Currently I'm outraged at the state of our union and lack of SNAP and EBT funds for the month of November. One of my friends posted a right-wing story to "think about." I see (in a way) where she was coming from. Her welfare recipient "example" was someone who'd been on welfare and food stamps for many years (17 I think). The over-simplified gist of the article was "When is enough, enough?" Right?! I am not vehemently opposed to the sentiment. But the idea of cutting people off swiftly and suddenly doesn't sit right with me.
A person who's been on food stamps and cash benefits for 17 years and has now raised children in this cyclical pattern, is going to fail miserably when they find themselves suddenly without. Many of us, I'd even venture to say most of us, learned how to fit into a working environment with loving support from home, or bosses, or teachers or all of the above. Someone pointed out how to fill out applications, how to dress to return them, what level of work ethic is expected when a person has a job. Maybe someone even coached them and cheered for them and lovingly corrected them. People who have never held a job, do not know how to obtain and hold a job. If, by the grace of god, they obtain a job, they don't know how to hold it. They've lived with ailments of all kinds during this unemployed time (all their adult life), and don't know how to power through when illness comes to call. They've been unemployed, their bodies are not used to standing for hours on end and they may not be able to do it.
There is a whole gammit of things that work against this sudden cutoff as being an effective "wake up call" to all those lazy people getting benefits. First of all, most people on benefits also work at a job. For one thing, no one can live off $700 a month. Secondly, yes, there is a poverty mindset. It affects those in poverty and the entire society around them. I just got into a comment war with someone who wants people to work and not be on food stamps, but wants them punished when they apply their intelligence and creativity to use the resources that the government supplied to start a business and try to pull themselves out of poverty. We cannot punish people for trying to get out of poverty if we want to cease giving them benefits. And the bottom line for this argument that I could find (aside from just trying to goad me on and on) was that there's not only a lot of misunderstanding of how the system works (we'll says works for the sake of this argument. We all know the system isn't working), but there's no understanding of a need for a plan to get us out of this mess. Another piece to the whole, "just let them go without, they will figure it out" is that the country didn't get into this fine mess in a month or a day, and we're not getting out either, but if we could minimize the food scarcity that would be cool. Third, the job market is not as rich as it looks. Last fall my kid moved out here (Kansas) from Missouri, weilding a good work record and good references. She applied and applied and applied. And applied. And after she applied for some more jobs, she scored some interviews. Interviews that seemed to go well. but yielded no job. I have heard of this multiple times, not just in my own situation. Jobs are simply not that easy to come by. Because for every one of you, there are 10-20 more desperate, hungry for work people just trying to get a job. Let's face it, acquiring a job more often than not is dependent on who you know rather than what you know. This is called networking, more specifically social networking. A program called Circles is invested in this.... building a social network for this in poverty so they can have a fighting chance at digging out.
So the sum of my frustration is larger than the government shutdown. It goes something like this: I find it wrong to criminalize the poor because they are poor and lack skills that you were lovingly bestowed; I find the breakdown in our system to be far reaching. It's not just that welfare needs an overhaul, but also that term limits need to be applied to those who supposedly serve us, as I don't see them serving us much currently. Minimum wage needs an overhaul. At least in Kansas it does. It is still: $7.25/hour. It has been this since 2010 according to the internet. I thought it had been that for longer. Does it just feel like forever?!
We need to stop pushing people into situations that they can't get out of and then criminalize them for it. Stop it America. Do better.
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