Millions of Americans Are Heading to Foodbanks for the First Time in Their Lives

reply to post by soficrow


Just my point of view here and i would like to make it clear i don't think middle class people claiming are layabouts.

However people seem to live beyond their means quite often while claiming they don't have enough. I'm in the UK but it's pretty much the same, people living in a 3 bedroom house, 2 kids, 2 cars, expensive food etc and claiming their life is so hard. Well there are easy ways to deal with it but it requires them to accept hardship and so many people are against it.

I lived for two months alone in the woods, i did this voluntarily to practice my survival techniques but my point is that few people are willing to live a difficult life, as soon as things get hard they act like they are more hard done by than anyone.

There were times when families lived in single rooms, indeed in the UK many immigrant families still do this. If people gave up luxury they would find themselves able to live well within their means. Your rent quotes and living expenses are based on better lifestyles than most need. It's not nice to say but people can survive on amounts of money they never even considered possible when they are pushed.

soficrow

SAMPLE BUDGET ............ Month .................... Year
Rent or mortgage ................ $1,200.00 .............. $ 14,400.00
Utilities ............................. 300.00 .............. 3,600.00
Minimum Charge Card Pmts. 500.00 ............... 6,000.00

TOTAL ........................... $ 2000.00............... $ 24,000.00

NOTE: In reality, many if not most are carrying a LOT more than $2000 a month fixed expenses...

Rent or mortgage, sell the house and move into a 1 bedroom flat, that's rent cut in half. Utilities, turn lights off whenever leaving rooms, abandon the tv, at night use lights only when necessary. Card payments, sorry but why would anyone have them? Pay off cards with every penny you have muster and abandon credit.

Doing that should half your outgoings. As for healthcare i would like to point something out to americans who hate socialised medicine so much. Take a look at the UK and other countries with socialised medicine, we spend less per person and have equal or better outcomes.

reply to post by soficrow


Maybe the title should read, "People who always thought they were too good to go to a Food Pantry, now need to use one occasionally."
Food Pantries and soup kitchens have been around for a long time. They are available for anybody whom is financially down and having trouble feeding themselves or their family.
In my opinion, everyone should visit a Soup Kitchen, atleast once. If you have money, make a nice donation and after you finish eating your hot, buffet style meal, Step over on to the other side and help serve others.
It will make you a better person.
We all want to see change, but we want it to be easy and I don't think it works that way.

Originally posted by theendisnear69
And yet the top 1% of Americans control the majority of the wealth.

How can you have billions of dollars, a hundred extra rooms in your mansion, and yet not feel the urge in your heart to help some of these people?

Does moolah blind your conscience or what? I'm asking cuz i'm working class, I wouldn't know.

because they are too busy counting their money and laughing at the middle and lower class they dont give a # oah we dont like it???they will move and take all their money with them companies create jobs overseas because 1 they dont give a crap about the american workers 2 they will make alot more money overseas then they will here because 1 the government both state and federal makes laws and taxes that would make any business owner go to some other country.

All i have to add is I was sittin at my local tire shop gettin my oil changed when a guy came in with a some what new BMW and all he had the money for was a used what they call a take off tire I thought to my self may be that was all the cash he had on him the guy at the tire shope told me that he has seen a lot of people in nice fancy cars come in and get a 30 dollar take off I guess they should of managed thier money better IMHO

reply to post by hillbilly4rent


Or maybe they always have been spending their money wisely? If the tires were in good shape, why not save a few extra bucks on them. Heck, I have a problem sometimes with the local and state gov't, just don't like their policies, or they hike up the cig tax again on me....then I'll go through this buy used thing, just to keep less money flowing into their funds. For the most part, I usually don't come out of that attitude much, don't think it would matter if I could afford a bmw or not.

reply to post by soficrow

So I did up a quick sample budget and posted it to show how people are trapped. The "budget" was incomplete and I got called on it…

No one ever bothers to figure out WHY the poor and middle class are in such a bind. The "Politically Correct" thing to do is to blame the people for "living beyond their means" etc etc

So I did a bit of digging and some calculations to see if the times I remember as "The Good Old Days" actually were.

My analysis showed they actually were much better.

I know this is a bit long but it is worth your while to read it so you understand HOW the bankers are stealing from us.

Lets look at WHY you can't buy what you need on your wages either outright or through saving because we as a nation are caught in the bankers lending traps.

First TAXES:
I already showed in an above post that we really pay at least 66.4% in Federal taxes before you add in state, local and property taxes.


Lets do some calculations
For every $100 I earn, after I pay my taxes I am left with $34.6. But when I go to buy a product about 1/3 of the cost is additional taxes! So in reality I get to keep and spend a measly $23.73 out of every $100 I earn!

It gets worse
This does not include the fact that I am earning 1/3 less than I was in 1971 when I first started working.


The sneak attack by the banksters – money devaluation:
Here is a money supply/gold/wage chart:
Date.....$ /oz gold.. Money supply......minimum wage...min wage in gold.....CEO pay in gold
1971 ......40.62.............. 81 billion...........$1.60 ...................0.0394 oz.
1974 ......195.20...........101 billion...........$2.00.....................0.0102 oz.
1976 ......124.74 ........... $113 billion.......$2.30.....................0.0184 oz..............0.663.oz
1985 .....354.20 ...........$205 billion........$3.35.....................0.0094 oz.
1994 .....409.80........... $ 406 billion........$4.25......................0.0104.oz.
2006 .....636.30 ...........$808 billion........$5.15.....................0.0081 oz.
2008 .....880.30........... $831 billion........$5.85.....................0.0066 oz................2.44.oz
2009...1,020.28...........$1663 billion........$6.55.....................0.0064.oz.

In 1971 I earned $2.75/hr I had a nice two bedroom apartment for $100, a car for $2,000 I paid off in a year and I could even afford to buy and stable a horse. I also put $50 to $100 dollars a month in the bank depending on overtime. OH, and a nice house sold for about $15,000 to $20,000. (Mom was a real estate agent) I am using 1971 to start because the USA went completely off the gold standard in 1971.

In 1976 I earned $4.45/hr. I had a nice two bedroom apartment again for $100/mo, a car for $5,000 I paid off in a year and I could afford to buy and stable a horse. I was also living on less than $50/wk spending money for groceries, gas, electric, phone and books. I was putting into savings over a hundred a month. I saved about 10-15% of my salary up until the mid eighties and I did not own a credit card or have any loans until the nineties. I bought all but my first two cars with cash.

Now think about it. If I had been married, my spouse and I could have saved up the money to buy that house at $15,000 to $20,000 outright in about five or so years if we both continued to work. The problem is the price of the house went up and the actual value of our wages nose dived thanks to the bankers and politicians. So instead we save up the 10% down (The actual price of the house) and sign a contract giving the bankers title to the house in exchange for NOTHING

Let's see why that happened.

In 1976 A typical American CEO earned 36 times as much as the average worker. By 2008 the average CEO pay increased to 369 times that of the average worker. timelines.ws...

If you look at the table the typical American CEO is actually paid five times MORE in “buying power” compared to 1976 while the rest of us are now paid a third of what we were paid in 1976. The price of gold indicates the steady devaluation of the US dollar as its purchasing power is diluted by the ever increasing supply of fiat money.

At the same time our wages were devalued, the price of goods was inflated thanks to taxes and the increased money supply. Therefore we can no longer SAVE to buy things. All the excess "fat" from the economy has been siphoned off and placed in the bankers' pockets. We are now in a vicious cycle of more and more debt.

This also means very few ordinary people have real wealth to lend. Real wealth that is based on labor and raw materials that produce salable goods.

Because the bankers "Fiat Fairy Dust" can be lent out at a much lower rate of interest than real wealth, the "bad" inflationary fiat money will always drive out the "good" money - someone's actual savings - based on real wealth.

Remember when the bankers "loan" out money they create it on the spot. So where does the VALUE of that "Fairy Dust" money come from? It is stolen from US!

What is Money?
Money is a tool of exchange, used by men in trade to give value for value. Money is the logical extension of the barter system. We only accept money in payment for our labor because we know we can exchange it for the product of the efforts of others. Without this believe in the value of money as a tool of exchange it would be just so much worthless paper. Worthless paper that is a illegal contract on wealth that does not exist, backed by a corrupt government holding a gun on those who are expected to produce the wealth. For after all what is the National Debt but a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs and dependent on the ignorance of the victims to pay it with their wealth (labor).

Mises concluded that money is neither a consumption good nor a capital good...

Because money is not capital, he concluded that an increase of the money supply confers no identifiable social value....

An increase in the quantity of money can no more increase the welfare of the members of a community, than a diminution of it can decrease their welfare. Regarded from this point of view, those goods that are employed as money are indeed what Adam Smith called them, "dead stock, which . . . produces nothing" (p. 85).

New money does not appear magically in equal percentages in all people's bank accounts or under their mattresses. Money spreads unevenly, and this process has varying effects on individuals, depending on whether they receive early or late access to the new money

It is these losses of the groups that are the last to be reached by the variation in the value of money which ultimately constitute the source of the profits made by the mine owners and the groups most closely connected with them

This indicates a fundamental aspect of Mises's monetary theory that is rarely mentioned: the expansion or contraction of money is a zero-sum game.
Mises on Money: www.lewrockwell.com...

reply to post by soficrow


My Father and his Father went hunting for deer in 1940. in 1932, there were tens of thousands of deer
in 1940 they were all gone, no tracks - no layers NOTHING == there were no deer, no rabbits, no squirrels, shocked because Louisana is full of things to eat. I suspect - we will see empty woods again. empty stomachs and loaded pistols. (Pop notes: many people stopped by over those years, we shared what ever we could with
these strangers. and we only had one person that made us uneasy. No Way No How would I do the same today.)

Originally posted by illuminnaughty
Personally I think its only right, that the americans suffer a bit. After all, they have been stuffing them selves for years at the expense of the rest of the world. Now they can experience what life in the poorer countrys is like. Struggling to make ends meet. Maybe it will make them wake up. Half the world is starving, Whilst they sit on their rather large asses. Making silly comments about other poorer countrys and how lazy the people are there. Whats needed is for the peace prize winner, to start another war. Then the americans can get back on top. Yes thats a real good american idea and a dream, they can all believe in. Kill poorer people to make them selves wealthy again.

First let me congratulate you on doing exactly what you accuse Americans of - accusing others unjustly through overgeneralization. But hey, you sound just like the Rich Americans so you fit right in bub. Keep sounding the way you do and you'll have a green card in no time. hehehehe
Now, lets get real -
We would not have gone to half the wars we have if it weren't for the rich 1% of the world so no matter what country you are in, if you have a rich person in it, they sided against you long ago. That was your first kick in the pant. Also your own people didn't start fighting for themselves, always begging for us to join in the fracus so you can win. Plenty of that going around when we could have surplus that money long ago and be sitting on it now. Just think if there were no Viet Nam, we'd have Doe Ray Me!
Oh and most important, since you feel this way, we need to take back UNICEF, RED CROSS and any groups that help save, rescue, give free operations and food to other countries.
Since we are so bad, you need to keep your begging hands to yourself.
Check that!
As a lazy fat, taxpaying American I give full permission to get out of every war in the world, stop helping any other country in the world, bring our troops home, protect our own boarders and food and tell you people to go hump yourselves. Now buy that for a donut mr.!

im sorry i have no sympathy. im not a cold hearted person at all and im one of those "suckers" who occasionally stop and give the homless/will work for food guys an occasional 5-10 dollars if i have it on me to spare. that being said.

in the last 5 years ive tried to start my own buisness paying myself 150.00 a week as a paycheck to make basic's.
did security for 7.25 an hour for 1 year when the buisness i started got robbed and couldnt recover from it.
then went into trucking where ive yet to make the so called 50,000.00 a year (more like 20,000)

in that 5 years ive yet to have a year where i personally have brought home more than 15000.00. my wife brings home around 700.00 a month for some disabilites. (i am willing to post my w2's with personal info scratched out)

now that ive said all that.. anyone making more than 20,000.00 in the usa is more than capable of living quite well and having nearly anything they want short of 100,000.00 cars O.o

460.00 for a 2 bedroom 2 bath townhouse apartment.
130.00 for Cable & Highspeed Internet
65.00 for Car Insurance (monthly)
35.00 for netflix
30.00 for 2 world of warcraft accounts for me and my wife.
140.00 for electricity (varies of course depending on month)

total 860.00 that must be paid every month

notice whats missing?

no car payment
no gym payments
no cellphones
no credit card payments
no subcription payments for clubs or afterschool activities.

outgoing is around 860..
incoming is around 2000.00

i just bought my son a new xbox 360 kinetic with 3 games and my mom a 42 inch hd tv for xmas.. that doesnt include what i got for myself or my wife simply by saving for 3-4 weeks. no credit cards needed. we eat out at least 2-4 times every 2 weeks. go to the movies at least 2-3 times a month.(depends on whats playing) between computer upgrades, and getting pretty much anything we want personally. i dont see how someone thats making 50,000.00 a year has issues at all unless they are just completly clueless about money.

if your having money issues at 50k a year. look at what your spending money on.. find out what the "must pays" are vs the luxaries. (no cellphones are not a must) im talking break it down. sometimes if things are going bad for you.. your gonna have to tell little jane and johnny sorry. soccer and band just isnt part of your afterschool activities this year unless you wanna go mow some lawns this summer. in the end .sometimes the answers no reguardless of how you or they feel about it. (thats life)

if i can have roughly 1000.00 to SPARE every month on a 20,000.00 a year budget.. then your pissing money down the drain if your struggling at 50,000.00 a year.

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

Rent or mortgage, sell the house and move into a 1 bedroom flat, that's rent cut in half.

They CAN'T sell - they owe more than their homes are worth. Often FAR more.

Again - these people are trying NOT to default on their loans and credit, and to avoid bankruptcy. And they're trying to "hold on" until the economy "turns around."

...Yes - these people are living beyond their means. The bubble burst and now, they're holding the bag.

But believe me, if they ALL decided, en masse to walk away from their homes and their toys and debts, we'd be into another major catastrophe. And all the banks and financial institutions would be whining for bailouts all over again.

reply to post by kimsie

We all want to see change, but we want it to be easy and I don't think it works that way.

How true. S&

I actually work for a food bank. We're currently putting out over a million lbs a month! It's insane!

reply to post by crimvelvet

No one ever bothers to figure out WHY the poor and middle class are in such a bind. The "Politically Correct" thing to do is to blame the people for "living beyond their means" etc etc

So I did a bit of digging and some calculations to see if the times I remember as "The Good Old Days" actually were.

My analysis showed they actually were much better.

For what it's worth, I agree with you.

Things used to be way better. Easier. More fun too.

Originally posted by nixie_nox
reply to post by againuntodust

 

The wait for HUD housing is about 5 years. Subsidized housing is also going on to years in some areas.
As for utility assistance, those have limited budgets, and have been running out.

edit on 3-1-2011 by nixie_nox because: (no reason given)

That's not true, just for the record. I just pulled up over 200 results for HUD apartments in less than 10 seconds right here

And as for utility assistance, those do NOT have limited budgets. LIHEAP will help you with your utilities no matter what, as long as you are meet the criteria, and they show no sign of stopping the assistance.

I won't accuse you of making up facts, please provide sources.

reply to post by ISRAELdid911

I suspect - we will see empty woods again. empty stomachs and loaded pistols. (Pop notes: many people stopped by over those years, we shared what ever we could with these strangers. and we only had one person that made us uneasy. No Way No How would I do the same today.)

Very important history, insights.

Re: Sharing. ...I know what you mean, but I keep hoping. People DO pull together when times get tough. True, most everyone today is indoctrinated and conditioned to compete - to believe that they need to fight for their piece of the pie and stand on others' heads. But...

if we focus on what we have in common, and realize we're in it together, and don't let the banksters pit us against one other, we have a brighter future.

Originally posted by nixie_nox
reply to post by zerbot565

 

It also depends on where you live.

Around here, a 740 sq. ft., 2 bedroom apt is gonna run you 2k a month.
Still think you can get by on 18k?

Post the location you're talking about and I'll find something bigger for less.

Originally posted by againuntodust

Originally posted by nixie_nox
reply to post by zerbot565

 

It also depends on where you live.

Around here, a 740 sq. ft., 2 bedroom apt is gonna run you 2k a month.
Still think you can get by on 18k?

Post the location you're talking about and I'll find something bigger for less.

exactly.. most people's problems is they dont want change or cant accept change.. lost your job, house not worth what it once was or what ever the problem... they dont want to accep the fact that thier reality has changed and will continue on in the same fashion as always freeting and worring or sacrificing everything because they refuse to face that reality.. when in truth the stress and pain can be cut short by making decisions for yourself instead of waiting for circumstances to force a decision on you.

reply to post by soficrow

Things used to be way better. Easier. More fun too.

Boy isn't that the truth. I use to climb, hike, cave and exercise other people's horses. Now everyone is afraid to let you on their property for fear you will sue them!

Oh and if you want to know WHY we are in this mess, I just stumbled across the reason. Remember the bankers control the economy by controlling money. As Milton Friedman said:

“I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money, and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression.”www.themoneymasters.com...

Eustace Mullins goes even further in his Secrets of the Federal Reserve and gives some blow by blow accounts of how the bankers manipulated the system to periodically "shear the sheep"

Commenter Byron states on 21 January 2010:

If the readers examine the St. Louis Federal Reserve graph of the M1 money supply (http//research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M1), they will note that whenever the Fed maintains a restrictive monetary policy (flat M1 growth rate) the economy enters a recession. The evidence is particularly striking for the 2008 recession. From 2003 to the fourth quarter of 2008, the Fed restricted the growth of M1; the result was the 2008 recession.

The Fed knows fully well that they created the recession as demonstrated by their subsequent loosening of M1 growth.

Milton Freedman and Anna Schwartz were correct in their assessments of money. www.thefreemanonline.org...

I go into a lot more detail on how Congress and the Bankers INTENTIONALLY caused this depression and are now profiting by it in this post: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by rumor21
I can't even tell you how many times i have seen people buy not only alcohol and cigarettes but lottery tickets with their EBT cards.

I would say that would be zero times since the computer system does not allow anything other than food items to be purchased with EBT food stamp cards.

Why are you spreading falsehoods?

reply to post by soficrow


And don't forget about the cost of child care. Without someone to watch the kids, you can kiss your job goodbye.