thoughts on people who live on benefits?

@KuroNeko you are the type of person that the programs are made for.

@Notanymore That does not stop people looking down on us, I can tell you.

@KuroNeko i believe you. Hell, I've seen it personally. But people don't realize how difficult it is to keep a house full of kids fed, and just how important it is to make damn sure we aren't sitting idly by when children are hungry. People who complain about assistance to families, yet are perfectly content with some od the waste the government accumulates confuse me.

@Notanymore Getting help has a stigma attached, sadly. People don't seem to understand that anyone can end up in trouble, without a roof over their heads and losing everything. Nobody is safe.

@KuroNeko i understand that completely. I've done a bit of volunteer work with shelters and the stories are damn scary.

@KuroNeko I met a realtor once who said it does not take much to put the average middle income family on the streets. I found out years later that she was right. The stigma is why I keep to myself and don't let people get close.

@SW-User For me it was the fact that I needed to escape an abusive relationship. Often I see the same people talking down about benefits are the same bashing women for not leaving their abusers. Some people just cannot put themselves in the shoes of another without it happening to them directly.

@KuroNeko I'm glad that you were able to get the help you needed and I'm glad that you have what you need available to you now

@KuroNeko It's the same for me. Divorce was necessary, but it left me with retirement as the only option. After 25 years of being a housewife, no one would look at my resume.

@SW-User I feel that. I spent years being told I had to stay home and look after the kids while he went out and bettered himself. I left with a little money to buy a second hand car an that was all.

@KuroNeko you've done what it takes to keep your children safe, healthy, happy and well fed. From whatever humble start you've achieved inspired greatness.

@KuroNeko I was a housewife due to disability. It was my doctor's recommendation. That left me, however, with a dead resume after 20+ years of marriage. So I enrolled in state counseling for unemployed people with disabilities, and they blew me off -- one excuse being that there's prejudice among employers against people with certain disabilities.

@SW-User Absolutely. You are pushed from both sides too. In the uk over the last few years, people have died trying to get their benefit claims appealed after losing them for not being sick or disabled enough according to the authorities.

@KuroNeko I shouldn't be surprised. I don't have disability pay myself, because I was told it's very hard to get approved here.

@SW-User That should never be the case. We should be looking after people.

@KuroNeko i agree completely. Everybody deserves a chance. Everybody deserves to eat

@Notanymore And the less people we have struggling at the bottom, the better it is for the whole society. Poverty is a very expensive thing.

@KuroNeko Opinion is very divided on the idea of taking care of people where I live. I hear a lot of the opposite of what you said and it's probably because of frustration with the already heavy tax burden.

@KuroNeko there's definitely people tgat abuse the system here. It makes the stigma for the people that really need help worse. I think the system needs reforming.

@Notanymore most governments could definitely be more careful with the money they tax from their people. Theres no excuse for homelessness for example, not in a first world country.

@KuroNeko I agree with you there. We need to cut internal government spending. And government wasting. and use the revenue to actually help the people

@KuroNeko Oh I agree entirely. It makes me sick when I think of where our tax money actually goes, especially when there are so many in desperate need.

@Notanymore So many trillions just unaccounted for in the US. It's just too easy to siphon off cash for whatever underground projects they have going on.

@SW-User So much of it goes towards the misery of others, I'm sure.

@KuroNeko and keeping politicians living a luxurious life