Monday Afternoon at the Welfare Office

115 thoughts on Monday Afternoon at the Welfare Office

1. Awesome post!

   The power trip seems very real. There’s also the not caring about poor people, and not wanting to see them. If the underclass is always shuttling between menial jobs, homes in highly-segregated, blighted neighborhoods and government offices in blighted urban areas, it’s very unlikely that those with privilege will have any meaningful interaction with the have-nots. It just reinforces the invisibility of poverty, making it easier for the people in power to ignore. Until the “middle class” actually sees poverty, it’s guaranteed that they’re going to dismiss it (and real people, whose lives are actually greatly inconvenienced by the government’s indifference).

   It boggles my mind how places like Milwaukee can be so incredibly economically and racially segregated, while few people seem to notice. I guess it’s easy to waste people’s time, if you’re operating under the assumption that they don’t exist, or at the very least, don’t matter.

   Sigh.

2. There’s also the idea that since you’re not working, they’ll make waiting in line will your job. Not so much giddy as vindictive. There’s a real hatred/terror of the poor on the part of those who provide for them; always afraid of being cheated so hoops are created to make sure you do some kind of ‘work.’

   Of course, this then eats up all your time so you’re unable to look for work or do anything else.

3. Two things for you:

   1) Some of the same problems in the UK, http://cruellablog.blogspot.com/2007/06/starters-orders.html

   2) Last call for subissions for the latest carnival of the feminists. Nominations here please: http://cruellablog.blogspot.com/2007/07/last-call-for-carnival.html

4. I think this has less to do with sadism than with a desire to limit the number of people collecting benefits. When there’s a government service that middle class and wealthy people need, it’s relatively painless to get it. I probably spend less than an hour per year waiting in line to get my car registered. When I need to report a crime, the police make a house call. The mailman brings letters right to my home. Busses come and take children from their homes to their schools.

   But when it’s a service that’s just for the poor and working class, there’s usually a conscious effort to make the procedure difficult. The theory seems to be that if you make it easy for people to get free food, health care, and housing, they’ll give up their jobs and start living on those generous government benefits.

   That’s ridiculous, of course, but it masks a real problem: we aren’t spending enough money on helping families who need a hand, so we have to limit the number of people taking benefits. We simply haven’t budgeted enough money to help everyone who needs it. But while I can accept that from an organization that relies on donations, like Toys for Tots, I can’t accept it from a government that spends more money every month on the war in Iraq than it spends on education, welfare, and public housing put together.

5. *waves*

   Hi. I’m someone who grew up on welfare, food stamps, food assistance programs (stale blocks of cheese, evaporated milk and a lot of peanut butter — I can’t eat peanut butter now, as an adult, because of it), etc. I’m now on Social Security disability due to … well, disability.

   Ironically enough, my husband has now taken a job at the county assistance office as a case worker. I get to see it from both sides now. And I try to bring a perspective for him of what it’s like to be on assistance: that these people are actually some of the hardest working, most determined people I’ve ever known. My mother, for my troubled relationship with her, was no slacker. I was a Type A before my condition started wearing down my ability to take care of myself* and I still fight the ambitious impulses, knowing that if I push myself too hard I’ll end up crashing.

   Now there’s some cognitive dissonance. I’m sure you’re familiar with the companion to the welfare wait-in-line attitude: not only should you sit down and shut up, but you should work yourself into a frenzy just to prove you are not a Lazy Slacking Freeloading Ass. You can’t allow yourself any rest. You have to have something to prove yourself when people look at you askance. I’ve had countless health crashes doing exactly this. Taking on too high a burden and not being able to handle it. So I’ve had to readjust, teach myself to maintain a careful balance, and it’s taken years. But now? Now when I realize: “I’m moving into a flare, it’s pointless to send out resumes looking for a new job because I can’t handle working at this point in time” I feel as though I am that Lazy Slacking Freeloading Ass because I’m trying to weasel myself out of having to work, or something. (Right. I’m voluntarily going through pain so bad I can hardly sit up, and can’t venture outside too long because my eyes will hurt the same way your legs might hurt after training for a marathon, so that I don’t have to work. That makes sense.)

   Anyway, I’m babbling. I just wanted to commiserate.

   * Standing in line is impossible for me. You’ll often find me, an otherwise healthy-looking adult, sitting on the ground, anywhere I need to, because I can’t stand for too long. I’ve kneeled down to rest in the grocery store countless times. It looks ridiculous, but fuck it, I stopped worrying about looking ridiculous a long time ago. I don’t need to put myself through that much more pain just to save the rest of the world having to deal with someone who’s different.

6. The one time in my life I ever got close to this was when I was between jobs and applied for unemployment. We were treated like cattle. That was years ago, and fortunately I found a new job after a few months, but that one experience was quite enough for me, thank you very much. My commiserations to the people who have to endure this treatment on a permanent or semi-permanent basis.

7. I’ve been on food stamps. It’s all true. You try to get as much work as you can – say you’re temping and it’s all you can do to rustle up three days’ work a week – and for every little thing they expect you to drag your ass to their dingy office and sit in the damn waiting room for two hours.

8. There’s also a racial aspect to the various efforts to make welfare as unpleasant as possible. Despite the fact that the vast majority of those recieving welfare are not black there is preception that most welfare recipients are black, which adds a racial element to the mix as well.

   Especially in the former Confederacy there is a racist belief that blacks are lazy, which neatly dovetails with the stereotype of welfare recipeients in general as lazy. For this reason we hear Limbaugh and his ilk froth about “Welfare Queens”, who, whenever they are depicted in the media, are inevitably black despite the twin facts that a) welfare queens don’t actually exist, and b) most people on welfare aren’t black.

9. amanda: yes, yes, yes and YES to everything you’ve said. That pressure to not be “like the rest of them” is enormous. If you use food stamps to buy groceries, you know the people in line are going to look at you crazy if you buy yourself some ice cream. When you apply for benefits (cash or otherwise) it’s not unusual to have caseworkers commend you on your education level, your speaking voice–well, then that just gets into the whole racist aspect of it too.

   I remind myself everyday that every mother is a working mother. Even though I don’t leave my house for my job, I’m raising a child, keeping a home, and being a part of my community. That in itself is worthwhile to me, although undervalued by society.

10. If anybody has any comments in moderation, I’m working on learning this system, so give me a bit. Just thought I’d mention that.

11. Yes Brad, and if there wasn’t that racist stereotype of people on welfare as black, it wouldn’t have been as easy for the welfare reform bill to be passed.

    Racism and classism, a great combination.

12. (delurks and welcomes)
    Back when my sisters and I were small, we were on WIC. I’d forgotten about all the poverty-shaming and dehumanization until now. Thanks for this.

13. They do it hoping that people will get so fed up with the system that they just give up.

    When I go to the DPS to renew my driver’s license, I only have to wait 15-30 minutes, tops. But even with an appointment at the welfare office, you’re lucky if you only have to wait an hour. I once waited until 4 PM for an appointment that was supposed to be at 1 PM.

14. Firstly, this story horrifies me. It shouldn’t have to be said that poor people are still people, deserving of dignity, respect and compassion.

    There is one thing that’s bothering me. Were there any men, any fathers queuing in that welfare office? My father is a single parent, and was unemployed for large parts of my childhood.

    I know that poverty is an issue which predominantly affects women, and that most single parents are mothers not fathers. The reasons for that are certainly are rooted in sexism – and may well be a contributing factor into the lack of respect which people on welfare are treated. Negative stereotypes about single mothers ‘milking the system’ are far more common than for their male counterparts.

    But it is possible to acknowledge all that, without ignoring the fact that families like mine exist.

15. You know, since they figured out a way to reduce wait times at the DMV, which processes far more people than the welfare system, they could do it at the welfare office, too.

    Applying for unemployment benefits was not terribly humiliating for me because I was able to do it through the internet — in fact, in California, they prefer you to do it that way.

    Which can only lead one to the conclusion that they don’t want to reduce the wait times. It’s a feature, not a bug.

16. It’s a feature, not a bug.

    Yep.

17. Mnemosyne Says:
    July 16th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
    You know, since they figured out a way to reduce wait times at the DMV, which processes far more people than the welfare system, they coulddo it at the welfare office, too.

    Applying for unemployment benefits was not terribly humiliating for me because I was able to do it through the internet — in fact, in California, they prefer you to do it that way.

    Which can only lead one to the conclusion that they don’t want to reduce the wait times. It’s a feature, not a bug.

    Exactly. That’s the way NY does it. It allowed me to look for work. It seems like welfare is run with the assumption that the exceptions (cheaters) are the rule.

18. Were there any men, any fathers queuing in that welfare office? My father is a single parent, and was unemployed for large parts of my childhood.

    Yes, there were and are men. But the overwhelming majority of caretakers in this world are women. In my years of doing welfare advocacy, I spoke to hundreds of people on welfare who were having trouble with their cases. I would say that less than 20 of those people were fathers.

19. Thank you for giving us a glimpse into the life that a lot of us don’t know very much about. I think that it’s brave, considering all of the people out there who love to berate and shame those on public assistance.

    And that’s what I think that all of this is about. Shaming and punishing. We make people stand in lines like this so that everyone can see their “lazy” and “ungrateful” butts standing in line and shake their heads. It’s because those of us who aren’t on public assistance think that we’re somehow better, when really we’re usually just a hell of a lot luckier.

20. If you use food stamps to buy groceries, you know the people in line are going to look at you crazy if you buy yourself some ice cream.

    Yes. If you are on government assistance for the poor and otherwise unfortunate, you can pretty much expect to have any and all purchases pretty widely scrutinized. You can’t win. I’ve heard of a woman who received a top-notch stroller at a baby shower, but who got what was comin’ to her because she was on WIC and other benefits at the time, and oooobviously if you are on government assistance, you can’t afford that kind of thing, so obviously you’re scamming us. I’ve heard people who were employed in grocery stores who ranted about those food stampers who bought lobster! All the time, I swear, it’s all they bought! Right. If you’re poor, you’d better stick to that peanut butter and evaporated milk. Stay humble, keep your eyes downturned at all times, speak meekly, work hard, and never, ever complain. Do all these things even if they are counterproductive to the goal of, well, getting you to be as healthy and productive a member of society as possible. That’s just what you get, after all. Bootstraps ‘n all.

    Oh, and I’ve seen men in the Social Security and county assistance offices, but almost never with children. If there’s a kid there, pretty much guaranteed it’s attached to a mother, not a father.

21. Yeah, ditto to Amanda W. I don’t know where this mentality emerges from that because someone needs public assistance we are entitled to make all kinds of judgments about their life and insist that they adhere to our idea of appropriately Spartan living conditions. Because it’s “our money” right? I think, rather than demanding more austerity from the poor, we should be asking for slightly less disgusting inequalities between the rich and boor, and maybe slightly less obscene indulgences by the very wealthy. When a poor woman buys herself some ice cream she’s being irresponsible, but when a rich man wants to lower taxes so he can take a fourth vacation, that’s just politics. How absurd.

    Especially given the huge amount of stress that the poor deal with, and the detrimental health effects of being poor, I think its should not be a source of shame for poor people in this country to try and make their situation a little more comfortable.

22. *I meant to say detrimental health effects of stress.

    But being poor is also demonstrably bad for health.

23. Amanda, my daughter just got a good digital camera for her birthday, and we’ve been having a great time going out and taking pictures. Whenever I post them on my blog I have to fight the impulse to say “it’s not my camera! I didn’t buy it! It was a gift!”

    cuz you know, there are people who will wonder about stuff like that. They’ll wonder why you’ve got a computer if you’re so poor, or why you’ve got internet, or jesus, I suppose why you’ve got breath in your lungs. And they’re not really curious, they just want to say to the world that there are degrees of poverty, and there is a stereotype of what poverty is supposed to look like, and if you don’t fit that, you’re just a whiny complainer.

24. It’s kind of funny. I’m so used to being completely open about income and prices sort of as a defense measure: “See, look at the numbers yourself and see that I’m not being irresponsible.” My husband grew up in upper-middle-class comfort, and is always embarrassed when I declare without shame while shopping: “Well, this one is only $4 and that one is $8, so…” etc. or otherwise discuss income/expenses freely. We don’t want to make people think we can’t afford that, after all. It’s a foreign attitude to me — I’d be more likely to think “we don’t want people to think we’re spending more than is our due.” Whenever friends compliment me on a purse or shirt, my first impulse is to declare “Yes, and it was only $6 at Wal-Mart!” Apparently this impulse isn’t widely shared 🙂

    (It’s kind of weird, considering he is pretty frugal and responsible when it comes to this kind of stuff. He’s just used to finance related discussion being a purely private thing, as compared to me being used to my finances being an open topic for discussion, as though my private life is “owned” by everyone else. Another privilege, I suppose.)

25. In my old urban working-class White/Latino neighborhood, going on welfare or getting any sort of public assistance was considered a disgrace by most unless you had a visible disability. Growing up, I constantly heard remarks from neighbors in the area that “young healthy people should be working, not going on welfare.” In short, popular perception about welfare recipients was that they were “a disgraceful sign of laziness and irresponsibility” (Quote taken from a remark by one former neighbor). It is one key reason why many childhood classmates and their families refused to get food stamps and go on welfare despite being eligible and in great need.

26. We wait in line at the food pantry. We wait in line at St. Ben’s meal program, where I dare anybody in the city of Milwaukee to drive to 9th and State after 5 pm during the week to see all the people (hundreds!) waiting in line for a hot meal.

    Kactus, you just made me cry. About 2 years before my husband was disabled, we decided one afternoon just before Christmas to drop off a box of canned goods at the local food bank in Baltimore, a few blocks from our house. We were newly married and feeling very “grown-up”; it felt like the “grown-up married thing” to do.

    When we got to there, it was about 10 degrees, sun going down and chilly as hell. But what shocked us was the sight of over 400 people, many of them children, quietly and patiently waiting in line. It shocked us- we literally had no idea of the scope of the poverty around us.

    We went straight home, after we dropped off our one box, and emptied every shelf of our pantry. We then grabbed garbage bags and filled them with every pair of mittens, gloves, hats, sweaters and coats we had clean and set aside as “extra”, as well as bags of Christmas candy that we were planning on using to make gingerbread. We filled our car and drove right back and made a REAL donation.

    Our understanding began that day- it grew over the course of the next decade. I will never be arrogant or smug about my life ever again and will never allow my children to be so, either. No one has to “justify” their situation to me- I just want to know how I can help. Because others were kind enough to help ME.

27. If you use food stamps to buy groceries, you know the people in line are going to look at you crazy if you buy yourself some ice cream.

    When we finally had a steady paycheck and decided to go off of food stamps, we weren’t allowed to turn the remainder back in! And I knew no one whom I could give them to… so we decided to be utterly stupid and bought 3 lobsters with them.

28. Kactus-

    Yes, there were and are men. But the overwhelming majority of caretakers in this world are women. In my years of doing welfare advocacy, I spoke to hundreds of people on welfare who were having trouble with their cases. I would say that less than 20 of those people were fathers.

    Hmm. I’m torn. I get that this is primarily a women’s issue, and there’s nothing wrong with treating it as such.

    But part of me is still jumping up and down shouting ‘WE EXIST! WE EXIST!’

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though single fathers are the exception, they still exist and still face some of the same problems as single mothers. I’m fed up of people saying ‘mothers’ when they mean ‘parents’.

29. I’m fed up of people saying ‘mothers’ when they mean ‘parents’.

    My husband would agree with you on that, Kirsten; he was the one to deal with Mainecare, food stamps, collection agencies, pawn shops, etc. I went into pretty much hermit/ emotional shutdown with the paralyzing fear and could only deal with taking care of the kids and home. Poverty isn’t just a single parent issue.

30. popular perception about welfare recipients was that they were “a disgraceful sign of laziness and irresponsibility” (Quote taken from a remark by one former neighbor). It is one key reason why many childhood classmates and their families refused to get food stamps and go on welfare despite being eligible and in great need.

    I fell into the same trap with my first daughter. I refused welfare; the result was that I was overworked, overwhelmed, scared, and almost never saw her for the first two years. When I wasn’t working I was trying to raise her and trying to live on no sleep and no money. I’ve never forgiven myself for putting my misplaced pride before her needs as a baby and my needs as a human. Never again.

31. Louise –

    Poverty isn’t just a single parent issue.

    Ack, yes. Sorry if my comment ignored that. And, yeah, restrictive ideas about gender and parenting can cause just as many problems for two parent families.

32. When I wasn’t working I was trying to raise her and trying to live on no sleep and no money. I’ve never forgiven myself for putting my misplaced pride before her needs as a baby and my needs as a human. Never again.

    Yeah, this was me after my divorce. My daughter was a bit older but I still think it was a pretty big mistake not to go on aid and take a minute to reorient and re-establish myself. Also, added to the fact that I really didn’t know how to be really poor , I was in a strange city with few people I could talk to and get advice from. If it wasn’t for the help and concern of sometimes total strangers we would have been in a world of hurt. Well, bigger hurt, that is.

    Also, I always need to tell this horror story in threads on this topic because years later I still find it appalling that such people exist.

    A woman in a news chatroom, frequented by people on the left and right, who I am pretty sure I had known for years… (I say “pretty sure” because I have completely erased who she was from my mind, it seems) very proudly told a story of her trip to the grocery store.

    Seems she was behind someone who was using food stamps to pay – but she didn’t stop at noting and judging what items the person bought… although it was one item in the basket which, she felt, justified her next actions. You see, the woman with the foodstamps had the gall to buy a bakery decorated birthday cake, with someones name written in on it. OMG… end of the world, cuz “what she should have done was buy a box mix and make a cake herself. In fact, if she just bought the flour and eggs and whatever else goes into cakes and whipped something up, she’d be able to make her food last longer and who cares what the cake looks like! These privileged poor people know nothing of how to save.”

    The chatroom woman was so incensed by the sight of this cake that she thought she was justified in seeing just how else this evil leech on society was abusing her privilege… so she followed the woman out to her car. The car, being just a regular, not new but not a completely rusted out junker, was another black mark against her – but not enough of one, after all, maybe even poor people could keep a car clean – and so the woman felt further justified to take yet another step to provide incontrovertible proof of parasititude.

    She followed the woman home.

33. No problem whatsoever, Kirsten- poverty is a HUMAN issue. That’s why bringing the issue of poverty with all of its facets of indignities, fears and misconceptions to the forefront for discussion like Kactus has done here today is so important.

    In retrospect, I was guilty of so much misguided arrogance. I thought that because we had 3 college degrees between us, had insurance and possessions, were 2 married adults in our 30’s, that ” IT COULDN’T HAPPEN TO US”. And then when it did, I felt so ashamed and so afraid of the current living arrangements as well as the future. I beat myself up emotionally and physically, trying to work as much as I could but seeing the writing on the wall, trying to delay the day we had to surrender our vehicle, to delay asking for help.

    Why? that question still bothers me. I think Kactus addressed that perfectly in #30, though. My daughter is now 12 and doesn’t remember any of it- but I do.

34. And just to go back to Kactus’ original post…in a right-headed world, the supposed “renovation monies” would have been divvied up, WITHOUT QUESTION, to all of the folks waiting and sitting in those plastic chairs and NOT on worthless, meaningless building renovations!

    (bashing head with keyboard…)

35. Louise, when I first began my rapid slide into poverty (after years of security living with a partner), I moved into an apartment with my 7 year old daughter. The rent was less than $400 and I still couldn’t afford it. And I remember one night I was reading Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, and I don’t know if you’ve read it but at the end one of the main characters goes from millionaire to homeless in the Bowery and then finally dead and dumped in a pauper’s grave. I couldn’t sleep after that because I was sure that was what was going to happen to us. I had visions of my sweet daughter and me in some welfare hotel, dodging beer bottles and crack pipes. And yeah, I can sort of chuckle about it now (now that I’ve survived much worse, oh yes) but I remember that crushing fear.

36. I don’t know where this mentality emerges from that because someone needs public assistance we are entitled to make all kinds of judgments about their life and insist that they adhere to our idea of appropriately Spartan living conditions. Because it’s “our money” right? I think, rather than demanding more austerity from the poor, we should be asking for slightly less disgusting inequalities between the rich and boor, and maybe slightly less obscene indulgences by the very wealthy. When a poor woman buys herself some ice cream she’s being irresponsible, but when a rich man wants to lower taxes so he can take a fourth vacation, that’s just politics. How absurd.

    Matthew Cole,

    From having several maternal relatives who harbor such attitudes towards those on public assistance, I can probably attempt to explain why they have such attitudes, however flawed the attitudes and reasoning behind them are.

    In the maternal side of my Chinese-American family, everyone in my parental generation grew up and remembered the carnage wrought by decades of colonial exploitation, weak governments, and wars. Many were old enough to remember the chaos and fear of being refugees when fleeing advancing Japanese and later, Chinese Communist armies.

    When some like my uncle-in-law found they were able to advance in American society from being a casual laborer without family to becoming a wealthy retired professional within his lifetime, he has little sympathy and understanding for those whom he perceived had many more economic, linguistic, and cultural advantages than he did when he first arrived. In short, his attitude like that of many relatives is “If we can make it from a lower starting point than many native-born Americans, why can’t they?” This is due to near complete ignorance of American history and social dynamics along with their buying into the “Protestant work ethic”. In their view, young healthy people should work hard and defer enjoyment until they become wealthy and are at retirement age. For this reason, they would be the types who would look askance at someone buying “luxury” items such as ice cream with food stamps.

    Also, it has been my observation that many wealthy and middle-class feel any “healthy young adult” who relies on government or others are effectively adolescents living off of the hard work of others. By defining “adult” as one who can sustain themselves without relying on others, they effectively infantilize those in poverty who need public assistance. It is also more telling that they rarely apply such reasoning to people in their own socio-economic classes such as “trust-fund babies”/those who inherit their wealth. In my view, such infantilization would be much more applicable to the latter group, especially when the ones I’ve encountered in college and in the working world often do act like spoiled self-absorbed children.

37. Preach it, kactus.

    It wouldn’t surprise me if “renovation” meant “removing hazards from the building because we don’t want to get our asses sued off”. You were probably at a building that was full of asbestos, or infested with rats, or about ready to fall down.

38. Almost everything I need to do, I can do online or by mail or both. It’s pretty cheap for the government I’d imagine. I think there is one important thing preventing the elimination of lines for you. It is the middle class “I feel better than other people” afterglow.

    Examples:
    1. They are poor so of course they can’t live as comfortably as me. I feel lucky to be comfortable.
    2. They deserve this for not working hard enough. I don’t deserve this. How nice I feel!
    3. They are poor so of course they don’t have more important things to do. I’m glad I have important things to do.
    4. There are so many welfare cheats, so I feel very good about myself for not getting cheated out of tax dollars.
    5. It’s so nice of me to donate my tax dollars to these people. Aren’t I great?

    I’m sure there’s more. These people get a warm happy afterglow from seeing the poor stand in line. They are so happy not to be YOU in your situation that it overcomes their humanity of feeling bad that you’re in line, and the walk away feeling better about themselves and their world. Meanwhile, you are labeled lazy, incompetent, a drain on the system, etc.

    I’m all for making your lives easier. I don’t like seeing the poor waiting in line, and I don’t like the wasted money on process and infinite forms. It makes me feel like the government is dirty and petty. I don’t see any good reason why the poor can’t fill out their forms and submit/mail things at midnight or 3am or 2:44pm or whatever the hell time is most convenient, just like the rest of us.

39. Word.

    I’ve been on welfare three times now, intermittently. Things are a little different here in Soviet Canuckistan, in that not everyone on welfare is either a parent or disabled, but the “hurry up and wait” thing doesn’t change.

    One thing that seems to happen here more than there (at least if the stories I’ve heard are any indication) is that welfare recipients are often shunted around to various NGOs for “workshopping” of various kinds, paid for by the Province. Some of this stuff is good; some of it is a disaster. A malevolent bureaucrat with an agenda got her claws into me last year and shunted me into a “job readiness skills” workshop which was way too basic for what I could have really used. That’s sixteen hours of my life I’ll never get back, and I’m still tired from sorting that BS out, almost a year later. (Ok, I’m disabled; I fatigue easily, but still…)

    As someone mentioned, being on welfare is like a job, and is, in fact, harder work than any paid employment I’ve ever had.

40. Whenever friends compliment me on a purse or shirt, my first impulse is to declare “Yes, and it was only $6 at Wal-Mart!” Apparently this impulse isn’t widely shared 🙂

    It is shared. My sisters and I are the same way. We love bargains and brag about good ones when we find them. But I grew up stretching every penny trying to make it into two, and without any other family to fall back on, since pretty much all my relatives were in the same boat we were. The husband, on the other hand, thinks all this bragging about bargains is a bit unseemly. Because, while he is exceedingly sensible about our finances, it isn’t something that is talked about outside the immediate family.

    It is absolutely a class difference, I think.

41. Bloody hell, kactus. Our system in Australia, while far from free of recipient-blaming, is at least more generous in some ways. If you’re a single parent whose kids are all in school the expectation of workfare is 16 hours a week (if they’re too young for school workfare is not expected).

    We’re a nation of queuers, but most bureaucracies here seem to have a ticket system much like the motor registry and a reasonable supply of seating. Long waits are still part of the punishment though.

42. I read today that the U.S. government will spend $750 million dollars over the next 5 years in Afghanistan on a program to “win the hearts and minds” of people who might turn to extremism and become terrorists. Kinda dumb when we’re mowing children down with machine guns for fun and dropping bombs on innocent villagers, yo.

    That being said, I’m not a big supporter of welfare. I think it’s abused a lot of the time by the people who acquire it, and I believe it can become a crutch that people don’t want to easily give up. However, if your wife is on chemotherapy and can’t work, and you get laid off, your three children shouldn’t starve. Thus, it should be fairly easy to get the assistance you need. This is when that $750 million might help us (i.e. the American people) out, oh wasters-of-loot-in-Washington. Don’t ya think?

43. That being said, I’m not a big supporter of welfare. I think it’s abused a lot of the time by the people who acquire it, and I believe it can become a crutch that people don’t want to easily give up.

    Kind of like welfare for the rich–er, I mean tax breaks. Hard to give up once you’re used to it.

44. I think it’s abused a lot of the time by the people who acquire it, and I believe it can become a crutch that people don’t want to easily give up.

    1) What is “a lot of the time”, and what is the nature of this “abuse”?
    2) Did you bother to read kactus’s post? Yes, how hard it must be to give up waiting in pointless, endless lines, to stop having petty bureaucrats harass you because they know they control whether you get groceries next month. I can’t believe anybody would want a nice middle-class job when they can have that.

    A crutch is something you use to help you while you get better. Wouldn’t it be nice if welfare also gave people a leg up–not as a threat (“do this or we take away WIC”) but, um, to help them so they no longer need welfare? It wouldn’t let us punish the poor, but the benefits probably outweigh that.

    Vicki, in my experience, much of the poor-hating comes not from the middle class, but from working-class people who are under the impression that nobody helps THEM, so fuck people who actually rely on government assistance. Nice when the powers that be can get oppressed groups to turn on one another.

45. Our system in Australia, while far from free of recipient-blaming, is at least more generous in some ways. If you’re a single parent whose kids are all in school the expectation of workfare is 16 hours a week (if they’re too young for school workfare is not expected).

    Tigtog, here in Wisconsin I believe the work requirement is 30 hours. And you’re only allowed to stay home with your new baby for 12 weeks, then it’s back to work. Legally, new moms are supposed to be able to get cash assistance for those 12 weeks, but often the caseworkers will “lose” the paperwork until your 12 weeks are up, so you have to scramble for funds with a brand-new baby. You can always demand a hearing and try to get your money, but the system banks on moms being so exhausted and intimidated by the hearing requirements that they just give up and don’t pursue their cases.

    That works in all the areas of welfare: foodstamps, childcare, cash assistance, medicaid. Make it so hard to get it that it seems easier to just give up.

    Oh, I could go on and on.

    I have a hard time talking about the whole welfare reform fiasco, because it is so depressing, and so overwhelming. But I’m working on a post on it for later this week. Suffice it to say that it has been one of those disasters that for some reason keeps getting funded and praised, even though it costs more than AFDC for fewer clients; even though in Wisconsin the costs have been enormous in terms of human lives lost, children snatched by CPS, families left homeless.

    The day I won my disability case and walked away from welfare forever was one of the happiest of my life. But I’ve never forgotten how it was, and how it still is for too many families.

46. I went to that office on 12th and Vliet to try and get food stamps. I was told by this one lady in a window to go to this OTHER window with a piece of paper to get ANOTHER piece of paper so I could get a box of food from the pantry downstairs (which nobody else seemed to be informed about). So, the people at the 2nd window said that they were “closed’. I wanted to scream! Instead, I was like, “Well, I guess I’ll tell the person who sent me here to come and talk to you….” They quickly “re-opened”. The lady behind me with 3 kids was relieved also. So, anyways, I just gave up after that fiasco.

47. 1) What is “a lot of the time”, and what is the nature of this “abuse”?
    2) Did you bother to read kactus’s post? Yes, how hard it must be to give up waiting in pointless, endless lines, to stop having petty bureaucrats harass you because they know they control whether you get groceries next month. I can’t believe anybody would want a nice middle-class job when they can have that.

    You’re absolutely right. Welfare benefits are always given to the people who need them most. And they’re NEVER abused either. People simply use them until they’re able to stand on their own two feet, and then they voluntarily give up the EBT cards and welfare checks. Silly me.

48. It is absolutely true that the folks who run the system put “checks” in place to keep people from getting the benefits they are entitled to. I do research on child care and child care subsidies and it is absolutely empirically documented truth. Some states even admit it. They don’t have enough, or don’t want to use it all up, or want to look like they are giving out less and one of the best ways to do this is to make it really fucking hard to access it. Or to instill fear about it – this is especially true in communities where there is a mix of documented and undocumented workers living together. There is a real (and probably justified) fear that if you attempt to get health insurance for your child (who is a citizen of this country) that your husband or brother or cousin who lives in your house will be deported.

49. Oh marksman. You’ve just given me an eye-rolling moment.

50. This post made me start looking around me for the past few days. I have never forgotten my own days of being poor, but this brought it home again. Today, in the 95 degree heat, I looked around from my air-conditioned car, on the way to pick up non-necessary groceries (popsicles), and I noted once again that being poor = being punished. If you don’t have a car, you have to wait, standing, in the blazing sun for long periods to catch a bus, likely to wait at the transfer point and catch another bus, possibly even a third. If you’re poor, you are pushing your infant across the highway in a stroller while dragging your toddler behind you, hoping the light doesn’t change before you make it. Or, you’re crossing in the middle of the busy highway because the closest cross-street is 1/4 mi. away in the wrong direction. You are dragging home groceries that you either did or did not pay for with WIC, but regardless, you can only carry so much because your stroller/arms/kids can only carry so much. If you’re poor, you hope that sore throat is just a summer sore throat, not strep like mine, because unlike me, you probably can’t afford the drop-in clinic that doesn’t take insurance.

    If you’re poor, the people around you indeed are sighing and clucking impatiently in line behind you at the grocery store while you indulge in the luxury of paying for your basic necessities with food stamps. Who knows the state of your cupboards before the next batch of food stamps was released to you?

    When I was poor I used to just pray that somehow, SOMEWHERE, I could just find some money. Just enough to buy just a couple more groceries. One day, years later, I saw a brand new mother in the grocery store, trying to puzzle out what she could buy with food stamps. She had the list and was wandering around the store with that new-mother deer-in-the-headlights look, and the few items in her cart just broke my heart. When she wasn’t looking, I dropped a folded twenty into her purse. I know that’s not a long-term solution. I just couldn’t stand it.

    I don’t understand the mentality of someone who is so bitterly sure that someone is hanging on to welfare as long as she can, trying to beat the oh-so-luxurious system that is welfare and food stamps. You know, when well-off women don’t work, we laud them for being “stay-at-home mothers.” (I was one, so I mean no slur. I just can’t stand the irony.)

    Sorry for the long, long post. I just don’t understand how being poor is something to be shamed for.

51. Silly me.

    I’ve never heard “silly” as a synonym for “disingenous nitwit” before, but hey, language is always evolving.

    If you feel like answering a question with something other than a half-assed exaggeration, I’d be interested to hear it.

52. I’m quite sure there are people who scam the system. I’m also quite sure that the vast majority of people who don’t should not have to suffer because of those few who do. Isn’t the American justice system based on the idea that it’s better for 100 guilty men to go free than for a single innocent man to be imprisoned? So why not cut your losses on the guilty welfare scammer, and let the innocents feed their kids.

    It also seems that the welfare ‘scammers’ that get exposed are generally just trying to get better lives for their kids. They’re not getting rich off it, they’re paying for ballet classes, and a computer to help their kids can do better in school.

    Interesting but related fact: men commit crimes for personal gain, prestige, honour, anger etc. Women tend to commit crimes in order to pay the rent, buy the kids clothes, pay the doctor’s bill.

53. Every time I hear rich people complain about welfare I want to scream. Thankfully, in Canada, welfare does not come with the stigma of food stamps and allows you to avoid a diet of evaporated milk and peanut butter. However, most of those job training programs are ineffective.
    My experience on welfare (my mom was a single mom ) leads me to believe that legislating a livable minimum wage goes a long way towards eliminating a need for social assistance for some people.

54. People who pay taxes get upset at what they see as people on welfare using luxuries because they see it as their tax money that goes to pay for it. If you sweat 10 hours a day in a minimum wage job and some slob has to stand in line for 2 hours to get the same benefits, that understandably the worker will not feel good. I am alright with welfare covering people who lost a job and are inbetween jobs for a few months but people who are forever on welfare and moreover popping new mouths to feed all the time should be taken off.

    I am guessing I should don a furnace-suit now.

55. Farhat I’m not going to flame you, I’m just going to point out that the propaganda has obviously worked on you. You know, that Big Lie that families on welfare are big old cheats, ya know? Just holding out their hands, waiting for the government to take care of them because it’s so much easier that way, having another baby every year so their enormous welfare checks will just get bigger, and bigger, and they can buy more beer and cadillacs.

    Sorry, but Jesus I’m sick to death of that one. For starters, you know that big old welfare check? Here in Wisconsin, the largest check you can get if you’re on cash assistance is $673, no matter how many children you have. You could have 10 babies a week and that check is going to stay exactly the same–unless, of course, the caseworker sanctions you for some minor infraction, in which case the check will become $0, or $50, or some other arbitrary amount.

    Yeah, quite the luxurious lifestyle. Add to that the cost of housing in the inner city of Milwaukee, where rents average $600. That $73 you have left won’t even buy a full tank of super unleaded gas for your cadillac.

    Of course that’s since welfare reform, you might say. It weeded out all the cheats, you might say. Well, statistics bear out the fact that before the 1996 welfare reform bill, under AFDC, the average person stayed on welfare no more than 2 years. The average person was white. The average adult on welfare had no more than 2 kids. The average person on welfare went on when they had to, and got off as soon as humanly possible.

    Because Farhat, no matter what the Big Lie might have told you, it is not fun or easy living on the very bottom rung of the ladder. It sucks.

    And you know, I don’t hear working people working up quite as much a sweat over the wealthy and their tax breaks (welfare for the rich), or the luxuries the wealthy buy and flaunt in their faces. Maybe if us working class people got angrier at the people who are really responsible for our low wages and crappy, non-existent benefits, we’d stand a better chance of getting together and improving our own lives.

56. Personally, I am not against help, but there are people who have been on it for too long. There are a lot of poor people who are poor because of the decisions they make in their life. Also, I was giving a reason why when someone sees another person buying lobsters with food stamps, they may get upset. Either they can afford the lobsters or they cannot with the amount they get, so what’s it?

    And I don’t know why you brought race into it. I don’t care if the recipients are white, black, or purple. Giving people money for nothing for too long is not too different from hooking them on to heroin.

57. Back in the late 60s I remember my mother trying to work with a mother on public assistance in our town. The mother had 10 kids by several different men–none of the men were around. The mother raised her kids well as she could, but you could tell that the cycle was going to be repeated unless a lot of effort occured on everyone’s part.

    It’s cases like this that end up causing a lot of the stereotypes. As far as anyone could tell, this woman didn’t think twice about having another kid.

    (Are we really being all that misanthropic to ask that if you’re on welfare, you at least try to not bring any more children into a lousy situation? It seems to me that taking a certain level of responsibility in respect to one’s actions is, well, simply what adults are supposed to do.)

    It’s these sorts of cases which is why there was a push for welfare agencies having upper limits on the amount provided to mothers.

    Part of the reason why services for poor people are so lousy is because there’s no push-back against them being so. Remember that DMV services were notoriously bad until enough screaming got done by everyone that a lot of places cleaned up their acts. Here, no one with any power cares, plus there is the attitude as mentioned above of “well, if we make it lousy enough, maybe it will be another kick in the butt for those lazy poor people to start putting their lives in order and get off welfare.”

    I guess I’m of two minds of it. I think the “safety net” should be much better designed and operated–I think there should be a higher level of support (and stop worrying so much about people who “game” the system at the low end)–make it easier for people to get off welfare through a gradual process–help much more with transportation, child-care, and health. But at the same time, I think for any support beyond the absolute bare minimum, there should be a realization that certain responsibilities are demanded of the recipient, as well.

58. And I don’t know why you brought race into it. I don’t care if the recipients are white, black, or purple. Giving people money for nothing for too long is not too different from hooking them on to heroin.

    Except, you know, that heroin kills you and money enables you to survive. Details.

59. farhat, who are these mythical lobster-buying poor people? I mean, really? And can you get me an invite to dinner at their place? Cuz, you know, I’ve never eaten lobster in my life. $150 a month in food stamps pretty much covers about half of the basics, and if you slip up and buy something outrageous (like, I dunno, fresh fruit, or ice cream) your lobster-buying options recede even further into the distance.

    This is the thing, and this is what’s getting on my nerves: I hate fucking stereotypes. All of your statements about poor people and people on welfare are nothing but stereotypes. Period. And yeah, just like you can find at least one example of everything to justify your stereotype, whether it’s race or gender or class, you ignore the overwhelming majority of people who are just trying to survive. Just survive. As if that’s any skin off of your teeth.

    And with that, comments are going to be more moderated on this post, because I will not have yet another discussion of welfare descend into the usual bash-the-poor fest. So think twice before you bring up any more of the same tired bullshit, because it’s an insult to me, it’s an insult to all of the people who have commented in good faith on this post, and it’s an insult to every parent who has had to do whatever it takes to feed their children. Because you are also forgetting who makes up the majority of the poor and the people who get government assistance in this country: children. And the hateful welfare lies of the politicians and the media and big business have only made the lives of children in poverty more miserable. Especially when the lies are accepted, without question, as truth.

60. Who’s talking hate-the-poor. I am talking about people who want to dip into my pockets to love them. Personally, if you want to pay more taxes, go to irs.gov, they have mechanisms in place to donate money to them above the paxes you pay. You can also go out on the street to Skid Row and donate money directly. Just don’t make laws forcing people to do what you want.

61. I read today that the U.S. government will spend $750 million dollars over the next 5 years in Afghanistan on a program to “win the hearts and minds” of people who might turn to extremism and become terrorists. . . that $750 million might help us (i.e. the American people) out, oh wasters-of-loot-in-Washington. Don’t ya think?

    Not really, since that works out to 50 cents per American per year. This developmental aid program (which would be in Pakistan, not Afghanistan) does have quite a few serious problems, although this is obviously not the thread to discuss them.

    About 0.5% of the U.S. budget goes to foreign aid, the vast majority of which is military foreign aid. So distress and anger over all the money we waste on non-military foreign aid is badly misdirected, and makes about as much sense as, oh, all the distress and anger over the money we waste on welfare cheats. And has a pretty similar mentality behind it, of focusing on the relatively small amount of money spent trying to help people, compared to the relatively large amount of money spent on killing people and helping corporations.

62. Because you are also forgetting who makes up the majority of the poor and the people who get government assistance in this country: children. And the hateful welfare lies of the politicians and the media and big business have only made the lives of children in poverty more miserable. Especially when the lies are accepted, without question, as truth.

    A-friggin-men, sister!

63. Late to the party, but so glad you wrote this post and glad to see the commenters feel free to acknowledge their time on welfare as well.

    I was once jobless for enough months that I needed to be helped. I come from a middle class family, have a doctorate in science, yaddi yadda, but this was in Europe. My impression from the jobless services were that they were trying to be professional: on time, conducting one-on-one meetings as though they were business meetings with outcomes of commitments on both sides …

    My impression of the lines and inconvenience bordering on harassment of the US assistance system is that it is designed to keep people as part of an under-employed underclass. You are not encouraged to feel self-respect, you are not treated professionally, your time and energy is uselessly squandered. So yes, it seems purposefully designed to keep the downtrodden down.

64. Oh, and newsflash, Farhat, if you sweat 10 hours a day in a minimum wage job, YOU’RE going to be getting some sort of government welfare too. Not just the “slob” who doesn’t have a job.

65. Um, Kactus; the lobster-buying one was me in post #27… but up here in Maine, I’ve often seen lobster cheaper than beef. It’s not as much a luxury here. So my bad if I accidentally started an emotional issue.

    My point with that post was that when we wanted to, we found we COULDN’T just turn in the remainder of our monthly food stamps or give them to another family! I would have prefered to do that, because that extra $20 might have helped someone. (Yeah; lobster was down around $4.99 a pound for chicken or 1 lb lobsters back then and still drops to less than $8 a lb in May.)

66. My posts have been awaiting moderation for 2 hours. Not sure why, but it seems mine go into moderation every single time I post a comment here (which is regularly).

67. My posts have been awaiting moderation for 2 hours. Not sure why, but it seems mine go into moderation every single time I post a comment here (which is regularly).

    Sorry about that. I just got back from taking my daughter to the doctor.

    Um, Kactus; the lobster-buying one was me in post #27… but up here in Maine, I’ve often seen lobster cheaper than beef. It’s not as much a luxury here. So my bad if I accidentally started an emotional issue.

    I know, Louise. I just find it funny that one time somebody mentions buying lobster, it gets turned into all poor people buying lobsters with their foodstamps. Trust me, if it isn’t lobster, it’s anything people in poverty buy that is beyond somebody’s concept of what they deserve.

68. I think the waiting ties in with infantilizing (exholt, #36) in another way: like children, you must be kept busy so you’ll stay out of trouble. Never mind that you’re not doing anything productive; if you’re waiting in line, we know you’re not off selling drugs or something.

    *sigh*

    OTOH, many of the middle-class folks I’ve met who support welfare reform give generously to charities that feed, clothe and house people. They’re annoyed with government programs and would rather have more control over where their money goes; that way they can pick agencies they see as effective and causes that matter to them personally.

    JPlum, I’d love to see some statistics to back up your claim about crime in #52. No offense, but I’m not going to go quoting it somewhere else just on your say-so. 😉 I’d love to know where you got the information, though, so I COULD use it if it came up.

69. I think the reaction is understandable, if overboard. If you’re working and still can’t afford luxuries, it’s not unreasonable for you to look at someone on welfare, buying what you see as luxuries, and think ‘Hey, that’s not fair-my taxes are supporting this person, and they can afford to buy stuff I can’t!’ On the other hand, it is not reasonable to comment on it-you don’t know the circumstances of that person’s life, and they are not accountable to you. Seriously, if they were buying luxuries all the time, there wouldn’t be enough left of the welfare cheque to actually live on. One cheap Maine lobster in a basket full of Kraft Dinner is hardly livin’ the high life!

70. That’s OK, kactus. I wasn’t sure how the comments were moderated WRT guest bloggers. I’ve just been frustrated these past weeks because my comments always go into moderation.

71. So true; it’s a matter of perspective, I guess. Once worked in a little hospital on the Maine coast 20 years ago and one of my coworkers was the wife of a lobsterman. Dangerous profession, so much so that she and her husband were working and saving every extra nickel to be able to put their 2 sons through college rather than have them follow their father and grandfather.

    On days when she couldn’t afford anything else, she brought lobster sandwiches to work and would have far preferred anything else! Go figure…

    BTW, I loved the petunia photo!!! Something like that you treasure always…

72. It’s interesting…
    Lobster was once considered a food for low-class folks. Because it’s a bottom-feeder. Eventually it became known as a high-class food. Hmph.

73. Been there, used both foodstamps and EBT card, as well as WIC. But because I was married and hubby and I were working our butts off (3 jobs between us) we couldn’t get very much help.

    I’ve seen some of the ways the system gets scammed: kids coached into acting incorrible for SSI checks, several adults living in the same household applying for “temporary emergency” food stamps in rotation.

    But none of them are the Cadillac Driving Welfare Queens ™. They are people doing what they can to survive in a dying region. There is no work. There’s often no electricity or running water. Many of them live in tin-roofed shacks. The Arkansas delta is one of the poorest regions in the US. Infant mortality rates run as high as 14.2 deaths/1000 births. (the US overall rate is 6.8, Arkansas overall is 8.3) If they have a car, it is a clunker that is used to get to work. The most educated person they know is a school-teacher.

    It’s all about survival.

74. Yeah, and beef here is 1.88/ pounds. Strawberries are more expensive than that here.

75. Giving people money for nothing for too long is not too different from hooking them on to heroin.

    Uh, no, it is completely different from hooking them onto a fatal, addictive and illegal drug.

    It seems to me that taking a certain level of responsibility in respect to one’s actions is, well, simply what adults are supposed to do.

    Pause for a moment and consider that you’re making a rather big assumption: that somebody who is capable of controlling her family size simply chooses not to do so because she prefers to eke by on welfare. Do you really believe that? If so, how functional do you think that person is, and how capable is she of making a rational choice?

    Imposing ‘responsibility’ is not something you accomplish by removing support systems. That’s like telling somebody with a broken ankle “Get off your lazy ass and hobble without those crutches.”

76. I struggle to fight my own stereotypes about poverty and entitlement. It is difficult–embarrassing–to admit, and reading threads like this makes the fight easier.

    Really what it comes down to is judgmental viewing of other people’s choices. I wouldn’t spend money on a TV if I were poor (says my mind,) so why should I pay taxes so they can spend money on a TV? And so on.

    Obviously I realize that this is a ridiculous way to feel when I think about it. Because while I might not spend money on a TV if I was poor, I’m sure I’d spend money on something else that they would avoid to save cash. I’d rather have an occasional glass of orange juice than a TV. I’d rather buy my kids a toy. Is that morally superior? Obviously not. It’s just a different choice.

    But it’s hard to avoid. Cognitive bias says that what “I” do is the best way, and what “I” don’t do is a worse way. And that’s really the heart of it. The feelings of poor people “overspending” are based on cherry-picking behavioral habits: Family A spends money on ice cream for dessert but eats only lentils and rice for dinner; family B blows a bit of cash on the movies once every 2 months but never gets ice cream; family C saves to buy their kids a nice christmas present but barely survives in the winter as a result.

    “Therefore,” pronounces the triumphant cost-cutter, “ice cream, movies, and nice presents are luxuries, and nobody needs to be able to afford them. All we need to provide are lentils and rice for dinner.” Which is true in one sense (those individual things are luxuries), but not true if you include ALL luxuries (having some luxuries in life, at least minor and reasonably affordable ones, is almost a mental necessity, not a luxury.)

    Heck, my own family was dirt poor two generations ago. We hear stories about shipping boxes for furniture and sleeping in the halls (or the same room) and eating old bread. But every now and then it seems they managed to celebrate a little. It’s easy to forget that fact when we get involved in the whole “it was OK for them it should be Ok for people now” stuff.

    Anyway, the reason I think articles like these are important is that they allow folks to really see the light of it. Perhaps, instead of thinking “Oh, buying your kid a $3 hot chocolate, how dare you do that on welfare, what a waste!” they will think “hmm, if my kid had been sitting at a bus stop in January for 90 minutes, wouldn’t I skip lunch to get them a hot drink?”

    So anyway, thanks for writing it.

77. Giving people money for nothing for too long is not too different from hooking them on to heroin

    .

    Uh, no, it is completely different from hooking them onto a fatal, addictive and illegal drug.

    Well put. I think we also need to redefine what are our definitions of working and “doing nothing.” If you buy into the welfare stereotype, you can easily make the assumption that once a woman goes on welfare she stays on it forever, she does nothing but lie about the house all day, and she effortlessly has a baby a year to keep her rolling in that welfare dough.

    Except for the fact that this is total bullshit. I can only imagine that Farhat has never raised children alone, otherwise there wouldn’t be this offhand reference to “doing nothing.”

78. That’s like telling somebody with a broken ankle “Get off your lazy ass and hobble without those crutches.”

    Well, Jeez, Mythago; they still have FEET, don’t they? Honestly…

    Seriously, we need more open and honest conversations like this if we are EVER going to dispel the atmosphere of poor-shaming:

    “Excuse me, HOW did you end up is such a LOWLY state?” (as if a wrong-headed decision were to “blame”)

    “If you’re poor, WHY are you wasting MY tax dollars on x-y-z?” (that pisses me off because our food coupons came with a list of what would or not be covered; it wasn’t a blank check)

    “Can’t you stop being poor? Okay, I’ll wait…how about now? WHAT? You’re still poor? WHY?” (Gee, maybe because my options haven’t had a fucking magic wand waved over them yet? Sorry to incovenience you…)

    “You have HOW MANY children???” (I have 2 myself, but still my mother said to me, “Louise, no more kids, okay?” And I was 33, had a college degree, and married for 7 years- I felt like I was a naughty 12 year old.) That was almost 10 years ago- I’ve made peace, but DAMMIT I have never forgotten that moment.

    Everyone’s circumstances are different and unless you’ve been scared of not being able to make a payment or have begged to be able to make a 1/2 payment on x-y-z, you can’t imagine the fear that makes it hard to sleep at night. When you cuddle your kids so you CAN sleep- knowing they are peaceful is the only good thing that can make you relax enough to sleep yourself.

    It’s exhausting- to try to remain upbeat for your kids as well as yourself. To try to find something good in every day. To just keep trying. You do it, but somedays you don’t know HOW.

    Sorry, Kactus; had to vent. Your writings are probably helping more people than you can imagine…

79. Farhat,

    As a fellow taxpayer who grew up in a working class neighborhood and paid for college through academic scholarships and odd jobs, I would rather my tax dollars go toward helping families who need public assistance than corporate welfare and tax breaks for the many spoiled overindulged trust-fund babies/inheritors of wealth I’ve encountered in college and the workplace. I wonder, how well do you all think these kids would last if they had to live the lives of families on public assistance without the benefit of family derived wealth?

80. On Virginia’s WIC program, here’s what you can buy with food stamps:

    “The program provides milk, cheese, eggs, juice, cereal, dried beans or peas, peanut butter and iron-fortified formula that supply crucial nutrients such as protein, iron, calcium, and vitamins A and C essential to maintain health.”

    Nary a fresh fruit nor fresh vegetable on the list. (Nor a LOBSTER, for that matter!) Anyone see a problem with this? Or have many of the negative commenters here seen an overweight person on welfare and thought, “Huh. Fatty sure can afford enough food to get FAT, can’t she?”

    Look at the list again. Not much “diet” food there. Certainly no room for the chirpy “Five A Day!” campaign that surrounds us.

81. “Huh. Fatty sure can afford enough food to get FAT, can’t she?”

    That one just makes you want to pound the smug, huh?

    Years ago, I met a very, very large woman in her 40’s, working in a program designed to help welfare folks. She was disabled and had an electric scooter that took her everywhere, including back to her home when necessary as her workplace did not have a handicap access bathroom, and had essentially her life in a backpack. She spoke in a whisper, primarily from serious breathing issues. What was most stunning about her was her beautifully coifed hair. A very beautiful woman. Medications and MS had just destroyed her body.

    We got to talking and I found that she had been a veterinarian surgeon before MS essentially stole her life and livelihood away from her. She quit her job the day she dropped a scapel during surgery; she knew she couldn’t risk an animal’s life. She was on disability and welfare, knew her situation wasn’t going to be getting better. Her dream was to somehow set up a WebMD question and answer site, based on her years of experience and education, for animals. Not once did she complain or “poor me”- I doubt I would have been like that.

    So the next day, my husband and I gave her one of our old laptop computers from our business, as well as a bunch of games, etc. (because work is well and good, but ya gotta have FUN, too!) There was no way she was ever going to be able to save up enough extra money to go up the street to the local pawn shop and get one- it was just the right thing to do. I hope it helped her accomplish her dreams or barring that, made her happy to not be stuck in a 2 block radius.

82. But Louise, she was working, wasn’t she? And if a person like that with legitimate health issues can still find the energy to pick herself up and work, then plenty of others can as well. Anyway, I am of the opinion that if you don’t mind spending welfare money, you shouldn’t mind others having an opinion on how you spend that money, rightly or wrongly.

    And also, I would be in favor of people on welfare getting free birth control, preferably something like a shot that doesn’t require them to remember it and that lasts for a few months to a year.

    And kactus, I haven’t raised any kids, singly or otherwise. On a grad student’s stipend, I would not be doing any favors bringing them into this world.

83. I would just like to say that I may have been a little too judgmental in some of my screeds above. I have lived where people could be often seen dying of just starvation and I’m sure I’ve walked by more than one person lying on the streets who’d be dead within 12 hours of preventable causes. And then I came to US and all the complaining about food stamps and welfare seems too trivial. But my perspective is not your perspective, and neither is yours mine so I’ll step back and stop the judging.

84. But not everyone can FIND a job; you’re missing the point. The program my friend was in was designed specifically to help welfare recipients like her with severely limitting disabilities and folks from a drug rehab program; a catch-all of folks who would have a hard time finding a mainstream job.

    It was also a part-time “as needed” program and she had to show up every day just to see if there was work for her. She couldn’t just call in; she had to go and wait (albeit short) in a line to see if there was enough work for her. WHEN SHE EVEN FELT WELL ENOUGH TO MAKE THE TRIP OVER. I only listed what had put her in the scooter (a helluva step up from her old wheelchair of what she told me)- there were far more health problems going on than just the MS. She was also a breast cancer survivor and swapped me her beloved pin ribbon pin for the computer.

    And here’s the thing: you’re a grad student, Farhat. She was a veterinarian SURGEON. You think she didn’t have a few years, say 8 or so, of college under her belt?? Imagine for one minute, that you spend years building up your education and future, you get out there, doing what you love for a decade, then WHAM!! within 5 years, you lose EVERYTHING.

    That’s the point- to have people see poverty from a different perspective. Not to have them say “well, they made bad choices” or “gee, that’s too bad”. Not “it won’t happen to me because I have x-y-z for a back up plan”. Just to understand a bit more.

    Because it really can happen to anyone.

85. I would also add that kactus has been very balanced in her writings and moderation especially considering that it is a topic that hits close to her.

86. I am of the opinion that if you don’t mind spending welfare money, you shouldn’t mind others having an opinion on how you spend that money, rightly or wrongly.

    Farhat, are you serious??? Everyone in this country gets “welfare money” of some type. I personally think that you make far too many trips during the week, and should consolidate your errands down because you’re causing too much wear and tear on the roads that my taxes pay for. Also, since you’re getting a grad student stipend, can I go over all of your classwork and give you pointers on your dissertation proposal? Because I don’t want any of my money going to waste, and that includes you getting a B in any of your classes. If you don’t want to work hard enough to get 100% on all your assignments, you don’t deserve the handout that the university is giving you on my dime. You’d better get done in the allotted time, too – none of this adding an extra year because your project didn’t work out the way you thought it would.

    See how that works?

87. Random thoughts about this post:

    1. It was great. Thank you for writing it.

    2. If anyone out there is a “welfare queen (king?)” who is scamming the government by waiting in line all day in the cold for food stamps even though he/she does not need them, he/she is welcome to them as far as I’m concerned. I certainly wouldn’t want to go through all that for any reason other than dire necessity. I can’t see how this method of earning one’s basic necessities could possibly be called “lazy”: it’s way more work for much less reward than, for example, my job.

    3. However, I’d like to put in a semi-good word for the disdainful grocery clerks. Most of them are one disaster away from being on welfare themselves. If they get sick or have a kid or if their spouse gets abusive or if a hurricane comes through the city and destroys their home they’re going to be where you are or worse. They know this but try to deny it and feel distainful of the “lazy welfare queens” as a way of pretending to themselves that they are better and that therefore it could never happen to them. This doesn’t hold for the wealthy anti-welfare idiots who are just idiots, IMHO, but the grocery clerks who are asking you why you buy ice cream (once a month) when you’re on welfare, they’re less likely to be evil than scared.

88. I used to work at a grocery store deli. Now, one of the more stupid welfare laws (in WA no less, which is prety okay with food stamp rules) is that people using foodstamps can’t get fresh chicken: they have to get the day-old cold stuff.

    One time, a coworker and I saw a lady with three kids coming up, and we pretty much knew it was going to be a foodstamp lady. (They normally looked stressed as all hell, their kids shoes are the cheap plastic based ones they give away, and normally they are heavy-set with sorta grey-looking skin…I see it as a sign of horrible health care.) She vacated to the back, since she “couldn’t handle” taking foodstamp cases. So I was left, telling this nice woman, that warm chicken was against the rules for me to give her, but here: this chicken was just about to go into the fridge, so it’s still pretty warm.

    I look back, at this, and say how arbitrary and horrible it is that the kids couldn’t even get hot chicken. My coworker thought it was horrible that “those kinds of people” could even get chicken at all, and how angry it made her that “her” money went to pay for her laziness. I told her that “her” money did no such thing, since we weren’t paying any taxes (below the minium required, we were in high school) and she should STFU.

89. I would also add that kactus has been very balanced in her writings and moderation especially considering that it is a topic that hits close to her.

    Thank you Farhat; I appreciate that.

    And car? I think I love you, for real.

90. umm…car, universities make money off grad students. They aren’t exactly a liability. Try getting a researcher who puts in 60-80 hours/week and teaches 10 hrs/week for $20,000 a year for years for no particular income guarantee after you graduate.

    As for the rest, “everyone” gets welfare money? If everyone gets welfare money, where is the money coming from? And more importantly, where is my check?

91. Also, since you’re getting a grad student stipend, can I go over all of your classwork and give you pointers on your dissertation proposal? Because I don’t want any of my money going to waste, and that includes you getting a B in any of your classes. If you don’t want to work hard enough to get 100% on all your assignments, you don’t deserve the handout that the university is giving you on my dime. You’d better get done in the allotted time, too – none of this adding an extra year because your project didn’t work out the way you thought it would.

    Car,

    Interestingly enough, I have encountered people who see grad students as parasitic drains on society. This is especially the case for the grad students whose research/field is deemed either “impractical” (Usually humanities & social sciences) and/or whose research is opposed on religious or other grounds (i.e. stem-cell research).

    Moreover, on some campuses, there are many wealthy undergraduates who view grad students with disdain. This became apparent when I met undergrads who expressed such sentiments. This was further reinforced by glancing at a university paper article where an undergrad wrote that he and many of his classmates disdainfully viewed the grad students as “sketchy” dregs of campus society.

    In short, Farhat’s position as a grad student could make her/him just as vulnerable to the very same judgmental second-guessing and stereotyping that are embedded in statements s(he) made about those on public assistance.

92. exholt, if you think I am unaware of that, you are sadly mistaken. In fact, I held pretty uncharitable views of grad students as an undergrad myself.

93. exholt, if you think I am unaware of that, you are sadly mistaken. In fact, I held pretty uncharitable views of grad students as an undergrad myself, and in some cases still do. Thankfully, I am in a hard science so I can get away with being supercilious most of the time.

94. JPlum, I’d love to see some statistics to back up your claim about crime in #52. No offense, but I’m not going to go quoting it somewhere else just on your say-so. 😉 I’d love to know where you got the information, though, so I COULD use it if it came up.

    It was in the book “Unruly Women: The politics of confinement and resistance” by Karlene Faith. Which is from 1994-ish, so the stats may have changed. I’ll look up the exact citation when I get home this evening. It’s a really interesting book.

95. Farhat, “everyone gets welfare money of some sort” doesn’t mean you should expect a check in the mail. It means that “social welfare programs” encompass a number of different things – not just the stereotypical “lazy welfare queen” scenario you imagine.
    It means that even YOU, should you find yourself disabled, could be eligible for disability benefits. YOU will get social security benefits (hopefully). If YOU need welfare (of some sort), you can get it. Unfortunately, the definition of “need” is really messed up – it leaves many, many needy people out in the cold because they make “too much” to get welfare- but not enough to live comfortably.

96. JPlum, I’d love to see some statistics to back up your claim about crime in #52. No offense, but I’m not going to go quoting it somewhere else just on your say-so. 😉 I’d love to know where you got the information, though, so I COULD use it if it came up.

    It was in the book “Unruly Women: The politics of confinement and resistance” by Karlene Faith. Which is from 1994-ish, so the stats may have changed. I’ll look up the exact citation when I get home this evening. It’s a really interesting book.

    Oh-found something on the Elizabeth Fry site: http://www.elizabethfry.ca/eweek07/pdf/issues.pdf

    “80% of women are imprisoned for economic related crimes. Moreover, the vast majority
    of property crimes for which women are charged involve either theft under $5,000 or
    fraud.”

    “Women generally make up a greater share of those charged with property offences than
    violent offences, such as homicide, assault, sexual assault or robbery. This is an indicator
    that women are being criminalized for behaving in a way that ensures their economic
    survival.”

97. exholt, if you think I am unaware of that, you are sadly mistaken. In fact, I held pretty uncharitable views of grad students as an undergrad myself, and in some cases still do. Thankfully, I am in a hard science so I can get away with being supercilious most of the time.

98. umm…car, universities make money off grad students. They aren’t exactly a liability. Try getting a researcher who puts in 60-80 hours/week and teaches 10 hrs/week for $20,000 a year for years for no particular income guarantee after you graduate.

    Farhat,

    Most people in the academy consider what you do an apprenticeship for you to “pay your dues” before being considered worthy of attaining the graduate degree with its associated benefits and potential opportunities, not a job in itself. More importantly, you implicitly agreed to the conditions of your graduate study when you made the CHOICE to attend grad school.

    The vast majority of people on public assistance, including those I personally knew growing up, did not CHOOSE the circumstances which made such assistance necessary. Every one I knew who was on public assistance was on it because of unforeseen circumstances which plunged their families into dire poverty. Trust me, when they found a way to get off public assistance, they were more than happy to give it up ASAP due to the humiliations foisted upon them by the petty bureaucrats, judgmental neighbors, food stamp purchase restrictions, and the fact the actual benefits do not go very far in meeting the most basic dietary needs.

    In fact, I held pretty uncharitable views of grad students as an undergrad myself, and in some cases still do. Thankfully, I am in a hard science so I can get away with being supercilious most of the time.

    As an aside, I never understood why undergraduates ever felt entitled to be hatefully judgmental towards grad students as a group. From my observations, undergraduates who do this are either bitter at being graded poorly/not having their overindulged egos stroked or they were non-serious students who hated the TA who held them accountable to the academic standards of the course.

    Though I’ve had terribly unhelpful TAs before, I’ve always limited my judgment to the inadequacies of those individual TAs. I never would think to extend my limited experiences to say that “all grad students are scum” as some fellow undergrad classmates would opine during my undergrad career.

    Your assumption of an entitlement to be supercilious for being in a hard science field is laughable. You remind me of many high school classmates who went into engineering and computer science at topflight institutions such as MIT and Carnegie-Mellon. They felt being in those fields proved them to be intellectually superior and guaranteed them a successful life. A few years after the tech bust of 2001, their smug sense of superiority was replaced with abject shame at being unemployed for two or more years. They weren’t too happy to find many “non-science majors” who not only remained gainfully employed, but were even prospering in “hard science” fields such as software engineering and IT. Moreover, I’ve known many “hard science” majors with topflight grad degrees who have been fired or had their careers stalled because of this “supercilious” attitude.

    To sum up: Farhat, please get off your high horse.

99. My point was that everyone gets government benefits of some kind, and usually in a much better way than “welfare” recipients do. I get $2000 per child knocked off of my income tax bill every year, plus extra for child care if I used it – how exactly is that any different than getting a food stamp check every month? (besides the fact that the tax credit is entirely free money that I can use for anything, rather than being told exactly what I’m allowed to spend it on, of course, and that it’s probably more money total than people get for food stamps in a year).

    People who own houses get part of their income tax bill knocked off, too – how is that different than living in reduced-cost government sponsored housing? Oh, yeah, again, infinite choice on where to live v. no choice.

    Flex-spend health care accounts that aren’t taxed at all, v. Medicaid? Again, you can use the untaxed money anywhere you want, instead of scraping for someone who will accept your government health card.

    Ok, so Farhat says that the university is making money off of him/her, not the other way around. Guess what? Take a look at your annual tax bill – graduate students don’t get Social Security taken out of their paycheck if employed by the university. ONCE AGAIN, that’s a straight-out government handout, right there.

    And all of my examples are simple, straightforward instances of direct monetary transfer from the government straight to an individual’s pocketbook. Add in all of the more nebulous road maintenance, ambulance/fire services, trash pickup on the city streets, etc. etc. and etc., and every person in this country is getting a heck of a lot of benefit relative to the amount they pay into the system on an individual level. I just find it hard to believe that anyone who realizes that can begrudge people their measly couple of hundred dollars a month that keeps them alive.

100. I work in a grocery store in Illinois. Here we have WIC (with the peanut butter, cheese, milk, cereal, and formula and maybe a few other things) and food stamps, which is now a credit card that only works on food (I am not sure what is restricted, but it doesn’t appear that much is). I don’t have too much cash register experience, but I do remember a few instances. I was trained by a Hispanic woman, who had to walk be through the rather extensive process of signing and punching in the codes and making sure the WIC lady had purchased the right products, because they are fairly specific things you have to buy (ie: actual cheese verses “cheese product”). The lady was upset and frustrated that my trainer had picked her to walk me through the stes with. Later my trainer told me about how she got in trouble because a customer had accused her of racism because she made her exchange products (the government won’t pay the store back if we let them through with the wrong products) The costumer got a ton of free stuff. Of course, she is the bad apple; most of the other WIC moms were perfectly nice, if annoyed to have to wait to have their cheese replaced or the correct cereal grabbed.

     It was interesting to see what people bought with their food stamps. Once I recall seeing a guy buying a whole bunch of chips and pop, and nothing else, and I had to wonder if he was really going to feed that all to his son who was with him. I hope they got something healthier on another trip. There were a few things that wouldn’t count, and someone would pay for $100 worth of groceries with their food stamp credit card and then have to pay $2.37 on some random thing that didn’t count. I never knew what those ranodm things were that didn’t count.

101. We are getting pretty far from the original discussion but that said, I don’t know of any MIT or CMU graduates being unemployed for a year after the tech bust. Sure, some took pay cuts and a few had to find other jobs and their stock portfolios were a fraction of what they thought they had and their stock options went bust but people who knew their stuff were still in demand. It did hurt those who were “web designers” because they had a 15 day course in HTML under their belt.

     I see no reason for “abject shame” over being unemployed. Especially not in an economic downturn. Unemployment happens to the best of us and sometimes especially to the best of us. There is nothing whatsoever to be gained by feeling shameful over it.

     As for attitude affecting your careers, sure it happens. But you have to guard against being too submissive or people will roll over you without even a moment’s thought.

102. But Farhat, do you admit that you are getting welfare money? Check your paystub and see if Social Security is being taken out of it. It’s been a few years since I was a doctoral student, but as of the turn of the century it certainly wasn’t, at least not for grad students at public universities. That’s a 12.4% raise you’ve been given straight from the government, because god knows everyone else has to pay it. If you’re making $20k a year, you’re raking in almost $200 a month from Uncle Sam. That’s quite a bit more than the $152 granted in food stamps for a single person per month.

103. Once I recall seeing a guy buying a whole bunch of chips and pop, and nothing else, and I had to wonder if he was really going to feed that all to his son who was with him. I hope they got something healthier on another trip.

     But, don’t you get it? Even if you didn’t mean to, you were sitting in judgement of someone else’s purchases and felt entitled to do so. That’s what is so annoying- how would you feel if someone were looking at your purchases and thinking similar?

     Maybe there was a good reason for the chips and pop (like a celebration, and it was a treat)- maybe not. But you were still judging him.

104. car, Louise, I get the strong impression that Farhat’s biggest problem is being young and falling into the trap that the young and healthy often do: that it will never happen to them. No matter how much help they’ve gotten over the years, how many support systems are in place for them, they still fall for the Myth of Self Sufficiency, the Big Lie that it is possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and if you don’t, well shame on you.

     I’d be interested in having this discussion again with you, Farhat, after you’ve gotten a few years, some kids, and maybe a major illness (yours or a family member) under your belt.

105. Kactus, I think you’re spot-on. We’ve just had a similiar reaction here to para/quadriplegic activists protesting about new rail carriages without provision to evacuate wheelchairs – people protesting about the cost of accommodating disability provisions as if it couldn’t be them in the wheelchair next week left behind in a train tunnel fire or worse.

     Fear leads to Othering. Othering leads to contempt.

106. kactus, you are so much more generous of spirit than I am. My fear is that people like Farhat never get those experiences, and grow up to be little George Bushes, voting accordingly.
     When I was in grad school, I had a spate of a few months during which I was quite short of money and ended up charging my groceries the entire time, because after the bills there was literally nothing left. It was humiliating at the time – I couldn’t stand the fact that I was using a credit card at the grocery store because I couldn’t afford to feed myself. Then I realized how damned lucky I was to have a credit card in the first place. What if I didn’t? Even then, I still had the option of humbling myself and asking my parents for money. They couldn’t spare much, but they would have been able to keep me in ramen noodles for awhile. Worst case, I could quit school and go live in their basement. I realized that I was in the lap of luxury compared to a lot of people. I have friends whose parents couldn’t spare even $10 a month to help them along, or who don’t have parents in the first place. I have friends who didn’t start with a credit card early and build up a good-sized limit, or who got into trouble and had their cards stopped, or otherwise didn’t have a reserve line to tap. It’s close to impossible for some people to see their support systems, because they’re so ingrained as “normal” and just part of life. Of course you’ll have a credit card. Of course your family will help. Of course you won’t get stuck with a minimum wage job when that’s all that’s available. Of course.
     My question is how can people like Farhat understand reality when they probably won’t be faced with it personally?

107. well car, there’s always hope. Given Farhat’s apparent youth (and I keep wanting to say “his”, not knowing Farhat’s gender, but you know, he talks with that male sense of entitlement, so probably) anything could happen in the next couple of decades. And if it doesn’t, if he stays as “supercilious” and oblivious as he is now, then he’ll be yet another welfare-bashing dick.

     I’m always amazed by the degree of jealousy shown by the welfare-haters. They really seem to feel that their piece of the pie is being stolen by those greedy poor folks, and if the poor folks would just get their own pieces of pie everything would be dandy. But they never stop to think about the wealthy, who steal the whole pie, the ingredients, and the pie-making factory to boot.

108. Not really, since that works out to 50 cents per American per year. This developmental aid program (which would be in Pakistan, not Afghanistan) does have quite a few serious problems, although this is obviously not the thread to discuss them.

     About 0.5% of the U.S. budget goes to foreign aid, the vast majority of which is military foreign aid. So distress and anger over all the money we waste on non-military foreign aid is badly misdirected, and makes about as much sense as, oh, all the distress and anger over the money we waste on welfare cheats. And has a pretty similar mentality behind it, of focusing on the relatively small amount of money spent trying to help people, compared to the relatively large amount of money spent on killing people and helping corporations.

     I’m sorry. I was wrong. $750 million is just chump change. Gosh, let’s just boil it all down to averages. Fitty-cent ain’t no big deal. Hearts and minds must be a lot cheaper than I first thought. Heck, let’s just put’em in the clearance bin.

     Thanks for clearing that up.

109. well car, there’s always hope. Given Farhat’s apparent youth (and I keep wanting to say “his”, not knowing Farhat’s gender, but you know, he talks with that male sense of entitlement, so probably) anything could happen in the next couple of decades. And if it doesn’t, if he stays as “supercilious” and oblivious as he is now, then he’ll be yet another welfare-bashing dick.

     kactus,

     I second Car’s statement on your generosity of spirit in the face of patronizing ignorance.

     Though youth and being male may be factors for such ignorance, I’ve heard similar statements delivered in nearly the same manner from relatives and people from a variety of ages and genders.

     This is especially the case with some upper-middle class maternal relatives from the suburbs. In fact, some of the most judgmental and ignorant comments about people who are on public assistance or generally poor that I’ve heard from relatives came from two aunts. Some of those comments were directed at my parents and other poorer relations whom they saw as “failures” for being “less successful” than they were. It was one reason why I did not get along with them during my adolescent years.

     From what I can surmise, they view most manifestations of poverty as the logical consequence of poor individual choices and thus, those afflicted should suffer its adverse affects only occasionally relieved by “successful” members of society with “charity” on their humiliatingly patronizing terms.

110. Oops. I neglected to put the word “logical” in the last sentence of my previous post in quotes. Sorry about that.

111. Farhat: Since you’re a man of science, I have an experiment for you: If you think that living on welfare is so great, try it. Drop out of school and live on the aid you can get from the state–and nothing but the aid you can get from the state (no dipping into savings, no borrowing from parents, no use of private medical insurance paid for by anyone but yourself, etc, though I suppose supplementing your income by “spare changing” would be legitimate in the context of the experiment)–for 3 months. It is also cheating to continue to live in your current domicile if it is pre-paid, but ok if you have to get the rent together every month. I’m inclined to say that keeping your current possessions is ok, but remember that you’re getting off easy if you do.

     If, at the end of that time, your experience supports the idea that this is the easy life, you can, I suppose, decide to continue it and be a Gentleman of Leisure or go back to your normal way of life if you prefer*. Otherwise, you will have gained insight into a way of life that I really think you have no understanding of right now.

     *Though the very fact that this IS just an experiment which you CAN quit if you want to or if it gets too hard makes it much less stressful for you than for the average welfare recipient, who has no choice about accepting aid: he or she needs it to survive, end of story.

112. Good one, Diane, except that first of all, Farhat (if he is indeed a young, childfree male) wouldn’t be eligible for any cash benefits in the United States. Now, if he became the sole caretaker of one or more children, then he’d be able to at least apply.

     No guarantee, though, that he’d get any check. Most likely when he went to apply for welfare the caseworker would take one look at his education level and his male-ness and say, “sorry, but you’re work-ready. No money for you!”

     Now, if Farhat wants he can appeal that illegal decision. So he goes through the hearing process, and hopefully is able to prove that he is, indeed, unable to find outside work, or that one or more of his children is so disabled that they are a barrier to him finding outside employment.

     So now here is Farhat, a month into his 3-month experiment, still without any money, but at least he’s won his hearing against the welfare department. What next? Wait for his check, which by now is a very pressing matter indeed, since he’s been without any income for a month. Hopefully his check will come within the next month, although not necessarily. And depending on what time in the month he applied, he might get a full check, or he might get a half month’s check. Now he’s going on 2 months without income.

     After 3 months, ideally he’ll get at least one check covering a full month. If he lives in Wisconsin he’ll be getting either $673 or $628, and he’ll be able to pay his back rent (hopefully before eviction), pay his delinquent bills, maybe pay back that $20 he borrowed from his friend 5 weeks ago, and if he’s lucky have enough left over to get a single cigarette from the corner store, to soothe his very stressed nerves. Cuz he is indeed feeling very stressed by now.

     Lucky for Farhat that he knows he only has to tough it out for 3 months and he’ll be rescued. Imagine single moms (and a few dads) who have to live like that for months at a time, until they’re so far behind on their bills that they may never get ahead.

113. Farhat should also remember that many people receiving welfare have paid into the system they’re benefiting from. Not everyone on welfare uses it from cradle to grave. A friend of mine gets welfare right now. She’d worked for a few years, paying into the system, and now she needs to be on the receiving end of those benefits. That’s how it’s supposed to work. And that’s OK.

114. More on waiting here in Wisconsin

     http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=635548

115. It seems that many here seem to prefer arguing with strawmen rather than what I said.

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