4 ms·

Perhaps I'm not reading the right sources, but I never see anybody talk about how much work it is to get benefits, at least in the U.S. Once the county welfare

Perhaps I'm not reading the right sources, but I never see anybody talk about how much work it is to get benefits, at least in the U.S. Once the county welfare office is involved in your life, you have a demanding new boss, always demanding paperwork -- forms, paystubs -- and phone calls to straighten things out when the paperwork goes wrong. It's not like somebody shows up out of the blue and gives you an envelope full of cash every month.

Mz 11y ago
I talk about it once in a while -- when I have time. I am homeless and had food stamps for a time. Then someone in the welfare office dropped the ball and they got cancelled. I reapplied and someone else dropped the ball. I have a compromised immune system. Not only did it take scads of time while getting me nothing, it made me ill to spend half the day in a crowded welfare office waiting room surrounded by poor people, who tend to not be in the best of health. After the second time they dropped the ball, I didn't bother to go back. My income is gradually going up. I would get less help than I used to. I do freelance work, so my income is erratic, which doesn't play nicely with their forms. Etc. I began looking for other solutions. I am sometimes upset that I am not getting the food stamps. My situation is still dicey and it is still a scramble every month to get enough resources to eat every day. But I am not going to go spend all kinds of time trying to chase the few dollars they would give me, getting sick over it, and worrying about the possibility that they will feel I am committing fraud or something because my income is erratic and some months I have enough and some months I don't (or whatever the hell problem they might have with me). So I do sometimes talk about it. But not a whole lot, for various reasons.
- sevensor 11y ago
  Thank you for speaking up! Public assistance in this country is given up so grudgingly, and often so incompetently, as to be actively counterproductive.
  - fricken4 11y ago
    I'm in Canada and a friend of mine was working in a government call centre; her job description could be summarized as 'deny people benefits in 9 minutes or less'. Her role as enforcer of state brutality eventually led to clinical depression and she quit. She couldn't handle turning down people who were more often than not in dire straights.
    - sevensor 11y ago
      Thanks for filling in the other side of the picture. I'd never considered that bad guidance wasn't the result of incompetence or malice on their part, but that the phone workers might actually be incentivized, even required, to lie.

Mz 11y ago

I talk about it once in a while -- when I have time. I am homeless and had food stamps for a time. Then someone in the welfare office dropped the ball and they got cancelled. I reapplied and someone else dropped the ball. I have a compromised immune system. Not only did it take scads of time while getting me nothing, it made me ill to spend half the day in a crowded welfare office waiting room surrounded by poor people, who tend to not be in the best of health. After the second time they dropped the ball, I didn't bother to go back. My income is gradually going up. I would get less help than I used to. I do freelance work, so my income is erratic, which doesn't play nicely with their forms. Etc. I began looking for other solutions. I am sometimes upset that I am not getting the food stamps. My situation is still dicey and it is still a scramble every month to get enough resources to eat every day. But I am not going to go spend all kinds of time trying to chase the few dollars they would give me, getting sick over it, and worrying about the possibility that they will feel I am committing fraud or something because my income is erratic and some months I have enough and some months I don't (or whatever the hell problem they might have with me). So I do sometimes talk about it. But not a whole lot, for various reasons.

sevensor 11y ago
Thank you for speaking up! Public assistance in this country is given up so grudgingly, and often so incompetently, as to be actively counterproductive.
- fricken4 11y ago
  I'm in Canada and a friend of mine was working in a government call centre; her job description could be summarized as 'deny people benefits in 9 minutes or less'. Her role as enforcer of state brutality eventually led to clinical depression and she quit. She couldn't handle turning down people who were more often than not in dire straights.
  - sevensor 11y ago
    Thanks for filling in the other side of the picture. I'd never considered that bad guidance wasn't the result of incompetence or malice on their part, but that the phone workers might actually be incentivized, even required, to lie.