Just me venting and ranting. I'd like to hear some opinions about this.

Is it just me or does the way social programs like welfare, food stamps and unemployment work disgust anyone? I'm all for helping hide who legitemetly need help. But is it getting out of hand?

I used to work at a grocery store while in college. At the beginning of the month, people would come in, buying tons of meat, steaks ribs, seafood and junk food. With ebt food stamp cards. Then buy cigarettes and beer with cash. I'm thinking, if you're that bad off you need government assistance, why not use the money you're paying for cigarettes and alcohol and buy food with it for you and your god damn 12 children you're dragging behind you.

I've talked to people unemployed, or on government assistance. I've heard them say things like, why try to better themselves when the government gives them housing, food, cell phone anything they want. Why work hard when it's handed to you for free!!!

I've heard people tell me that I'm stupid for not being in welfare or I'm stupid for not getting food stamps.

Is this really he culture? To be praised for needing government assistance?!?

I don't make a lot of money, but I manage what make and buy only things I need. I'm happy, I pay my taxes and I don't ask for much. But it pisses me off when people don't do shit with their lives and call it being less fortunate and that they are owed something for it, while I'm called privaliged.

It makes me sick.

... and then there's people who genuinely need it. Are you against helping them? It sounds like the problem to you isn't the welfare itself, but the minority of applicants who abuse it.

Majority of those receiving benefits work a minimum of 30 hours per week, something legally required by most welfare programs. If you're in a two-parent household, you have to work up to 50 hours. Who could be working full-time and yet still need benefits? Maybe those 88 percent of minimum wage laborers over 20 years old? Do you know how many states have only a $7.25 minimum wage?

$7.50 minimum wage here in NM. Come join us.

What about those who really need it?

You need to learn some shit instead of regurgitating right-wing talking points.

http://usuncut.com/politics/6-common-wel...believing/

Quote:Myth #1: Welfare encourages people to not work.
One popular right-wing talking point is that there are all these jobs that aren’t being taken because people would rather take a welfare check than get a job. But an overwhelming majority of welfare recipients work—according to a 2014 study by the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, 73 percent of welfare recipients are working at least part-time.
When looking at the numbers by industry, half of the nation’s fast food workers and nearly half of America’s home health care providers are receiving public assistance either in the form of food stamps, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or the Earned Income Tax Credit. 46 percent of childcare workers rely on welfare, as do one-fourth of adjunct college professors.

and so on.

Yes, there are people who take advantage of government assistance. But defining an entire group of people by the worst elements is silly and childish.

There are people who genuinely need help and use it properly. You don't notice those people, because you are counting the misses and not the hits. My sister was one of them. She only had one kid, but her husband was in the middle of a career change after not making it as a preacher, and they manage a transitional housing complex for at risk women and their children, and got paid in rent. She used EBT to buy food for her family.

If you talked to people who are proud to make $275 a week on unemployment and do nothing else with their lives, then you have managed to link in with a certain percentage of every society. People who are happy to game the system and live in squalor exist, and they aren't going away. Now you have to ask yourself, do you want to punish their kids for their parent's choices in life? Do you strip the parent of welfare because his choices "make you sick" and let the kids starve because you don't like it that poor people are more likely to be addicted to smoking and they buy their cigarettes with cash? You also have to ask yourself, how much does it cost cities/counties/municipalities to manage a homeless population? When people don't get government assistance, do they tend to resort to criminal activity to make ends meet. You pay for this with tax dollars (police involvement, public defenders, jail/prisons, safety measures). So, you weigh the fiscal costs of paying for public defenders and how much it costs to house a low level offender in a state prison.

EBT systems drastically reduce cash on hand, and therefore street crime. They help people who actually need it, and some that take advantage. If you think living on welfare is some sort of easy life, you are sorely mistaken.

Your privilege is not something you are guilty of. It's not something you did wrong. It is a product of your upbringing, the good job your parents did (assuming here), and your social station. It also is a product of the color of your skin. (Assuming here again.)

As a brown person in Tennessee, I have had a service weapon pulled on me during a traffic stop for having a taillight out on my car. I have been told that they don't serve "towelheads" here because I am racially ambiguous enough to look Middle Eastern. Will I not get hired for the color of my skin? I have to constantly worry about whether some of these people around here is going to call me "boy" (happens about once every other month or so) and how I'm going to respond. I have to walk a tightrope because if I am too loud, then I'm the angry nigger, and if I don't stand up for myself, they don't hear how offensive it is. The privilege that white people have is that they don't have to worry about those types of things on a daily basis. It's not something you are guilty of, it just is something that exists.

So when someone talks about white privilege, they are not talking about how you don't have any worries of your own and you are living the Life of Reilly. They are just talking about the things that aren't on your plate. If someone talks about how they are owed government assistance, then they are being silly, and are not indicative of everyone who actually needs assistance.

If you live in a world where the taxes you pay should only go to help people like you, then you don't live in the America I grew up in.

(December 10, 2016 at 1:21 pm)Loading Please Wait Wrote: Just me venting and ranting. I'd like to hear some opinions about this.

Is it just me or does the way social programs like welfare, food stamps and unemployment  work disgust anyone? I'm all for helping hide who legitemetly need help. But is it getting out of hand?

wut 

It's turning into a white privilege thread.

Personally, when faced with a choice between seeing children and the disadvantaged starve and allowing a few that abuse the system do so, I choose the latter- and it's not even close. Your mileage - and empathy - may vary.