As the class warfare between the rich and Republicans intensifies following this weekend's CPAC, we could only wish they would sit down and read
this.
(Be sure to watch the video...)
It goes on and is a great read; but my questions are:
What has happened to this country that people don't understand the need for the government to help those less fortunate?
whenever the economy sucks, people cry about the poor getting to live off the gov't tit.. that's when the 'welfare queens' myth flourish.. IMO, it happens because that's when more Americans apply for the gov't tit and find out that it's not the Shangri-La they've been told it was.. but instead of growing as a person a finally disbelieving the myths they have been told, they blame those 'others' who
must be getting everything the jaded person wants/needs when they don't deserve it, thus ruining it for the jaded person. What that jaded person doesn't know it it's never been easy to get welfare.. and that there are so many hoops built into the system anymore that almost no one gets to live the life of Riley on it.. All you have to do is look at someone who is 100% disabled and 100% unable to work even if they wanted nothing more than to work.. They get shitty medicaid that doesn't do enough and less money a month than most people pay for their cable..
but tell a republican that and he doesn't believe it.. because somewhere in this country a black mother might get a $100 more a month than she deserves because she got pregnant again..and to stop her, they will stop the ones that really do deserve it.. not understanding or caring that she will always get help, it's the ones who really deserve it that will get fucked..
add that in with Obama being black and the stereotypes of blacks and welfare.. and with the bad economy and everyone already being angry about gov't money, and the perception that Obama's the Food Stamp president because he must be handing them out to the welfare black queens.. and you get what we have today..
Since when did the need for government aid creep into our middle class?
it didn't... the middle class has just creeped down into the gov't aid rolls... you can't live in this country for under 80-90,000 a year.. so all those jobs 10-15 years ago that were 35,000-45,000 a year are now the new poverty levels.. Those jobs (like teachers,cops,secretaries,manufacturers,construction .. every day 'joe' jobs) can't sustain a family anymore and no one is going to raise those wages...so the 'good jobs' of old are needing more help... those jobs should have raised, but have stayed stagnant for decades while the upper jobs have risen exponentially..
What type of aid could we live without? Medicare? Medicaid? SNAP? School lunch programs? The earned-income tax credit?
Please answer.
the answer is.. none. and if truth be told, we need more.. right now poverty level is $22,200 per year for a family of four... 22,000 20 years ago was good money, I know because that's about what hubby was making and I was able to have a kid and go to school full time, thus not working..15 years ago I had two kids and was not working again but his pay hadn't gone up, but he was severely injured and his insurance pay out was an additional 10k year for the next few years.. so even at 32,000 a year we were still going out to eat every weekend, see a movie every Friday night, going to WDW once a month and staying over (we did have passes but not for hotel/food)... 10 years ago(give or take), I started working part time because we weren't making the money... 6 years ago I started working a different job that pays triple what I was making, but not as many hours..(it has the potential to get my 3 figures a year tho so I stay with it) but that extra is what puts us over..
If I couldn't work and he was only living off if his single job with nothing extra... we'd still be making 24,000 a year.. his work has never gotten easier, it's in the construction field..wages have actually gone down over the last 20 years.. I did apply to medicaid once and was given a 'co-pay' of 2500 a month for each of us, and not combined.. so in order for me to get healthcare, I'd have to pay the 1st 2500 each month on whomever was.. so now we just use the walk-in clinic and hope we don't need the er.
my point is, we struggle when we are making more now than we were 15 years ago.. a lot more. So it's not that gov't aid crept into the middle class, it's that the middle class is dying out.. in the next 20 years there will be the servers and the millionaires... and nothing in between... the idea that everyone should be a millionaire is wonderful, except that when that happens the price of widgets goes up to 100,000 a piece.. where they were only 400 a piece 20 years earlier.. but that is the course we are on..when wall street greed and deception along with vulture capitalism is hailed by presidential nominee as being 'good' and 'american' the real America suffers..
