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Pixie SticksHamilton Nolan
4/13/15 1:14pm
I am on public assistance and here is my story: I own a small chain of BBQ restaurants. They are a family business given to me upon my graduation from Southern Methodists University. Since I took over they have become steadily more profitable and I am now in a position to be taking roughly $225K per year out of the business. Its a good life. However....

When I opened my third restaurant as expansion I was able to get the city to give me a 5 year tax abatement for putting the business in a depressed area. Thanks public!

Over the winter we had a pipe break under one of the stores. Generally, that would be the responsibility to the land owner (me). Being somewhat smart, I threatened the water department, and then the city that I would convert that property to a parking lot if I was on the hook for the $20K repair. Remember, I just opened a new store so losing one was a good bluff to make. They fixed the pipe, no charge. Thanks public!

I pay my employees a very good wage but my customers still insist on tipping them, even with the no tipping necessary sign. This means a better than living wage PLUS tips. You can probably imagine that allows me to attract top notch staff. The public is so conditioned to tipping that they, in essence, overpay my employees. Thanks public!

I could go on and on about other examples so yup, I am on public assistance.

*this is not a joke and I do find this type of "help" for the privileged (like me) to be distasteful. However, if the programs exist, I will take full advantage of them without remorse.
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  ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and BokePixie Sticks
  4/13/15 1:19pm
  Listen, dude, I just have to ask: what kind of barbecue are we talking here?
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  Cstrife16Pixie Sticks
  4/13/15 1:20pm
  Yeah the pipe burst things isnt public assistance. Its fleecing the public, asshole.
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ZippyZippyZippyHamilton Nolan
4/13/15 1:01pm
The thing is, the stories you publish aren't gonna change anyone's mind. Decent human beings already know that people don't collect food stamps because they're "too lazy to work." Those who buy into that bullshit will simply note (correctly) that nobody who WOULD be "too lazy to work" would write in their story to you. Also, no matter how dire the circumstances people report, assholes will still yell GET A JOB.

Because conservatives really kinda are fine with the poor just straight-up starving or dying from lack of health care; they just don't usually say so outright.
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  serendous sZippyZippyZippy
  4/13/15 1:16pm
  I hate to agree with you but this is so true. People want to believe what they want to believe and there is a vocal subset of people who firmly believe that all people who receive public assistance are grifters who are too lazy/stupid/greedy to work and refuse to think otherwise. They're the people who trot out the welfare queens driving luxury cars and eating lobster stories and who are convinced that cutting social services will somehow save billions of dollars even though welfare programs like SNAP and Medicaid make up a fairly small portion of federal and state budgets. Odds are these are the same people who make exceptions when 'people who really need help' i.e. people like themselves have to apply for benefits. You know, because they need it, not like all of those other poor people.
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  poorperson69ZippyZippyZippy
  4/13/15 1:42pm
  Exactly. I have a full time job and am on food stamps. I spent a few days arguing with people on Reddit and now I'm exhausted. It's pointless.
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PhillyCheezitsHamilton Nolan
4/13/15 1:25pm
One of the main factors that causes America's hatred of people on public assistance is that the people middle class people know personally on public assistance tend to be scumbags.

My cousin got drunk (at 1pm on a Tuesday) and put himself through a windshield, he's on disability. Another cousin dropped out of her full scholarship to Bard (they didn't understand her desire for dance!) and now her kids are on every social program she can get them on. A good friend of mine had three kids and used to try and convince me that he could support his whole family by delivering pizzas on the weekend. He and his wife would hang around the house all day doing nothing, they were on food stamps and everything else. He was also a college dropout and all three of these examples are hardcore Republicans to boot.

The social segregation we have in America tends to make it so we don't even see the people who don't have a shot in life. The people on welfare we see are people who had every chance to be self-supporting adults, but instead try and milk the system. I know a guy who spent years trying to get on disability for a twisted ankle. Many Americans have no idea what poverty is really like, and therefore it is easy to assume everybody has the ability to be middle class.
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  BrocephalusPhillyCheezits
  4/13/15 1:33pm
  Yeah, this is kinda where I'm at. The only people I personally know who are on or have been on some sort of assistance program were giant scumbags who were 100% fleecing the government for taxpayer money. I think that most people on assistance truly need it, it can just be hard to separate them from the people you know.
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  WIncredulous is with her!PhillyCheezits
  4/13/15 1:52pm
  I think you make a very valid point. I worked off and on in public assistance, approving (or disapproving) Medicaid, food stamps, child care assistance and energy assistance. They already have policies in place to drug test known drug felons before approving food stamps, they already have job search and other requirements. There are, yes, people that game the system. There always will be. But the majority of people I worked with were disabled or elderly on a fixed income. They need every penny of assistance they can get. Just because Cousin Joe games the system doesn't mean that everyone does. Just because one jerk you know is a scammer, doesn't mean that everyone is. There were days I'd gnash my teeth because I "knew" I was giving benefits to a cheat, but I couldn't prove it. There were other days i'd cry in my office after people left, when they were just barely over the income limits and were denied benefits.
  
  The answer is to strengthen the fraud programs and actually go after people proven to have defrauded the system, not arbitrarily take away benefits from everyone.
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carborhaterHamilton Nolan
4/13/15 1:15pm
I own Walmart. I employ hundreds of thousands of people at a rate of pay that is insufficient for their basic means of sustenance/shelter/clothing/transportation. I encourage my employees to go on public assistance to fill in the gap between what I am willing to pay them and what they need to survive. In this way, I save billions of dollars. Despite the "jobs" I create, I keep the liability of the American welfare recipient on the backs of the american tax payer and I am a billionaire as a result of this business model. Public Assistance is AMAZING.
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  WIncredulous is with her!carborhater
  4/13/15 1:53pm
  This needs a billion more stars.
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  e30s2kcarborhater
  4/13/15 4:36pm
  Countdown for some idiot to waltz in screaming "Walmart is a publicly traded company, no one single person owns it - so you're a lying communist!" and completely miss the point...
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MikeHamilton Nolan
4/13/15 1:06pm
Regardless of how much is spent on public assistance, I doubt it would be anywhere near the amount given to corporations for corporate welfare with tax breaks, exemptions, tax loopholes, etc, etc, etc...
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  Meanwhile, ElsewhereMike
  4/13/15 1:13pm
  I was going to mention if someone is taking any sort of loans other than cash or auto, they are on government assistance, but that is more a backdoor subsidy to the housing and education.
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  Chris WayneMike
  4/13/15 1:18pm
  Good point. I mean the crazy contacts that lawmaker throw to defense contractors alone is mind boggling. I know it's an old hippie adage about bombs and schools and yadda yadda yadda, but I really can't take any of the whole "Welfare Queen" arguments seriously when our defense budget is grotesquely bloated with useless pork.
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MisterHamilton Nolan
4/13/15 1:10pm
My wife and I applied for multiple public assistance programs in the State of Michigan in 2013. Long story short - my wife, who has a master's degree in education, was relegated to working a half-time teacher assistant position. In that year, she had a baby, and a few months later her mother died. So after her 12 weeks maternity leave (unpaid), and the time she spent away with her family and grieving, she made a paltry income at best for the first half of the year.

I worked full time, but not enough to support a mortgage and a family of four. So we applied for anything we could. Welfare, food assistance, WIC... all rejected. EVEN WIC! (we had two kids under 3! Although they gave us a free 24 pack of diapers. Thanks, Michigan). Our combined income exceeded the top threshold by a pittance. I don't remember exactly but was like $2500 or something crazy like that. We got no assistance. And thanks to family members, were able to make it through until her new job started in September.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not crying about it - I know there are people who aren't even as lucky as we were, but the whole thing was just mind-blowing. Here we were, two people who ACTIVELY were working and finding jobs, HOLDING ONTO OURSELVES BY OUR BOOTSTRAPS, and yet that wasn't enough. We were way to poor to be rich, and too rich to be poor.

A year later, our credit problems due to our situation had become too much to handle, and we went through bankruptcy.
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  BlatheringMister
  4/13/15 1:24pm
  I feel for you. And I hope other people can see how the system ran roughshod over a family in need and can try to picture someone with a marginal education and no resources trying to survive the same bureaucratic machine.
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  IAmLiterallyJebLundMister
  4/13/15 1:50pm
  Damn, that's tough. And that is something that a lot of people who cry "entitlement!" don't seem to understand - you have to be in extraordinarily bad shape to qualify for government assistance.
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e.nonHamilton Nolan
4/13/15 1:14pm
honestly, i couldn't even finish the nyt article yesterday. the fucking maliciousness of what they are doing to adults without kids is mindblowing... and as an old never to be gainfully employed again, it's terrifying. and, of course, all those legislators advocating these measures are living off the taxpayer tit, and taking bribes on side... not to mention their assorted travel and meal expenses reimbursed as 'business expenses'... a director of a former employer was notorious for taking car service to/from the office and lunches reimbursed in just that way.
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  Blatheringe.non
  4/13/15 1:28pm
  It's easy maliciousness because they aren't voters or a population that gets organized in any way.
  
  That NYT article was depressing. In my job, I often work with the very poor. I don't know any of them that enjoy being a ward of the welfare state. Some of them do work, either seasonally or sporadically. They tend to get the jobs that dry up quickly or the jobs that work you to the breaking point very quickly. Others want to work but lack the most basic skills to hold a job.
  
  "Bootstraps" or "Get a job" will never work because the problem isn't a mass of people that are trying not to work. The mass of people lack boots and/or education to do the most basic dead end jobs.
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  e.nonBlathering
  4/13/15 1:34pm
  there are no jobs ... even for those with the education/ability. and esp once you've crossed that 50yo mark, you'll likely never find anything comparable to doing what you were doing before.
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OtherKate8Hamilton Nolan
4/13/15 1:26pm
THANK YOU for doing this. I used to work in fundraising for a food bank. The majority of our clients were hard-working people who worked low-paying jobs that most people who complain about welfare recipients would never take-dirty, back-destroying manual labor of all sorts. The next largest was from people with serious disabilities. There is a major issue with accounting (i.e., not understanding it) in our country-the amount of money that a huge number of people are being paid simply doesn't add up to what it costs to meet their basic needs. Poverty in the U.S. is mostly a labor policy issue, as you have pointed out before, NOT (or only in very, very, very few cases) due to individual laziness or irresponsibility. Gwyneth Paltrow just got a lot of attention for taking the Food Stamps challenge-feeding her family for a week on the paltry amount of money people get for food stamps. That's nice, but what I would really like to see is for a celebrity to do the Block Grant Challenge. As you note above, legislatures want to change the way money is allocated for food benefits so that, instead of handing over a certain amount to counties to administer directly to people who need help, they're adding a layer of bureaucracy by requiring counties to apply for block grants to get this money. I have written a block grant, and let me tell you-I was a professional grant writer, _it was my job_, the thing I did all day long, and that sucker took probably 200 hours to pull together. We had to hand-deliver 3 paper copies to our state office, a 4-hour drive away, and each copy was busting out of a 4-inch binder. After I was paid (in part with public money) to prepare that proposal, it was reviewed by a large committee of people who were also paid public money to review it, and then administered through an additional layer of bureaucracy that wouldn't have been there, if the money had just been allocated to the benefits offices. So...I'm not clear about how block granting is supposed to do anything but create more barriers to people who need and deserve help from the society THEY contribute to, and who are impoverished by our inability to do basic accountancy and make meeting people's basic needs the priority of our "civilized" society. Alright I'm done, for real. But seriously, THANK YOU.
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  BlatheringOtherKate8
  4/13/15 4:53pm
  From a really good post, let me just highlight "back destroying" because I know several men of my dad's generation who, before retirement age, worked themselves into unemployment through significant manual labor and I'm seeing some guys my age who I went to school with going there. Those of us (like me) lucky enough to spend all day in climate controlled offices don't always realize the physical toll some jobs take on a person and these are the jobs that often have the least safety net.
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  CalamityJane2Blathering
  4/13/15 5:53pm
  Oh my, this is so true. I walk past construction workers each day and it makes me thank my lucky stars I drive a desk.
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originalkateHamilton Nolan
4/13/15 1:35pm
Back when we were in the Army some young enlisted families were paid so little they relied on food stamps. I believe this is still true today. I hope the anti-food stamps yahoos know this as they spout their compassion-free rhetoric.
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  WIncredulous is with her!originalkate
  4/13/15 1:43pm
  I just found this, but I also know the Army Times did at story about food stamps years ago, as well. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/0…
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  WaterWishoriginalkate
  4/13/15 1:53pm
  My sister's husband was in the Air Force when they first got married a hundred years ago, and they were on food stamps. Two kids.
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TrashBoatHamilton Nolan
4/13/15 2:17pm
My husband was laid off and I was someone who never thought I'd be on food assistance or medicaid. Filling out the forms (40 pages) was daunting. Page after page. Then copying records and bills and bank statements. And the whole time, you're feeling like a fraud, like a failure.

When we went to turn our packet in, it was a 2.5 hours wait in a room with screaming children and parents who probably wanted to scream too. The woman who took our case was one of the rudest people I've ever met. Didn't smile. Made comments like, "Well, here's another one in the system," and such. When she handed us our EBT card (for food), she laid out the rules and said things like, "You can't use this for cosmetics or cleaning supplies or any non food items. You'll have to find ways to clean your home with other funds. If you keep up on that sort of thing." (eyed us up and down.) "You don't want your house getting bugs. That costs money to get ride of them and we don't pay for that."

Just one assumption after another that we must be dirty, uneducated, stupid.

Going shopping was the worst. The first time using the card, the cashier had a very loud voice that carried. I couldn't figure out how to work it and she explained it to me. Loudly. "FOR FOOD STAMPS USE THAT BUTTON RIGHT THERE."

At following visits, the look on the cashier's faces when you got the EBT card out kept you from looking anyone in the eye. Some, who were pleasant up until that point, were no longer that way.

I ended up going through the self-check out whenever possible.

I stopped going to stores that did not have a self-check out. It just made it easier—especially when they made it so you could take more than 15 items through the bigger stations. Nobody was standing behind you, looking in your cart, and making "tsk" noises when you whipped out a steak.

(Because steak on sale can be a great bargain. A 10 oz sirloin will feed three as protein. Often, you have leftovers that you can shave/cut for french dip or philly cheese steak the next day.) $8.99 for something that can feed three and be used in leftovers. Add potatoes which are $1.50 for a large bag and you are making it work without turning to ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches.)

I still don't go to stores where I can't self-check out. It makes me uncomfortable. I've never been able to shake that.

We were on assistance for a little under a year. For three, we received $300 a month for food. We made it work. We had to be careful, but we made it work.

Neither of us smoked or had drug issues.

We never bought lobster or crab or prime rib. Didn't need to. We ate a lot of chicken, because you could buy that in bulk. It was the frozen breast kind. Probably had a lot of hormones and other junk on it, but when you have $300/month, you don't have much of a choice.

I'll never forget my husband getting a new job with benefits. The day I called human services and told them we didn't need medicaid anymore? One of the best days I remember. The tether was gone.

I didn't tell people I was on assistance at any time during that period. We were far too ashamed and embarrassed. I did have a colleague at my current job whose husband lost his job—over 100k a year salary and he was "overqualified" for everything. He got a job at Target. I went with my colleague to fill out forms for medicaid and food assistance. She cried the entire time.

I cringe to think about people replying to this and being rude. Or, worse, saying, "Well YOU are the type of person that the system is made for. You didn't abuse it." And they say this because I've spilled my pride all over this post and talk about my humiliation.

Other people are humiliated, too. Nobody sits in the human services office and laughs, dances, or looks like they're having the time of their lives. Except for the kids, maybe. Just because they're not showing great humility or shame in being there asking for a handout doesn't mean they aren't devastated. You just learn to wear it on the inside and hope you never have to go back.
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