#JC Penneys racist white lady

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New Post has been published on https://www.wittybitches.com/2016/12/welfare-benefits-help-everyone/

3 Things Everyone Forgets About Welfare Benefits

Video footage of a SUPER pleasant white lady spewing racisms aplenty is going viral right now.

Image: Paul Sablerman / Flickr / (CC BY 2.0)

The clip, which has more than 2.5 million+ views on YouTube, shows the woman going off on a couple of Latinas after one of them joined the other in line. This caused the white lady (who was probably thinking, “First our jobs and now this!” because , um, Trump?) to explode. In the video you can see her practically screaming at the women, yelling for them to “go back to wherever the f*** they come [sic] from,” and, most tellingly in my opinion, insisting the women were probably on “welfare.”

“Just because you come from another country, that don’t make you nobody. You’re nobody, as far as I’m concerned. Probably on welfare. The taxpayers probably paid for all that stuff.”

I’m sure you’re all just SHOCKED that a middle aged white woman in Louisville, Kentucky, who shops at JC Penney’s, would be racist. SHOCKED. She must be a psychic too for knowing those women were undocumented without any evidence whatsoever. Or she’s just a racist dick making racist dick assumptions. Yeah, let’s go with that.

Seeing old Blue Hair McGrand Wizard’s tirade did bring up a topic I’ve seen a lot of lately. That is, the myth that undocumented immigrants receive tons of free welfare and, like, back rubs from sexy bodybuilders or whatever, courtesy of the American taxpayer. They don’t., of course. Undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible for any social services benefits. Even legal immigrants have to wait five years to receive benefits after becoming citizens.

All told, about half of all Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cases include just the children of the household with no financial help for the grownups. Why? Usually because the parents have been disqualified, like the aforementioned illegal immigrant families.

Some folks argue that these undocumented immigrants still benefit from welfare when their natural born citizen children receive things like Medicaid, TANF, and/or food stamps. Which is technically true. So what? Are we really going to argue about whether or not kids should starve because of where their parents were born?

Besides, the true purpose of welfare isn’t about “feeding the poor” or “helping the needy.”

Social services like food stamps, Medicaid, cash assistance, and Section 8, aka “welfare” weren’t created to help poor people, citizen or not. Not primarily, anyway. None of what social services does is really about helping specific demographics in a general sense.

Truth is, it’s not warm and fuzzy – it’s just basic economics. The welfare system has three distinct purposes that everybody seems to either be unaware of or conveniently forgets. Those purposes are…

1. Welfare reduces crime rates

Welfare suppresses crime. Turns out, when folks are starving they’ll do just about anything and everything to feed themselves and their kids. Theft? Sure, why not. Larceny? You bet your ass. Crime becomes an easier choice when one is living in abject poverty.

I would dare to say that it stops even being a choice at a certain point. When you weigh the potential consequences of stealing a wallet against the fact that your kids are hungry and your utilities are shut off, crime starts looking like the ONLY option.

This should be pretty obvious to everyone, but since y’all did just elect a sentient Cheeto as president it probably bears repeating; Poverty = crime. Welfare helps to alleviate this problem (or it used to). According to the Luxembourg Income Study countries that implement social services programs tend to see a marked decrease in poverty. 

Of course, the opposite is also true –  when poverty goes up, so does crime. According to Pacific Standard,

“Males looked specifically at the more than 50,000 homicides in California from 1991 to 2002. As one would expect, teenagers perpetrated more of the homicides than other age groups — but only when he did not control for poverty. When he did control for poverty, teenagers committed more crimes than other age groups only in high-poverty areas. In the areas where teenagers had as much money as other middle-aged people, they tended to commit fewer violent crimes. And in the areas where middle-aged people had as little money as other teenagers, those middle-aged people tended to commit just as many violent crimes.”

2. Welfare helps maintain stability

Welfare helps maintain the average American’s confidence in the US as a nation. It maintains societal stability.It keeps us invested in America.

When a citizen becomes uninvested in the nation or society they live in, they start seeing government as their enemy #1 and therefore that nation or society becomes a threat. American terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski were uninvested in society. When a significant number of citizens are convinced that their government isn’t concerned about their well-being or their survival, that’s when a revolution becomes not just a possibility but an inevitability.

Just look at the American revolution…and the Chinese, Russian, French, and Cuban revolutions too. They all began when people began to feel as though the government left  them to fend for themselves. The poor, unwashed masses felt used and abused by the nation they called home.

This is why the United States keeps such a close eye on the unemployment rate. Because if it reaches 10%, the crime rate will rise. If the unemployment rate reaches 20%, the country will become criminally, dangerously unstable. The success or failure of a nation depends on its underprivileged classes – those unwashed masses I mentioned before. If the poor stop believing in the country, all is already lost.

3. Welfare keeps our economic engine running

Last and most importantly, welfare protects our economy.

During a recession, money stops flowing – it becomes locked up. Most banks stop lending. The Trumps of the world won’t make investments. The middle class have to scrimp and save. But ya know who can’t scrimp and save? The working poor. Those schlubs can’t afford to save because they have to spend every red cent just to get by.

If a billionaire earns $12 million bucks they’ll spend a quarter of it, maybe. The rest of that 12 mil will just languish in the bank to gain interest and do nothing.  It offers no benefit to our nation or the economy. However, if $5 million bucks is given to the social services system almost all of it will be back in circulation by the week’s end.

There are few things in life as inevitable as a downturn in the economy. Death. Taxes, white people being racist. Aaaaand recessions.

Recessions happen. They can’t be stopped, only softened. A responsible government will take precautions and put safety nets in place to help minimize the damage an inevitable recession will cause. Welfare is one of those nets. It doesn’t matter whether or not the recipients of social services deserve the benefits given to them. They’re cogs serving a purpose, inadvertently  or not, in the economic machine. What actually matters is that these cogs spend that money, fast. Welfare recipients keep the economy fluid during a recession.

They are the gasoline that makes our economic motor run.

#food stamps #JC Penneys racist white lady #Racism #social services #welfare #Featured #Poverty