Author Archives: james

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.

the last two readings that we read and touched on wednesday talked about some big issues in welfare possibly the biggest issue which is the children on and affected by welfare.  when i read through these readings it made me realize how much these children do get affected and that children are a really big part of why people get on welfare.  i feel that if someone is going to have a child that isn’t a spur of the moment decision, it’s a decision that should be planned for well in advance because of the money needed to support a child.  the idea of having a child is to give that child more than you had so they could have a better life. this includes things such as a better education which would give your child a better position to get a better job in the long run.  i understand that if you get pregnant by accident then there is really nothing you can do there unless you didn’t practice safe sex then you weren’t acting responsibly and should have to live with the outcome.  but a point that was brought up in class that i never even thought of was that maybe these women were never taught how to practice safe sex or what products are out there for them to use.  in that case you can’t blame them really because no one ever sat down with them and told them the facts.  then these children are born to women who are often young and don’t have the ability to provide that child with everything that it’s going to need.  so now this child is going to have a disadvantage meaning that down the road they are going to have a tough time paying for school and eventually college.  this child isn’t going to be in any kind of good position because the child will only have what they family can afford which probably won’t be much unless the mother is able to get a good job down the road.  you should bring a child into the world when you are able to give it everything that it’s going to need including a good education.  but a lot of the time people don’t think of the outcomes of their actions and then when something that they didn’t expect to happen happens then don’t know where to go and they need help or else they won’t survive.

i was taking the A train how from work today and when i was changing a song on my ipod i overheard something that reminded me of this class. there was three women and the train and they were talking and i heard one say to the other that “I’m on foodstamps.”  they were talking about “public assistance” at least that is the words they used.  i couldn’t get the whole conversation even though im sure it was an interesting one because i didn’t want to seem like a crazy person listening in to their conversation so i only heard a small part.  but the thing i did notice is that the one lady had two children, they were calling her mommy that is how i know they were her kids.  these kids were young probably 7 and 3 but they both were wearing nikes and the mother had a cell phone.  these things are things i consider luxury goods but these people are on foodstamps.  Is there anything wrong with this, what do you guys think? i dont know anything about these people and im not trying to judge them but i was just making observations.