People Who Need Help Shouldn't Be Able To Enjoy Themselves

I see this attitude on here all the time, and have heard it in 'real life,' and I get this sick/frustrated feeling everytime. Most recently, it was in a thread about someone saying they began using food stamps, and within a few posts someone basically said 'If you're poor enough to need food stamps, you shouldn't have the internet. Use that money to buy a few loaves of bread.' Similarly, I often hear people say, basically, that you should only eat health food if you get food stamps. Like buying anything other than bread, fruits, and vegetables is abusing the system.

This attitude infuriorates me. Whenever someone poor has or does anything enjoyable, some people will always act like they're doing something wrong, and they must not really be in need, if they spend money on anything enjoyable, not essentials. Of course you shouldn't blow money on nonsense if you are poor, but having financial difficulties doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to enjoy yourself, you should just basically stay alive and be grateful for that. Life is meant to be enjoyed, and that doesn't stop applying if you have financial difficulties.

reply to post by TheJourney

You are, of course, 'entitled' to your opinion. I don't particularly disagree with your point per se here, just the somewhat misplaced indignation.

A lot of people are dense and angry when it comes to stuff like this because of their prejudice and their subjective judgement on another. It's ignorant and yet it happens a lot. The people aren't flawed, it's the damn belief systems and the programmed system in place that is flawed obviously. Yet it is too easy for simple minded people to blame another because of their primitive emotional outlook. ' Those are my taxpayer dollars paying for your food!!!' What a joke. If you can't see past the illusion you deserve to enslave yourself to supposedly believe that you somehow individually feed another person through taxes.

reply to post by TheJourney


Enjoy yourself on your own dime. Is this really too much to ask? What, people who actually work should pay so that people who don't work can enjoy themselves? Is it too much to ask for people to give something back to society?

reply to post by jvm222


Yes, people are dense and angry when it comes to welfare and food stamps because many of the people on assistance programs abuse the system.

reply to post by TheJourney


I agree with your post. Being poor sucks and if you have a few bucks for online access or whatever that's fine with me. Perhaps much of the indignation we see is from people who have never been poor. Well that can change and maybe they can as well.

Coverage of things like that surfer bum in CA buying lobsters with food stamps doesn't help and I believe he was the exception not the rule. In any civilized country no one should go hungry of lack shelter or medical care. Maybe if TPTB would quit spending all the money on themselves and the war-machine we could advance as a society.

DestroyDestroyDestroy
reply to post by TheJourney

 

Enjoy yourself on your own dime. Is this really too much to ask? What, people who actually work should pay so that people who don't work can enjoy themselves? Is it too much to ask for people to give something back to society?

What exactly are the figures on this?

Something tells me it is under a dollar out of my pay check that goes to hungry, unemployed and generally unhappy people.

Of course it also depends on how we delineate the criteria for determining who needs help and for determining what the "correct" use of one's time and resources. Also, what type of help are we talking about? Medical help, help in school, counseling help, how about help walking across a street, the forms of "help" and who needs it is immense. Without a clearly defined notion of "help" we basically don't know what we are talking about. Not to mention that it is somewhat subjective, your concept of who needs help may be radically different from someone else's notion, do you really want a complete stranger telling you how to live your life, even though they know next to nothing about you?

Also, what do we mean by "enjoying" oneself, it appears to me that nowadays in the Obama Regime enjoying oneself in a manner not prescribed by the president himself is a crime and worthy of surveillance by the NSA and CIA.

This is a problem, nearly everyone thinks they have life all figured out, and that their approach is correct and true for everyone, for all time.

deloprator20000
Of course it also depends on how we delineate the criteria for determining who needs help and for determining what the "correct" use of one's time and resources.

Seems pretty simple to me. If someone is hungry give them food. If they are sick give them medical care. If they are homeless give them shelter. It's pretty simple and when I say give I mean give.

As a nation we (the US) squanders so much money money it's indecent. And then they cry over someone adding a bag of chips to their grocery basket when using food stamps. Pathetic.

I don't mean to pick apart such a sensitive subject-- it's also such a good one nowdays, my reasons were to save space; and pay my personal respect to the excellent points. This should be a major thread, and I hope it makes it. F&S!

TheJourney
I see this attitude on here all the time, and have heard it in 'real life,' and I get this sick/frustrated feeling everytime. Most recently, it was in a thread about someone saying they began using food stamps, and
1.within a few posts someone basically said 'If you're poor enough to need food stamps, you shouldn't have the internet.
2.Use that money to buy a few loaves of bread.' Similarly, I often hear people say, basically, that you should only eat health food if you get food stamps. Like buying anything other than bread, fruits, and
3. vegetables is abusing the system.

This attitude infuriorates me. Whenever someone poor has or does anything enjoyable, some people will always act like they're doing something wrong, and they must not really be in need, if they spend money on anything enjoyable, not essentials. Of course you shouldn't blow money on nonsense if you are poor, but having financial difficulties doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to enjoy yourself,
4. Lynch Pin Moment...you should just basically stay alive and be grateful for that.

Life is meant to be enjoyed, and that doesn't stop applying if you have financial difficulties.

edit on 23-9-2013 by TheJourney because: (no reason given)

1. For the first time ever, I'll have to go down to my reasonably local Health and Human Services office this week to apply for food stamps-- because my unemployment won't even cover the rent plus meager utilities.
The Internet is my mailbox for trying to find a job: and ATS is where I get my news tips. I said tips, I didn't say an I.V.

2. I've been baking my own bread for the last six months, and it's .40 cheaper a loaf. It's also sturdy and useless enough to run your tires into when parking. If I had a car; separate story

3. vegetables are a luxury for the impoverished. I have a multivitamin every morning and a head of wilted Romaine every two months.

4. I got pulled through the other side of a couple Stage Four monsters in my neck: to watch what happens to a country when gratitude is no longer an attribute of the general population. It's been replaced with an emerging and false sense of entitlement.

I'm not unloading on anybody in particular, and if nothing else happens today I'm grateful there are no other mouths to feed than the dove. He eats better than I do because HE deserves it... and none at all like what's going wrong under my little chunk of Heaven is his fault.
I'm grateful to have no discretionary income for seven years-- and I'll die with a clear conscience having done the right thing for this system by exposing it at every opportunity. I just didn't want to finish on a yellow, it ain't my style...

Life is meant to be endured by the poor to enrich the evil. Live it. And if you don't love it you're a domestic terrorist.

DestroyDestroyDestroy
reply to post by TheJourney

 

Enjoy yourself on your own dime. Is this really too much to ask? What, people who actually work should pay so that people who don't work can enjoy themselves? Is it too much to ask for people to give something back to society?

You are assuming that all people on assistance don't work.
Typical stereotype...

DestroyDestroyDestroy
reply to post by jvm222

 

Yes, people are dense and angry when it comes to welfare and food stamps because many of the people on assistance programs abuse the system.

Yes many abuse it but that doesn't give you the right to judge or knock those who don't.

Bassago
reply to post by TheJourney

 

Coverage of things like that surfer bum in CA buying lobsters with food stamps doesn't help and I believe he was the exception not the rule.

That wasn't even real. It was a set up by Fox news I believe.

TheJourney
I see this attitude on here all the time, and have heard it in 'real life,' and I get this sick/frustrated feeling everytime. Most recently, it was in a thread about someone saying they began using food stamps, and within a few posts someone basically said 'If you're poor enough to need food stamps, you shouldn't have the internet. Use that money to buy a few loaves of bread.' Similarly, I often hear people say, basically, that you should only eat health food if you get food stamps. Like buying anything other than bread, fruits, and vegetables is abusing the system.

This attitude infuriorates me. Whenever someone poor has or does anything enjoyable, some people will always act like they're doing something wrong, and they must not really be in need, if they spend money on anything enjoyable, not essentials. Of course you shouldn't blow money on nonsense if you are poor, but having financial difficulties doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to enjoy yourself, you should just basically stay alive and be grateful for that. Life is meant to be enjoyed, and that doesn't stop applying if you have financial difficulties.

edit on 23-9-2013 by TheJourney because: (no reason given)

I agree with your premise. The overall cost of supporting a foodstamps program is pennies compared to how we use the rest of our other budget. We waste it on foreign countries that like to set up false flag situations, such as, U.S.S. Liberty. We fund organizations through illegal narcotics trade, which allows them to sponsor regime changes, and creates a hostile environment. The children grow up around that. See that, learn that, and become the product of their environment. Meanwhile some cowardly fiend is sitting at their mansion enjoying their dinner, decides to send your kids to go and rectify the situation because they need help. This system is diabolic. Somehow I shall stop them.

When you are at or below the poverty line a 40oz and a little bag goes a long way to get you through the daily grind. It's hard to understand unless that's where you are. Temporary relief it is, but many are living day to day let alone paycheck to paycheck.

I do shake my head at the people who sell their stamps 50 cents on the dollar the first day their card is filled. But I buy them. Because I'm poor and half off groceries is too good a deal to pass up. I am not rambo and this is what survival is. All that's mighty eventually falls.

It is the little things in life that can keep a person who is experiencing extreme hardships from breaking.

Ever have to tell you kids that the Easter Bunny not only skipped your house because we didn't have eggs to hide, and not only that, you can't have anything to eat today because the food banks are closed and we couldn't get there on a flat tire anyways 'because Daddy decided to drain the bank account and disappear due to some pre mid life crisis the week before'

Well I have, and I'll tell you what getting foodstamps and being able to re-invite the Easter bunny back and make the day of 3 little kids who just lost their father kept me from going insane during a time when every thing that could go wrong, did go wrong.

I lost my job because I couldn't afford daycare, I had no money, absolutely no help, no family. I had one child with serious medical issues that meant I was was lucky if I got 2 hours sleep a night, and barely hanging on. Phone had been shut off, heat had been shut off. Thank goodness we had a fire place and it was only cold for a few more weeks, I was running out of paper and twigs I found in the yard to burn.

Also once I got my internet turned back on, it truly was my life line. If I didn't have my online friends for support, I don't know what I would have done.

Somehow I survived that hellish year, but then again, I had been through worse.

I have come so far from that, I often forget how close I was to breaking, but it was the little things that got me through, paid for by cash aide and foodstamps.

If it wasn't for help through tax payer dollars, which I paid into and have repaid back through taxes since then, taxpayers would probably be footing the bill for me in prison and my kids in state care due to me doing something desperate to feed my kids.

So yes. I paid for internet on the tax payer dime, and yes, I bought things like birthday cakes and the occasional treat for my kids on taxpayer dime. But it was through the internet I was able to get in touch with resources and go to school online to get me on my feet. In fact I might have still been on welfare had it not been for the internet.

In the early, early 1980's I was divorced @ the ripe age of 17 yrs. old...My X hubby had just gotten out of the USMC and I was afraid to move with him to a small.small town in Kansas for fear he would keep me knocked up & pregnant...anyways I digress...lol...I stayed in Cali. and tried to raise my son(my folks ended up adopting him when he was 4 yrs. old...upon my request)...I was on food stamps back then...on the 1st of the month I would buy 2-3 cases of formula and baby food...etc, The WIC program hadn't been invented yet, Then with what ever was left over after babies needs were met(I always kept extra for my son by over shopping for his needs first, for those times in case an emergency...i.e.earthquake...etc). Then with what was left I used on myself...and if I wanted a Filet Mignon or Lobster I bought it with my food tramps...LOL...It wasn't wise though because if I did this I went hungry later in the month...COMMON HORSE SENSE...

To this day I always just worry about myself not what others are doing...

The system has always been...

If someone poor starts to get money, the rich try and steal it and ruine that persons business

If the poor don't have money then the rich still want to tax them in some way

If the poor can't even pay their taxes the rich would love to just see the poor person dead and gone.

It's always been like that since the dawn of time.

This life is all about treating others as you would family, and what do family members do to greedy siblings? They tell them whats up. Without hurting there feelings

Wow, I love how you wrote the title of this thread, I immediately came on board to trash it more or less. We all need help in some ways or another - and we definitely all deserve to happy, I think that the Best Society is one in which people are able to be happy and productive.

Look at it this way. If one takes the assumption that someone on disability or food stamps does not deserve to be happy because they need help, and that person takes that assumption to the natural end of it, they will find that they shouldn't be able to enjoy themselves, either - ever.

Because life is a never-ending quest for perfection if you look at it that way. Living to seek approval is a waste of time. Living, however, is not - and some people need assistance.

Even the people getting assistance are probably doing something productive - taking care of their kids, their house, gardening, you know? Most people I know on food stamps (a lot of them) are more productive with their days than those not on them.

I mean it only makes sense.

My goal in life is to support myself - but hell, I need help, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, either. Does that mean I can't enjoy myself? No... that's ridiculous.

The people who shouldn't be allowed to enjoy themselves are the people that are in charge of the welfare of our country - they have responsibilities that take a lot of time.