Why are there so many people today ready to get on welfare. What happened to our pride

I will answer it from a d/f point of view. In the UK, people on welfare get the following benefits; income support, housing benefit, council tax, kids allowance/tax credit. It adds up.

Now, there are a lot of people who want to go to work but if they do, by the time they assess their income and what they have to pay out - including child care, they would be better-off financially staying on Welfare. Sad but True.

The government allowed American businesses to ship middle class manufacturing jobs overseas for slave labor. Industry leaders have, by greedy practices, taken away many Americans ability to make a decent living. When people say to the unemployed, get off your butts and get a job, go work at McDonalds or something - they dont really understand what they are saying. A person with a mortgage, car loans, school loans, healthcare, insurances cannot make ends meet at any of these low paying entry level positions. The government tells people to go back to school and get re-educated for the jobs of tomorrow? They dont mention the thousands of brand new college graduates unable to find work? They just got out of school. Are they suppose to go back and start over? The truth is, the economy is a shambles. It is not about pride when people take any help offered. It is about being humble enough to do what it takes to make ends meet while hoping and praying for better days and better opportunities.

Perhaps it has something to do with not being able to get a job so that they can feed their children?

I personally have not met one person bragging about how much money they get on welfare. What I have heard is how hard people are trying to find work and can not get it. My son and daughter are both included in this. My 23 year old son has been laid off 5 times in two years due to cut-backs. He is presently unemployed and has been looking for almost a year. He has looked for fast food jobs to phone sales and anything in between! My daughter who is 17 and graduated a year early and attending College this fall is looking for a job. She can not find one either! She has a food handlers certificate and about 8 months restaurant experience. She was laid of 3 months ago due to cut-backs. Now, my foster daughter, has 3 children, one which has Down Syndrome. Her husband walked out. Believe me she is not bragging. She is not making it. Her pantry and refrigerator are not full, her gas tank is generally empty and the girls are growing out of their clothing. She get's a pittance from welfare. Her husband pays the state child support and they take it. She does not get that and her pittance. She can not go to work. She has no one to care for her children. No work experience either. Her rent alone is over 1/2 of her check. She can not move because she can not save enough money for first and last month in another place. She also has to pay all of her utilities. This does not leave enough for bragging rights!

I do understand what you are talking about with SS though. My parents get SS and my father used to get Medi-cal 100% covered for health care and In-home supportive services. When he got his cost of living increase it made him a few dollars ineligible. Now he has to pay $500.00 month share of cost on his medical care, and In-home supportive services. It is ridiculous that a few dollars can make you pay $500.00 by their accounting. I don't know how they expect him to pay his rent, utilities, food and misc...I guess they think he has a magic wand. Thank God he has us! We are getting pretty financially strapped now, helping our son, daughter, dad and foster daughter! Something needs to change.

you answered your own question dear. Most of those folk don't have any, and if they claim they do--- its false pride. They know the system honey and they play it just like they play everything else. You really cant be mad at them, what else can they brag about--how many can goods they have on the shelf--- the entire system is a game waiting to be played. Those folk believe that the world owes them something instead of getting out there and accomplishing whatever is their hearts desire. Then again their heart may not desire a god damn thing........

Vonda G. Nelson

i would have to agree. some people really do need it! and its not even that much! not enough to live on thats for sure! i am sure most people rather make min wage at a job then live on less on welfare. some people do take advantage of it but some people really need it to survive.

well, little grandma, let me tell you something. i was laid off in dec and work all the time at part time jobs and never collect the full amt of unemployment, work at part time min wage jobs that's all i can find, but collect part unemployment. the unemployment caps what i can earn working, so anything over that they cut down my unemployment check, never allowing me to earn above a certain amt. so i never earn more than 55% of what i used to earn. and husband works, too. problem is we have terrible health insurance coverage, and husband has heart failure AND just recovering from cancer AND a tumor in his gut. son needs a $700 drug every month. I need about $800 worth of drugs every month. Hubby, about $650 worth of drugs every month. Son also needs occupational therapy twice a week, me I am supposed to be in physical therapy because I have crippling arthritis. Son also sees a counselor once a week, he's got some cognitive issues. Add up our medical costs NOT COVERED and it takes most of our income and we can't get by. We just were REJECTED for state health insurance coverage because guess what? we make too much, my husband's employer offers health care coverage (never mind they don't actually cover anything like drugs or most required services) and we make too much (nevermind it all goes to paying for the services no one covers). I WOULD LOVE TO BE ON WELFARE RIGHT ABOUT NOW!

The simple answer is there are some people who abuse the system. This will happen no matter what. There are those that are hard workers and do not want to take any assistance for pride or other reasons. My partner and myself tried to get on welfare because I have been out of work for over 6 months, and the one paycheck is hard for a family of 4. We were denied because he makes too much. The family of 4 and his income is between $35-$45,000 a year for a family of 4 is tough. We took it in stride and just tried to save where we could but we are behind on everything. Pride doesn't have anything to do with it. If the help is available we should have access to it. The answer I believe to your question is how do we weed out those that really do not need it. I have heard lots of stories of people who are working full time and should not be on welfare but are still getting it. Things like that make it harder for other people like my family that would like to have it but can't.

Forget government assistance. I dare you to go to through your state forms and see if you could fill them out correctly. I work with homeless people every day, serving them the only meal they eat that day. We can only serve this meal M-F, and we will serve 150,000 meals this year. NO homeless people want to live on government assistance, even if it was enough money to survive, which it isn't. I've never heard a homeless person brag. NO homeless person wants to be homeless. Most of them make a little bit of legitimate money working a full- or part-time job. Most of these jobs are "off-the-books" and of course offer no health insurance. How would you like to try to find a job if your clothes are not clean, you don't have a permanent address, you don't have a drivers license (or you can't even meet the requirements to get a state ID. You can't get a bus pass (or the job is not close to a bus stop), You don't have any way to get the return call inviting you to come to your new job (no telephone, voice mail, or cell phone). Most chronically homeless people either are mentally ill without medication, or self-medicate with drugs and alcohol because they are unbearably miserable--think you might be miserable too if you were them? I know someone who waited in the county hospital emergency room for 19 HOURS just to get her BiPolar medication renewed so she could be stable enough to keep her job. How do people get homeless? They had no safety net. If they have relatives, they get asked to leave if the relative cannot support them, or they are unpredictable because they are mentally ill or are substance abusers. Or they have no family at all. One way or anther, they fell through the cracks and can't find a way to climb back up. In Dallas, there are 10,000 homeless people and only 2,000 shelter beds. If you subtract that, more than 7,300 people in our community are sleeping on the streets. Dallas just spent $21 million on a homeless center that serves only 300 PEOPLE at a time. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL OF THIS, YOU are not IMMUNE. You could easily be one of these people. If you can't pay your rent or utilities, you lose your home or apartment. You then quickly go through your savings, then exhaust the resources of friends and family. Then you have to live in your car if it hasn't been repossessed. Your car dies and you can't afford to repair it or pay your citations on your "abandoned car," And there you are, no place to live. You would be HOMELESS.