12-17-2013, 11:48 PM
Chakravartin wrote:
[quote=Grateful11]On one hand it bothers me that people live like this but on the other hand I see this as a never ending cycle of working the system and sitting up your
children to be in the system is just wrong in my mind.
Seems like she got the short end.
Only once, when she was in her early 30s, had she lived without government assistance. She had moved her children into a two-bedroom apartment near the Southwest waterfront and signed a lease for $925, working as a home health aide during the day and as a prep cook at RFK Stadium at night. "Climbing the ladder," she said, but then came the reality of what that meant. The increase in her income disqualified her from food stamps, and buying food with cash left nothing to pay the gas bill, and cutting off the heat made the winter seem endless, and the combination of the cold house and the 60-hour workweeks aggravated her arthritis, damaged her heart and compelled her to quit work and apply for disability.
For some people, the game is rigged against them.
There seems to be a horrible sort of netherworld where people earn enough to be cut off from assistance yet not enough to be able to live a decent, let alone nice, life. I suppose we got there because of our hyperparanoia that someone out there is getting some free heat or free food who does not deserve it. I hate the idea that hundreds of thousands of people suffer because we are so concerned that a few creeps may game the system. There's no way they are receiving anything approaching the, oh, say, $2,281,347,113 which Wells Fargo stills owes the taxpayers. We need to figure out a better way than cutting people off from assistance just because they have begun to earn pauper's wages.