Welfare!!!

I have this neighbor that the kids love to play with her daughter, and I have talked to her quite a few times and she has been really nice. We talk about our lives alittle and the struggles that we are both going through right now. She also is a single mother, yet her boyfriend lives with her. I have been helping her get to and from work the past 2 days and also dropping her daughter off at preschool and picking her up. Her car has a flat tire and she has not been able to get it fixed until today... So while she is riding with me today she asks me to take her to Job & Family Services so that she can apply for some help and assistance. I take her and she goes in to get the paperwork and comes back out, all the while I am watching people walk in and out and I can not help but judge alittle. Not because they are there, yet because they are walking in smoking cigarettes to get food stamps because they can afford $5 a day in that but not food, and because half of them I see living around me or around town in there "pimped" out cars with nice rims & paint jobs. I know this is wrong, so why do I do it....... So I am hard on myself and said alittle prayer, cuz that is what I have been doing alot lately so that God can help me with all of my short comings.... So she gets in the car, and we are driving home, and we start to talk.... She proceeds to tell me that she has been holding off asking for any assistance from the government, because she grew up in a family where it was taken so much advantage of, that she told herself that she wouldn't do that... She grew up all her life living with parents that lived off of everything they could get for free, so bad that they knew exactly how many hours a week they could work and how much money they could make at a job before quitting and moving on to keep their "free assistance." She did this all her life with them, and even now they do it as elderly. So they have never had a "real" job or tried to live in society as a citizen that paid taxes and supported themselves. Her mother now is an alcoholic, and lives off of welfare and has her whole housing paid for along with food stamps and health insurance.....So now for the first time, she is having to ask for assistance because her ex is not paying his childsupport and she is just struggling. She would have been eligable a long time for help, yet she strived to do it on her own.. And for this I commended her...

Yet, if you know anything about the system, it is hard to get on and it takes forever, yet once you get it, they make it so easy to stay on forever. Say you get $450 a month in food stamps, free health insurance for your kids and yourself, and a voucher that covers almost 75% of your rent equalling $450. Plus they will pick you up to go to the doctors, the grocery store, appt.'s, and many more services. Yet if you get a job making too much money you lose all of it... So lets break this down.

$450 food stamps
$450 rent voucher
$350 health insurance for a family of 4 a month, and this is going on the cheap end, and medicaid is fantastic!
=$1250 month in free stuff, plus perks

Yet if you get a job and make $12hr somewhere for 40 hours a week, you will get dropped from services.
$480 week b4 taxes,
-$120 taxes
=$360 a week
=$1440 month
+ you pay for your own food, insurance, and rent out of this....
WHO THEY HELL WOULD WANT A JOB!!!!!!!! So they make it too easy, unless you can find a GREAT job that is high paying, and who can do that in this economy.

So this made me think, and yes I know I gave alot of personal info for someone else. Yet you do not know them, and never will, and this is my personal blog... So I was thinking, do you know how many people probably do this... How many people probably live off welfare and our tax money assistance forever. We do not hold people accountable for themselves enough, and we do not follow through with the assistance we are giving people..... So why not spend alittle less money in the end, by drug testing, doing home visits, and giving people a cut off date that isn't FOREVER!!!!

I will say, that I have used a few systems to help with myself and the kids on and off since I left David. I have not consistantly, and only have in times when I had no other option. Yet I get right off when I can, and have had to go through the long process of reapplying over again. Yet I don't want to ever have to do this, yet I have worked since I was 16 and have paid taxes for 17 years and have never used any assistance or help, so I feel that I have a need. Yet I am disguisted by others that abuse this system and make it hard for those that really need it. So I think this is why we have an issue of lazy people laying around in government housing, and getting everything handed to them.... Because the system is broken, and nobody does anything about it. We do not have the same work ethic that this country use to have, nor do we have the same standards... Yet I look at this and wonder where it all went down hill. I believe in starting these programs for those in need, and I believe in second chances, yet where did it ever become ok for people to live off of others forever.

This is just my opinion for the day, and I was enlightend alittle today. I do not live stupid to what goes on around me, yet I was lucky to grow up in a stable enviroment when I was younger and in an area that we never witnessed things like this or heard of people doing things like this.... Not saying that I am better, yet I was raised differently.... And it is odd to me why this is worse in some areas than others, yet where I grew up there was no metro housing or gov housing, nor where there services for lazy people. We grew up where everyone helped good people in a hard time until they got onto their feet, that is what is right and that is what we are lacking...I am sorry if this offends anyone, yet hopefully it makes you think.....