Punching Downward

[valarltd]

It's a truism in comedy that you "punch up." If you are making fun of someone, go up the social scale. Parody the powerful, lampoon the rich.

Will Rogers was a master of it. "There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."

But these days, some people prefer to punch down, sneering at the poor and minorities and calling it humor. It's the same humor that leads to laughing while someone else is being beaten up.

And it makes punching down that much more acceptable next time.

I recently got into a discussion with someone who was wondering why I was never nice about the political stuff she posted. I told her, I was being nice, that I wasn't calling her stupid and cruel, only badly in need of facts instead of propaganda.

This woman is by no stretch wealthy. Yet she thinks it appropriate to demand that those lower than she is on the social scale be subjected to more intrusion, in the form of drug testing. "Because a lot of people ARE cheating on welfare."

Let me say up front, if you aren't doing brain surgery or operating heavy machinery or otherwise taking people's live in your hands, I consider drug testing unnecessary and a symptom of our controlling corporate state. If you are unemployed, it's pure nonsense. In every state where the "drug test the poor" laws have been proposed, it's been done by a legislator in the pay of/holding stock in the testing companies.

When Florida implemented drug testing for welfare recipients, they found that only 2.6% failed. Testing ended up costing the state over $45,000, or 30 months of maximum TANF+SNAP benefits for a family of 4.


Let's unpack the whole idea of "test welfare recipients" and all the underlying assumptions.

1) Welfare recipients are poor. Yes. This is a given. The cut-off line is about $1000/month. It was tough living on $900/month when it was just two of us 20 years ago. I cannot imagine trying to live on it today, with kids.

Unfortunately in our society, we tend to think poor people deserve to be. And that they should LOOK poor. That they should wear cheap, mended clothing, and not have cellphones (75% of the whole world, from Bangledesh to Kamchatka has cell phones, I don't want to hear it) and never ever have a single scrap of enjoyment.

2) There are a lot of them. As of 2012, 4.3 million Americans receive welfare benefits of some sort (not counting food stamps) That's about 1.4% of the population. Hardly a hoard. 47 million receive food stamps. That's 15%, one in 7 people. Too many, for our country. SNAP is mostly for supplementing families who are already working.

3) They're probably nonwhite. True. Only 40% of welfare recipients are white.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/

So that gets into all kinds of subconscious stereotypes about non-whites. Lazy. Drug users. Criminals. These are reinforced by our media and society until most people won't even admit to thinking that.

4) They're living high on the hog! In 40 states, welfare is a better deal than an $8/hr full time job. Ouch, that hits where I live (making $8/hr). And that's well over minimum wage...

But remember, an $8/hr job brings in about $16,000 a year. Doesn't sound so lavish, does it now?
Maximum TANF is $900/month for a family of four. Maximum foodstamps are $500. $16800/year. So yeah, a little better, but not much.

4a) But they buy expensive food, or blow it all on junk food.

While $500 is the maximum amount for a family of 4, most places, the average allotment is about $150 for that family. Hawaii averages $215. Minnesota goes $115. How high on the hog can your family live on $115/month?
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/avg-monthly-food-stamp-benefits/

"Food stamp demographics don’t fit the stereotype Republicans present. Currently, 41 percent of food stamp recipients come from a household with earnings from a job (the “working poor”); 36 percent are white, 22 percent are African American, and 10 percent are Hispanic. To qualify for food stamps a family of four needs an income at or below 130 percent of the official poverty level ($29,000) and savings of less than $2,000. According to the latest figures from the United States Department of Agriculture, 38 percent of those eligible for food stamps still don’t take advantage of them."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021216227

All of that. For $115/month.


5) They get on it and live on it forever!
34% of welfare recipients are on it 1 year or less.
53% are off after two years.
80% are on it less than 5 years.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/For a better round up

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/five-media-myths-about-welfare/


So, all these ideas affect how we think about the poor.
Nonwhite criminals, faking their paperwork, stealing our hard-earned tax dollars and using it to live lavishly. Why WOULDN'T we drug-test them?

Except, they aren't.
Philadelphia has about 95,000 welfare recipients. About 200-400 were found to be frauds. The most common form of fraud? Working women taking a second job and not reporting that income.
http://spritzophrenia.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/how-bad-is-welfare-fraud-in-the-usa/

This 2% figure seems to hold across programs:
1.9% of Unemployment benefit claims
2.2% of benefits in the UK


So, if 1.4% of the population is getting cash benefits (not including food stamps)
And 2% of them are getting these fraudulently,
that means three people out of every ten thousand might be living on the princely sum of $11,000 a year, at tax payer expense.

9300 people getting direct cash benefits.
This means, in all of Memphis, there are 200 people getting welfare benefits they are not entitled to. So, we're subsidizing 50 families.

Let's look at food stamps.
About 93,000 Memphians get foodstamps, figure 2500 households .
About half of them already HAVE jobs. Which means they've likely already been drug tested.


But it's what the (colored, criminal, thieving) poor deserve, right? They want our money, they meet out conditions. 
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24708.htm

Why do we look down the ladder and yell, instead of looking up the ladder and protesting?
Because it's easier to worry about the woman buying a bakery cake or the $550,000 that is getting squandered on fraudulent families.
Because billions of dollars evaporating in mortgages, loans, securities and bank fraud is too much to take in.
Because we can shame an individual.
Because we can pass laws to humiliate the poor at our state level, as we sift out the ":Deserving" and "undeserving"
Because we cannot do anything against those above us.

Because we are terrified and trying to maintain our position as "better than" by punishing those below us.

We're punching down.

Comments

[nbrooks.livejournal.com]

Preach!

[jess-faraday.livejournal.com]

Well said.