The following are taken from actual letters received by the Welfare Department in applications for support.
– I am forwarding my marriage certificate and 6 children. I had seven but one died which was baptised on a half sheet of paper.
– I am writing the welfare department to say that my baby was born two years old. When do I get my money?
– Mrs. Jones has not had any clothes for two years and has been visited regularly by the clergy.
– I am glad to report that my husband who is missing is dead.
– This is my eighth child. What are you going to do about it.
– Please find for certain if my husband is dead. The man I am now living with can’t do anything until he knows.
– I am very much annoyed to find out that you have branded my son illiterate. This is a dirty lie as I was married a week before he was born.
– I am forwarding my marriage certificate and my 3 children one of which is a mistake as you can see.
-Unless I get my husband’s money pretty soon, I will be forced to lead an immortal life.
– I want money as quick as I can get it. I have been in bed with the doctor for two weeks and he doesn’t do me any good. If things don’t improve, I will have to send for another doctor.
Thought this was funny!
TWO MUST WATCH VIDEOS ABOUT FOOD STAMPS
food stamp of1977 This video demostrated how food stamp were developed and how it solved problem such as malnutrition.
food stamp importance This video illustrates how food stamps today are important part of Chicago’s South Side people. In this video you will see how people in Chicago depand on food stamps.
khazrah
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(c) 2006, Karla Dorman
So in class we were talking about the media’s role on poor people and in general- sadly in some aspects the media does play a major role in our lives because they want to get a great story to attract viewers but they don’t always give us the real facts. So I decided to do a goggle search people on welfare I found this interesting picture: http://allfinancialmatters.com/2008/01/03/welfare-definition/ this pic is a neg veiew about what people think of welfare
I was looking at some blogs today on the internet and came across a website called AssociatedContent. Like many other blogs, viewers rate the postings of amateur and professional authors according to what there thesis, what they actually say, and how they back it up. On the topic of welfare, a user named “Kyle” posted something I found very interesting. i found myself agreeing with him most of the time, but for some reason, a lot of people gave this guy a 2 out of 5 stars rating. I was wondering why this might be the case. Anyway, credit to Kyle, here’s what he says:
The welfare system in the United States was designed to help poorer people to afford the cost of living. However, the current system provides an incentive for people not to work and is a waste of taxpayers’ money.
“Welfare is supposed to be temporary, only for a short time to help people during a tough time. The system is taken advantage of too often and many people don’t look for work and just depend on their checks to support them. This is not fair to people who are working and have to pay the money that helps these people who aren’t doing anything to help themselves. It is very difficult to fix the system though because there are also a lot of people who are trying to find work and just can’t and it wouldn’t be fair to take away their benefits because of the people who abused the system. Some changes must be made to keep this system helping those who actually need it and keep people from just relying on others to support them.
There should be penalties for people who aren’t looking for work or improving their skills. Education should be encouraged to help people on welfare be able to take control of their lives and not have to use welfare any longer. There also should be better incentives to work, not losing all benefits at a certain point. As people earn more money their welfare should decrease, but the total money they receive should increase to provide a reason for them to work more. There should also be more checks to make sure welfare recipients are looking for work or improving their education and if they aren’t they should stop receiving benefits. Welfare needs to be thought of as a short term help not a long term solution for unemployed people.”
Do you think that this pretty much sums up what we’ve been discussing in the class? Why or why not? What is this guy missing? I wish he would have discussed the stigmas that are very much attatched to his topic of choice.
Me and my prednant friend went to sign her up for foodstamps and WIC and all that stuff on friday. She is a single mother and the father of the baby wants nothing to do with her or the child meaning that she has to do everything on her own. What I found interesting in all those offices is that when they asked her about the father and she told them that he will not help and when they added him to all the papers she was supposed to get like $250 worth of foodstamps and I’m not sure about WIC even though the father will not help or pay child support. But when she changed it to “father unknown” then her aid almost doubled. This surprized me becasue I thought that having a father who will not help at all or no father should be almost the same and she should get almost the same aid but it turns out that if the mother will put down the name of the father then she will get a lot less aid whether or not the father will help at all. So this means that it is better for her not to mention him at all because she will be better off like that.
Critical Condition is being streamed in its entirety until Tuesday November 11, 2008.
If you have the time, please watch the film. Not only does it engage you with the participants struggles but you also learn how healthcare in this country is unfairly dispersed on the basis of income level.
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/criticalcondition/fullfilm.html
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fu5hwy3JyIM" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]So I ran across a little post Obama elect interview with Joe the plumber. He was on a show and the host asked him a question relating to Obama and his loyalty to America. So not surprisingly this conversation turned into a bashing of Obama policies by Joe the plumber and why he thought Obama was a bad choice. As it turns out Joe himself was on welfare as were his parents numerous times. He had obviously been in tight spots and welfare had bailed him out, but he refuses to admit that he did any wrong by going on welfare. Somehow he legitimizes his stay on welfare with the idea that he put into the system and over generalizes that welfare recipients stay on welfare longer than needed and never put any tax money back into it. So even though without welfare who knows what kind of plumber Joe might have been he is against the very system that bailed him and many other people out. Its also funny how under Obama, Joe will be able to get a tax rebate check but doesn’t want to get other peoples money. I want to see when that check comes in to him from the government if he isn’t going to cash it the second he gets it. Its these kind of people who say one thing but do something completely different that gets me annoyed. Give credit where some credit is due. America may not have the best welfare system the world but if it helped you out greatly don’t speak out against it like its the most horrible thing in the world.
Well since we’re reading this book, I came across an article on the Economix section of the NY Times site: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/do-americans-still-hate-welfare/?scp=1&sq=WELFARE&st=cse
According to the article it seems that Americans don’t really HATE welfare, they just don’t see it as a problem or serious issue:
“…a recent Gallup poll showed that Americans ranked welfare far down the list of the nation’s problems, below, among other things, terrorism, health care and Social Security…”
I find it ironic that people dont care about welfare but are desperately holding on to their S.S> benefits (although some argue that social security isn’t a form of welfare). I remember one class where we were talking about the stigma that the word “welfare” comes with. One poll resulted in 65% of people believing that government spends too little on assistance for the poor. But then when asked the same question with the word “welfare” in the mix, the results were overwhelmingly lower. I think this is something very important that we, as Americans, need to look at and reevaluate. The election is in spitting distance and the lingering argument of “Obama’s tax plan=welfare for Americans” is getting old now, but its interesting to see the power of a tiny little word, welfare.
The reading for tomorrow comes from the book Why Americans Hate Welfare and the chapter starts off by talking about individualism. This chapter explains how individualism in American plays into why so many people are opposed to welfare. A lot of people come to America to live the “American Dream” which includes working hard for yourself and your family so that you will succeed in the end. This mentality is seen all over American and it is a big part of American culture. The author says that this mentality is one reason that we don’t like the thought of welfare. People in America have a lot of respect and pride in self-responsibility. They believe that everyone should support themselves. When they here about spending more of their money on welfare programs for the state or something like that people tend to cringe. I feel like this mentality could be a main reason why so many people in American feel a certain way towards welfare programs. It has been instilled in their minds that you work hard for yourself and that is all. So when people need help everyone kind of looks at them as if they aren’t going along with the norm, they are different. But some people need help and these people didn’t get into these situations on purpose. Someone could lose their job pretty quickly and that could send them into a spiral of bad events ending with them needing some extra help, some welfare. People need to think about if they were to fall on hard times wouldn’t they want someone their to help them for awhile so that they could get back on their feet. I think every person would like to think that if they needed help they would have some way of getting it. So I think people need to keep that in mind when thinking about welfare. These are real people with real families that need real help and it could be anyone at anytime.
