Rules for taking public assistance

[jedimomma]

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, mostly because myself and many of my friends are now on varying forms of state aid. Taking public assistance is a daunting thing to do, generally incredibly depressing, and just all around no fun. Many perfect strangers are happy to criticize you for your dependence, regardless of the fact that they

Comments

[moonshineray]

My mother told me about growing up as a child in the early welfare days. Raised by a single mother with a dead-beat Dad (my grandpa was a drunk and womanizer), she told me about how she grew up eating a can of soup a day or sometimes every other day because there was no money even with her job, how her grandma would sit her down at her house and feed her an entire loaf of bread with butter... while the kids on welfare had steak and cashmere sweaters. Her mother wouldn't go on welfare, and while I felt the same as she did about why it was best not to, had I been in her position, I would have taken the welfare rather than suffer so deeply. That was why when all our savings ran out and our cupboards emptied and unemployment denied us the money I was counting on and one of the jobs Dave was going for turned him down, and there was nowhere else to turn and nothing else that could be done, we finally applied and were accepted. Today our cupboards will be full and we will not be hungry and will not have to eat the weird and unhealthy food food banks often give (which is also never enough) and as much as I can't help but be disappointed that it came to this, I am grateful for what I can get if not for me but for my kids, because there is no shame I will not endure to see them healthy.

This is so true so often, and funny and sad at the same time. People are judgemental jerks. You can be against the system as it stands while not taking it out on the people who are just trying to get by. I have never, nor will ever, put down someone who needed help. I hate especially that they pick on single mothers, who are often the ones who need it the most. Yet I cannot stop myself from feeling a little embarrassment in needing this. 5 years of struggle, and the better part of a year unemployed and only now have we come to this.

It's hard.

On an unrelated note, I am so glad costco takes the food stamp card now here. We buy most of our meat and a lot of produce there, very low prices compared to a lot of places around here and we know how to buy carefully in bulk. I am such a person for saving money on food!

[moonshineray]

PS- another neat thing, the local farmer's markets are taking it too!

[jedimomma]

Don't you love that?!

[jedimomma]

Wow, your grandma was hardcore. I guess I've never really understood the "accept no aid at any cost" mindset. I mean, I suppose if one really believes that "anyone can make it in America" or something similar, then it makes some sense. But that's just not true, it never has been true, and it really really really really isn't true right now. If we're not willing to look out for one another, and help each other when we're in need, why are we living in a society at all? Is being an American only "I live on the same contiguous piece of ground as they do"? Do we owe nothing to each other? Even those who are doing well right now didn't bootstrap themselves--they're riding on the coattails of a rich country with all kinds of benefits.

Part of having a functional society is that there is a baseline below which people can't fall (or at least, can't fall without trying hard). Societies don't function when large portions of them are worried about having enough to eat, or how they will care for sick family members, or are being worked to death. That's where revolutions come from. There are lots of ways to create those baselines and safety nets, and people disagree about how it should look; welfare-state proponents think that this is part of the government's responsibility, libertarians think that the invisible hand will guide the social market into creating services without intervention, and so on. But the fact that the safety nets have got to be there for a society to function isn't up for debate, that's just how it is. But they also only work if people are willing to take the aid. Safety nets don't work if people are shamed into jumping over the edge of them.