although I've certainly qualified. I've always been able to feed myself and stay very healthy on a rock bottom, mostly veg diet. If I had children to feed, I'd have trotted right down there and applied.

I refuse to shame anyone on EBT. I'm just grateful that the few bucks they get are getting away from the MIC.

Did you major in culinary arts in college? You picked a profession you love which in some ways is more important then money. You could b.have chosen to be a doctor and make tons of money but would you be happy? Pick the profession that makes you happy first. Have you thought of making a specialty item and sell it? That can be lucrative. Good luck and keep you head held high.

The Reply Title is one of the conservative mottos. Apparently staying off food stamps as easy as getting yet another job.

Got two jobs? Get three!
Got three jobs? Get four!

Because jobs grow on trees, and it's not a matter of time or of job availability, but simply of being willing to work yet another job.

"What do you mean, you only have three jobs?"

People that have actually said something or done something.

Versus to what extent she's reacting against anonymous people whose looks she's interpreting (and deciding are worth paying attention to) or things in the press or on tv.


As for the last bit--typically what makes labor valuable is the same thing that makes things valuable or food valuable. One could argue that if we valued things based on use and utility then chicken, beans and broccoli should be very expensive--far more expensive than something like caviar or cheesecake or tiramisu, or even lobster. Why? Because they're healthier and more nutritious, more so even than Kobe beef.

One could argue that a car is more valuable than the Mona Lisa or the Hope diamond. One's useful; the other two, not so much.

Same with labor. If I wasn't educated enough for my current job, I could still work in landscaping, in a kitchen, as a bookkeeper. Each would earn me less money than I make now. However, given the relatively high amounts of unemployment in the last three categories--lots of people slip between those jobs and others so "unemployed landscaper" isn't just a really notable statistic to cite--there's pressure to keep the wages low.

We used to do things to prevent competition for labor and objects. Guilds, with legal monopolies or their capitalist versions, unions; monopolies, whether through feudal and mercantilist royal patents and charters or the capitalist version, whether through running competitors out of business or through regulatory monopolies like AT&T used to be. But for every clear winner there were losers; people kept out of the market, two people who could have done two jobs for the cost of one person so one got high pay and one got no pay. (Notice that structural unemployment plummeted at the same time all those low-paying jobs came along. I was told in the late '70s that unemployment below 6% was unattainable, at 6% unemployment, "full employment", was hard to maintain. During the recession in early 2000s unemployment didn't reach up to 6%. It's a trade-off, winners and losers.)

I honestly don't have an opinion as to which is best--regulate the labor market to ensure high wages/high structural unemployment or let market labors float.