Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While this series was compelling, motivating as well as tough to swallow (have not read the actual book yet!), I think it was wrong for the main character to accept cash jobs on the side while receiving housing, food, free medical and financial assistance from taxpayers.
Welfare fraud is a huge crime yet this movie treats the character with sympathy for having to try so hard to survive.

Cite for this assertion?

Really??!
Why do you need a citation for this??
It is common knowledge (just like cats are felines!) that welfare fraud is a crime.
A huge one at that. A felony.

If you go into the Nanny forums on this site > there are tons of posters on threads declaring how shameful it is for domestic workers to work “under-the-table” for cash wages.
People accuse people of doing this as cheating the government and/or getting out of paying their taxes.
Yet this movie seems to say it is a-okay to receive food coupons and rental help while at the same time accepting cash paying only jobs on the side.
Remember how after being fired from ValueMaids Alex put up ads on job boards advertising she was available for cleaning houses - yet only for cash?
How is this fair when the taxpayers are covering her food/housing/medical costs?

You can put lipstick 💄 on a pig……
Welfare fraud is welfare fraud.
And Alex is committing a serious felony yet it is never acknowledged to be bad which is why this program should not have been shown on Netflix.

The Closer with Dave Chapelle got so much criticism…..however he was not committing any offenses to the law.

Anonymous wrote:While this series was compelling, motivating as well as tough to swallow (have not read the actual book yet!), I think it was wrong for the main character to accept cash jobs on the side while receiving housing, food, free medical and financial assistance from taxpayers.
Welfare fraud is a huge crime yet this movie treats the character with sympathy for having to try so hard to survive.

Why do you hate poor people so much? Why do you resent the character for trying hard to survive and support her family. Government assistance is pathetic - it’s next to nothing. Should she let her children starve instead? Would that make you feel better and more righteous? What would you do in her situation?

Anonymous wrote:While this series was compelling, motivating as well as tough to swallow (have not read the actual book yet!), I think it was wrong for the main character to accept cash jobs on the side while receiving housing, food, free medical and financial assistance from taxpayers.
Welfare fraud is a huge crime yet this movie treats the character with sympathy for having to try so hard to survive.

What the hell??!

How else was she supposed to support herself and her daughter? Government assistance is not enough and she worked to supplement that. Or are you suggesting that she not accept government assistance when she had some jobs too? Because that's also whack, it's not like those jobs paid so much, she still was very poor.

Anonymous wrote:While this series was compelling, motivating as well as tough to swallow (have not read the actual book yet!), I think it was wrong for the main character to accept cash jobs on the side while receiving housing, food, free medical and financial assistance from taxpayers.
Welfare fraud is a huge crime yet this movie treats the character with sympathy for having to try so hard to survive.

Cite for this assertion?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone actually read the book? Stephanie Land made a lot of bad choices that are not shown on the tv show.

1. Deciding to have a baby with no real job, savings, OR a boyfriend with a real job (and the kicker is, she was 29 in real life, not early twenties like the show so she should have had a better job or savings. She was plenty old enough to know better).

2. When she got a tax refund, instead of using the money to move her daughter out of the moldy apartment that she knew was making her sick, she bought herself a $200 diamond ring as some type of whacky promise to herself and a solo vacation.

3. After she and the daughter moved to Montana, she got knocked up again and decided to have the baby by herself AGAIN! Slid right back into poverty.

You don't understand how poverty is a complete mindset, not just a circumstance. You're probably one of those people who believe that giving a rich person $500 and a poor person $500 should yield the same result if only the poor person tried harder.

I grew up poor and my mom wasn't married to my dad who remains a mystery to me. I could see how not having an education led to not having money and I just didn't want to end up like my mom. It's not rocket science that motherhood keeps women poor.

But it’s also dangerous to keep waiting too long to have kids...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone actually read the book? Stephanie Land made a lot of bad choices that are not shown on the tv show.

1. Deciding to have a baby with no real job, savings, OR a boyfriend with a real job (and the kicker is, she was 29 in real life, not early twenties like the show so she should have had a better job or savings. She was plenty old enough to know better).

2. When she got a tax refund, instead of using the money to move her daughter out of the moldy apartment that she knew was making her sick, she bought herself a $200 diamond ring as some type of whacky promise to herself and a solo vacation.

3. After she and the daughter moved to Montana, she got knocked up again and decided to have the baby by herself AGAIN! Slid right back into poverty.

You don't understand how poverty is a complete mindset, not just a circumstance. You're probably one of those people who believe that giving a rich person $500 and a poor person $500 should yield the same result if only the poor person tried harder.

DP but it makes me worried that the idea of just giving poor people money is gaining prominence

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone actually read the book? Stephanie Land made a lot of bad choices that are not shown on the tv show.

1. Deciding to have a baby with no real job, savings, OR a boyfriend with a real job (and the kicker is, she was 29 in real life, not early twenties like the show so she should have had a better job or savings. She was plenty old enough to know better).

2. When she got a tax refund, instead of using the money to move her daughter out of the moldy apartment that she knew was making her sick, she bought herself a $200 diamond ring as some type of whacky promise to herself and a solo vacation.

3. After she and the daughter moved to Montana, she got knocked up again and decided to have the baby by herself AGAIN! Slid right back into poverty.

I’ve read the book but not watched the show. Honestly, I almost stopped reading when she described accidentally getting pregnant. Her boyfriend was very clear that he did NOT want the child. She was very clear that she was not against abortion, but her choice was to skip college and have the baby. I get that poverty is a mindset, but this one decision set her up to fail. And as you said, she was not that young when she made this choice.

Maybe she didn’t want to risk going through a bajillion rounds of IVF 5+ years later like so many wise women? I had my kid at 34 fwiw, but can understand her sentiment.
But she should have stopped at one!

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone actually read the book? Stephanie Land made a lot of bad choices that are not shown on the tv show.

1. Deciding to have a baby with no real job, savings, OR a boyfriend with a real job (and the kicker is, she was 29 in real life, not early twenties like the show so she should have had a better job or savings. She was plenty old enough to know better).

2. When she got a tax refund, instead of using the money to move her daughter out of the moldy apartment that she knew was making her sick, she bought herself a $200 diamond ring as some type of whacky promise to herself and a solo vacation.

3. After she and the daughter moved to Montana, she got knocked up again and decided to have the baby by herself AGAIN! Slid right back into poverty.

I can understand wanting to keep the baby at 29, and the ring, but not the solo travel and the second kid in her circumstances

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding receiving any form of government assistance, the system is not designed to succeed sadly. People who receive it generally only learn it is a way of life vs. a temporary safety net.
It seems like for every step forward one takes, they are sadly taken two steps backward at the same time. 😢

Government assistance is really only temporary. People should learn to be self -supporting. I say this as a child who had to visit social workers with my family and answer questions about home, school, what we spend money on etc. It is a well-meaning but a patronizing process.

It’s changed a lot,
At least in CA. I fill out the papers and my kid has no idea we are in subsidized housing.

Anonymous wrote:Regarding receiving any form of government assistance, the system is not designed to succeed sadly. People who receive it generally only learn it is a way of life vs. a temporary safety net.
It seems like for every step forward one takes, they are sadly taken two steps backward at the same time. 😢

The problem is people get punished for trying to better themselves, once you are a bit over a very low
Threshold you don’t get a cent. So sometimes it’s easy to just keep living the way you do.

Anonymous wrote:While this series was compelling, motivating as well as tough to swallow (have not read the actual book yet!), I think it was wrong for the main character to accept cash jobs on the side while receiving housing, food, free medical and financial assistance from taxpayers.
Welfare fraud is a huge crime yet this movie treats the character with sympathy for having to try so hard to survive.

It’s impossible to lead a dignified life on govt assistance

Anonymous wrote:In the book she says she showed receipts for every payment, even the jobs she took on her own. Sometimes that meant she lost the daycare subsidy that month.

Tbh I am having a hard time believing this!

In the book she says she showed receipts for every payment, even the jobs she took on her own. Sometimes that meant she lost the daycare subsidy that month.

While this series was compelling, motivating as well as tough to swallow (have not read the actual book yet!), I think it was wrong for the main character to accept cash jobs on the side while receiving housing, food, free medical and financial assistance from taxpayers.
Welfare fraud is a huge crime yet this movie treats the character with sympathy for having to try so hard to survive.

“Paula” in real life is in Europe the whole time. She came once to help move Stephanie from the shelter to the temp apartment. She had an English boyfriend who did make Stephanie pay for her burger afterwards.

She was absolutely not a part of the book or Stephanie’s life. It was her grandma who was bipolar, and she was already deceased.