Reply to Should welfare recipients be required not to have children while on welfare? Agree or disagree? Why

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]

Anonymous wrote:

No, you have that backwards. Life is a series of choices. Make shitty choices and your life will be shitty. Make good choices and your life will be better. Some people don't even understand that fundamental reality. Some people don't see the point of becoming educated enough to make good choices. Some people actually go out of their way to and prefer to make shitty choices, foolishly thinking there's a shortcut to or exit strategy to a better life (like gambling or crime or getting pregnant). There are no shortcuts, no walks in the park, you have to do the work and make the right choices.

The choices you have depend on the hand you're dealt and how well you understand the game.

If you're dealt a mixed hand of crappy cards...

and you can barely read them...

and you don't really understand the rules or odds of the game...

and you're distracted by a lot of other things like being hungry, medical issues, having to help support your family, lacking role models, etc. ...

and you don't have the financial resources to bluff ...

then most of your choices are bad and the odds that you will end up worse off after that hand are very high, no matter what you choose.

Lots of us are dealt mixed hands of crappy cards - parents that divorce, die young, who are alcoholics, drug dependent, manic depressive, can't manage money and go bankrupt, lose their jobs, have nervous breakdowns bla bla bla. Hunger? Issues at home? No role models? Cry me a river, you weren't born in Somalia or Afghanistan.

Have you at any significant point in your life not had enough food?

Yes. There were several periods in my life when I had to get by on not much, for example the equivalent of $7 a week for food, ate pretty sparsely and went hungry much of the time. This is why I get annoyed when people want to just brush it all off and continually make excuses, saying, "oh, you don't know how it is" and "oh, you don't understand" - yes I fucking do, I grew up dirt poor, with a single mom who was barely around, a whole host of problems - and no other family to help, I have been homeless myself and managed to turn it around - and in fact I did so with far less help and support than the typical FARMS family in DC has available to them. [/quote]

You sound like an exceptional person. What you did was very hard and I'm sure there were a lot of times when you wanted to quit, etc.

When I deal with people who face challenges that I've faced, my initial emotion is along the lines of "I did it. Why can't you?" and if they have an easier path that I did for that challenge, then I'm even less sympathetic.

What I try to do, however, is to remember how hard the challenges were (because that fades with time) and how often I felt hopeless and like giving up - and I try to remember when someone gave me a hand (or when I would've wanted someone to).

When you've climbed the mountain, you can either look down on the people who are still struggling, and say, "I did without help. Why can't you?" and turn your back on them, or you can reach down and say, "I know how hard it is. Let me give you a hand." At the very least you can say, "I know how hard it is. I know what you're facing." and give some sympathy and encouragement.

[quote] And yes, I do think corporate welfare needs to stop also - but that's a separate issue. BOTH are problems, and bringing one up doesn't absolve or excuse the other, it's just a dodge and deflection - so don't even bother trying.  [/quote]

You're right. They are separate issues. And I say this without any evidence, so I freely admit that I could be wrong, but I think the scale of the difference is substantial. I think the cost to us as a society of supporting children of people on welfare (to the extent we do), is much, much smaller than the benefits being given to corporations. The lobbyists for the poor are not nearly as well paid or as well connected as those who lobby for the corporations, and the poor have the added benefit of having people look down on them for their situation and make assumptions about how they are lazy, unwilling to work, drug addicted, etc. - because if they weren't all of those things, naturally they wouldn't be poor![/quote]

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