Text 14538, 48 rader
Skriven 2005-10-10 17:50:30 av SHANNON TALLEY (1:275/311)
     Kommentar till en text av Raymond Yates
Ärende: Re: forever in debt
===========================
Hi Raymond,

It sucked 'being' one of those people with the shopping cart.  After I had 
joined the service, I got married and had a kid.  This was back during the 
Regan years and we didn't get paid very well (Very junior people still don't 
get paid well).  I'll never forget applying for and receiving food stamps. 
I was more or less forced to by circumstance because  I couldn't pay the 
rent, buy food, and pay for gasoline and utilities with as little as the 
military paid us.  "Then", the Clinton administration (in it's brilliance), 
decided that Military people didn't need food stamps and took it away from 
us (it's been subsequently reinstated).  I had to take a second job working 
evenings, while my wife worked nights (and stayed up during most of the day 
with our baby).  I ended up taking an assignment to South America where we 
lived in relatively good comfort on my small income for 7 years.  When I 
came back to the states I was a higher rank, and we had got more raises to 
compensate for all the military folks leaving the service for the new 
booming IT industry.  We were better off.

Anyway, paying that extra -- just that $1 or $2 more is just too much for 
some people.  I remember going to the store and trying to figure out how to 
buy 1 weeks worth of food for $10.00.  What I usually did was buy a sack of 
potatoes, some hamburger meat (in the prefrozen cheaper section), a bag of 
frozen vegetables, and some milk and / or margarine.  If they were on sale, 
we would buy some fruit or onions.  We would use condiments (packaged 
ketchup, salt, etc.) collected from fast food restaurants (usually taken 
from desk drawers at work) instead of buying them because we couldn't afford 
them. I would examine the receipt, and OFTEN discovered I was being charged 
taxes on items that shouldn't have been taxed.  That $1.00 at the register 
on those taxes meant not getting something we needed to eat.

Sure, with this program one would get a check back, but that's "after" 
people have gone hungry.  It's better for some to get the savings right 
away, at the cash register, rather than waiting.

> I've had occasion to wait behind people with a Shopping cart with items 
> that
> were both exempt and not from the Food Stamp program. I'd as soon not do 
> that.
> pay the tax on it all, and get the money back you're supposed to get on 
> the
> first of the month.
> As the bill is structured now (and it may change) the "prebates" range 
> from
> $187.43/mo for a single person to $741.75/mo for a family of eight (larger
> than that, add $62.48/person/mo).

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