I've read story after story of people who were too good or too proud to accept help or welfare or whatever name it went by. From childhood I wanted to scream at those people, "What the Fuck??? You need help and you're turning it away??? What are you THINKING??"
As a child I sometimes went hungry, despite the fact that my parents, who'd grown up during the Great Depression, were firmly committed to making sure that we always had enough to eat. To be fair, the times of hunger more often occurred after my mother left my father, an abusive alcoholic, and moved us from northern New York State to Tucson, Arizona, in 1962. But we'd had times of scarcity before the move. After, they were almost constant. Mom was a nurse, and she knew she could get work no matter where she went, but back then nurses didn't earn very much money. She cashed in a retirement plan, which carried us through the first year. After that, it was real touch and go.
Our second year in Tucson I got a Saturday babysitting job, and the small amount of money it paid I used to buy groceries. Most of the time I asked the mom of the two girls I babysat to stop at the grocery store when she drove me home those Saturday evenings so I could buy food. She was astonished. She thought I'd be using the money for myself. I couldn't imagine doing that. We'd go hungry if I didn't buy food and cook it for us. Trust me when I say it did not feel like a sacrifice. It didn't then, and it doesn't all these years later.
No doubt we'd have been eligible for some sort of food stamps or surplus food. I don't know. My mother never looked into it, and I never really thought about it back then. But ever since then I've understood the social support system. If you need help to feed yourself or your family, you absolutely deserve it. If I don't need such help then I'm fortunate, and I NEVER begrudge you or anyone else such support. If you need it, you need it, pure and simple. And children should never go hungry.
In the time frame I've mentioned above, I got serious dental work from a (Catholic) charity clinic in my city. For years afterward, when I was working and was giving money to the United Way, I specified that my donation go to that specific charity.
For 25 years I was married I had a secure and decent income. But before that, and since my divorce, my income has been a lot less. Luckily for me I grew up and spent my early adult working life with a very limited income, so living now on a restricted budget, while never fun, is something I've done many times in my life, and can do.
If there is any reason for us to be here, I believe it is to help each other out. I've been the recipient of charity, and I truly want to pay it back and pay it forward. Currently, I do volunteer work at a local homeless shelter, preparing meals for those who come to us. I actually love to cook, truly enjoy cooking on a large scale, and feel it's the very least I can do to help those who are in need.
All of this is to come around to why I just don't get those who despise the poor, who think that various support systems are wrong (unless they are beneficiaries of the same), who demonize those who are on "Welfare" or any other support system. The truly sad thing is that most of those doing the condemning have no clue to what extent they are the recipients of these support systems.
And to extend it out, they truly haven't a clue how much corporate welfare is out there.
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