THAT is where the perverse incentive is - only a parent with small children gets those sorts of benefits. So not only is that an incentive for the girls to pop out babies, but they have to produce a new one every 5 years or they lose everything!
If you don’t have a young child (below school age) you get NOTHING. Well, OK, you get food stamps - but that’s IT!
So… the rest of us are tarred with the brush of a MINORITY of poor people. I assure you, without young children a poor person in the US with no job is fucked.
YOU brought it up, YOU find it - you’re so vague on the details that any story I bring up you’ll just say wasn’t THE story.
No, that was cruel to the point of being sadistic. You CLEARLY blasted past my statements that I am UNDERemployed, not UNemployed – and those hours of the day I don’t spend in gainful employment I spend LOOKING FOR gainful employment. But why not bring up that tired old myth that only the unemployed are poor, I mean the phrase “working poor” just doesn’t exist - oh, wait, it DOES.
Why don’t you be just a little more condescending and pat me on the head and say “there, there - don’t worry your pretty little head about it”?
I have worked two jobs simultaneously and still not made enough money to cover the rent AND food. It’s not for lack of ambition or sitting on my ass all day. What makes you think I have copious spare time? Certainly during the summer I work MORE hours per week than I ever did in a “regular job” and for far less pay… because it’s the ONLY work I can find around here.
And yes, I am emotional about it - if facing the very real prospect of homelessness doesn’t stir a person on an emotional level then there is something seriously wrong with him or her. That does not invalidate my position. The only people who can be dispassionate about this issue are those who have no risk in the matter - those of us who do should not be dismissed out of hand because we care deeply whether or not we’re chucked out onto the street.
If you remember it so clearly then surely you can provide a link to the story.
You remember the story clearly… but can’t remember details like whether or not a kid was involved? This is why I say you’re making it up. As for reporting it - government workers read the newspaper, too. And regardless of WHY she refused it, if she refused an offer of work then she loses ALL state aid - ALL of it. Unemployment, food stamps, anything she gets for any hypothetical offspring… in fact, if she’s head of household refusal of a valid work offer means the entire family lose all their aid.
Now, maybe she has enough money to risk all that - in which case she’s NOT poor but middle class (for now).
Oh, please - are you saying that one dishonest person committing fraud is excuse to render everyone else in the aid system dispossessed of everything and homeless?
Seriously - even the mothers with children I’ve met while in the public aid system have been busting their butts to either get vocational training or start a business or find work. If there is such a person I haven’t met her or him yet.
I think the point of some of the posts here is that government benefits DON’T provide enough to survive. Or did you miss that?
Or I’'ll just be that crazy homeless woman pushing a stolen grocery cart, weeping because my husband died for being unable to obtain the medication he needs to stay alive. Because if I can’t make our health insurance premiums this month we’ll lose that insurance and that’s exactly what will happen - we’ll have no money to buy his medication and eventually he will die of his diabetes. It will probably be protracted and horrible, because while an ER will “stabilize” you if you’re in imminent danger of death they will NOT give you the means to get a prescription for daily medication needed to prevent that crisis.
Relatives? My mother is dead. I have one sister who actually was homeless for three months last year. My father no longer has a home of his own - he’s living with my other sister, who is the only employed member of our family, her husband being currently without a steady job and catching what day labor he can. WHERE DO YOU THINK AID WILL COME FROM? My family can’t help me. Churches tend to discriminate against those who aren’t Christians.
Sure, throw you hands up and just assume SOMEONE will take care of me - it’s not YOUR problem. It is, however, mine. I face the very, very real possibility that within four months I will lose EVERYTHING - my home, my possessions, my spouse who I simply do not have the money to keep alive.** I have been facing that threat for 26 months!** Somehow I’ve managed to keep going but I have fewer and fewer resources, fewer possessions to sell, fewer and fewer favors to call in.
Of course, that’s if I remain honest - the stupidity of it all is that if I committed a crime and went to jail I’d have a place to live, three meals a day, and guaranteed healthcare. Gee, maybe that’s a contributing factor to the link between poverty and crime, that being in goddamned JAIL is better than being poor and honest out on the street, at least from the point of view of bare survival.
Oh, believe me, if I knew where the jobs were I’d move in a heartbeat. So please, please do tell me where the jobs are.
And I suppose you weren’t listening - if you don’t have young children you DON’T qualify for public housing anywhere n the US! Not since “welfare reform”. Do you get it or not? I don’t have children, I’m not old enough to be a senior citizen - there is NO public housing option for me! NOT ANYWHERE. Other than a homeless shelter or a box on top of a sewer grate.
And WHERE is this free heathcare? Seriously, where does THAT happen? I’ve earned LESS than the poverty line for over two years and I still have to pay health insurance premiums! The ONLY way an adult can get Medicaid is if he or she is the guardian of a minor and I don’t have children. That is why I have to PAY for my health insurance.
Do you understand? For two effin’ years I have been scrabbling to avoid losing everything. Other than food stamps - which I could NOT get until December 09 - I GET NOTHING! Not NOW, not EVER. For the food stamps - public aid said I owned too many vehicles and I had to sell one. Nevermind that I use them to make what little money I earn. It’s only because I am married that we got to keep them both (one for each adult) and it wasn’t enough that I had the same last name as my husband I had to bring in my marriage license and our birth certificates and proof of my name before and after my marriage to fucking prove my 20 year marriage was valid!!!
Funny, isn’t it - when I was middle class no one for a moment ever questioned the validity of my marriage. NOT ONCE. But the minute I’m poor, well! I must be liar (you yourself show similar signs of doubting my word).
Oh, and if I hadn’t hung onto those documents all those years? Well! I wouldn’t get squat until I produced them. Of course, getting certified copies takes MONEY because no one makes copies for free, and if you don’t have the money for the fees… well, sucks to be you. You get NOTHING.
Actually, aside from the ever present worry of how to pay my rent THIS month… my life is actually pretty good. In fact, it doesn’t suck most of the time. If I could just bring in $1200 a month (because, in fact, that’s all I need to cover my bills and set aside about $100 a month) I’d actually have a damn good life, if a frugal one.
That’s the scary thing for people like you, the notion that the poor AREN’T miserable every minute of every day.
So take your false pity (because no one with real empathy could have made the opening crack you did) and shove it where the sun don’t shine.
I know something about Google, and I’ve been trying to track down this story from the information you gave, and I haven’t found it either. I think it’s time for you to put up or shut up about the details of this story.
I actually did investigate emigrating to Canada. I am told that while I would be welcomed (if I could find a job there - not impossible) my husband would not. It seems they don’t want disabled Americans moving there and “sponging” off their health system. So, yes, I could move to Canada - at the price of abandoning my husband, who, as I mentioned, can’t live without his daily medication, which I have no hope of paying for out of pocket, and even if I was making enough to pay for that, he would require additional care on top of that from time to time.
But really, it’s a pretty pathetic and disgusting thing for someone to propose solving the poverty problem by dumping the poor onto other countries, don’t you think? I waiting for someone to propose rounding up the poor and doing this by force.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
No Broomstick. You’ve made this way too much about yourself, and that’s why you’ve gotten emotional/rant-y about it. The point of the posts/conversation was, many liberal politicians cynically create an underclass dependent on Federal largesse as a means to ensuring an ever-needy population, who would then continue to return them to office.
I got so tired of hearing our resident *emotion-bot *bitch about it that I just spent 20 minutes looking for it. Problem is there was like 50 Elkhart stories in the series and I haven’t found it yet.
It’s not important. It doesn’t even really move the conversation forward; not nearly as much as the posts in the adjacent Pit thread about Tom Delay and Unemployment Insurance providing incentive for people to slow-roll their efforts to find a new job (I’m referring to the European study, or ‘Eurotrash’ as the poster called it).
So I guess it’s moot, or I retract the comment, or whatever the protocol is.
Do you know how incorrect this comment is? You’ve buried the needle on the bullshit meter. It’s smoking.
I’ve been a member of many churches over the years (travelling around, and took awhile to find the right one for the family). We helped many families in need. NEVER ONCE did we ever discriminate based on their faith; in fact, I don’t think we ever asked them what it was, or where they spent their Sunday’s (or Saturday’s in the case of unemployed lawyers, accountants, etc)
So why am I bothering to even write this? Do I care about ‘winning’ an argument against someone who changes the argument so it’s all about them? Of course not. I’m telling you this because you might actually get the help you need at a church. Consider it, if only for the health of your husband; even if you think religion is stupid, the opiate of the masses, for the gullible, etc.
A personal anecdote to counter someone who’s made things “too personal”?
That’s showing him Mr Smashy! You’ve left a smoking crater where Broomstick’s “bullshit meter” used to be.
Why not finish off they day by kidnapping some Haitian orphans?
You’ll be glad you did!
Don’t mistake me for a holy roller - I would never wear my religion on my sleeve, as you seem to assume. I wasn’t even sure if I should bring it up… but if her husband needs help and is in danger of death, Broom should not be suffering from any misconceptions about her options for getting that help. If my response was a bit harsh… well, that was to cut through her fog of emotion, kind of a tough love approach.
Maybe you should try to help instead of spouting off childish comments.
Nah, it’d be better if you learned to show consistency in your decisions about when it’s OK to drag personal information into a discussion.
If it’s OK when it helps your side of the argument, it’s also OK when it helps the other guy.
See? It’s not complicated.
Why not give it a try?
That is why I support being unfair with the well to do and support taxes to help more people like Broomstick.
I’m sure you will appreciate the tough love approach showed to the rich.
(On a serious note, I remember many historical examples that not taking care of the unemployed can lead to even worse consequences to the elites, this is indeed like insurance against insurrection)
In any case, **Broomstick **,I feel sorry for your troubles, pay no attention to obtuse nabobs like Smashie.
If your hubby is on meds for type II diabetes, the odds are that he would still have to pay for his drugs directly or though private insurance if he were a permanent resident in or citizen of Canada. Fortunately, we have generic drugs (as does the USA), and we have brand-name drugs at low cost when compared to the USA. One of the great shortcomings of health care in Canada is that when we put it in place, we stopped short of covering out-patient medication. Times have changed – medications are far more prevalent and far more helpful these days, so I think it is time we catch up with what our single pool insurance covers.
In Canada we usually pay for our drugs out of pocket or through private insurance (but in-hospital drugs are covered by socialized universal health care, all drugs are covered for folks on welfare or disability, all drugs are covered for seniors but there are nominal deductibles, there are government subsidies for folks who are working but are facing high drug costs e.g. over $1,000 per month, and low drug prices combined with subsidized housing and living minimum wages usually, but sadly not always, make health affordable for the working poor).
In the short term, there probably would not be much difference between your moving to find employment in the USA and your moving to find employment in Canada, for either way, your husband would still have to pay for his drugs. The big difference would be in the long term, for if your husband’s health gets worse, Canada is the place to be.
As far as getting your husband settled in Canada goes, please have a look at the following.
If your hubby’s diabetes is so severe that it will have him in dialysis in the next decade, or require some other greatly expensive treatment, then he would not be admissible on his own. If his diabetes is not going to be severe in the next decade, for example, if metformin or some other combination of meds is keeping things in line, then his type II would not bar his admissibility.
Even if his diabetes is severe, it is still possible for him to be admitted if you are first admitted as a permanent resident and then you bring him in as your hubby. Just live in adjacent border towns for a while.
I hope that whomever has provided you with legal advice on immigrating to Canada took this into consideration, for extremely few people who try to immigrate to Canada are turned down solely due to non-advanced type II diabetes.
This conversation is about POOR PEOPLE. Broomstick is POOR. It IS about her. You still have no evidence for your assertion beyond “it isn’t impossible”
And even after you looked for some, you still don’t have it. You still refuse to acknowledge that unemployment is temporary, and that it runs out. You’re still operating off of fantasy assumptions that have already been dis-proven.
Young man, a couple thoughts here, so please listen up:
if Broom is in such desperate straights as she describes here, yet doesn’t wish to avail herself of every possible avenue for assistance, then nobody can help her. In her post (go back and re-read it please) she suffers from the misconception that churches only help out their own kind. (On further review maybe she just hates Christians and I am being whooshed?) I tried to get through to her that that couldn’t be further from the truth… at least in my experience. I don’t live in Indiana nor would I at gunpoint so it’s just a guess - but a pretty reasonable guess.
our discussion was about excessive government help trapping generations in poverty. She responded at a personal level. To address just that one issue I gave her some personal experience of my own. Knuckleheads like Squink evidently can’t follow that, but so be it.
however much I may disagree with Broom’s politics (I suspect a lot), or how emotional or shrill her attacks become, I wouldn’t want her (or anyone) to starve, become homeless, or die due to a lack of routine/inexpensive medicines. I leave those positions for the haters on Kos and HuffPo, on Little Green Footballs and TownHall.
You’re right I can’t find the link. So sue me. It doesn’t matter to the primary conversation in any case. (And we’ve gone far afield of the OP, for that matter). You honestly think I’d make up something that trivial and unhelpful to the position I was trying to illustrate? Are you so devoid of critical thinking capabilities that you don’t see the nonsense in what you’re suggesting?
One more thing: I don’t “acknowledge” that unemployment is temporary? WTF? When did I say that? I accept your apology in advance, on that one. Unemployment varies by state, but right now has been extended out to 99 weeks, in some states, which seems like a long time.
