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Some auto-bio of my own. My mother raised us after divorcing my father who was an alcoholic, the last 20 years of his life unemployed, cared for by his mother, neither of whom was on Food Stamps or Welfare of any kind except for my grandmother’s SS checks – does that qualify? My mother was a factory worker & she died of cancer in my early adulthood, she also never was on the dole. My wife’s family also worked and was never on the dole except for SS after retirement, their sole income. She had an uncle who was an alcoholic & lived in SRO’s but he didn’t exactly have people over for dinners at the holidays and was distant.
I don’t know anyone who smoked crack, is lazy and unwilling to work and/or sleeps with prostitutes. Even the local hard-luck kids – young adults – I know who are unlucky in their parental “choices’ want to and do work, hard, don’t smoke crack or hang with prostitutes. Their incomes however are substantially below the national average & many are not quite advanced degree material but they try & are not irresponsible. They have no insurance or benefits of any kind worth noting so they save up cash for a trip to the dentist or a local GP for instance.
What I disagree most with your postings and many other like-minded posters is the grouping together in a refuse category & hang assumptions about them generally being lay-abouts who just want to suck the cash from hard working affluent people and are not willing to work and provide for their own families. Times have also changed. My 1st job was working in a shipyard with a pay – and benefits – that would allow me to rent a nice apartment & I could go to college & pay for tuition and borrow the rest in student loans. Not too many of those around anymore. Most of the new jobs have no bennies and pay minimum wage and apartments cost a bit more than minimum wages even for 2.
