I need some help. Recently I read something re the wealthy receiving more benefits than the poor.

[MissMarple]

Now I can't find it. A friend would like the source to use with some of her friends. Someone has published a study finding that the non "poor" and the poor receive between $5000 and $6000 annually. But the poor actually get somewhat less. Does anyone have a clue about this?

I thought it was reported on Talking Points, but I can't find it there or on google. It seems like good information to share with all of the "welfare fraud" mantra people, whether they like it or not. Any thing backing up the point would be great. I found one at Time magazine from when Bill Clinton was first in office. Something from this century would be muy better.

Thanks for any help. :hi:

[Cleita]

1. What are you talking about?

If you are talking about Social Security, the benefit is based on what you earned over your lifetime, so yes, the poor will get less because they didn't earn as much. In many cases because elderly women like myself didn't make the wages men did back in the last century, most of us women get less SS than our husbands.

[MissMarple]

2. It was more than S.S. I know the farm bill is a huge net for them.

I didn't read all the particulars at the time. And with S.S., the wealthy don't pay any where near the percentage of their income than those making under $100,000 do, men or women.

Thanks!

[yellowdogintexas]

5. well some where back in the 1960's I THINK the farmers were finally included in SS

benefits. They had not been for a long time, actually. So whatever their income taxes showed for the years prior determined their benefit, since they don't receive wages in the same way as other workers. They also had some sort of a one time bonus built in if they were over a certain age at that time. They now pay self employment tax on their personal income from the farm, which was not the case before.

My widow aunt received a larger benefit because her husband didn't even get into the system until he was 75 or so in age, which also increases the monthly amount in the formula, plus the handicap. If he had started getting benefits at 65 her monthly check would have been lower.

She would have been eligible for a small check of some sort on her own but the widow can choose between her own benefit or the spouse's whichever is higher.

You are correct in the percentage amount statement.

We only pay the SS tax on the first $100K or whatever it is now, no matter how much we make which is why the person with a huge income will get the same benefit as the person who is just at $100K ..that is the cap.

Farmers do have options to place land in the Soil Bank and a stipend is given for that land being out of action..not able to generate income in the normal manner. They also get disaster funds if their barn blows up or a fire destroys the corn or hail wipes out the beans and so forth

This began as a means of encouraging crop rotation and also to help manage the flow of crops so as to not have a huge surplus of one crop in one year then none of it in another year. This is completely different from the specific crop subsidies, like dairy or the old tobacco one.

[yellowdogintexas]

3. if you are talking about Social Security benefits, which is the one thing everybody gets

your SS Benefit from which all COLA increases are calculated is in fact based on your income over the last 3 or 4 years back from the time you sign up for it.

There is a maximum cap that no one can exceed.

Everyone with averaged income above that receives the same amount per month.

Everybody with averaged income below that will have their benefit determined by their income, it progressively drops as the income average drops.

Widow's benefits are based on the husband's so a widow who was never in the workforce whose husband was entitled to the max will get more per month than a single woman who worked all her life at a low paying job. and the widow doesn't need the money and the single woman does.

Not fair but the story of my two aunts.

(Sort of sucks that someone who never worked and didn't pay a dime into the system can get the max, but it happens. I have a strong inclination towards income based SS benefits; basically if you have a trust fund, by God you don't get the benefits. Bet Teddy Kennedy donates his to charity. )

Your Medicare is the same regardless of income; it is not affected by anything.

If your income is low enough, you can get Medicaid and it picks up your Medicare premiums and pays your deductible and out of pocket expenses on anything Medicare covers. If your income is low enough for Medicaid, you can probably get Food Stamps and maybe a housing supplement if you are a renter.

disclaimer: this is how it worked between Medicare and Medicaid a long time ago, I do not know if these rules have changed recently. ******************

I hope this helps you some

[MissMarple]

4. Thanks, it's helpful, especially the widow, single mom thing. n/t

[yellowdogintexas]

6. good. My aunts were both childless actually ..they were my great aunts

one never married..she was the poor one
the other one married the farmer who lived long enough to cash in on the addition of the farmers to SS benefits. She called her SS check her "mad Money" which made my mom and me furious.

My mother just could not understand why my working aunt got so little and my other aunt so much. We were both very outraged, good liberals that we were.

I was working for Medicare at the time so I went to our Social Security in house rep for answers and he walked me through it step by step which is pretty much as I related it to you.

[MissMarple]

7. That is very frustrating. We can do better than that as a country.

And, apparently, the farm bill has a ton of pork for factory farms and even rural acreage with single family homes that are just more suburban suburbia. I think they are called cowboy start up kits. Bill Moyers had a program on this earlier this year. It is absolutely a tragic absurdity. The farm bill does a lot good, but it is also a feeding trough for big ag and random owners of formerly agricultural land, for untilled agricultural land. For instance, rice farmers in Texas get disaster money even if they have no loss, no damage, have planted no crops. Crazy making. But food stamps and school lunch subsidies are in the farm bill. Politics...don't you love it? :banghead:

[yellowdogintexas]

8. I think food stamps and school lunch are in the USDA because they

both originally sprouted from the old surplus food programs Government Commodity Foods

Way back when ... before food stamps instead of a coupon you could use at the grocery, you had access to the surplus food supply.

cheese, ground beef, bread, butter, etc were actually distributed on certain days, from refrigerated trucks IIRC.

School cafeterias received truckloads of stuff that they didn't have to pay for, so they used it..which is why back then we always had real butter on the bread and mashed potatoes, and lots of things made with cheap hamburger

Showing my age here, I graduated from high school just as food stamps were starting up. I do not know if schools anywhere get commodity stuff any more..possibly in places where fast food merchandisers have not been allowed to take over the food supply in the schools., or in rural places ...

I no longer have the bookmark but there is a website that allows one to search any county in the US for farm subsidies and stuff by name. So I went out there and pulled up my little farm county in Kentucky. I am either related to or went to school with most of the persons on that list. They aren't making any money off the Soil Bank. There are a few incorporated farms but I think they are owned by families who combined individual holdings into an incorporation for income tax purposes .. gotta tell you when I saw what my sister and her family received over past 10 years I was furious because it was so little...at least in the context of the assumption that farmers are raking it in with these funds. I was like..hey Joe, why not put that 100 acres in the Soil Bank and pay off your equipment expenses? The year they received the most was the year they lost a full tobacco barn (those things implode, from spontaneous combustion) ...several local farmers lost barns that year; it was a hot hot summer ..that was the one guaranteed cash a farmer could count on so they got some money to offset the loss.

[AnneD]

9. The program has an even darker begining....

Americans were so malnourished during the depression, when the war came around 30% of the young men were rejected due to nutritionally caused deficiencies. That is why some of these programs came about.

[yellowdogintexas]

10. makes sense to me..I did not know when it started, I just knew it existed when

I was a kid