So what kind of "X" are you?

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Many of you claim to be "X" type of person but not [Poll #1775595]

Comments

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

The only thing that video made me think is that it's crazy that I feed two adults on less than the food stamp budget. My girlfriend is a coupon-clipping goddess.

There is no racism here.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The film features a token white woman, so it cannot be racist.

Anyone woman can feed a baby and herself on $220 per month deserves a budgeting award. The video does not represent the life of a welfare mom. All of those trappings require a much greater income. The woman would have to turn tricks on the side to surround her family with such luxury.

Re: There is no racism here.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

My wife and I spend about 300$ a month for food and we don't skimp in the least.

Re: There is no racism here.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

must be something bout the cost of formula ???? i dunno diapers {although those are not for eating}

Re: There is no racism here.

[curseangel.livejournal.com]

Good for you, but a lot of people can't do that. I know my aunt and I couldn't without seriously skimping and basically taking all the nutritious food out of our diet. Then again, we live in NYC. Food is freaking expensive here.

Re: There is no racism here.

[curseangel.livejournal.com]

Anyone woman can feed a baby and herself on $220 per month deserves a budgeting award.

This. I haven't watched the video (and won't, I have a feeling it'll get on my nerves), so I can't comment on that, but food stamps amounts tend to be much lower than is really necessary to feed a family healthily. I know I sure as hell couldn't feed myself, let alone another person (still less a child!), on $220/month!

Re: There is no racism here.

[yelena-r0ssini.livejournal.com]

Eh. I could feed me and one BABY on that. Maaaybe. If I was super duper careful. As soon as the kid started eating solids though forget it, I'm up to $300 a month minimum.

Then again I do live in a suburb with a pretty ridiculously high cost of living and food.

Re: There is no racism here.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Anyone woman can feed a baby and herself on $220 per month deserves a budgeting award. -- You're talking about what she said at the end? That's $220 per month if you're single (I think "alone" is what she said). With WIC added, you get more per child though WIC also has rations or specifics on what you can buy with WIC checks.

[allisnow.livejournal.com]

To be fair, most of the EBT users I see at my local grocery will use their EBT for important dietary staples like Popsicles, deli sandwiches and candy bars, and use their cash for the vodka and smokes.

ETA: Great. Now I'm going to have that song stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I am a pragmatist whose bent includes wanting to overhaul obsolete legal systems reflecting a different era to modernize them and whose idea of social and economic views would make me a European Rightist, but makes me sound like a Stalinist next to some of the US Right. I don't really have a US ideology that fits me very well, my preference is for Realpolitik and I abhor ideology even if I agree with much of it as being too inflexible. I also consider the idea that political questions need sides to be a bizarre and puzzling one that does not reflect very much on the concept of sides themselves. There are certain concepts that I am rigidly inflexible on and view from a moral absolutist framework, and there are others I see in a light that's anything but, which might be in some senses contradictory but in reality make me an ordinary individual self-aware enough to see the contradictions exist.

/Puts on Rorschach trench coat

Does that answer your questions?

/Takes off trenchcoat and gives it a decent double-round in the washing machine.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And as far as welfare's concerned, the general idea of blaming the people dependent on the system for the failings of the system is the usual refuge of people who don't want to admit that the idea's good, the execution not-so. Their criticisms generally verge into the whole "Ban poor people from voting so we don't have unwanted strays in our political/economic system" and have since Bonzo's most famous co-star was elected President.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

Dang, that video/song was jacked up :/

[hey-its-michael.livejournal.com]

WTF did I just watch?

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

do not worry - your brain will start to learn to use it's right hemisphere eventually

[lai-choi-san.livejournal.com]

I didn't vote because I don't know, I don't live in the US.
One of the things that strike me the most in that video is the show of vulgarity. Vulgarity results from cultural vacuity which originates from shitty television programs (yes, you know : the ministry of education for poor children) which is a product of hypercapitalist system. As you sow, etc...

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

I want so much to agree with this. So, in general, I will. Great crack at telly being the Ministry of Education for Poor Children.

Now the caveat: sometimes a good sound healthy vulgarity has its place. Every now and then we have to take the Ivory Tower out of our asses. :)

welcome to the 21st Century

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

2 girls 1 cup is "shocking". Dare I say...vulgar?

Whereas, profanity is part of urban vernacular *shrugs*

Remember, people have been using so called profane and vulgar language for....well forever! Just because censors protect the babbys from things adult, does not make profanity "bad"

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Vulgarity results from cultural vacuity which originates from shitty television programs (yes, you know : the ministry of education for poor children) which is a product of hypercapitalist system. As you sow, etc...

Hah! My girlfriend would have something to say. She wrote a thesis paper (some 100+ pages) about the use of vulgarity in Chaucer. Chaucer, one of the greatest literary minds in the English language, a great satirist and poet, was a big, big fan of things like a story about Hell where all the monks (who were quite reviled in medieval England) live in the Devil's asshole.

Vulgarity is a result of wanting to be vulgar, not "cultural vacuity." Good vulgar words have their place in the language. We need them, some of us more regularly than others. What should she have said? "All you must do is engage in coitus"? That doesn't have the same meaning at all.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

In Maryland here we have the Independence card or "indy." It doesn't improve the image of welfare to see people dressed nicely drive up in a decent car to a 7/11 and buy expensive junk food using their indy. The problem is that the cards often get either stolen or coerced or sold by the people who get them, to unscrupulous people who don't qualify (and then use them at 7/11).

In the old days before food stamps I was involved in a government program to distribute free food to the poor. Basic staples that would prevent hunger. When food stamps first came out the criticism was that they would get abused and unfortunately it turned out to be true.

A program I would like to see that would be relatively cheap in the long run is to have a USDA free food program provided by the schools. Any child between 5 and 18 could walk in and get three free nutritious meals a day, no questions asked. The infrastructure is there and institutional meals are very inexpensive.

[paft.livejournal.com]

e: When food stamps first came out the criticism was that they would get abused and unfortunately it turned out to be true.

As I've observed, EVERY program, whether it benefits the rich, the middle class, or poor, will be abused at some point by someone. It's only when a program benefits the poor that the very existence of abuse is used as an excuse to eliminate the program entirely.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

i do like the idea of a usda free food program....i think it might be exceptionally functional in the more rural parts where agriculture and poverty closely parallel each other, no?

i don't know about fully cooked/prepared meals...but maybe a pound a potatoes can be sent home at the end of the schoolday (with the student) every now and then....er something like that ????

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

I watched the video until a few bars(?) in to where the music started. Sorry but I didn't understand a word she shouted. Her patois is too thick.

But I get the gist of what this conversation is about. I dunno racist or stereotype. Welfare moms (and pops) come in all shapes, sizes and colours. The same story could have featured a Blackfoot American Native and still be just as stereotypical.

Cheats are one thing. Welfare moms are not exactly cheats so much as they are simply taking advantage of the existing system to the fullest.

The system is not perfect. Not in the USA. Not in Estonia. Not in Sweden. The system uses food stamps (cards) as a way to ensure a distribution of food for poor people. Not necessarily a fair distribution, nor necessarily a healthy distribution. I assume beer and cigarettes cannot be bought with food stamps everywhere but I don't know that for sure.

But even I can tell that this video is degrading people who use food stamps and other welfare programs. Get a job! Earn your keep! Make a rap video and get off the dole! This video is less a stereotype but more a political statement.

Her patois...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... is often called ebonics. For some Americans, it is the only dialect they speak or understand.

The video is very stereotypical and the political statement it seems to be making is that the EBT program is a rip-off of tax payers.

[saraf3m.livejournal.com]

Just for clarification for those skeptical of the cost of food and budgeting...

I grew up in New England (where food is certainly NOT cheap), lived a few years in Ohio (where there was options for buying and storing bulk foods cheaply and plenty of farms and slaughter houses to also buy bulk/fresh) and now live not too far from "Crenshaw" and "La Brea" - both referenced in the video.

The card she is commenting on is $220 for just a single person qualifying for the state aided welfare program, not the additional children/additional $ per child someone receives. 2 adults can live quite happily full on half that per month in this area as there are several local growers and year round fresh produce. Food is fairly inexpensive if you cook - but that is the if in this scenario, along with where you go for groceries. Its not very easy to walk to fairer priced places, and toting groceries on a bus WITH children is beyond a cumbersome request. Prepared food often rivals NYC, as this is Los Angeles, unless you resign to the taco trucks only, and even then that can chew away your budget fairly quickly, IF they take EBT. If someone gave me $220/mo for food AND clothing I'd be eating like a king AND have a new work uniform EVERY month, but I have a car and no care taking responsibilities. Housing, on the other hand...well she did mention she got her section 8, and though most of those neighborhoods can be...questionable from a suburban dweller's standpoint, it certainly aids a CONSIDERABLE amount of the cost (40-60%) if approved. Even so, often they are not conveniently located to the affordable groceries that have fresh items fairly priced, and so goes the cycle for the poor.

So, living IN the area this is NOT racist, imho, and is not fully stereotypical (though what stereotype is?), only not an uncommon occurrence and not very surprising as 1 of every 3 people I know share the same attitudes and habits with their EBT.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

I have known some women like that in my lifetime, but the majority of women I've met/known who receive WIC/food stamps are more concerned about feeding their children then they are about finding ways to get fast food or party. And they don't look at it as "Oh, it's free" and get a ton of junk food or something.

I don't want to get into too much detail, but my mother was in an emotionally abusive second marriage. He wouldn't let her get a job -- it was like a control thing for him. She worked miracles with what little we had, made a lot of stuff from scratch and did a lot of potluck dinners with friends and neighbors. The one thing I hope I never have to touch again is powdered milk, cause that stuff is just gross!