Having been told often enough not to say "wheelchair bound" I generally don't

[conuly]

But is this a "don't say it" sort of thing or a "don't say it, and politely ask others not to either" sort of thing?

********************

5 types of apples, once thought extinct, are rediscovered

I love this comic.

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8 TV Shows That Were Creatively Altered by a Writers Strike

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Judge: Idaho must allow gender changes on birth certificates

Mother's Day: The Belgian nursery school ditching traditional celebrations (The interviewed parents claim they understand but don't approve, but since they only mention children with two fathers I think they don't understand at all. I'm thinking this benefits the kids who have dead or abusive mothers and don't need that thrown in their faces at school.)

For many factory towns, white collar job loss hurts the most

Busting the Myth of ‘Welfare Makes People Lazy’

The male glance: how we fail to take women’s stories seriously

Immigrants say working at Kansas ranch was 'like slavery'

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For #MeToo movement, a mixed reception in nations outside US

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Italy stems immigration, short on aiding indebted sex slaves

Grenade blast kills one in Sri Lanka communal violence, social media blocked (More.)

Comments

[kengr]

Busting the Myth of ‘Welfare Makes People Lazy’

One bit in there made me want to scream. The bit about the conservative dogma that "welfare discourages people from working".

I've been on welfare (while waiting for a decision on my disability benefits) And the truth is, the rules *penalize* you for working!

For starters, they subtract your *gross* income from your benefits, not your net income.

And if your income varies (which is almost certain at the low end where you are working part time on varying schedules) they want a copy of your pay stubs. Which means for a biweekly paycheck, you can't get your benefits for up to 2 weeks after the start of the month, because they will want the stub that includes the last day of the month.

That practically guarantees late fees on bills.

[marahmarie]

I have a similar reason for wanting to scream (though a bit different): it's not that being on benefits (of any sort) encourages one to not work but that once on them, one risks having them drastically cut or stopped if they *do* work, even if in any realistic world the money made at a job won't replace what's taken away (food, medical, rental assistance and so on), so what happens is people caught in such circumstances walk a financial and emotional tightrope of seeing how if they "go over hours" this week then food's getting cut down (or off) next month or if they "work too many hours" this month then there goes rental assistance next year, and so on...

The situation just winds up piling on more stress (on top of the already-rampant stress and exhaustion of being poor, discriminated against, and socially and systematically oppressed and disregarded because of mindsets not of our own making) because a) in the US especially, no matter which benefit's being discussed, it's not enough to cover what a human being and/or their family actually needs and b) no matter which benefit's being discussed, one can lose it rather easily just by having an income that's still insufficient to replace whatever the state takes away as "punishment" for earning said income.

If they want to encourage the ability to actually *have* any independence from the state/government/system without poor people meeting disaster (and they don't - they'd personally love for all poor people to meet exactly that), the system would need to a) be more generous to begin with and b) not cut a person back or off so quickly once they show any income over the pitiful levels the system sets to ensure a benefit's "safety". Until it gets to the point where benefits are expanded and not taken away so quickly or easily over a person's provably meager and insufficient-to-live-on earnings, the need for assistance will continue, unabated (and will get even worse as they cut more and more of them off for more and more people, as they're planning to do), resulting in poor people making no advancements, except in suffering.

[kengr]

Yeah the "resource" limits are a bad joke.

For me it was $50. and *technically* I was in violation from the point I got my check until I paid the rent & utilities.

But it's a combo of believing urban myths about aid recipients, politicians catering to those who believe them, and a strong dose of "don't confuse me with facts, my mind is already made up"

[marahmarie]

I think the most inane part of it is at any moment it could be them. So many of the less than entirely rich people don't realize they, just like the rest of us, could be just one medical emergency or car total or job loss away from facing the same (perhaps permanent) impoverishment they've trained themselves to despise others for facing.

I always say, "What if it's them? What if one day, God forbid, it is?" I've had personal experience with someone who was like that, then it was him, and to say the least he did *not* handle it too well. How could he, when he so vocally hated the very sort of person he now was? I hate to say it served him right, but from a solely karmic retribution standpoint, it most certainly did.

[conuly]

These are the same people who think not opening the mail when you can't pay the bills is a moral failing. Hypocrisy, thy name is neocon.

Seriously, they can't afford to think that way, because it'd shatter too many illusions.

[marahmarie]

Actually, with people I've known like that (definitely more than one) it's been the opposite: they don't open their mail because they literally don't want to know. They're always behind on rent/mortgage/other bills, the electric bill is always way too high (like, unjustifiably so, which they defend as a right because of having to work at a job), and they always justify all of it by saying they deserve (italics verbally included) to buy themselves All The Things to make up for the endless suffering of having to work, and they're always male.

Just my observations over quite a few years with more than one dude who was or is just like that.

[conuly]

I'm pretty sure, like, 99% sure, that this is because they hate the poor.

[kengr]

It's more a case (in *most* cases) of not understanding the way the world *actually* works (and has worked since the 80s or earlier).

They think that you have to have done something *wrong* to not have a good job or be out of work. They think it's your *fault*.

The reality is that *they* could be in just as bad a situation if they didn't "know people". It's bad luck or lack of resources (degrees, having "connections", or even just the right ancestry (or living in the right/wrong area))

It's the poor's *misfortune* not their *fault*.

But as long as they think there's fault involved, it's effectively the same as if they hated the poor.

[conuly]

The just world fallacy lets them imagine it won't happen to them, but it still sucks.