| With five of us, we spend over $150 a week....so that was only paying half of our food...sorry that it upsets you. And I was working full time, teaching school...and he was working 20 hrs a week as well as going to school full time....and yet we were still below the poverty level. |
You spend $600 per month on food for 5 people? Ever thought of budgeting? Our family of 4 doesn't spend anywhere near that much on food. Then again, we don't have the government to foot the bill for half of it. And then again, we didn't crank out 3 children we could't afford.
One of the things that seperates humans from animals is our ability to control our urges. Animals just mate whenver they can. But humans don't have to. We can think ahead. One example of thinking ahead might be to think "I don't think we can afford 3 children."
Would you have had 3 children if you didn't know the government would step in and help take care of them for you? Or would you mate yourselves into starvation?
| I WAS woriking full time...and his working full time, at his $5 an hour job, would still have qualified us for food stamps...we wanted to rise above the poverty level, and he wanted to be a teacher just as I was, so we did what we felt was best for our family in the long run. Perhaps not the way everyone would have done it, but it IS what the system is there for....and since we were both paying taxes at the time, we were in essence paying for our OWN food stamps..... |
I don't know what's worse. The fact you don't know how the tax system works or that we paid for you to become teachers who know so little.
Unless you make over $30,000 per year, you're not paying federal income taxes. as Jilluser pointed out, you may get money withheld, but you get it back at the end of the year (and in some caes, even more back with child credit and earned income tax credits depending on the circumtances).
PoetMom, your mentality is the same mentality that leads to Enron type situations. It's the mindset that you've earned it. I'm sure Ken Lay felt the same way.
Which puts the lie to Wisefawn's claims that it's all "temporary". How temporary is something that allows you to go to school and become a PROFESSOR? That's not exactly a 2 year associate's degree there. If anything, your example is why welfare needs to be reformed more dramatically. It's not designed so that people like me pay for people like you to attend college for years to get a master's or whatever so that youc an become professors. It's there to help get you back on your feet.
People who live responsbility end up paying for people like you who have lived irresponsbily. I didn't have children until I could afford them. I finished college first. And I worked my rear end off to pay for it ON MY OWN. I didn't get food stamps even though it meant soup, and left over soup were our "staples". Meanwhile, your family lives it up on $600 per month in food for only 5 people. That's $120 per month per person with 3 of them being children.
Ultimately though the problem is the confusion between NEED and WANT. Sure, now that you've used the system for years you're able to start paying it back. That's nice. At least you're contributing now. But that isn't what welfare is designed for. If all of society behaved as you did, the system woudl come to a screaching halt. How about living responsibly? Family planning? There are a lot of things I *want* but I can't do them because I have responsibilities.
Your story is pretty straight forward: You and your husband cranked out 3 children before you had the means to support them. So society, namely, people like me and JillUser, end up having to help pay for your irresponsible lifestyle. You then made use of that so that your husband could go to school to become a teacher and later a professor.
That is now what welfare and food stamps were for. A better plan would have been this: Get your degree FIRST then crank out the kids as you can afford them. Then you don't have to drain the system at all.
