While We Were Working
Our secretary has always had a job. For a while she drew blood at our lab during the day and then worked at the local Pizza Hut at night. Then she left us and managed the Pizza Hut. Then she came back and became our secretary. Recently she took a job at a local Super Market to help make ends meet.
Yesterday she told us a story about a woman who came to her checkout with a basket full of cookies and candy and pop... Lots and lots of pop. The woman had her Food Stamps in hand when she was told that the paper plates she'd picked up (so that she wouldn't have to do dishes) could not be paid for with Food Stamps. The woman rolled her eyes, and with manicured nails, retrieved a One Hundred Dollar Bill from her wallet.
I'm sure this same woman is first in line when the local food bank opens.
I figure it this way: I can give my money to IDES, which builds shacks in India and digs wells in Africa... Or, I can give to local charities so that our poor can afford Cinemax.
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5 comments:
Malott - It really is irritating when I hear of people like this - especially when I personally know people who are in need whohave food stamps. This woman is the type of person that when people see her, they think she represents the majority of folks on food stamps. So, if the federal budget is cut and food stamps are cut there is one thing that will probably happen: people who really need them will not get them at all but people like the woman described will be sure to have a way to still get them. Meantime, the poor suffer.
Delta...
Good to hear from you. Your comment made me a little ashamed that I posted this... a little.
I'm glad the truly needy are getting help. But governmental charity will always be imperfect, and often wasteful... And it will always be gamed by those of dubious character.
I am so convinced of the horrors inflicted on the poor by our institutionalized welfare system, especially on blacks. My husband and I have had a little first hand experience with it recently. We have fallen in love with a young black woman (21) and her four children and are doing what we can to help her dig her way out of "the system". It has been a real eye opening experience to be going into the generationalized system of poverty. Women and children receive sustenance level housing, income and medical care. Just enough to get them by from day to day. They kind of commiserate with each other and fight with each other over space and stuff and there's also a threatening cultural undercurrent that discourages anyone from breaking out. It's downright scary. Once someone gets a little ahead, the others come looking for their share in the redistribution. About black men...they are the throw-aways - accountable for nothing and worth nothing. If they're bad enough they go to jail. When their not in jail they don't get the entitlements, so they glom onto the women for a place to live and they bring drugs and violence into the environment. Generationally poor women are weak and vulnerable and they do not deny men anything, including access to their own and other women's children for all sorts of abuse.
I'm not talking about race or all poor people here. I'm speaking about the generationalized culture of poverty the institutionalized welfare system has spawned. This is an EVIL system, but we're so up to our eyeballs in a culture of overgrown children that I honestly don't know what the answer is at this point. All I know is that I'm completely over giving it any credit for being compassionate. The famous War on Poverty has been a dismal failure. It has become a horrific monster that has stolen souls and deprived human beings of their dignity the ability to grow up. God help us help the poor.
That is so depressing. The enabling will continue... The government is like Uriah Heep, bringing Mr Wickfield the drink which will destroy him.
I try not to get too discouraged. This may be why Jesus said "The poor you will have with you always."
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