I had decided to not write political blogs anymore… but I just can’t help myself after seeing the Brian Williams interview of two couples on food stamps. This is proof of my theory that people who take government handouts are getting more demoralized with each and every handout, destroying their own sense of self-fulfillment.
Brian Williams, the NBC news anchor has started this new nightly program, and his show interviewed two couples down in the Boise Idaho area on food stamps. Obviously your heart goes out to these people…, UNTIL the end of the interview. In the beginning they go on and on about how bad it sucks to use food stamps. Each couple got about 6-700 bucks a month from the government. They said they were embarrassed to swipe the food stamp card. That they even had a technique to hide the fact that it was a food stamp card instead of a credit card. That they had day jobs and couldn’t make ends meet. Ok, so the story truly sucks up to this point, and I’m genuinely feeling sad and depressed for these two couples. Then it happens. One of the guys says it!!!! Oh does he say it!!!! He said he would go out and get a second job, but then he would lose his food stamps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH!!!! You hypocrite!!!!! You just got done telling us for 10 minutes how embarrassed you are about taking food stamps, but you’re too freaking lazy to go get a second job!!!!
Let me guarantee you something. If you did your day job, and then scrubbed floors for 3 hours each night, you wouldn’t be embarrassed anymore. You would be happier with yourself when you went into your WinCo store and paid for your food with your own money. Welcome to the real world son!!!!!! I work 3 jobs!!!! My first job starts somewhere in the 5-7 AM range, where I blow off time with my family to answer emails before they get out of hand. Then I go to my second job where I run a company. I get off about 5-7 PM. I then sneak in a little time with my family. My wife goes to bed around 10, and guess what. I’m working till midnight or often 2 AM. THAT’S THE REAL WORLD. This guy is not willing to do what it takes to put food on his table himself… Why? Because the State of Idaho will give him the food stamps, and if he works too hard, he will lose them. I would have more respect for this guy if he was proud of milking the system instead of whining about it.
Why is it our duty to support this type of laziness? I’m all for being humane and having our taxes go to helping someone for 6 months or so. But if you’re on food stamps longer than 6 months, there’s something fundamentally wrong with your scenario and it’s time to man up and do something about it.
Guess what? Working a lot of hours sucks. But those of us who choose to live our life on our terms accept this fact and just work it, instead of looking to the government for a handout.
This guy confirmed my previous post on Occupy Spokane and Wall Street SO much that I just had to post one more political rant. I’m sorry to our followers, but I had to get off some steam. This guy NEEDS to quit taking money from the government, get a second job, and start living his life again. The ENTIRE interview proves this!!! He went on and on and on complaining about how embarrassed he is about it. So freaking do something about it!! Get a second job like the rest of us.
THE REAL PROBLEM IS INFLATION.
Let’s get real for a moment. Making 50,000 a year, doesn’t even cut it anymore. This is depressing. Just living is too expensive anymore. Everything has gone up. 5 years ago, you filled up your car for 15 bucks. Now it’s 50. The food portions you buy have gotten smaller and twice the money. Taxes have gone up, insurance has skyrocketed, and now businesses have to charge more for what they sell. The only real items that haven’t gone up with these ratios are most service industries. Why? Because many business owners of service industries just eat it, because they’re too scared to raise their prices, and a lot of them would lose customers or clients if they did raise their prices. Lawyers, doctors, and services performed by monster companies are the only people I’ve consistently seen who have had the backbone to double their service fees to keep up with the times. They just don’t care and have enough money to weather out a huge dip in sales if they lose a lot of business from raising their prices.
So where does that leave the common man like these couples? WAY below what it takes to live. Remember 5 years ago, when $12 an hour was a darn decent wage? Try raising a family on that now! It just can’t happen. But the real problem is that the cost of doing BUSINESS has skyrocketed, and many businesses can’t afford to pay their employees more. If I paid all my employees what I wanted, well, we’d be out of business.
So it sucks for these two couples in Boise…. They don’t make enough to live. But even if their wages doubled, they still wouldn’t make enough! The money just isn’t there anymore. Unless the cost of everything drops, we’re all screwed.
Here’s a cost of living estimated budget of a normal family with 1-2 kids.
Monthly cost:
Mortgage: 1300
Gas 2 cars: 500
Car payments: 600
Health Insurance: 900
Cable and Internet: 100
Gas and Electric: 150
Cell phones: 200
Auto & Home Maintenance: let’s just say 500 to average out the bombshells
Once a year family vacation: 400 (Let’s just say it costs 5,000 for a nice 1-2 week trip.)
Food: 600
So we’re at 5250 a month and we haven’t gone to a movie, gone out to eat, or bought your kids birthday presents. This is 63,000 a year.
According to my math, the average American family would need to make 80,000 a year combined income to live a comfortable life, and not go to bed stressing out about money, not arguing with their spouse about what to spend on, and feeling guilty about buying a dinner at Applebee’s instead of a sandwich or hamburger at night. Depressing? You betcha. If you’re a one income family that’s equates to your head of household needing to make 38 bucks an hour. Even more depressing for an employer if your goal is to provide a good lifestyle for the people who work for you.
My point is that food stamps aren’t going to get anyone out of this mess. PERMANENT food stamps aren’t going to do it for that couple. Government subsidizing this in any means at all isn’t going to work. With their current mentality they are permanently SCREWED. It’s just the math. Not even politics.
We all make decisions. I’ve selfishly decided to drive a 60,000 pickup truck (That was 34,000 5 years ago.) If i drove an 84 Chevy maybe I wouldn’t have to work as much. You can live a great life working 40 hours a week for a lot less than 80,000 a year, but it takes serious discipline in today’s world. And I guarantee you if you sit back and accept a handout, your mentality is going to be so permanently messed up that instead of learning to change your lifestyle and choices, you’d be broke making 80,000 a year also.
Here’s the video for you to see yourself:
http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/28/9069519-waiting-for-midnight-hungry-families-on-food-stamps-give-walmart-enormous-spike