Everything Nac

Chris Herrington decided years ago that his reality was much more fun…

and he’s ready to tell you why.

Sit back and relax.
It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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The Anger Over Welfare

     Welfare. Now that’s a problem, isn’t it? We know that some people need help, but then other people are getting just help; and it’s the only plan they’ve got! Have you noticed how some people have this sense of entitlement? It’s totally amazing that they have the thought that the checks will just come rolling in since they exist! I mean, what are we to do?

     In 2009, a family of four with a yearly income of $21,954 or less was considered poor by American standards (U.S. Census Bureau News, September 16, 2010);11.1 percent (8.8 million) of American families fell into this category. The number of people below the official poverty thresholds numbered 43.6 million people in poverty in 2009, a poverty rate of 14.3 percent. This rate was the highest since 1994, but was 8.1 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available.
http://usa.usembassy.de/society-socialsecurity.htm

     Okay, people have some needs, but once you get back on your feet, isn’t it time to start to work to pull your own weight? You would think that people would have a little bit more self-respect than to simply take charity when it is not really needed, just because the line is open. It reminds me of people who go to happy hour and eat an entire dinner of free hors d’oeuvres. (No wonder this practice is just about gone.)

     Who are the people who need to get public assistance? What about people who are out of work? They lost their jobs, but are we supposed to just carry them until the economy returns to health? How about the victims of the hurricanes and other natural disasters? I mean, if you don’t have any more common sense than to build your house right on the ocean front and then not have fantastic insurance, what were you thinking? And these people in mortgage crisis? Look, Pal, you made your bed by jacking up your costs and depending on your job to keep on earning you a hefty living; why should anyone help out someone who does not have a lick of economic sense? Flood victims, wild fire victims, mudslide victims, earthquake victims….where is all of this political correctness coming from? If you don’t plan better, you get burned, or drowned, right? I mean, this is why we all went to school, to find out what we needed to do to prepare to meet the world and all of its messiness. And public education, we need to take a look at this practice of giving everyone a free education. I think that the third time you go to the office that should be your last day in public education, like they do in some other countries. If you can’t behave, take care of your own self, really, right?

     But let’s get down on this welfare thing. If someone needs a helping hand, fine. But, I am not going to just carry someone for life simply because he can’t get up off of his back side and do some work. There is no need to just hand someone a check because he is lazy. If he can work, but he doesn’t want to, then he should just break the law, get put into jail, and then I will feed, clothe, and house his sorry behind. I only support criminals with my free money, isn’t that right?

     And all of these girls having babies just to get on welfare! That’s disgusting! Have they no shame? I know that nearly 1 in 3 women will be raped in her life time, and I don’t believe in abortion, even if, but that does not mean that these girls can’t just pick themselves up off the street and get themselves a good paying job that does not require a lot of self-esteem so that they can take care of their own. They should have known better than to wear those shorts in that part of town anyways.

     And the laziness of some people! Just getting a check for food and not even trying to go to work! I think we ought to just cut off welfare all together and let them suffer that. After they get real hungry, then they will know they need to get up and go get a job.

     Do you know how many people really need to be on public assistance? Let me see. You have to be really sick and disabled, but then I know disabled people who work. And when you get better, you can go back to work. I don’t know maybe 5% of the people are bad enough off at one time to need public assistance, counting orphans and sick folks and such. That’s .05 X 300,000,000 . That’s about 15 million. How many are on the rolls?

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/09/07/one-in-six-americans-receives-government-assistance/

     1 out of 6 Americans is on some kind of public assistance, this website says. Others agree; it’s about 17%, not 5 percent. Now, my number of 5% was arbitrary, but something does not seem right.

     Rise in Number of Americans Receiving Government Benefits

     “Out of the Spotlight” Posting for April 19, 2010

     New data from the Census Bureau offers a revealing look the hardships that confronted American families as the economy spiraled downward in 2008. According to the Census Bureau, between May and November 2008, the percentage of households participating in federal aid programs increased from 23.2 percent to 24.7 percent. The percentage of people receiving food stamps climbed from 7.6 percent to 8.8 percent, and the segment of those receiving benefits from Medicaid, which includes the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, rose from 17.5 percent to 18.5 percent.

     The figures are based on the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation, which follows the same group of people over time, interviewing them once every four months.

     The report also finds that in the third quarter of 2008, a monthly average of 28.4 million households (24 percent of Americans) received benefits from need-based federal aid programs, such as Medicaid, which had 21.1 million participants. Further, a monthly average of 11.5 million children participated in the free or reduced-price school meals program and 9.3 million Americans were enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps).

http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/OutOfTheSpotlight.aspx?id=a7559453-84fa-443c-8b1a-8edda26d88e5

     Okay so children are getting some benefits, and food stamps, but what about this:

http://rightwingnews.com/2010/11/no-more-using-california-welfare-cards-to-buy-medical-marijuana/

     You have to make it a law that people can’t buy pot or gamble with their food stamps and assistance cards? This is like our having to rein in the banks and bail out those corporations. What is wrong with people? Don’t they think about this stuff? Just because they can get away with it, they do it until they get caught! Does everything need to be forced????

     Okay, so we are looking at the least educated, the most disenfranchised, the least self-disciplined, and the ones most medically at-risk, so what do you do with these 10’s of millions of Americans who need or feel that they need to continue on the Federally tax-funded relief programs that have in fact become the way they make their livings generation after generation? Free housing, free food, free education, free medical, and free from accountability? Let’s set some limits here! I don’t want to be dragging these folks around the rest of my life, and they should want to do better for themselves, right?

     Whose value system is that? Mine. We allowed it in the first place. It is a system that is in place that they grew up with. It’s seriously all they know. These are people who, if you gave them $100,000, they would be in worse shape than ever.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/95216/a_homeless_man_blows_100000_of_free.html

     Really? Yep!

     I have done home visits where there is not a single book in a house. Not a picture on the wall. It doesn’t mean that they have dirt on the floor or that they are sub-human. It means that this is not a value to them. I know of middle class Americans who never go to museums. I’m talking about people who have never seen the beach. They’ve never seen a mountain. They’ve seen pictures. They have heard tell; others did it, but not them.

     When we talk about entrenched poverty, the kind that runs through generations, the ideas are ingrained and solid. Imagine that someone challenged your reality. What about if in 2000 years Christ is seen as no more important than Zeus? Records, 8-track, tapes, CD’s, mp3, flash drive, bio-electric storage, super-conducting synthetic crystal resonance, hyper-magnetic nano-implants for biometric interfaced co-existence….. Imagine a world that is so advanced beyond your own experience that it seems impossible to understand what it is that has transpired in a super-segmented reality that provides for such an advanced form of equality that race and world geo-political concepts no longer apply. If we keep walking down this path, you are going to come to a point where you are helpless to do anything without assistance, somewhat like aging in a highly technical world, but without the luxury of having anyone to be there directly for you since you are all alone. Imagine the islands of helplessness that exist in the world where we live where people can win an argument with themselves that goes: “If I take public assistance, I will get free money and be able to eat and survive, but if I go get a job, I will only be able to earn $500 more, so I might as well stay home.” This is the kind of engrained thinking that comes with hard core institutionalization, like prison. They can’t make a decision because they have had that part taken out year after year. They can’t make it in the real world, really!

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr151.pdf

     Sometimes we see lists of average house hold taxes, but we forget to look at the people who pay them. If the bottom 20% make less than $23,000 and the average American house hold pays almost $18,000 in taxes, then we can’t assume that those at the bottom pay the average, right? It is for sure that those who make 80% of the money pay 80% of the taxes. And they have a right to know that they are getting a big bang for their buck, and no one can seriously fault them for that. But we can’t look purely at the amount of money they pay, since it is really only a % of what they made, just like the middle class. And people at the bottom need to take responsibility for their exposure to poverty and disease, since they are the ones who are asking for help. Having the time and energy to do that is one of the luxuries of the upper and middle class; it’s why people want to be there. “I have people for that,” one ad puts it.

     What makes no sense is to be angry about the abuses, if that’s all you do to help. We have security cameras on the streets because people abuse roads, not just to keep the poor in check. The amount of fraud that has been committed in the last few years on some levels has cost us worldwide $72 trillion. Just the first bailout would have paid all of our public welfare bills for 42 years. And that was just the bail out under Bush!

     I don’t see how anger, however righteous, is going to solve anything. All charities are down on collections. Being angry because people are not focusing on improving their lives when they may not have any idea where to start is like denying the 5 stages of grief. 12 step programs, youth camps, church groups, committees of all types, resource groups, and funds of all kinds have been working with this problem for 10,000 years. We provide an ever-increasing amount of money to our citizens to soak up, no doubt. And we must do something about it, and quickly.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1950_2015&view=1&expand=&units=b&fy=fy11&chart=F0-total&bar=1&stack=1&size=l&title=Total%20Government%20Spending%20Chart&state=US&color=c&local=s

     Best Answer – Chosen by Voters

     With cash AND food stamps benefits (this info may be outdated by a year or two), a family of four gets about $930./month. Where I live, you can’t rent a 3 bedroom home for less than 1200./month. It is also a popular misconception that a family on welfare “makes money” on having more babies. A working family receives a $2,450 tax deduction per child, and can claim up to $2,400 in tax credits to offset the costs of child care. By comparison, a welfare parent only gets about $90 per month in increased benefits for another child. It is by NO means a glamorous life. I wouldn’t want to live that way. I’m going to guess that most people on welfare aren’t enjoying living that far beneath the federal poverty level. Since 1996, there have been work requirements (minimum number of hours worked each week) for welfare recipients in most cases. I believe there are still some who abuse the system, but for those who really need it, I don’t object to it.. especially if two-thirds of them are children.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080821191642AAp0vCG

Best Answer – Chosen by Voters
Around 35% of african americans are on welfare per capita
around 13.5% of Caucasians are on welfare per capita
around 29% of Hispanic Americans are on welfare per capita
around 19.5% of asian americans are on welfare per capita
the rest is miscellaneous
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100526160047AAwjSh0

     A person going to work and making minimum wage at $7.50 for 35 hours a week would make $1050 per month. That’s $12, 600 per year. Divide that by 365 and you get $34.52 per day. If both parents worked at minimum wage, that would be $25,200 per year. If they had 2 kids, each costing $130,000 each to raise to age 18, then we could say that $25,200 x 18 = 453,600. Subtracting the kids cost, 260,000, we get 193,600. Now, dividing back out 193,600/18 = $10,755.56 per year. And by the day that is $29.47. With two kids, when we look at how their money needs to be used to raise the children, these two adults actually work for $2.11 an hour. You can’t do much on that, Friends.

     On the public tab they don’t ultimately do any better, and if you have seen how the system works, then it is not really an esteem builder either. Most people I know who are on welfare are edgy, or angry, or defensive, or depressed, and some are all of those and more.

     I would not wish welfare on anyone. Let’s be very serious for a moment. Would you?

     It is hard to get people to understand what great good they can do for themselves if they will only lean into it. Once you are down, it may seem impossible to get up. Yes, I agree, there are those who work the system and are ripping us off. I want them to go to work and stop stealing from me too. Even those at the very bottom of the social ladder deserve to be treated with dignity though. I know that some people have the feeling that prisoners need to be ill-treated and not given basketballs and TV. I know that if people make their beds they need to lie in them.

     I also know many people feel that way even though they themselves have been flat out broke, broken, sunken, and out for the count, and they were able to pull themselves back up by their boot straps with the help of a few friends. Some people take longer than others. It may take a rigorous series of steps to wean those who have become addicted to the public dole, and it must be done, but we can never forget that before there was a VA, the homeless vets from the Civil War lined the streets of New York. We cannot forget the bread lines of the Depression. We cannot forget the huge leap Americans took when offered the GI Bill. We cannot forget the giant step we took when we took up the cause of science and math in the late 1950’s.

     We cannot afford to simply throw away 10’s of millions of Americans. We must reform the system, yes. Use a work program to train our disadvantaged, and teach them the dignity of work and self-sufficiency, absolutely. But, to shame them day after day, making them to feel that the food they get, the housing they live in, and the educational boost they get is tied with strings of disparagement and self-righteousness is not to mitigate the struggles they endure in a life of poverty and a lower standard of food, clothing, housing, and education that many of us take for granted in our finger pointing. Many, and maybe most, of them would prefer to work, if they had the chance to change their outlook. We can assist them free of charge to us merely by adopting an attitude that roots them on, challenges our own paradigms, and frees us all from the mentality that this can’t be done. Just like they may have the thought that they can’t change, we only solidify that thought by our agreeing with it. America must reinvent itself every day, and tomorrow will be no different in that respect. Instead of platitudes like, “Do it for the children,” let’s be more practical. They can either learn to make a dollar for themselves, or you and I will be paying for them the rest of our lives and theirs. It’s a choice, but if you can’t reach them then don’t preach to them. Condemnation never motivated anyone to do the right thing. If you can’t do anything to help them, with all of your resources, then don’t judge them for not being able to help themselves when they have less than anybody.

     runningturtle87

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     Having completed 32 years of public school service, Chris Herrington lives, with his wife, in Appleby, Texas, and his writing consists of blogging and essay writing concerning an array of topics including education, mediation, self-development, and human interests. He teaches at the Martin School of Choice, plays racquetball, and enjoys his job.

     Chris Herrington can be reached at herrington@everythingnac.com