Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I didnt take a house loan out that I couldnt afford, nor have I worked for an employer that has been operating in the red and needing a bailout
I never lived beyond my means or associated anything with me that did
I dont blame the government
a lot of people could afford the loans at the time but had an unexpected job loss and/or the mortgage went up so high due to deregulation that all of a sudden they couldn't afford it...btw clinton is guilty of that one...just like bush was guilty of the other deregulations...FTR i'm for some regulation but not overregulation, history has proven over and over that both extremes (as always is the case in anything) are bad for the country.
I don't have up close knowledge of anybody getting on welfare, but a friend of one of my kid's tried to get food stamps after he lost his job. He was denied because he had a savings account, several thousand in it. He spent all that on rent over a few months. Thank goodness he didn't go too long between jobs. He went to the food bank a few times. Now, there was someone who needed a little bit of temp help and couldn't get it. Yet, I see people in SUV's buying carts full of items at Target, that have five kids with braces, sit in the dr's waiting rooms with me and so on. I'm starting to think a lot of people flat out lie when filling out those forms. I'm not against temp help at all!!! But there seems to be some funny stuff going on sometimes. I've always given to the food bank, but after seeing this kid's experience, I give double now.
I agree with a lot of what you say but here's the thing to qualify for food stamps you can't have a big savings account, no exceptions. I'm sure you would like that rule if it was someone disabled, on welfare, or only working part time. So how do we make exceptions for one situation?
People are being fed so much ridiculous nonsense about welfare so they will spend their energy resenting the poor instead of questioning corporate welfare and the widening income gap between the very rich and the middle class. I'm so sick of hearing about the supposed class warfare with people hating the rich, from what I see and read it's all abut hating, and envying the poor who supposedly have these amazing lives of leisure. Give me a break, most of the people on welfare live difficult lives, spend some time in the inner city and tell me how wonderful the lifestyle is. I bet most would be happy to trade places with those complaining.
I do believe we need many welfare reforms, and fraud must be cracked down upon, but there are many people who use welfare as it was intended, as a temporary means of assistance to get a family through a hard time, the majority who use public assistance are on it for 2 years or less. I am close to a young married couple who found themselves with an unplanned pregnancy, and without some forms of public assistance they wouldn't have been able to survive.
They did what most conservative would say should be their only choice and had their child, but those same conservatives want to take away any help for people like them. These are two incredibly hard working people who were more than willing to work, they just couldn't find jobs that paid anything, and the jobs they did find were part time, and temporary so they couldn't get any health insurance. It turned out their baby had some serious health issues, and needed a lot of care, and no, she didn't smoke, drink, or do a single drug, and thanks to a public program the conservatives want to get rid of, she was able to get prenatal care and proper nutrition.
Their beautiful child, now healthy, thanks to public aid that helped pay for health care just turned four, and they are both working full time jobs, pay for their own health insurance, receive no public assistance, and haven't for a couple years. She recently completed a two year degree, and is going on for further education to care for children with problems. All I read are stories of "welfare queens,"abusing the system and how every person who receives any aid is lazy and useless. I never read about people like this couple who are both productive citizens who care about making this country a better place, they needed help to get there and my tax dollars were put to good use helping them. They needed help in order to feed and care for their young family, and that help needs to stay available if we are to call this the best country in the world.
I've never received a single cent in public assistance, I run a successful business, and pay plenty in taxes, but I happen to care about those less fortunate than me and want to see programs available that help people better themselves. I was fortunate that I came from a good family with loving parents that did everything they could to give me a good life. I was sent to a decent school, my parents had the time and energy to make sure I got good grades which allowed me to go to college, do well, and have all the tools to start a successful business. I did work very hard, and I did it on my own, but I cannot deny that I was set up for success by my parents, and that played a part, not everyone is so fortunate. I can't stand to listen to someone like Mitt Romney act like he wasn't given tremendous gifts being born into a wealthy, connected family. His disdain for the 47% who don't earn enough to pay federal income tax is disgusting. That couple is still in that 47%, and I don't know anyone who works harder than they do. The vast majority of that 47% are hard working everyday Americans who take care of their families on their own, and many pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than Mitt and his wealthy friends do, yet they look down on these average hard working Americans and wrongly call them lazy free loaders.
Well said, Detshn (above). I wish I could rep you again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by badhornet
Everybody seems to forget that government was set up to defend this country from invaders foreign and domestic.
Its not the governments job to find you a job or take care of you.
That can be left to family members or private organizations.
FDR ruined this country with his social programs. Its why were in the mess were in
And you are forgetting that the reason they started giving kids snacks and lunches in schools is because during the draft of WWII so many guys had to be rejected because they had serious health issues caused by poor nutrition. So, having government programs that take care of the poorest among us really IS be part of "defending this country from invaders foreign and domestic."
People are being fed so much ridiculous nonsense about welfare so they will spend their energy resenting the poor instead of questioning corporate welfare and the widening income gap between the very rich and the middle class. I'm so sick of hearing about the supposed class warfare with people hating the rich, from what I see and read it's all abut hating, and envying the poor who supposedly have these amazing lives of leisure. Give me a break, most of the people on welfare live difficult lives, spend some time in the inner city and tell me how wonderful the lifestyle is. I bet most would be happy to trade places with those complaining.
I do believe we need many welfare reforms, and fraud must be cracked down upon, but there are many people who use welfare as it was intended, as a temporary means of assistance to get a family through a hard time, the majority who use public assistance are on it for 2 years or less. I am close to a young married couple who found themselves with an unplanned pregnancy, and without some forms of public assistance they wouldn't have been able to survive.
They did what most conservative would say should be their only choice and had their child, but those same conservatives want to take away any help for people like them. These are two incredibly hard working people who were more than willing to work, they just couldn't find jobs that paid anything, and the jobs they did find were part time, and temporary so they couldn't get any health insurance. It turned out their baby had some serious health issues, and needed a lot of care, and no, she didn't smoke, drink, or do a single drug, and thanks to a public program the conservatives want to get rid of, she was able to get prenatal care and proper nutrition.
Their beautiful child, now healthy, thanks to public aid that helped pay for health care just turned four, and they are both working full time jobs, pay for their own health insurance, receive no public assistance, and haven't for a couple years. She recently completed a two year degree, and is going on for further education to care for children with problems. All I read are stories of "welfare queens,"abusing the system and how every person who receives any aid is lazy and useless. I never read about people like this couple who are both productive citizens who care about making this country a better place, they needed help to get there and my tax dollars were put to good use helping them. They needed help in order to feed and care for their young family, and that help needs to stay available if we are to call this the best country in the world.
I've never received a single cent in public assistance, I run a successful business, and pay plenty in taxes, but I happen to care about those less fortunate than me and want to see programs available that help people better themselves. I was fortunate that I came from a good family with loving parents that did everything they could to give me a good life. I was sent to a decent school, my parents had the time and energy to make sure I got good grades which allowed me to go to college, do well, and have all the tools to start a successful business. I did work very hard, and I did it on my own, but I cannot deny that I was set up for success by my parents, and that played a part, not everyone is so fortunate. I can't stand to listen to someone like Mitt Romney act like he wasn't given tremendous gifts being born into a wealthy, connected family. His disdain for the 47% who don't earn enough to pay federal income tax is disgusting. That couple is still in that 47%, and I don't know anyone who works harder than they do. The vast majority of that 47% are hard working everyday Americans who take care of their families on their own, and many pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than Mitt and his wealthy friends do, yet they look down on these average hard working Americans and wrongly call them lazy free loaders.
That sounds to me like a lot of people these days, I would imagine. We've got over 40 Million on food stamps, and 100 Million on some form of government assistance, so I suspect there are a lot of working poor, and unemployed through no fault of their own types, finding themselves in need of assistance. And though I am philosophically against forced charity in the form of collected taxes to be redistributed through government agencies to other people, the disparity in income distribution, and the way the deck has been stacked against the 99% today, preludes me from being an advocate of cutting off welfare programs. That has to happen at some point, but not before sanity and lawful behavior is restored, and many many other problems are fixed first.
The biggest problems I see at the moment that needs to be fixed stems from the failure of government, and not the failure of the people. The vast majority of the economic problems of everyday working types is due in substantial measure to government misbehavior and malfeasance in their failed responsibility to promote policies that benefit the domestic economy as a whole; their failure to insure lawful behavior of the banking and wall street financial sectors; and the betrayal of the American people in facilitating "globalization" that has decimated American industry and domestic manufacturing. Couple that with out of control spending, and a foreign policy of interventionist wars and the Trillions of dollars wasted there (not to downplay the disgrace in morality of such behavior), and what we have is nothing short of a mafia like criminal operation where the 1/2% at the top (corporations and individuals such as Soros, Rockefellers, Gates, etc.) have successfully perpetrated a financial Coup D'etat, which has facilitated the economic gutting the country, and converted the majority of Americans into debt slaves, serfs, and the living dead. Consequently, the solutions must necessarily start with fixing the problems from the top down, and not the bottom up.
Unfortunately, what people just don't seem to grasp is that "socialism" is at the heart of the problem overall. Social welfare and assistance programs serves to mask the aforementioned corruption at the top. It's a stealth bribe to forestall public outrage, and demands for accountability to end this criminal conduct of leadership. And these programs are used by those very same corrupt politicians to buy favor with the public, maintaining their positions, and allowing them to continue doing harm. So instead of a march on Washington, and effective political action, we end up with droves heading toward welfare and unemployment offices for these "benefits". And the costs of those "entitlements" are shouldered by the middle class, and not the mega-wealthy thieves at the top.
During the Great Depression, Millions of Americans were out of work like they are today. But they were far more visible, with Millions lined up outside in soup kitchen lines. Today, the problems are kept undercover with food stamps and other welfare programs which allows for this "things are looking up" BS to be fed to the public. The depth of the problems are hidden from view.
Secondly, these welfare programs serve as another excuse for the creation of multiple revenue streams to also be tapped by the criminals at the top, while also serving as the excuse for the financial troubles being suffered because of them. A similar tactic was used by the banker gangsters in their criminal conduct in the home mortgage scam, as they bilked Trillions from the system, while blaming the victims of their scams for the collapse of the housing bubble that they created.
Thirdly, medicare and medicaid has helped enable the creation of this health care monster that accounts for over 2.5 Trillion dollars annually (the highest expenditure of any nation) while health of the American people is in rapid decline. Every consumer safety agency, like the FDA, EPA, CDC, etc. are now the chief protectors of the monopolistic corporations they we created to police. In short, the entire system is drowning in it's own corruption, and taking the American people along with it.
All of this was made possible by agreeing to allow "government" to steal our wages and salaries in the form of taxes and fees to do with as they should decide, under the guise of social responsibility. What this has led to is a system that now socializes all of the costs for running the nation, while the real profits are privatized into the hands of the top 1%.
The insidious portion of all this is the creation of class warfare that is now in full swing, as people are demanding the expansion of the very system that is killing their own futures. The people are demanding ObamaCare ... demanding higher taxes on the so-called "rich", which to the average financially burdened American includes those people making 250K. But those are not the ones who are killing this economy .. they are just the only ones left standing .... and the masses, apparently willing to personify the old adage that "misery loves company" are demanding that they be taken down too, while the true thieves and the truly wealthy (measured in ten's and hundreds of Billions) laugh all the way to the banks that THEY OWN.
They are the ones that brought you "Socialism" to begin with, because they understood just how easy it is to game the socialist model. History has already provided step by step instructions for how easy that is to do, and the only ones that seem clueless to the program are the victims who are demanding more of the same.
Welfare is only for 5 years lifetime limit. Thank GOD! It used to be you could be on welfare forever. 5 years is fine albeit there are still people who abuse but at least they can't abuse it forever like they use to...
Not the Medicaid, food stamps, Section 8 and free utilities portion of it. Nor is General Assistance limited to 5 years, nor is SSDI.
You're thinking of only the big cash giveaway to women to reward them for giving birth to a child they could not afford and with a man who doesn't choose to help support it. That's the only welfare program with any time limit on it.
Well said, Detshn (above). I wish I could rep you again.
And you are forgetting that the reason they started giving kids snacks and lunches in schools is because during the draft of WWII so many guys had to be rejected because they had serious health issues caused by poor nutrition. So, having government programs that take care of the poorest among us really IS be part of "defending this country from invaders foreign and domestic."
Why aren't their food stamp receiving parents held accountable? You'd think with all those food stamps, WIC and TANF they're getting that the parents could be held responsible for getting some of that to their kids.
^the only SSDI that I know of is Social Security Disability Insurance which you have to work to get so going by context I don't think that's what you're talking about
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
