United States | News & Politics

"everyone else are freeloaders. I actually need the support I get though!"

smh, it would have been funny if it isn't such a common mentality.

Now that's just good business

can sell any oxy pills they don't snort.

God I basically know a town made up of these people. Then they have to trade back pills for pill counts, crazy lifestyle those people live.

GOP voters are richer on average than DNC voters, who are richer on average than non-voters. I believe the breakdown of annual income was something like non-voters $35k, DNC voters $60k, GOP voters $80k. The vast majority of "trailer trash" don't vote and are just a punching bag for rich liberals so they don't have to confront their rich small business owner class-allies who actually make up the core of the GOP.

It's funny that people's stereotype of the GOP is either of dirt poor trailer trash reactionaries, or uber-rich Koch billionaires when the reality is that DNC is the party of billionaires and haute bourgies and the ultra-poor have no party. GOP is the party of the petty bourgies, the landlords, small business owners, home owners and labor aristocrats - the "middle class". GOP so controls the conversations that Americans all believe "small business owner" and "home owner" are benevolent sacred things, but in fact it is the source of much evil. Democrats are afraid to attack the middle class and the GOP for being petty fascist crooks and mini-tyrannical monsters they are because their own party contains the haute imperialist crooks and the mega-tyrannical monsters.

Pretty sure the "red" states are net takers of federal funds compared to "blue" states.

That depends on how you define "welfare."

This article looks at food assistance:

Of these, about one-in-five (22%) of Democrats say they had received food stamps compared with 10% of Republicans. About 17% of political independents say they have received food stamps.

This article looks at entitlements generally:

While the two parties are sharply divided over entitlement spending, the differences in the proportions of Republicans and Democrats who have received entitlements is fairly modest: 60% of Democrats, 52% of Republicans and 53% of independents have benefited from one of these six major classes of federal entitlement programs.

So at least from those two studies, Democrats use welfare more than Republicans. The "red states get more welfare funding" notion can be understood to mean that the poor in those states probably vote Democrat and use lots of federal welfare.

Here's another article from another source:

Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats, while full time Workers are evenly divided between parties.

Wouldn't all government welfare be "insurance" since they're funded with tax dollars? Even if you're not a net tax payer, you're still paying your fair share as defined by the tax code.

So I really don't understand that line of discussion. Whether you're getting Social Security or food assistance, it's welfare. I don't care if you need it or not, if you're getting a benefit from the government, I consider it all the same thing.

Imo, we should combine most of the various government benefits into a single check you get based on your income. Here's my plan:

• if you make nothing, you are brought up to the poverty line
• if you make under a living wage (say, 2x the poverty line), you get a benefit on a sliding scale based on income
• if you make over a living wage, you get no benefit

This would replace the EITC, Social Security, food assistance programs, etc, though probably not Medicare/Medicaid.