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Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by jdhendrickson on Sunday November 05, 2023 @09:41PM (#38158165)
This whole post could be summed up as "I make up stories from people that don't exist to justify my selfish world view", and frankly these "people are saying" anecdotes with no facts backing them up don't work well on a site where people research things instead of taking them at face value. If you want that kind of echo chamber, may I recommend Facebook or something similar?

70% (approximately) of people on welfare already have a job. That's strange isn't it? Not going fishing. Not living the life working under the table. No, doing the hard jobs you expect to be done for next to nothing, for your comfort and convenience. They clean your hotel rooms, wait on you at restaurants and check you out at your local Walmart that destroyed all the other work in their town, and then paid them so little they had to apply for help to feed their children. These vital jobs that people expected to be done even in the middle of a pandemic, well they don't pay enough to live off of anymore. Because the wealth only moves in one direction and has for decades.

Welfare the majority of the time is a hand up not a hand out, 50% of recipients are able to get off of it inside of a year, 70% inside of 2 years and if we should have a few people who game the system, oh well. It's a necessary evil to make sure women and children are not on the streets, to ensure that once you are down you are not out, because we are the most prosperous nation on earth and we can EASILY afford it, and part of the social contact entailed in being an American is you care for your fellow Americans. Unless you are someone who sits around ruminating about what an injustice it is that a portion of your income is used to keep children from being hungry and how very unfair that is to you.

I pay more than what I am asked in taxes, I contribute to charities at a rate that most people would be surprised by, and I can tell you this. Every charity in our country is a failure of our government. Every church that proselytizes via helping the poor does so because the system we built is not working for it's constituents, and myopic people want to spend a bunch of time fighting about who gets what of the very, very thin slice of the pie, instead of actually doing the hard work of reforming the bakery. If there is any truth to your anecdotes at all consider this; it might be more telling of you and the moral fibre of those you surround yourself with than people at large.

Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by WalterBright on Sunday November 05, 2023 @10:03PM (#38158306)
Take a look at a graph of the US poverty rate over the years. It went down until around 1968, where it bottomed out and started going back up.

What happened in 1968? Johnson's Great Society program.

Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by Gibbon1 on Sunday November 05, 2023 @10:05PM (#38158328)
One can look at a graph of US oil imports over time and see something more reasonable.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...

Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by refurb on Sunday November 05, 2023 @10:54PM (#38158654)
Census bureau poverty rate is before social benefits.

It’s much lower after adjusting for social benefits.

Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by WalterBright on Sunday November 05, 2023 @11:09PM (#38158737)
> is before social benefits

Right, and it stopped going down.

Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by refurb on Monday November 06, 2023 @12:24AM (#38159177)
From the data I’ve seen the poverty rate has trended down since the 60’s
Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by WalterBright on Monday November 06, 2023 @12:41AM (#38159281)
Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by refurb on Monday November 06, 2023 @08:31PM (#38171951)
Exactly. Page 11. Poverty rates are lower now than in 1964.
Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by jimmydddd on Sunday November 05, 2023 @10:03PM (#38158312)
I can never wrap my mind around the Walmart thing.
Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by User23 on Sunday November 05, 2023 @10:33PM (#38158524)
Wait until you hear about Dollar General.
Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by Clubber on Sunday November 05, 2023 @10:19PM (#38158428)
Not only do we subsidize their workforce, we pay for the police to arrest shoplifters for them.
Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by WalterBright on Sunday November 05, 2023 @10:38PM (#38158557)
Do you really want people to hire private police forces?
Re:Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts by BetaDeltaAlpha on Monday November 06, 2023 @12:34AM (#38159232)
Safeway in SF does this (hiring private security, many off-duty cops) now.