I am going to tell a story about the state I live in: Maine.
We have many programs: HUD (to help pay rent), Food Stamps, HEAP (fuel/electricity assistance), and others.
All of these have complex forms to fill out, and offices filled with staff that don't actually understand the complex rules, and the rules seem to change all the time.
Hiring these people costs money. Due to the complexity of the rules and forms, many families that qualify for these programs do not apply for them due to the frustration they cause, and when you're poor you only have a limited amount of frustration before you curl up and cry yourself to sleep every night.
Many consider just getting any aid from the state a full time job in of itself.
Not only that, programs like food stamps issue a card, the maintenance of these cards is probably not cheap as they outsource it to some company out of state. The minimum you can get on food stamps here is $15/mo (which helps absolutely no one, I'm sorry, but $15/mo could be a day's worth of food for a couple with a kid); what is the actual cost of doing that $15/mo? I read somewhere that a quarter of a million households qualify for food stamps in Maine, how much are money are we losing administering a program like this that has such little benefit? Could we be feeding another few thousand households with that waste?
I've been advocating a basic income program for years purely because of the efficiency of it. Once people no longer have to worry about where their next meal is, or their wife's next meal, or their kids's next meal, or if they will have a roof over their head tomorrow, or will their car be stolen, I mean, repoed by the bank tomorrow, they can actually focus on being gainfully employed, or go back to school, or just not be a fucking wreck.
I live in Maine. I suspect we are the poorest and most forgotten about state in the great experiment that is our nation. A program like this would create all the jobs we don't have, would end the constant bullshit people here have to deal with, and probably save lives as well.
Life here is so bleak that, as a non-alcoholic, people have assumed that I mean that I'm just in AA, and quit drinking. "No," I tell them, "I really don't drink. Never have." They look at me like I have two heads.
Yup (ex-pat Mainer that had to leave to find real work). The really perverse thing is where some of these benefits have income cliffs, where you lose the benefit if you make too much money working. For instance, let's say that you get to work some overtime and earn a little extra money. Then you realize that you've gone over the line to get your heat assistance, and you've got to come up with the $600/mo to fill the oil tank out of your own pocket. You'd be better off not working any harder, unless you can make the jump to get out of the band where losing benefits offsets the increased income.
I have never heard someone talk about Maine as bleak. Seems like most people who live there or are from there love it. Are you really saying poverty in Maine eclipses the Deep South?
Purely anecdotal, but I took a roadtrip through southern Appalachia a few years ago, and the parts of West Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina that I went through reminded me so much of rural Maine that it wasn't funny.
Maine is really two different states. There is southern Maine, centered on York and Cumberland counties (basically the Portland metro area), and then there is the rest of the state. The other half of Maine has very little industry, almost no white-collar work, and extremely low population density. There are entire regions of the state that are propped up by one or two paper mills that are still operating, or subsist off of tourism dollars during the summer months or the ski season. And even tourism and skiing took a beating during the recent financial crisis.
I agree with this. When people say "Hey, what about Portland" I tell them, no, Portland and Kittery are actually part of New Hampshire since they seem to get all the actual benefit.
Like, you know how when you travel between states, theres the major highways, and theres tons forest, and no actual towns or anything for miles? It isn't like that from NH into Portland, it IS like that from Portland into Augusta or on the way up to Bangor.
Oh, and as for all the paper mills? We're killing those off. And our one large major employer that isn't in Portland/Kittery? Its rumored that since Jackson Lab couldn't open a big new location here in Maine and opened it in Flordia instead, they're moving their existing location here down to Florida too (and with that, probably thousands of jobs will go with it between the people that work there and the people that support those people in that community).
Its like, can we just leave the US and join Canada already?
We have many programs: HUD (to help pay rent), Food Stamps, HEAP (fuel/electricity assistance), and others.
All of these have complex forms to fill out, and offices filled with staff that don't actually understand the complex rules, and the rules seem to change all the time.
Hiring these people costs money. Due to the complexity of the rules and forms, many families that qualify for these programs do not apply for them due to the frustration they cause, and when you're poor you only have a limited amount of frustration before you curl up and cry yourself to sleep every night.
Many consider just getting any aid from the state a full time job in of itself.
Not only that, programs like food stamps issue a card, the maintenance of these cards is probably not cheap as they outsource it to some company out of state. The minimum you can get on food stamps here is $15/mo (which helps absolutely no one, I'm sorry, but $15/mo could be a day's worth of food for a couple with a kid); what is the actual cost of doing that $15/mo? I read somewhere that a quarter of a million households qualify for food stamps in Maine, how much are money are we losing administering a program like this that has such little benefit? Could we be feeding another few thousand households with that waste?
I've been advocating a basic income program for years purely because of the efficiency of it. Once people no longer have to worry about where their next meal is, or their wife's next meal, or their kids's next meal, or if they will have a roof over their head tomorrow, or will their car be stolen, I mean, repoed by the bank tomorrow, they can actually focus on being gainfully employed, or go back to school, or just not be a fucking wreck.
I live in Maine. I suspect we are the poorest and most forgotten about state in the great experiment that is our nation. A program like this would create all the jobs we don't have, would end the constant bullshit people here have to deal with, and probably save lives as well.
Life here is so bleak that, as a non-alcoholic, people have assumed that I mean that I'm just in AA, and quit drinking. "No," I tell them, "I really don't drink. Never have." They look at me like I have two heads.