Letters to the Editor
-
Just a symptom
Things like food stamps and any government assistance are just symptoms of socialism. If we lived in a truly capitalist society there would be plenty for all and anyone who did fall through the cracks would be helped by private charity.
-
ChillyDogg
If we lived in a truly capitalist society there would be plenty for all and anyone who did fall through the cracks would be helped by private charity.
Non sequitur.
Next.
-
Talk about poverty and eating habits
I don't think of myself as ever being poor, since I have always been healthy, educated and motivated to work. But the early 90's recession hit the ad business hard, no one was hiring and I was rolling pennies to eat. My food of choice? A six-pack, two times out of three.
-
@ walter_map
Much of the reason I ended up poor is because I suffered from depression and an eventual nervous breakdown. After I went through the process of seeking various government resources, and the humiliations of that process, I began to dream about suicide. I used to think of what a massive relief it would be to no longer have every day be a struggle to continue in the face of my own inadequacy and self-contempt. Sometimes when things got bad, I would call a crisis line. They always asked certain questions to rule out imminent suicide. "Are you feeling helpless or hopeless or are you thinking of hurting yourself?" Sometimes, when they asked that, I would almost laugh. Oh no, I would think, my gas has been cut off to my furnace because I could not pay the bill but, no not at all thinking of hurting myself. Just freezing.
I always assured the crisis line person that I was not feeling truly hopeless (measure hopeless!) or helpless (geez, what else could I be) or thinking of suicide. I didn't want the police to come. All the time in the back of my mind I was dreaming of walking the railroad track and not hearing the whistle.
I wonder if anyone who has never been there could understand that I would rather die than go back to poverty. Yes, indeed, I do have a plan.
Later on, when I was somewhat better, I actually held several paid and volunteer jobs that involved working with poor people. I remember that, as a CASA, there was one woman who got her children taken away because she had cancer and was poor. Child neglect they said. But the reason was poverty. No other reason.
So I was lucky. No one ever took my child away. But was my child so lucky, living with a depressed mother in poverty? I wonder. It haunts me. What horror have I passed on as a consequence of my own inadequacy.
BTW, I was not uneducated. I had a BA at the time and was halfway to getting an MA when serious depression struck.
Then I inherited some money and got much better. I no longer had the stress of constant poverty making me sicker.
-
Poverty is
Feeling ashamed when my dad can't get a job
Not buying books at the book fair
Not getting to go to birthday parties
Not getting a hot dog on a hot dog day
Pretending that you forgot your lunch
Not being able to play hockey
Being teased for the way you are dressed
Not getting to go on school trips.
- Grade 4 & 5 children, North Bay, Ontario. Excerpts from Our Neighbour's Voices: Will We Listen? (The Interfaith Social Reform Coalition)
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
I have heard that Gandhi, when people asked him if he was a Christian, would often reply, "Ask the poor. They will tell you who the Christians are."
I've had the luxury of travel and, in the luxury of travel, I've seen the detriments of poverty and I've gone on to see how easy the cures can be - cures that cost cents to the richest nations in the world.
Brad Pitt
-
The new "Welfare Queen"
I look back at the "Contract with America" and the utter meanness with which the straw woman of the "Welfare Queen"... the poor woman who had more kids simply because the government would give her money for every one of them and then who sat around doing nothing... was rolled out for every argument. It was a lie. There may have been a very tiny number of people who did something like that, but they were a very tiny percentage of those on the welfare roles, certainly a fragment of a percent.
The sad thing about the letters discussion is that rather than dismissing this new lie off-hand, we've just demonstrated that it has the traction to ignite a debate which assumes the argument is somewhat true. It isn't. America has an obesity problem. America is more disconnected from it's farms and from growing food than she's ever been before. Those two facts cover all sectors of society.
In addition to that, food stamps are currently underfunded. Last spring a number of governors and mayors spent a week eating only what they could buy on a food stamp allotment to attract attention to this. That was $21 in food for the week for the Representatives in this article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051501957.html).
It is true that fresh, locally grown veggies and carefully prepared food is currently a luxury of the wealthy or the rural. So much so that the originator of the Slow Food movement chided US foodies during his visit last year for creating a system that had not expanded access to fresh food.
Another point of the article that has been ignored in the comments is that money in food stamps would acheive the goal of getting money to the poorest Americans quickly with low overhead. Since that is the goal, can't we just butt out of how *exactly* people are going to spend that money?