I keep having this conversation with co-workers.
Coworker: "All I know is there are too many entitled people out there. I don't want somebody with a cell phone taking my hard earned money to buy themselves video games and then buy steak with food stamps paid for with my taxes." Then inevitably, they go on. "I know all about it. My [cousin/half-sister/niece] is on the dole and she is playing it for all she can get."
Well, sure you have a bad opinion of those on the dole. Of the poor people you know, 100% are gaming the system.
I understand how they feel. 50% of the people I know gamed the system. My brother is still on disability and is truly too unbalanced to work, but my father could have worked all through his ten years of disability. Now, granted, his work fired him because he got cancer, and Mom wasn't on disability, so they might have felt there was a disability credit in their names. I got a semester's Pell Grant out of it too, so there's my complicity.
But, if you average Dave and Dad, I'm from a 50% Welfare Queen family. (I'm a Welfare Duchess.) You'd think I'd be on the fence about fraud, and I might have were it not for the visit Mom took us on to see one of her cases. Brown meat and flies in the refrigerator. They were actual poor people, where the average fraud rate is nine percent. Just nine, not 50 to 100 percent like you see in our middle-class families.
I qualified for food stamps (or whatever it's called now) right before I got a job. My plan was to go into a fancy grocery store and buy the most expensive steak I could find and dare anyone to say a word while I stared defiantly back at them. I was kind of pissed off at the world - can you tell?
Where I met real poor people was at the unemployment office, where I talked to a guy who was going to get $400 - a month. His wife was on disability. One of his kids was disabled. And that was just the start of the conversation.
Posted by: Becs | November 21, 2012 at 07:13 AM
i like you when you're funny, and i love you when you get all on your soapbox.
Posted by: magpie | November 21, 2012 at 11:38 AM
Ugh, I don't know how you work with people like that. Maybe the biggest perk of my gov't job is being surrounded by middle class working people who are liberal and generally Democrats. I don't think I could eat my lunch around folks like your co-workers.
Posted by: Amy in StL | November 21, 2012 at 02:05 PM
As one of those coworkers, I was 14 or 15 when my father (the sole breadwinner) became ill with kidney disease. We got food stamps, and when my father died three months before I turned 18, my mother, sister, brother and I were eligible for social security. I was also eligible for pell grants, state grants to go to college.
I don't begrudge helping the poor. I am glad to see some of my taxes go to help families such as mine. My sister is mentally ill and on the dole. Yes. Good. People do NOT want her in the workplace. Trust met.
Welfare is and should be available in a civilized society. Do certain people (who are perfectly capable of working) take advantage of it? You bet. Is it as rampant as conservatives believe? No.
I'm in favor of the welfare state. Can it be made better? Why not? Should we go the way the Republican Party wants to take things? Hell, no.
Posted by: Marcia | November 21, 2012 at 05:57 PM
Magpie - I have an image of me in a coronet on a soapbox.
Amy in StL - Oh, no, they have a point too. I don't ever agree with it, but I see where they're coming from. Unless it's about ObamaCare: I always want to ask them to return the money I spent giving their children a free education.
Marcia - Interesting. If I didn't know you I would assume from what you wrote you were one of the coworkers I was disagreeing with. Do I read this right? Are you just heatedly agreeing with me?
Posted by: TheQueen | November 22, 2012 at 10:17 PM
Indeed I am heatedly agreeing with you.
Posted by: Marcia | November 24, 2012 at 05:48 PM
We got in on the welfare when the "welfare state" in California provided free college educations. My husband went to grad school on a NASA scholarship. All free stuff. This is the basis of our personal affluence, along with the SS and Medicare we now have.
I'll bet there is hardly a person in this country that has not had some kind of government benefit. That's why we pay our taxes, to provide benefits to ourselves and our fellow citizens.
Don't know why this simple fact is so hard to grasp.
Posted by: Hattie | November 24, 2012 at 06:33 PM
I was able to go to community college because of Pell, food stamps, free lunch, and Medicaid. It worked. Now I pay taxes and I am very glad to know that some of my taxes go to those programs. You can tell your co-workers you have heard of someone who won the game.
"Gaming the system" makes me think of Bernie Madoff who gamed until he couldn't anymore. Wonder how his theft compares to welfare fraud?
Posted by: Wendy | November 24, 2012 at 08:42 PM
Marcia - I thought so.
Hattie - I think we all need to accept you pay for things you like (in my case, welfare) and things you don't (wars). If my coworkers are happy to pay for the wars and don't want to pay for the aid then we all cancel each other out. The Circle of Life! Karma! Something!
Wendy - Well, they're pretty pissed at Bernie too.
Posted by: TheQueen | November 24, 2012 at 10:51 PM