Grace Ross: Politics of Hate—Blaming Welfare Recipients

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Grace Ross, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Even today there is a relatively small constituency in our country who believes they’re entitled to live on government pay-outs – no matter what struggles our government seems to be going through to make ends meet. Even now, when our economy is still horrendous.

This small set believes that we the people, our resources should be used to continue to bail them out no matter what trouble they get into. They don’t seem to have any clue about spending within their means or taking responsibility for bad financial choices, risky choices to the point of essentially gambling away their future and the future of those depending on them. These are folks who don’t seem to have any concern for how their damaging acts hurt others or what kind of future they leave for their children, children really of all of us.

They got themselves into a very bad mess often using the resources of others – arguably all resources that aren’t theirs – to try to make a fast one. The fact is that they engaged in fraud, criminal uses of money they got from the government, continue the same behavior without planning ahead, not really doing stuff to pull themselves out of the mess that they’re in, but continuing the same behavior and expecting us endless to support them.

In fact, arguably we’re spending as a country $80 billion a month to give them money without strings attached.

While I’m sure in their mind that there are reasons why these folks have made these decisions, I think if most people knew the realities the terms that come to mind are: moocher and lazy and thoughtless and entitled, irresponsible, etc.

Of course, the only folks who could possibly cost us that amount of money are folks that are already incredibly wealthy because $80 billion is a huge amount of money even for our national economy. Of course, I’m talking about a relatively small number of top financial industry folks such as heads of the megabanks, etc.

Instead of paying attention to folks who actually could be described the way I just described, amazingly one our state constitutional officers, a woman at that, has chosen once again to spend our state resources on blaming a tiny percentage of our population: those who are usually the hardest hit when the economy is bad. She has used her position to seek out and actually twist the facts to make this tiny crew of folks seem like the “bad guys” in this bad economy. These people spend so little money that they and their children live well below the established poverty level somehow. These, of course, are the single mothers who get stuck without a sufficient income to raise their children as opposed to paying attention to those who literally believe and have legally managed to put themselves above us all.

Its these parents who end up being called welfare recipients and moochers, but they receive so little that they don’t “fare well”. Surely, the economic well being of the children who make up our future would be seen as a collective responsibility in this terrible economy. But instead as a period positively drenched in the politics of hate, the folks who are hated are unfortunately often the scapegoats for what’s happened. Clearly even put all together, welfare recipients get pennies in comparison to the very wealthiest amongst us who can then believe they are entitled to the $80 billion a month, month after month, even as our entire budget as a country slides farther and farther into decline.

Here’s some food for thought: what is the best predictor of how many folks will be on welfare? A bad economy: single mothers who are always the last hired and first fired, are most predictably likely to be on welfare if the economy is bad. What’s the second best predictor of being on welfare? Whether you were battered or not: women with children who are battered have a huge percentage chance of ending up on welfare.

All you have to do is start out being someone with children whose earning power compared to the average man is 73 cents on the dollar add to that a really bad economy and if you have the bad luck to be one of the women who’s battered, that’s who will be on welfare. Take away the gender, take away having kids, take away the bad economy, and take away battering, the number of folks who would be on welfare would be close to zero.

And even with the hugely increased economic needs of families in this terrible economy with the longest unemployment crisis in 3/4s of a century, the amount of money for these families? It is less than 1/4 of just the one monthly hand I described above to the wealthiest in our society who are just continuing the same policies that destroyed the world economy!

And it would be great if our State Auditor would look at where our state is wasting lots of it’s money not at formerly battered women with children. She said she’d look into the financial impacts of foreclosure – that has cost up to 4.1 billion in losses some months – and that’s way more money still flowing into the pockets of those “entitled” financial industry leaders.

Those traditionally seen as welfare recipients are barely surviving – certainly not faring well, while those faring famously on their “welfare” from our government may be responsible for the rest of us having to say farewell to our economic wellbeing for many years to come!