Welfare

Today, something showed up in my Facebook news feed that shocked me. It was this:

WRITTEN BY A 21 YEAR OLD FEMALE.

PUT ME IN CHARGE . . .

Put me in charge of food stamps. I'd get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho's, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I'd do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we'll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, or smoke, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a "government" job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the "common good.."

Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin their "self esteem," consider that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people's mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND While you are on Gov't subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes, that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov't welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

Now, if you have the guts - PASS IT ON...I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO GET THIS BACK, IF EVERYONE SENDS IT, I WILL GET OVER 220 BACK!!! I WOULD KNOW YOU SENT IT ON!!!

There is just so much wrong with this entire rant that it's hard to even know where to start. 

• No one lives on beans, rice, cheese and powdered milk. As anyone who has ever tried to eat healthy can attest, junk food is a hell of a lot cheaper than real food. When you are receiving the average amount of food stamps, 133.85 per person per month, buying cheap food stretches that paltry amount farther. I spend around 150.00 a week on groceries for my family of three. Food stamps would only get us about 2/3rds of the way through the month, and we certainly wouldn't be eating well. 
• Forced sterilization? Fucking really? What is this, Nazi Germany? 
• The drug testing of Florida welfare recipients proved how useless this truly is. While you may think that this will save the government tons on money by getting all of those crack whores off welfare, think again. Only 2.6% of the people tested in Florida failed the drug test. The cost to administer all the tests was 118K, the amount that would have been paid out to the drug addicted welfare recipients was 73K. So the program ended up costing the state of Florida 45K extra dollars. Money well spent obviously.
• If there were a magical glut of government jobs that needed doing, we wouldn't have a 7.4% unemployment rate. This isn't the Great Depression when FDR created jobs by funding public works projects. There is no money to fund the necessary upgrades to our infrastructure.

Basically here is what I see that this person wants to do: Round up all of the people on welfare in to concentration or "work" camps, sterilize them and feed them beans. How is there ANYTHING right about that? These are PEOPLE! People just like you and me, who have fallen on hard times and need help getting back up again. That's what welfare is, it's a safety net so that if, (insert deity here) forbid, YOU lose your job, and you don't have any one to ask for help, you and your kids don't wind up starving in the street. 

And speaking of religion, I hear over and over again about how America is a Christian nation yet things like this prove that we do not act like one. If you know me, you know that I am an atheist but I know what Jesus said about helping the poor. Matthew 25:40 says "And the King will say, 'I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!" So tell me, if Jesus showed up tomorrow, would you also treat him like an animal?

If you look at your 2012 federal tax receipt you will see that for a 50K income family with 1 child, $73.48 went to food and nutrition assistance (including SNAP, WIC and the school lunch program). If you stretch that over a whole year, it's only 0.20 a day. 20 whole cents! If you add up all of the public assistance items in the federal income tax receipt (including food and nutrition assistance, TANF, and Medicare) it is still less than we spend per day on national defense. 

The common portrayal of the drug addicted "welfare queen" with 6 kids is a gross exaggeration. YES, there ARE people who scam the system but the overwhelming majority of people on welfare are not out to suckle the government's titty for the rest of their lives. Most people are just looking for help in a world where help is hard to find.