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Why should we agree with that? Shellfish is good for a balanced diet and soda is cheap and delicious. Plus I don't really care what they eat or drink as long as they can make it a month on it. #freedom #murica

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Why should we agree with that? Shellfish is good for a balanced diet and soda is cheap and delicious. Plus I don't really care what they eat or drink as long as they can make it a month on it. #freedom #murica

Because restrictions on poor people = good, but restrictions on business etc = bad

OgreChubbs wrote:


Also welfare is a strict place vs the poor alot less so vs the middle class. I drop off some lumber there every now and again and you see people in 100k plus cars getting their check. Then you see alot of druggies with 4 kids all dressed like trash even tho they get miney for the kids they spend it on drugs.

You may be confused. Those are not poor people, those are Politicians.

People seem to be really confused on the drugs of abuse by the very poor in America. It's not things like coke or heroin, addictions that can cost 100's of dollars a day, it's alcohol.

Cheap, 10 handles of vodka and malt liquor. Of course there are poor hard drug users, but the vast majority of (really any) group of addict poor aren't blowing all their money on cocaine, they're blowing it on booze.

That one substance that is always mysteriously absent from these tests, and surprisingly isn't demonized like that nasty plant cannabis in poor populations like alcohol.

Cars.com doesn't even sell 100k+ cars in my area, I must be in the wrong part of Oklahoma.

But it is actually quite normal for people on welfare to have nice cars, and there is no reason for them not to have a nice car. Of course if you don't know the facts about life on welfare this can easily be one of those "people are abusing welfare, just look at their car" kind of situation.

When Florida instituted drug testing, it found that the people eligible for welfare pissed hot so infrequently, they spent more on the drug testing then they would have spent on benefits for said drug testers.

The only way that this makes sense is if A.) You want to dehumanize poor people for the sin of being poor, even though it costs more, or if B.) your family has interests in the drug testing labs that are approved to provide the testing.

In neither A nor B should this program continue, let alone be expanded.

 Ouze wrote:
When Florida instituted drug testing, it found that the people eligible for welfare pissed hot so infrequently, they spent more on the drug testing then they would have spent on benefits for said drug testers.

And it should probably also be pointed out that the rates of people applying for welfare wasn't affected by the decision to begin drug testing, so there wasn't any evidence that people decided not to apply either. Just to get that out of the way before people try to argue that point.

I'm assuming this whole drugs thing is because for some people there is an assumption that if you are poor you must do drug? Fitting in with the whole narrative that the only reason anyone is poor is because they have not tried hard enough? The whole "there's no poor people, only people who are not rich yet thing"?

Most people who are poor are not addicts, or alcoholic. They are just trying to get buy, and assuming they are, and putting an extra stress on their life(what happens if they mix up my test? Will it show posative because of that person in the street I walked past smoking weed, or because of the cough medicine I had last week, like that athlete, or the poppyseed roll I had earlier etc...). There are a lot of misconceptions and just made up stuff. Most people are just trying to get through their lives without needing more arbitrary restrictions just to please some people with petty vengeance issues.

Doing some research im quite shocked by the number of jobs in the US that do drug testing. It shocks me again and again that a country so obsessed with personal freedom in public how many ways you give up privacy and freedom. Drug testing is almost unheard of in the UK unless you work in a very small number of jobs, such as being a pilot.

 feeder wrote:
Testing welfare recipients for drugs is a money losing system. Why waste money in such a fashion?

And finds nothing, really.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/02/19/3747139/states-drug-testing-welfare-recipients/

850,000 spent in 10 states to find a handful of people in 2015.

Maine's system only tests those with prior drug convictions. All of 7 people were tested, if I read that right.

Asterios wrote:
but would you be agreeable to certain things not being able to be bought with foodstamps like shellfish and soda and such?

No, because those restrictions have no practical purpose and I don't see any value in having a law that essentially says "poor people must be miserable at all times".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

OgreChubbs wrote:
So a 20$ drug test could cut someone off 450$.

Except it's not just one $20 drug test, it's the $20 drug test for that person plus a whole lot of other $20 drug tests for people who pass the test, plus all of the bureaucracy to manage the whole system. Once you consider the total costs of the testing you end up spending more than you "save" in denied welfare payments. So it really is a case of "I'm willing to spend $2 to keep you from having $1".

 Steve steveson wrote:

Doing some research im quite shocked by the number of jobs in the US that do drug testing. It shocks me again and again that a country so obsessed with personal freedom in public how many ways you give up privacy and freedom. Drug testing is almost unheard of in the UK unless you work in a very small number of jobs, such as being a pilot.

The argument is, and I have seen it as recently as yesterday on here, that you do not have privacy from your boss. Because companies need freedom too. Freedom to invade the private lives of their employees. We only get privacy from the government, in certain situations, depending on what is going on and who is in office..... #freedom #murica

I don't agree with it, but that is generally the argument I am given when I ask why mandatory drug testing is a thing.

 Peregrine wrote:

Asterios wrote:
but would you be agreeable to certain things not being able to be bought with foodstamps like shellfish and soda and such?

No, because those restrictions have no practical purpose and I don't see any value in having a law that essentially says "poor people must be miserable at all times".

Poor people can only eat poor food! Otherwise, how are we going to tell who is in what strict caste system we are putting in place!

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:

Doing some research im quite shocked by the number of jobs in the US that do drug testing. It shocks me again and again that a country so obsessed with personal freedom in public how many ways you give up privacy and freedom. Drug testing is almost unheard of in the UK unless you work in a very small number of jobs, such as being a pilot.

The argument is, and I have seen it as recently as yesterday on here, that you do not have privacy from your boss. Because companies need freedom too. Freedom to invade the private lives of their employees. We only get privacy from the government, in certain situations, depending on what is going on and who is in office..... #freedom #murica

I don't agree with it, but that is generally the argument I am given when I ask why mandatory drug testing is a thing.

 Peregrine wrote:

Asterios wrote:
but would you be agreeable to certain things not being able to be bought with foodstamps like shellfish and soda and such?

No, because those restrictions have no practical purpose and I don't see any value in having a law that essentially says "poor people must be miserable at all times".

Poor people can only eat poor food! Otherwise, how are we going to tell who is in what strict caste system we are putting in place!

Its not about personal freedom or company freedom. Every employee represents an investment in time and money. If you are doing meth on the regular, at some point, you will become useless to that company, its not an if. If you are in charge of peoples money, have a high risk job, any number of other situations, being on drugs shows a lack of reliability, personal discipline, and not to mention illegal activity. And as Frazzled pointed out earlier, after I misunderstood him, drug testing is not mandatory, unless you want to work in one of those jobs and get paid. McDonalds hires just about anyone, please feel free to make that a life goal if you insist on illicit drugs. Otherwise, join the rest of the real world and get to work.

This seems like one of those situations in which people's philosophy of public life is diametrically opposed and no amount of fact pointing out by either side will bring a resolution to the debate.