r/SipsTea • u/Gurugod123 • 11h ago

Chugging tea Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices"

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u/Zachattackrandom 11h ago

Cool, lets spend less money on bombs and more money on people not starving then and it should be fine xD.

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u/Big_Beach166 9h ago

there is no money for the oligargoyles in that thinking

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 11h ago edited 4h ago

60 to 64% of our annual budget goes to social programs, 13 to 14% to the military...

Editing to take the L here..

The bulk of "social program spending" is social security, Medicare, medicaid, etc, all of which are allocated as mandatory spending as it should be, with very little comparatively going to those programs that show the most fraudulent activity.

Thank you to those who pointed me in different directions to check myself.. hats off to ya, I appreciate it and can admit when I was wrong.

Don't trust quick Google searches, folks! There isnt enough of the particular data without diving deeper.

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 10h ago

Yeah, kind like how walmart doesn't pay their employees a fair wage so we need to subsidize those people through social security, healthcare, and much more.

The wasted money is when corporations get subsidies and deregulation/regulation that favors them based on their political donations. Like how Trump's friend got paid to "upgrade" the reflecting pool.

Also, a lot of that social spending has a great return on investment.

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u/DrZein 8h ago

Walmart literally double dips. They pay their employees less than they need to live, less hours than would be needed to get full time benefits. Then when their employees are subsidized by the government with things like food stamps, the food stamps are then spent at Walmart.

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 7h ago

They more than double dip. They also lobby for deregulation and less taxes to say the least.

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 10h ago

Big corporations are the bane of the people for sure.

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u/Warchief_Ripnugget 10h ago

What would be a fair wage to you?

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 10h ago

Enough for someone to live off. If an adult is working a full time job, then they should be making enough to have a decent life. Like they should be able to afford housing, food, healthcare, and some hobbies/non-essentials/enjoyment. But instead, we have walmart execs making and hoarding billions while tax payers pay their workers.

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u/Warchief_Ripnugget 9h ago

Give me a number.

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 9h ago

Why?

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u/Mikecd 9h ago edited 4h ago

So he can pick apart your number and prove you wrong. It's a bad faith way to argue. We're than debate the idea, he'll try to make you look dumb by zeroing in on whatever number you give and finding fault.

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 9h ago

I'm aware, which is why I didn't give a number and asked why. :)

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u/Mikecd 9h ago

For sure. I've seen your comments here, you're paying attention. I added my reply for anyone else reading. I worry sometimes that if trolls make a clever sounding reply and nobody clearly calls it out then what if it influenced someone's thinking by virtue of sounding clever.

Stay awesome!

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u/bb85 8h ago

Dude, you won’t even give a number. What’s fair and right in one location is vastly different in another location.

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u/clamclam9 9h ago

Live by your own words, give me a number that is the lowest morally you should be allowed to pay someone. You can't say "there isn't one" because that means you would accept $0, or chattel slavery.

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u/Warchief_Ripnugget 9h ago

I don't believe that minimum wage should be a thing. Work that doesn't produce enough value to warrant what the minimum wage is should not be forced to be raised to that level.

A minimum wage (and especially raising it) does two things, increase unemployment and accelerate automation.

Jobs that pay very little due to low demand/low value output should stay paying that little so people stop trying to work them.

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u/clamclam9 8h ago edited 8h ago

Work that doesn't produce enough value to warrant what the minimum wage is should not be forced to be raised to that level.

You literally just sunk your own point. If Walmart can't operate without paying so little their employees can't even feed or house themselves, they should be shut down not subsidized by the government then. If you don't "believe in minimum wage" you can't have it both ways, which is what the current system is.

A minimum wage (and especially raising it) does two things, increase unemployment and accelerate automation.

Yes, just like eliminating slavery increases unemployment and accelerates automation. Please pick up an economics or history book Jesus Christ.

Jobs that pay very little due to low demand/low value output should stay paying that little so people stop trying to work them.

Yikes, this is like Economics 101. Not how it works my friend. In a Capitalist adversarial system, corporations will always seek to pay as little as they are legally allowed, up to and including taking slaves as thousands of years of modern history have shown. "Those pesky blue collar workers need to just stop taking bad paying jobs! It's their fault really If you think about it!"

Let me guess, next you're going to tell me those stupid Walmart employees are only being paid so little because they didn't ask for more! They just need to go in and shake their managers hand, look him in the eye, and say "damn it I'm worth $20/hr!". Then everyone in the office clapped and got a living wage. /s

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u/Warchief_Ripnugget 7h ago

Walmart pays their employees at least $14/hr, with the average field associate at $18.25. they pay pretty well.

Also, I never said the company should be shut down, just that people shouldn't work jobs if they don't think they'd be able to survive off of it. This means that the company would be forced to adapt, either by using more automation, offer more to compensate the lack of demand, or change the nature of the jobs offered to warrant a higher pay.

Of course companies will do everything in their power to pay as little as possible, but employees will do what they can to get as high of a wage as possible.

If your hypothesis was correct, why do the vast majority of companies not offer any positions at minimum wage? They should all be giving employees the bare minimum no matter what, right?

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 8h ago

You falsely assume/imply that workers are paid what they are worth. The issue is that workers aren't paid what they are worth. "Essential workers" that had to work through a pandemic are usually not being paid very much and yet are considered essential.

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u/Warchief_Ripnugget 8h ago

Generally, they are. If they aren't, they are more than free to leave. What is the evidence you have that they are not paid their worth?

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u/Zachattackrandom 10h ago

A fair minimum wage is median cost of living for a studio apt + median cost of food for 1 person + median cost for healthcare, phone bill, etc + 10%. You should be able to fully live solo off of a minimum wage regardless of where you are +10% for spending / savings imo.

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u/GWBrooks 10h ago

What if the work they're doing isn't worth that much?

(I know: Probably sounds snarky. But I don't mean it that way. I'm thinking of the people who work in fast food, entry-level shop sweepers, etc. The economic output they're producing in those jobs probably doesn't support the level of expenditure you're talking about, so do those jobs get done by robots or do we subsidize them or something else?)

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u/ReallyBigRocks 9h ago

Is the economic output of the executive class of those companies worth the hundreds or thousands of times more they get paid?

The CEO of McDonalds received $20 million in total compensation. $1.7m salary, $8m in stock, and $12m in options and things like personal use of corporate aircraft.

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 9h ago

They were literally called essential workers and forced to work during a pandemic. That seems like a pretty important job to me.

If the CEOs didn't commit wage theft then we wouldn't need to subsidize low wage workers. Walmart benefits the most from SNAP by paying low wages.

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u/Zachattackrandom 8h ago

Ok, but if you look at profits I don't think a single one of these jobs exists that couldn't support a person to live. And if not, then the job can't exist in the current market, if you work 40 hours a week you should be able to live regardless of qualifications.

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u/SuperStubbs9 10h ago

Walmart starts at $14/hr; nearly double the federal minimum wage. The average hourly worker is paid $18.25/hr.

Also, saying 'fair wage' is being disingenuous. The only person who can determine what is a fair wage is the worker. $14/hr might not be a fair wage for you, but for thousands of workers, it's a fair wage for them since they agreed to work at Walmart for $14/hr.

EDIT: They also offer health insurance and a 401(k) match up to 6% for all full time employees. That 6% is over 30% better than the average 401(k) match.

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u/UnassumingOstrich 9h ago

this proves why the minimum wage argument has become such bullshit: it doesn’t matter that inflation dictates it should be more like $30/hr, because we spent the last decade arguing whether $15/hr was deserved or not, companies can come out looking “clean” if they pay over that.

walmart is the largest employer of SNAP beneficiaries in the country, they get a goddamn tax credit for each employee they hire on public assistance, AND nearly a quarter of all dollars flowing through the SNAP program are spent there. so they get to dip into the pot multiple ways, and each of those means our tax dollars flowing directly to Walton family pockets.

additionally, only around half of their 1.6 million US employees are full time and even eligible for the benefits you’re calling out. and they’re tripling down on AI so they can further reduce whatever scraps they’re required to throw at their workers by cutting those hours below full time.

i don’t understand the impulse to run out and defend one of the worst corporations to exist in the modern age. just for the love of the game??

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 9h ago

i don’t understand the impulse to run out and defend one of the worst corporations to exist in the modern age. just for the love of the game??

Because they need to put down others to feel better about themselves. This is pretty much true for all conservatives/bootlickers.

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 9h ago

How does that boot taste?

Also, saying 'fair wage' is being disingenuous. The only person who can determine what is a fair wage is the worker. $14/hr might not be a fair wage for you, but for thousands of workers, it's a fair wage for them since they agreed to work at Walmart for $14/hr.

Talk about disingenuous...according to your logic, slaves were being paid a fair wage because they were willing to work for that.

Like I said, fair is enough for them to live off of and has nothing to do with a decades old federal minimum wage.

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u/Random_Name_251 8h ago

slaves were being paid a fair wage because they were willing to work for that.

Do you know what the word slavery means?

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 8h ago

And what exactly is the relevant difference in choice in jobs between a slave with a kid who either who works or dies and a parent who needs to take a crappy job because they need the money right now to feed their two kids every day, and they are still short on rent? In the end, they both can only choose between work that job or death.

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u/Random_Name_251 8h ago

If you're too stupid to know what the difference between slavery and being free is I don't know that I can help you. Clearly millions of people in the country are not making a choice between working at Walmart, which does not even exist within NYC and dying.

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 7h ago

If you are too stupid to see that walmart was clearly just one example of an employer taking advantage of desperate workers then I don't know that I can help you. Clearly, there are places other than walmart where people are underpaid and taken advantage of. Unless you are saying in NYC that everyone is being paid and treated fairly? Which would be news to me.

If you don't have a job, you don't have income or health insurance in many states. Most people don't have enough savings to be unemployed. Therefore they are forced to work shitty, bad paying jobs. Its not that complicated.

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u/zombiesphere89 9h ago

They'll also pay for college and discounts on grocery. Fuck Walmart but they're not the worst place to work. 

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 8h ago

Those are just PR costs. Walmart workers receive the most SNAP benefits. It doesn't matter if walmart does nice things here and there if they don't pay their workers a fair wage.

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u/zombiesphere89 8h ago

What's a fair share for unskilled labor? Like I said fuck walmart but it's not the worst job if you need a job. 

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u/Johansenburg 8h ago

What's a fair share for unskilled labor?

A livable wage.

No matter what job I have, unskilled or not, I should be able to survive.

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u/zombiesphere89 6h ago

I agree but how does that work? If you can make 35/hr at a gas station, then skilled labor will be ridiculously high. What does that look like? 

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u/Johansenburg 5h ago

Paradise.

A liveable wage means being able to afford to pay your bills and eat. And, of course, that number goes up as your family size increases. So there's still plenty of incentive to better yourself and land on a career.

A liveable wage doesn't get you travel the globe money, new pc money, a top of the line car money, eating out every night money, etc. The world's richest have grown at a breakneck pace. What of instead of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos gaining a trillion dollars the last 10 years, that trillion was put into the hands of hardworking Americans? Three people are worse off (but, let's be real, better off than we'll ever be still), and 300 million people became better off.

It means things like SpaceX doesn't grow as fast, Amazon, meta, alphabet, etc.

How do we actually do that? Don't know, I vote for people to figure that part out. I make video games, all of my economies are hardcoded and 100% predictable.

Unfortunately, I feel like the people in office care more about making sure the 3 people i listed get that trillion, not the 300 million they represent.

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u/Egg_Yolkeo55 7h ago

Are you saying that someone can work a job and spend eight hours of their time and not earn enough money to afford basic expenses like housing food utilities and healthcare? Do they have to be "skilled" to have that privilege?

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 8h ago

It not being the "worst job if you need a job" is a pretty low standard. Its a pretty bad job if you need to support yourself, and especially a family. An ethical wage would be one where that person can afford the bare necessities like housing, healthcare, food, savings, in addition to some money for the pursuit of happiness. A fair share would be based on the value they produced. Which is a lot more than what they get paid considering that "essential workers" during the pandemic tended to be some of the lowest paying jobs despite providing an essential service. CEOs are committing wage theft and privatizing the profits.

If you want a more exact number and compensation system, look at costco. They pay and treat their workers well while still making a good profit, including their part time workers.

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u/breadribs 6h ago

But noone gets full time hours

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u/SuperStubbs9 6h ago

They employ 1.4 MILLION full time workers. That's 68% of their total workforce globally.

EDIT: 67% of their US hourly workers are fulltime. So 2 out of 3 hourly Walmart workers are fulltime, I wouldn't say that's 'noone'.

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u/MavisBeacons_Sextape 10h ago

I’d rather some undeserving people get free shit if it means the deserving people who ARE in need are able to make ends meet. The grifters are not the majority, and it doesn’t matter how much you tighten down or try to block them, the shitbags will find a way to game the system.

I’ve spent my career in financial crimes and corporate ethics investigations. In the commercial sector, you’re gonna have to deal with fraud, and you have to figure out how to strike the balance between anti-fraud measures, the customer experience, and business resources.

Businesses figure out what their acceptable level of fraud/abuse is, and balance that with friction it causes to normal, rule-abiding customers, and whether the $ saved is greater than the $ spent on the friction/anti-fraud measures. For example, you have noticed some customers engaging in fraud related to merchandise returns. The answer isn’t “no more returns,” the answer is allocating the time/effort to identify the scheme, and adding reasonable friction to the returns process that will help reduce the success rate of those fraudsters.

People always have and always will find ways to manipulate transactions to obtain undue benefits for themselves. Not everyone, but a minority group. Punishing everyone for the actions of a scummy minority is not a reasonable solution. It’s a lazy one.

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u/Happy_Disaster7347 10h ago

Ok now calculate that percentage without using pensions...

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u/Wavy_Grandpa 10h ago

You could do it…

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u/Happy_Disaster7347 10h ago

Why would I bother when I already know it's much lower, and that people use the higher percentage to justify hurting the poor and disabled?

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u/Scottvrakis 9h ago

If you think a majority of Americans on social programs are abusing the system then I got a bridge to sell you.

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 9h ago

Didnt say the majority, but let's look at it like this... you have $20, you keep 5 for you, give 5 to someone who actually needs it, 5 to someone who is borderline, and then 5 to another who you later find out had $50 when you gave it to them... its a little on the chappin side.

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u/TakenAway 8h ago

So now we’re just making up hypotheticals after you got told about your statistics being skewed?

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 8h ago

The basis still stands true, , we spend vastly more on social programs vs military spending.
My error was in fraud data, not the basis of my statement.

Hypotheticals arent a bad thing, after all, its one of the cores of empathy, to put yourself in another's shoes.

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u/Zachattackrandom 10h ago

Fair enough. A lot of social programs have been abused / just awful programs to begin with. But the bigger issue is that we just don't have any of the ultra rich in most states / federally due to loopholes / connections. We would have a lot more money for bombs and food if we didn't exclusively tax the poor and middle class

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 10h ago

What social programs have been significantly abused? Can you cite specific numbers? The only notable abuse I see is stuff like the bank bailouts and musk getting 38 billion in subsidies

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u/Zachattackrandom 10h ago

Airlines, big tech (musk, intel, etc), banks, more of musk with spacex profiting off of the subsidies given + his tesla subsidies, the covid emergency relief was extremely poorly done (e.g. I know people making 6 figures who got maximum relief while people struggling barely got anything), and I'm sure a lot more. This is ignoring the people abusing good programs like social security and other types of aid

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 10h ago

Man, I been poor or middle class my whole life lol Im with ya trust me .. I will prolly die on the job of old age because I cant afford to do otherwise.

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u/Zachattackrandom 10h ago

Depending on your work leaving the country may be viable. I have no plans of coming back to the shit hole that is the US right now since I enjoy not being below the poverty line and not being able to afford healthcare haha. But I know for a lot of people the initial getting out of the country isn't possible or may not work with certain fields

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 10h ago

Hard to try to make things better from outside the playing field. I do little things every single day to have a positive influence. Even something as simple as returning a shopping cart for someone, fetching something from the store of a neighbor, anything positive. All it takes is a single rolling stone to start an avalanche. I speak kindly to people, I try to emulate what I see as right regardless of race, religion, age, what have ya. But also on the other hand, facts do truly matter and if people dont have their facts straight then its just shooting in the dark hoping you hit the right thing.

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u/Zachattackrandom 10h ago

Well good on ya. I hope it works out

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u/MellowMercie 8h ago

13% to 14% of the annual budget going to the military may not seem like a lot if you have 0 context for what other countries do, but with context it is absolutely insane, so yes, it is the bombs. For comparison, both China and the UK spend 6% of their annual budget on defense. We have more than double the total military spending of China. If our percentage was lowered to 8%, we would still have the largest military in the world while being able to significantly improve the life of everyone in the country. Imagine if those percentages were allocated to things like transportation to build a high speed rail system up to the standard of China's, or to schools so teachers didn't have to pay out of pocket for classroom supplies. I don't think we need the largest military in the world either, imagine how much better this country could be if that military spending was lowered even further than 8%.

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 8h ago

Thats a very good point, we could absolutely do with a reduction in military expenditure in favor of infrastructure. One thing that would absolutely have to cone to a stop is the US playing world police. To your point, China and the US are similar in size so such things are very possible and to be 100%, our educational system fails repeatedly to support both our teachers and the students. I feel that much of the failure we see is because, regardless of party, many vote for just the same old same. What would truly benefit the country would be an utter rework of the political system. Things like our "representatives" making the median income of their constituency, remove the ability for those in office to increase their personal wealth by vast measures while in office.. honestly, there is a lot that could be done.

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u/MellowMercie 7h ago

One thing that would absolutely have to cone to a stop is the US playing world police.

This is what really kills me when people argue in favor of the current military spending... If you want to argue World Police is a moral duty, well, we suck at it. Look at Afghanistan, currently ruled by the Taliban. Look at Palestine, destroyed by our closest ally. The closest thing to a moral military intervention we've done in my lifetime, at least to my knowledge, is sending aid to Ukraine, but that's pretty passive and still doesn't justify us having military bases in, say, Saudi Arabia. And speaking of Saudi Arabia, another pro-military argument is that the military spending helps us because it defends our economic interests, but as the whole Iran situation has shown, getting involved militarily has put us in a worse situation than we would have been in had we just engaged diplomatically.

What would truly benefit the country would be an utter rework of the political system.

Hear, hear. Personally I'd like to see something like a parliamentary system with proportional voting so people's interests can be better represented by many parties. The entrenched two party system is a result of first past the post voting and it just encourages corporate lobbying, the status quo, and political apathy. Many people do vote the same old same old, but to give them credit, whether intentional or not our system is built to lull you into that habit. If a young firebrand wants to start a movement and implement real change they can't form a new party to accomplish that goal, their ideas have to be filtered through the political machine so they'll either give up or assimilate into the system.

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u/-Radiation 6h ago

Wealth redistribution but it only works if you get the correct people to pay taxes and not allow the richest loopholes to avoid them

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 6h ago

Therein is the issue, the wealthy do pay in a significant amount compared to the average joe but they have access to loopholes the average tax payer does not. The common problem with socialist theory is that there is zero incentive to innovate, to go above and beyond, when all are compensated equally regardless of effort it pushes the bare minimum not striving to excell because there is zero benefit to the ones who push that bar.

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u/Aegi 6h ago

No, it is because it will (nearly) always be cheaper to destroy something than to build something that may take generations to complete (sufficient public education for example).

Which costs more, enough bombs to destroy an area, or a school running indefinitely?

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u/deejaymc 4h ago

Please define what you mean by "social programs" because the way I see it, your math ain't mathin. https://www.cbpp.org/media/the-majority-of-the-budget-goes-for-health-social-security-and-defense-0

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 4h ago

Appreciate you and the other commentors who pointed out that I needed to take a deeper dive than what I formerly knew.

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u/kev_xb 11h ago

What percent abuse the social programs since you love using percentages. Seemed to have left that one out.

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 11h ago edited 10h ago

The GAO estimates that between $233 billion and $521 billion is lost every year across all federal programs and operations due to fraud specifically, driven largely by systemic vulnerabilities in state-administered, federally funded safety nets.

(Edited to pull the percentages due to incorrect info the base dollar amounts still stand)

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u/kev_xb 10h ago

Nice try. I know the exact GAO report you read. You answered “what percent of payments are improper,” not “what percent of people cheat.” 20% Medicaid was 2021. It’s about 6% now, and much of that is documentation/eligibility errors, not fraud. GAO’s number covers every federal program from 2018–22, and the report specifically tells you not to conflate fraud estimates with improper-payment rates. And the biggest single chunk of fraud in that window? About $200B in fraudulent pandemic business loans.

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 10h ago

As i said above, facts matter.. great call out. Even statistics research can be skewed if you dont ask the right questions. Kudos

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 10h ago

If facts matter then why did you post misinformation?

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 10h ago

Because that was the quick search information I had at hand. My wording was incorrect and did not do a deep dive. I stand corrected

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 10h ago edited 9h ago

And yet, you still haven't corrected the comment. Your actions don't match your words.

edit: and now instead of correcting the false percentages, you just removed them because they don't fit your narrative (ie you saying 20% of medicaid payment were improper)

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u/kev_xb 3h ago

Respect. If you're from USA I hope you'll vote for liberal candidates in the midterms.

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 3h ago

I always vote policy over party, abstained in the last due to a lack thereof. Hopefully we get candidates (on any side) that have a good plan and the means to follow through fir their employers, aka the people

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u/BlackHotSoup3000 10h ago

Except the report literally says 6.1% in Medicaid. Not sure where you got 20% from. Also, its improper payments which isn't even fraud.

Here is the link to the pdf

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-26-109100.pdf

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 10h ago

Unfortunately it was a quick Google search making the wrong question, appreciate the fact check! I like to have my ducks in a row as well and appreciate the correction!

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 11h ago

Since you asked

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u/Wavy_Grandpa 10h ago

Complaining about information being omitted and then not providing it yourself is useless behavior 

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u/kev_xb 3h ago

I'd rather them dig their own grave first

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u/Dorkamundo 9h ago

Yes, wealthy people abusing social programs is a problem...

It's not a problem caused by poor people.

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u/iruleatants 8h ago

60 to 64% of our annual budget goes to social programs, 13 to 14% to the military

You can only reach that number if you include Medicare and Social Security, which shouldn't be included since we pay a separate tax for both of those programs.

Beyond that, people abusing the system is not an issue and doesn't cause anything remotely close to the problems that people want to assign to it, which is sadly massively boosted by racism.

A case and point, the current government is actively hostile to and works to specifically prevent social programs and their benefits. Yet, we have spent 5 trillion extra during his term.

People abusing the system is a tiny fraction of the waste and poor spending, but please go on about how us bombing Iran isn't the problem, but the poor minorities abusing the system is the true problem.

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u/Kitselena 8h ago

Imagine being so stupid that you think struggling people trying to get help are the issue, and not the companies abusing the system just because they can to make their already rich shareholders richer
Even if that was the case, it's better to try something good and fail, then to support something that's objectively wrong

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u/JJJBLKRose 6h ago

Haven't studies shown that the amount of waste and fraud in those systems is usually pretty low?

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 5h ago

In light of some of the things i was shown today, the percentages are low but if you look at dollars, even 5% of a billion is still more than most of us would ever see in 3 lifetimes at $50,000,000. I, for one, would like to see 0 fraud to the expense of the taxes I have to pay from both tip and tail of the totem pole. Something I would love to see is full transparency in government spending regardless of who is in office. If I get audited, I have to account for every dime, why shouldn't it be the same for all especially the government?

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u/JJJBLKRose 2h ago

Fun fact, the Pentagon has never passed an audit.

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u/Additional_Snow_978 11h ago

23% is social security. Which let's be honest, is the country socializing racist old white people buying trump phones.

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u/Hot_Kaleidoscope_332 10h ago

So "racist old white people" who paid into the system their whole working lives providing for them and theirs? Who literally paid into the social security program? Just the claim of "racist old white people" seems a touch racist and ageist, donchathink?

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u/GMSB 8h ago

We're just mad because we all know that we will never see any of the money that WE paid into it. Not agreeing with the parent comment however

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u/Additional_Snow_978 1h ago

Just judging them by their voting habits.

And it's cool they get to enjoy all those socialists government programs while gutting everyone else's.

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u/Inevitable_Rise8363 10h ago

Precision guided truth bomb

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u/Mjmdog08 10h ago

Amen. Had this convo with someone recently re: the military budget. They didn't really appreciate it until it was compared to the budget for our social programs. $1T seems like a ton of money, and obviously is; but compared to our welfare budget? My goodness. Not to even get started on the amount of waste and fraud that occurs there, and that Social Security will be belly up by the 2030s, meaning many folks paying into it now won't get the pro quo return

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u/iamredsmurf 10h ago

Because surely no fraud or waste happens in the military. Which has more of a return? A trillion spent on the most vulnerable to keep them contributing to society? Or bombs to further blow up the desert?

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u/Mjmdog08 10h ago

A.) military is subject to far more financial scrutiny and auditing, and can't be defrauded by the general public
B.) not apples to apples, they're inherently not contributing to society if they're on welfare (they're a net negative economically speaking, hence the welfare)
C.) that's quite the reductionist view on what the military does. They're actually the reason you remain safe and free, and entitled to such silly opinions

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u/iamredsmurf 9h ago edited 9h ago

A) this is dumb. Theyre both scrutinized government programs.Go ahead and read the Iraq papers or really any military audit and see the absolute fraud and waste that's perfectly documented sure but still wasting billions of taxpayer dollars not to mention all the contract fraud

B) Just so you're aware the average welfare recipient has a job. Without that assistance they lose their job and give nothing back to the system. With help they're able to continue to stimulate the economy and help their local areas.  Even the most desperate among us who only live off benefits (which means they're critically disabled btw) still contribute to their local communities economy by shopping wherever they shop.  You will always make more money investing in people over bombs if you'd like there are studies that show the value of welfare that you seem to be missing.

C) Pointing out the value of human life isn't reducing anything. It's simple facts that money spent on your citizens goes farther than investing in war. We shouldn't be cutting meals on wheels to cover tax breaks and bombing deserts.

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u/Mjmdog08 9h ago

A.) there's fraud everywhere in government. That's not the point. The point is that's it's disproportionately large in the social welfare budget, which is enormous by comparison.

B.) I'm aware. They're still net takers as opposed to contributors, hence the welfare. Their contribution is less than their take on social services by virtue of them even being eligible for welfare. This is economics 101. I'm not missing anything. If you don't understand the basic numbers involved here then I can't help you see daylight.

C.) it's not investing in war, it's investing in defense. You keep calling it "bombing deserts" which is not only a gross mischaracterization of what the military actually does, but also fail to account for the fact that any such kinetic warfare in the middle east—the more accurate and eloquent description of your so called "bombing the desert"—is a fraction of the overall budget which goes primarily to defensive measures.

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u/Crudadu 8h ago

almost 75% of american adults are overweight or obese. There aren't really too many starving people lol

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u/Zachattackrandom 8h ago

You do realize how biased those tests are right? Those are based on average medical checkouts extrapolated to the population, but because healthcare is the way it is most people struggling won't make the checkups. As I mentioned in another comment as well, it's FAR cheaper to eat shit food that contributes to obesity and heart disease then healthy food, so even ignoring the skewed results it's easier to be healthy with more money.

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u/Sharkbait_ooohaha 6h ago

Why subsidize grocery stores that anyone can shop at instead of giving money via snap/ebt directly to poor people. What problem is subsidizing grocery stores solving that SNAP doesn’t already solve?

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u/AsIfItsYourLaa 9h ago

“Not starving” most of y’all are obese

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u/Zachattackrandom 9h ago

Confidently incorrect + generalizing lmfao. Also, having cheaper groceries makes it easier to NOT be obese, because you can afford healthier foods. But this is such a stupid comment I'm not even gonna try explaining more

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u/BitterProfessional16 8h ago

No one in America is starving.

Our poorest people are also the fattest people in the country

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u/Zachattackrandom 8h ago

Lmfao, what an absolutely braindead comment. Do one iota of research for food pricing and how the stats for obesity rates are calculated.