I get a general impression, reading blog rants, slurs thrown my way, talk radio, and posts in forums, that people have a fundamental misunderstanding how welfare works in America. People think, somehow, that the poor live "high on the hog" in where they are. As someone who is hovering around the welfare system now, whose story generated a number of slurs and insults including a request that I off myself so a guy's taxes were lower, and generally getting a reply I should of shut up, because my story getting out now makes myself unemployable ("Would you hire him? I wouldn't" goes one Tracy L. Coenen CPA in her website on Fraud, implying I am a fraudster who is wrong with America: http://www.sequenceinc.com/fraudfiles/2010/03/this-is-why-welfare-sucks/)
And then you read rants about the said "Obama welfare phones" with an implication that somehow U.S tax dollars are paying for cell phones for free (tax dollars implied as in income taxes, and not fees). You can see examples of rants here:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/cellphone.asp
And then on here, when discussing the negative income tax proposal, word was, "Yeah, but the money paid out would be very really little amount". Implication is the poor live high on the hog, particularly those not working.
Want to know reality of situation?
* Government phones, paid for with a portion of fees raised to get phones to libraries and other areas. You get 4 hours a month allocated to you, period. You can go 2 hours a month and save what wasn't used. It is enough to get in touch with someone in an emergency, to say land a job somewhere. I know when I didn't have one when I was getting settled into a shelter environment and I managed to not get a job, probably as a result of this.
* In New York state, a bastion of welfare, because it is a blue state, and they LOVE giving tons of cash to the poor, want to know how much a single person gets per month, assuming they get rent, food, and health coverage covered? Well, it is around $100 a month. That is right $100 a month (This would cover everything from clothes to transportation to everything). If you have an arrangement where you don't have them cover rent is around $175 a month. And this goes on forever, right? Nope, it is 2 years total, due to welfare reform that happened under Bill Clinton. And you just lounge around and collect it, right? Nope, if you are in a position to work, they will babysit you expecting a full 40 hours a week of continued looking for work, taking anything that comes along, even if it is paid under the table. These last requirements, by the way, are federal mandate. And guess what? Well, word is to borrow from a plan in Georgia that you could collect unemployment on a trial period with employers, and yahoos go and complain about this, about collecting unemployment while on a job. THE NERVE OF OBAMA! And so it goes (Thank you Drudge for directing me to the ranting).
* But, but.. there are dem women who just have babies so they can live high on the hog. Hmm... so, what exactly is supposed to be done about children born into the world they have no say in? Rather they die of starvation or something? Maybe can warehouse them also. By the way, those women, if possible are supposed to get jobs, and the fathers of the children are supposed to pay child support. That is how it works.
* If somehow, unemployment and welfare went away, everyone would start working jobs. Really? You know there are jobs everywhere? And what kind of jobs? There are homeless people, living on the streets, who actually do work jobs. Again, what kind of jobs are available? Is it some sort of great thing that a person can't even make enough money to afford shelter?
Do people seriously have a clue how things work, or do they just pull information out of their buttocks to justify their anger at things?
