period is awful it came a week or two late and i am cramping up so hard including in my legs

hurgleburgle

...
...
... thank you, gracious Lord in heaven, for making me male.

Richy

emnmnme wrote: »

Mazzyx wrote: »

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/25/179038260/signing-up-for-food-stamps

I'm a - for 35 years I've been a certified financial planner professionally. This is what I do. And I have a double whammy when nine months ago I had to apply for food stamps because my income has dropped by 98 percent over the last six years due to the economy. And I'm still living in a beautiful gated community, which I bought 20-some years ago when I was making three and four hundred thousand dollars a year.

So I'm surrounded by very staunch conservative people who consistently talk down about food stamp recipients, and I cannot say one word out loud. Also because I am a certified financial planner, if word got out that I was on food stamps, none of my neighbors would approach me to buy retirement products or annuities or life insurance or anything.

Can you only imagine your trusted advisor himself is on food stamps? So I have a double whammy where I must remain incommunicado. I must sit and listen while they condemn others that are on food stamps, including other neighbors that word has leaked out are on them. So it's a very, very, very difficult situation.

I'm conflicted on this. On the one hand, he needs food. On the other hand, he still owns a beautiful luxury house six years after treading water.

Which he has presumably paid in full when he was earning a good salary. Which he makes it sound like is a status symbol that makes customers of his neighbours. And I'd call it a bad financial move to sell an asset for a non-renewable short-term financial boost. So, I don't share your conflict.

AManFromEarth

I mean, let's be real here.

When you're poor you go into a store and you have X amount of money for Y days.

You get foods that are cheap, that will keep, and that take very little prep time.

That is the real problem with food stamps, not people spending too much on "high quality" food. The fact that we act like it's anything different is one of the greatest achievements of the Republican party in the last 40 years.

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot

Ravenhpltc24 wrote: »

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot wrote: »

oh my god this period is awful it came a week or two late and i am cramping up so hard including in my legs

hurgleburgle

Midol dat shit.

at work, didn't bring anything at all, am trying to make do with toilet paper and tenacity

Irond Will

TTODewback wrote: »

http://www.wsfa.com/story/22137114/blue-collar-themed-amusement-park-to-be-built-in-alabama

It's like a paradise for @Ludious!

the nascar roller coaster goes counter-clockwise in an oval and doesn't stop for 5 hours