My BIOT - welfare rant
Today I went shopping and a lady In front of me made a big deal because she had to pay $3 out of pocket for her giant cart of groceries. Her bill was $259 and she seriously complained about $3 dollars. She realized she didn't have enough on her card. The perception of this lady was bad, she had 6 kids with her and one of them was pregnant.
I look down at my cart and only have a few items and I don't buy anything unless it's on sale or I have a coupon. When I do shop I make sure I don't break my fragile bank account.
I work at a place that 90% of our employees and 50% of our customers are on some type of government assistance. The things they buy make me upset. If you're getting assistance you should not be wearing a juicy couture sweatshirt or sporting micheal kors purse. I get pretty close with my employees and listen to them when they have tough days. Sometimes it upsets me that I can't get through to them on how to better thier lives, instead they get pregnant, again.
This is my rant, judge me if you want.
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Nothing better than second,
Nothing better than second, third or fourth generation welfare moms. Drives me nuts.
Exactly. One of my sisters
Exactly. One of my sisters got food stamps many years ago and she was determined to work hard to get off of welfare as soon as possible.
She is now mentally ill, enough that she could easily get disability but she doesn't. She works her ass off and she may lose a job because of her illness but she gets another one and keeps on plugging along, doing the best that she can. That's just how we were raised.
Just a back story to why I
Just a back story to why I feel this way.
I've never been on assistance my adult life. My mother raised us kids on it, but would sell the paper food stamps to support her drug habit. So we had to worry where our next meal was coming from.
Now as an adult, I worked hard for everything, put myself through college. I also deal with ss12 Bm as a welfare princess.
I used to work in medical
I used to work in medical billing in a small town. One of our patients and her kids were on medicaid, but she wore designer clothes, carried a designer handbag and drove a Lexus. She was married, husband was a fisherman and she had a job.
Used to drive us all nuts when she came into the office. None of us could figure out how she and her kids could be on medicaid.
When I used to work at
When I used to work at Wal-Mart, that is all I would see. Women with multiple kids with BMW keys, sporting the newest phones, wearing designer labels, with manicured nails. It makes me sick to see what these people get away with. What really angers me is when a young woman who is working her way through school, spending every dollar she makes on rent and school supplies, who can't apply for student aid since her mother died and her father wanted nothing to do with her, being denied food stamps simply because she was responsible enough to NOT have a child without being able to afford it.
I am very opinionated about
I am very opinionated about this subject. Years ago, I got into a discussion with a co-worker about soda.
"Oh," she says, "you don't think poor people deserve to drink soda?"
"No, not if they cannot pay for it. It is not a necessity, it is a luxury."
I believe in helping my fellow man. I don't believe in helping them eat steak when someone else is picking up the tab.
My SD23 would tell my husband that she and her husband (now ex) were eating steak and shrimp. They got food stamps. My DH and I are a 2 income family with no kids and are getting by ok but we do not eat steak and shrimp hardly EVER. My priority is paying off my house, paying my bills, etc., since I get NO help from the government because I don't have kids (no kid deductions on tax returns). Pissed.me.off. SD thinks, hey, free money, go crazy!
So, I agree. I feel that if you are on assistance, only certain things should qualify. Steak, shrimp, and caviar are not necessary for survival. I know for WIC, only certain cereals qualify and I feel it should be the same for food stamps. Not every food item should be available for welfare recipients. Sorry, that's just the way it is. You live off of other people (and I'm fine with helping) you take what you need and ONLY that.
I could never understand why
I could never understand why soda and candy bars were on the list of acceptable items to purchase with FS but yet toilet paper was not.
I was on assistance after I got pregnant on BC (yes, really) when in college. DS's deadbeat father fled the state to avoid paying CS until DS was almost 10. Even though I got FS, I STILL did the couponing etc. and I would have FS left over every single month. I could never understand people who complained because they didn't get enough. I guess cutting coupons is too much work for someone with no job!
^^^THIS^^^
^^^THIS^^^
It also is annoying that
It also is annoying that these people are allowed to buy soda and other junk food items with wic.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items
When DH was constructively
When DH was constructively fired 4 years ago he applied for unemployment. Then spent every single daytime hour finding a new job. He got one in 7 weeks (and a better one 2 months after that).
The unemployment checks started coming in and when he got a job he called them to let them know. They told him to cash the check anyway and if he owes them they will 'sort it out later'. He still sent it back with a note "Thanks but no thanks, I have a job now." Still the checks kept coming. Still he sent them back with documentation that he was working.
I think it was about 8 weeks before they worked it out. Even then they didn't take the checks back until he physically took time off his new job and went in to their office, sat for 2 hours and gave them all back. They couldn't understand why he didn't just cash the checks... Because he has integrity and is honest, dumbshit!
It also burns me bad because
It also burns me bad because I've got a friend who is on food stamps and getting unemployment benefits. He's busting his ass to look for a job so he can get off them. It's unconscionable to both of us as to how people have gotten away with welfare abuse-often for 3 or 4 generations.
If it takes on average 40k to
If it takes on average 40k to maintain a family, why in the world are people still insisting on paying $7.25 an hour? Why in the world do they think they can have it both ways? And in many many cases, it is not that the poor are lazy and don't want to work, it's that they are working and can't earn enough to make ends meet
Maybe they should have went to college to get a higher paying job before making a family. You can't blame the minimum wage on this. Minimum wage is not ment to support a family, it's for 1 person household, in college, or part time summer work. My first year of college I made 8,000 and I paid all my bills and lived on it just fine. I did not have fancy clothes and lives off Ramon noodles.
Minimum wage is getting raised in my state to 9.60 by 2016, guess how much a gallon of milk will cost. Out in the oil fields in North Dakota walmart is paying 17.90 for a sales associate, guess how much a 1 bedroom apartment costs - $2000.
Bottom line - don't make a family if you can't support them, because I don't want to.
I agree with you about
I agree with you about unemployment to a point. You first need a job to get it and it's an average pay out of the last 12 months of your income to the state max payout. This is for people that really need the help for a few weeks. I've moved so many times because of dh job. And 4 weeks was the longest I took to find gainful employment. So people taking 6 months to find a job are to picky or stupid.
One thing my mothers ex husband said to me and I will never forget this; "I only look for seasonal work so I can collect unemployment during the winter". He said this 15 years ago, and this is a driving factor for me to be succsessful in life because I never want to reach that low.