Flat Broke with Children

Not that my ranting about this will ever do any good, but then again, neither will my ranting about any of the other stuff I write about. So here goes.

We've all been taught from a young age that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I mean, we learn all about the feudal system in school, and then about how the British were taxing the Americans (of course, what we don't learn, is that the tax load Americans were paying was lighter than the rest of the British empire), and then about slavery. I mean, European and American history is just one long history of the rich keeping the poor down.

But wait, now that America has entered the modern age, everything that is fucked up with governments and the class system doesn't apply. I mean, the rich and the laws aren't keeping them poor people down. If they REALLY want to be rich, or at least middle class, they would be, because that's how America is. Ah, yes, America. The only country in the world where being born into poverty means nothing, and where taking responsibility for your own future means everything.

As you might surmise, this is a rant about welfare. Lately, I've been reading Flat Broke with Children, which is a pretty enlightening book. Especially for me, since I was 11 when the welfare reform happened and I didn't even know there was one. I come from a lower-middle middle class background, and also from a very small community, so either there were no welfare recipients at all, or they were hidden, which was probably the case. I guess I do remember my mom talking about the new people at the factory, who were brought in by agencies and only kept their jobs 3 or 6 months, but that's about it.

At any rate, what I AM familiar with is the stereotype of the welfare cheat, which persists until this very day. I mean, you hear about it all the time: those people who are sitting back and soaking up our tax dollars because they're too lazy to work. When I heard this as a kid and a teenager, I never gave it second thought. I mean, I didn't know any of these people, so why should I care? Also, I just assumed that when people said this, they were talking about people whose bills were covered, who could actually live off of welfare. Of the 14 million people on welfare at its peak, I'm sure that there were some cheats, probably a lot of them, but not all 14 million were.

At any rate, people don't seem to understand that the welfare reform was designed to kick the cheats off the rolls and to help the people who weren't cheating. While there may still be a few cheats out there, it's really not likely, because the new welfare system makes it so complicated and unpalatable to cheat, that I can't imagine they would do it.

Once you set foot in the welfare office, you are probed and prodded. It takes them about 3 hours to make sure that you're eligible. You have to PROVE that you are making less than half the poverty line wage, that is, less than around $7,000. Once you're deemed eligible, you have to either be on a job, looking for a job, or training for a job. Period. If you don't do things like put in 40 job applications in in 30 days, you'll be sanctioned. If you miss an appointment with your caseworker, you'll be sanctioned. If you don't come to "life skills" classes, you'll be sanctioned, even if you didn't come because you couldn't find child care for your children. A sanction means that the first time you go for a month without benefits, second time, two months, etc. They make you jump through so many hoops of bullshit that only a person who desperately needed the money would do it.

Not to mention the intrusiveness of welfare into people's lives. May I point out that 90% of adults on welfare are single mothers? So let's say that you have a child when applying for welfare. To receive any benefits, you must work with the welfare office to track the father down if he isn't paying child support. What if you got raped and don't know who the father was? Sorry, you can't receive benefits. What if you don't want to bring and abusive or murderous man back into your life? Sorry, you can't receive benefits.

Oh, not to mention the effort to control a woman's fertility. If a woman is on welfare and she gets pregnant, that child is called a "capped child," that is, that child won't get any welfare benefits. You and all your other children will, but not that child. And the benefits aren't just monetary, either. Welfare gives new mothers time off to care for their newborn children, that is, if the children receive benefits. If you have a capped child, you have to work, even if it is under six months old. This is the government's way of "controlling" fertility, by making women "think twice" about having sex. The only way the government attempts to control pregnancies among welfare mothers is promotion of abstinence, or punishment for not abstaining. That's right. We hand out free condoms at high school, at colleges, in India, and Africa, but nobody thought it would be a good idea to give condoms to welfare mothers, who, like those in Africa and India, can't afford to buy them, even if they know to use them.

On of the points that Kurt Vonnegut drives home in Breakfast of Champions is that this country blames the poor for poverty, and as a result, the poor blame themselves too. Contrary to what politicians say, no matter how much you hate being poor, that won't get you a GED or job skills or child care. You'd think that by the very existence of welfare, people would realize that. But apparently not, since the stereotype of ALL people on welfare as lazy immoral cheats is still alive. But when stereotyping welfare recipients, people forget two things: 1. a welfare check is usually around $400 a month, which BARELY makes ends meet when combined with a minimum wage job and 2. NOBODY WANTS TO BE THAT POOR. I'm sorry to drop the bomb, but we've got to realize that it's true. Think about it. Why would a mother deliberately have more children just to get $50 a month each for them? Why would a homeless man spend the night on a park bench in the middle of winter? This is a society where you have to work to be accepted. Even filthy rich people work, and not having any work experience apparently doesn't matter. I can't imagine that anyone would CHOOSE not having to work over the hardships and humiliation of being poor. And, besides, it's not a choice anymore: if you're on welfare, you have to work. This is a fact that is still largely ignored, I guess. I mean, check out this review of Flat Broke with Children from amazon.com:

This book critiques welfare reform by giving the reader a teary eyed story about people who have no money and have lots of kids to raise. Yet this argument simply ignores the facts. First of all this book ignores personal responsibility. How bout people on welfare taking responsibility for having unprotected sex and having ten kids without ever bothering to get married. How bout taking responsibility for not having a job. People that don't have jobs and can never find work are in that situation because they actually work to not find work. Most people that are unemployed love being unemployed and they love living off the government dole and being lazy. And this book simply ignores this fact. This book tries to make everyone feel so bad for people that are basically in a situation they themselves caused. Rather then trying to exhort these people to learn a new skill and not have as many kids instead this book blames the government because the government has dared to say `if you don't find a job in five years we might decrease your stipends'. Amazingly enough in countries that don't have welfare people manage to find work. If welfare ended tomorrow all these people would go get jobs, in fact it is welfare that pays them not to work and discourages them from having a honest job.

Now, we all know that you can find many a stupid thing said on amazon.com, however, this guy is a "Top 100" reviewer. I'm not sure what the criteria for being a Top 100 reviewer are, but I'm sure that one of them is actually reading, watching, or using a product before you review it, and it's obvious that this guy didn't. If he actually knew anything about the reform, he would know that it makes people work. He would also know how hard the lives of these people are, and how hard it is to cheat welfare, although it's still possible, but you still have to be pretty poor. Even if this guy is an intelligent person, on issues like welfare, or taxes, or abortion, or the war, some people just automatically go into conservative auto-pilot mode. I mean, he's just lumping a bunch of arguments together that are popular amongst conservatives, not even checking to see if they're outdated or not, or if they're even correct. And the part about people living in other countries? EXCUSE ME? Most nations that don't have a welfare system are poor nations with tons of homeless people. If you consider "begging" or "rifling through landfills" or "prostitution" to be careers, perhaps you need a reality check. Also, this guy, if he read the book, ignored the fact that a lot of women on welfare were simply having a hard time, they got sick, or had an accident and lost their jobs, and they knew welfare was only going to be a temporary thing for them. They just needed some help. In fact, this guy ignored the fact that most of the women interviewed in the book were ashamed of being on welfare and were trying to make the distinction between themselves and the welfare cheats, whom they may or may not have met.

Why can't these people keep jobs? Hmm...well, for starters, 44% of welfare recipients have a disability, either mental or physical, that keeps them from keeping a job. Perhaps others were born into poor or abusive households, where something like drugs is the only answer. Or perhaps the fact that discrimination against non-whites and women, gasp, yes, still exists in the workplace and in housing. Not to mention that about 60% of welfare mothers have been victims of domestic violence at some point in their lives, and many are on welfare because they ran from abusive situations. Mr. Amazon.com also ignored the fact (that is, if he even read the book) that many of these women got pregnant with men they were engaged to or already married to. We forget how much context matters. If you are born poor, you will probably stay poor. Perhaps one in a million can rise from poverty to middle or upper class status. The factors working against people living in poverty are too great.

Of course, the greatest thing overlooked is that our society, just like the welfare system, is structured to keep the poor placated but desperate. That is, we need someone to make our fast food, clean our toilets, ring our groceries, and the like. But as long as they're not homeless, as long as we don't have to see them on the street, it's OK.