Early morning thoughts on welfare reform

[annatheunknown]

My thoughts go to odd places in the morning. I usually try toward the creativity, but I barely have any control when I'm solidly awake; in those first minutes between one state and another, I take what I get. This morning, I got thoughts on welfare reform.

A woman on my Facebook feed recently declared that she would never go to Walmart again due to

Comments

[zaecus]

I was told by one of the caretakers of the system that the fraud is not as common as people think but more common than people want to believe, and even so, most of the cases of fraud that are proved turn out to be genuine mistakes and not intentional theft.

She also recounted a case of a poor woman who was repeatedly reported for potential fraud. This woman, like me, had a neurological disability. Unlike me, she qualified for full assistance and received it. Because of her disability, she was unable to work at any job that most people meeting her would think she -should- be doing. She simply couldn't process groups of people, nor could she process graduated demands from others (scheduling of deadlines for example). As a result, she wound up working for charities and other non-profits. Because of these, largely unpaid, jobs, she had received certain other considerations in order to -do- the jobs: paid cellphone, car, and housing. Unfortunately for her, the car she received was a Mercedes--chosen specifically because it had the lowest annual maintenance of the choices, and the housing she received was in a fairly upscale neighborhood. On its own, that would have probably been enough to cause her problems, but she was also of Mediterranean descent, and so looked latino to most of her entitled white neighbors.

I bring this up specifically because most of the people I run into who decry the way people 'abuse' the system have the idea that people should always be trying to get out of the system and some incomprehensible notion that these same people should never have anything worth having while in the system. Welcome to our modern society, where there are people who, though they can contribute, will never earn a sustainable wage for their contributions and where even the poor sometimes want something nice for themselves.

I can't speak about the system from experience because, even if I didn't have major psychological baggage about doing so, it has been made repeatedly and undeniably clear to me that--here in Texas, at least--I am just as unqualified to enter the system as I am to be a part of society.

...but I'm not bitter much.