Kraichgauer wrote:
Persephone29 wrote:
Nobody ever said that ALL poor people have 6 illegitimate kids, by 6 different men, then refuse to identify the father on the birth certificate so that the government has no recourse to recoup the welfare money to support them. I listed it as an example of why qualifying for welfare is often theft, or the next best thing to it.
This is a well thought out and perfected scam.
I can tell you that if I was going to be poor, the very last thing I would set out to be was a parent. But, misery loves company and some people have kids with absolutely NO intention of raising them. Has anyone defending this type thing spent a significant amount of time in poor neighborhoods? My husband and I lived in E. Gainesville, Fl., for the first 10 years of our marriage. Babies filthy, diapers dragging, no supervision, probably hungry... and probably benefiting very little from a check that has been assigned to them. But because they are 'poor' and qualify, a check is sent off into space where half of it is probably deposited each month into some prisoner's commissary account somewhere. You have absolutely no idea the complexity of where these funds go and the kids are getting fed at school (which is a good program) because parents can't be counted on not to trade out their EBT funds at 50 cents on the dollar, for drugs. But, they 'qualify.'
Do I think all people on public assistance do this? No... I'm sure there are some very good poor people who would never dream of doing that. But, there are enough that this lower, middle class white girl not only knows about it, but has come in contact with it in the drug world (for those that do not know, I'm 6 years the other side of an opiate addiction). The average person has NO idea the scams that are out there.
Y'all act like every 'poor' person is the equivalent of the blind man at the city gates, begging for alms. They're not, some are very sophisticated, with bad intentions.
A great many conservatives do believe most if not all poor people on public assistance are scamming the system.
Many conservatives are Calvinists in denial. One tenet of Calvinism is "total depravity", the belief that most people are completely and irredeemably corrupt. So to them, of course if you put out food stamps or whatever, you're going to mostly have people take advantage of it and scamming the system, so it's better not to have these programs at all. They think liberals are naive for not agreeing with them on this. It's a matter of faith for them. You're not going to convince them.
But these people make up a minority. Polling shows most Americans support maintaining food stamp benefits:
https://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers- ... ogram.htmlAnd with single-payer, one kind of universal health care, there is a slim majority of Americans that support it:
https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-op ... -coverage/We're winning on the public opinion. We're wasting our time if we think we can convince people like Persephone or Ezra to change their views. Rather, we need to do everything in our power to mobilize the people who support these programs.
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"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
27 Aug 2019, 7:51 am
