Our Life's Biggest Mysteries

I mean this to be funny, but I'm probably going to piss y'all off, sorry!

1- If I stay at home to take care of my kids, I'm not supporting them, unless I turn it into a business by taking care of other people's children too.

2- No matter what, I should put my kids in daycare for around 150.00 a week for each of my two boys so that I can work a job making about 400.00 a month. (When I had them in Daycare, it was 150.00 a week for each, but I was given a discount for having two, so I was charged 257.25 a week for both. IIRC) Provided that I can obtain that job, because I have tried and I'm either over qualified or I have not had a stable job history. (Employers tell me both - when they bother to call me back or send a letter to give a reason, most of the time I hear nothing, and bugging them just makes them start hanging up on me, lol!) Doing the math, the state would help me pay that (I'm going to use the easy to multiply number of 250 for the both of them 250*4=1000.00) 1000.00 a month so that I could work a job making around 400.00 dollars a month. (Working part time minimum wage because - again, if anyone would hire me - that is the kind of job I'd have to work.) But I'm bitched out for making the tax payers have to pay welfare because I "refuse" to get a job... (Which, ironically if I did get a job, they'd be paying welfare AND daycare, costing the taxpayers more, shrugs.)

3- I went to school because I was tired of no one hiring me, and that cost the tax payers a pretty penny, racked me up a huge amount of debt, and hasn't yet resulted in a job. To be fair, this has more to do with the fact that the state stopped paying our daycare and I literally couldn't finish my degree. However, Hubby is now working on his second degree - while I stay at home and take care of the boys - because he couldn't get a job with his first degree. Hubby worked for three years at a minimum wage sandwich shop because it was the ONLY place that would hire him, and they hired him ONLY because he got a reference from a case worker. His job did not get us off of welfare, it simply lowered the amount of benefits they gave us each month. The mystery is that we get blamed for not trying hard enough, not doing whatever it takes, and "sitting" on welfare. Yeah...

4- Another mystery is that taxpayers blame those on welfare for getting "free money" and doing nothing. Everyone apparently knows someone who abuses the system. I don't. The mystery is this: (I'm going put this on a very small scale so that it's easier to illustrate.)

Imagine a small town of only 200 adults. Lets say that ideally, there is 100 women, 100 men, and they are all married so that there is exactly 100 couples. They each have 2 kids, so that's 200 kids. Also in this town, there are exactly 100 jobs. No more; it's a small town in the middle of nowhere after all. In this ideal town, each couple chooses 1 spouse to go to work and one spouse to stay home. Of the jobs, 10 make 80,000 a year or more, 50 make minimum wage, and the rest make something in between.

Very soon, something happens in this "ideal" little town. One of the 50 people making minimum wage realizes that he or she cannot support his/her family on minimum wage, but luckily, another person on minimum wage just lost his/her job, so the first person gets his or her spouse to take that job, and now they have two incomes and can mostly support their family. For ease of simplicity, this couple's children both go to school, so they do not have to worry about paying daycare while they work.

UH-OH! Now the person who lost his/her job has no income, and neither does the spouse! They apply for any job they can get, but no one is hiring. There are no jobs to be had! They have to get help from the state and get called names for refusing to work to support their children.

Moving is not an option because they have no money, and all the other towns are exactly the same. (In this example, and whether people want to admit it or not, in real life too...)

Tired of the tedium of not working, one decides to go back to school (online because this town is too small to have a college), and eventually gets a degree. This person manages to impress the employer of one of those 100 jobs, and takes one of the 80,000 a year or more jobs. But now the person who had that job is laid off. He or she has a great work history and great skills, and so manages to impress one of the employers of the 40 median jobs. Now that median worker is laid off, but manages to snag one of the minimum wage jobs. Suddenly, there is another family in this town on welfare!

Rather than shut up and be grateful that this family takes the pittance of welfare, people resent them. Why should this family get something for nothing? Everyone else has to work after all! This family gets tired of getting dumped on all the time, so one of the adults goes online and gets a degree, but it doesn't help. So he/she gets another one and this time manages to snag a median job.

The result is another minimum wage worker pushed out of a job and another family on welfare. This family uses their time at home to support themselves in other ways. They make their own stuff as much as possible. They do without all the toys, and grow their own food as much as possible (and no I am not referring to us here. We have black thumbs no matter how much we try).

They take as little of the welfare as they can, but still people give them shit for "refusing" to get a job and support their family...

Do you want to know what I think? I know it's unconventional and will probably piss everyone off, but here's the two biggest mysteries in life, not just mine.

1- People always blame the poor for being poor. It is a prime example of fearing what you don't understand. It's the fear that one day that could easily be anyone. They blame the poor for not trying hard enough. It's a mystery why this is the natural tendency of humans when just about every religion on the planet commands us to show compassion to and help the poor and unfortunate. Rather than blame and fear them, show compassion and gratitude that because they exist, you have your job and opportunities. It IS a universal truth that there is not a job for every single person who can work on this planet. Therefore, either those who cannot find jobs must either work for themselves (by planting a garden or making their own clothes or something else that probably doesn't earn a good income) OR they must rely on the charity of others.

2- The other biggest mystery in life is that it IS the responsibility of the government to care for the people. ALL the people. Yet when the government does a good job of this, the people protest and complain that it's not fair and it's not right. Since when did keeping people off the streets and making sure they have food to eat become something terrible? It's a mystery why people resent this.

I also want the system to change. I want people - in this so called christian nation - to be good christians. I want them to follow the teachings of Jesus.
Do not judge.
Do not fear.
Do not cast stones.
If you see someone in need, help them.
Do not complain about it.

This reminds me of something I read in a Dear Abby column (I WISH I could find it online somewhere, but it was in a paper a long time ago).

The person writing in wrote something like: My good friend asked to borrow money for this that and the other. I have borrowed her money before, and she always pays it back, so I said yes. Today, I discovered that she used that money to - in addition to what she said she would - buy a bottle of wine, some makeup, and a new dress. I'm livid! How dare she spend my money on such frivolous things!

To which Abby responded something like this: Dear Livid, first of all, that is not your money. You loaned it to her and have a fair expectation of getting paid back. It is now hers to do whatever she wants with it. Second of all, even if you had given it to her, it would still not be your money anymore. A gift is a gift, and you cannot dictate how it is used. Maybe she needed that makeup and dress for a job interview you don't know about yet. In any case, keep your nose out of it!

I love that advice. People get SOOOOOOOO emotional about money! The economy is shit, so we have taken to blaming each other about how we spend our money that we have earned or been given. I was talking to someone else about food earlier, and this little gem of advice came out of my fingertips:

The solution is not to restrict choice, but to remove all restrictions and improve choice!

Rather than give a person a "choice" between a job and welfare, and then blaming them when they, ahem, "choose" welfare, why not give them another option? Perhaps a solution to this would be to make some of the illegal jobs legal, so that they literally CAN'T "play" the system. (By dealing drugs for example and then collecting welfare. See, add choices.)

Why not consider them paid stay at home workers who are NOT taking your job from you?

Why not create a field of jobs for all people who stay at home - whether due to disability or any other reason - in which so long as they are doing something to take care of themselves - such as gardening or cooking or making clothes or occasionally watching the neighbor's kid - they get credit for all the hard work they are doing.

Why not stop blaming them?

Ok, in my head this was funny in a satire kind of way, but as I read it, it doesn't sound funny at all. I honestly meant this as a satire piece that questions the way things are done, but it probably just comes across as either whining or trying to excuse my "lazy" behavior. Ok, I get that. Doesn't mean that it has no valid points... More than anything, I just want people to think about things from the other side for a bit.

That is all, have a happy day :-)
(And by all means, feel free to argue with me, just do it politely, thank you!)