SHAME ON AMERICA

We have people without beds to sleep in. Why can't we somehow figure out a way to keep every citizen fed and bedded ?
We borrow money to fight wars --why not borrow to help our people?
Just curious as usual.

Dear Alice, my dear friend.

The truth is that most americans consider that the
government will take up the slack and that it is not their personal problem. Our government really does a good job. There are people who know just how to get the most out of laying back and not working. I know some of them.

In fact, they live better with less effort than I. If you have four children, have been laid off, you can get 800 dollars a month in food stamps. If your four children are all under five, there is no way they can eat 800 dollars worth of food, but the family gets it with no qualification. It is a challenge how to buy $800 worth of food, not toilet paper, or soaps, or anything not food for two adults and four children under 5.

Add to that rent subsidy, cell phone with 250 minutes, health care and Unemployment...Dang!

I am talking about people who do not really want to work for a living. It is and can be done.

Then, there are people who would starve because they have no knowledge of how the system works and those like me who would rather die than ask for that kind of help.

Help comes with a price. I should have been born in another century long ago.

Love,
Betty

Betty, We have people on the streets in Kirkland, WA. No children or spouse.or house or job. It is revolting.

Maybe it is a state problem.

Betty,

You are so rght and I am so wrong. Wa state has a great Public assistance program.
The people don't want it or something.

My apologies.

Love ya,

Alice

Dear Alice,
You are not wrong. People need help. I am not so sure the government is the helper. In your state, if a person should collect money from the state to help themselves over hard time, when they die the state of Washington has the right to sell all their stuff at public auction to recover their expenditure.

We have become a people with no place to go for help. The agencies that are supposed to help take more than they give. They take a person's dignity, put them on a public record of having had to ask for help and that follows them on most employment applications these days.

The red tape is long.

There are many people who do not care a whit about all of that. They suck up the benefits of the state they are in and move on down the road to a new state.

I see people all around me working so hard. I see people picking strawberries and running, running to the boss truck so that they can get another few boxes picked in that day and registered for their wage. I think it is less that a dollar a box that they get.

I see people in the city with a sign about how Jesus loves the person who gives to the poor. They are on every corner. They are smoking their cigarettes.

I do not know, Alice. I really do not know what or how to make even a small difference in the fabric of this world.


I imagine it is not a grand effort that is required of us. It is to be steady in the way we go and the quality of our loving and compassion that matters at the end of the day.

Don't give up on me, Alice. One day, together we will fix this world we live in.

Love,
Betty

Betty,

You are not the problem, if everyone were like you , life would be much better.