Just yesterday, I completed an application for snap benefits. That’s all I wanted and needed assistance with. Because I’m a part-time worker, my finances at times get strapped because I’m paying off a loan from a bank and it makes my working budgets feel a little compressed. I need some breathing room here.
I hope I get them but I never intend to be on it forever, I just need some financial security and resource assurance. I’ve always tried being a person who looked to things like this and only go to them when I needed them, not because I wanted them and mooch off from them.
Trust me, in 6 months your tune will change when they make you submit that form again to prove that you’re still broke. It’s such a tedious process that often gets fucked up by the office after you turn it in, you’ll feel like you deserve even MORE than they’ll give you.
Fuck no
No fucking way, give me what’s mine by right of being a citizen and paying taxes. Fuck guilt.
No. I pay taxes while using none of those programs and those programs are there to give people a hand up who are struggling. You deserve a roof over your head, a warm & safe place to sleep, clean water to drink and bathe, and decent food to eat. You are human and trying to meet your basic needs. People who have more can support those who have less. Simple.
I paid into this, even if you did not, if you qualify, then you must take advantage of it. This is my gift for you.
“Guilty” isn’t the right word, more like “I don’t wanna be ‘made an example out of’” by the media as “Immigrants living on welfare”, since I’m foreign-born.
The mistake people keep making about the Right is that they care about logic.
Trump spent 2016 to 2020 talking about the Wall. From 2024 on he was silent. None of his people bring it up.
They will hate on you anyway. Take the damn money
I felt guilty every time I signed up for the EI I paid for. I knew it was irrational and the product of generations of propaganda making me feel that way but god damn if it didnt work.
I had to go through all of this so many times when struggling with a failed life and business.
I had ONE good agent who helped me and reminded me that I pay for all these programs, and the agent’s job is to help us qualify for them, not to judge nor moralize any part of it.
All the other agents judged and moralized to a degree that I eventually let my SNAP funding expire because I couldn’t keep going in there and facing the people scouring my business receipts for some implied wrongdoing.
Despite that, it’s still your right, you still paid for all of it, even if you don’t pay income tax, there is tax on anything and everything you buy and do, so you’re not doing anything other than collecting what you’ve loaned to the government. Hold your head up and look them in the eye if they ever challenge you, and apply for every goddamn program you’re eligible for, and if anyone gives you shit about it, you talk to their manager, and if they don’t help, talk to that person’s manager.
(One agent who was openly hostile and lectured me about “looking capable of working” and had a bad attitude through the whole process actually got fired because I complained, the manager of that DES office actually called me to let me know and to tell me they felt bad about it and that it’s not their job to be judgemental or invalidate others.)
The programs are there for a reason. Don’t listen to idiots with an IQ lower than the number of M&Ms that come in a Halloween serving.
That’s what your tax dollars are for.
Take your entitlements - you’re entitled to them.
Nope. Used them for years. Now I pay a fucky amount of taxes with my high paying job to support them. Use them. We live in a society.
I will say, as a tax payer, if you are eligible for them, FUCKING TAKE THEM! Take every ¢ you can make reasonable use of!
I pay into the pool to provide a safety net to everyone. I’ve bounced off it myself, when I was younger. I want to know that it is doing its job for those that need it.
Proviso, I’m based in the UK. I’m quite sure a lot of tax payers, world wide, feel the same and would also give you “permission”.
No. They were put there for a reason in order to help me out.
You know who the biggest welfare queens in the States are? Corporations who deliberately limit worker hours so that they’ll never get benefits, and who deliberately underpay workers relative to their value and the amount of profit the company makes, and who deliberately arrange to underpay their taxes.
All of these things increase pressure on the worker and their desperate struggle to have just a little breathing room - and the government cheerfully goes along with all of this.
If any part of society was working as it should - if government represented the people instead of the corporations, if minimum wage had kept up with inflation, if corporations and the wealthy paid back into the system that has so vastly benefitted them - if any of that had happened, then you wouldn’t be under the stress that you’re under.
Go. Sign up for SNAP. Check with your county and see what other resources are available to you because you’re on SNAP - maybe you qualify for reduced heating, or a free phone line, or seasonal credit at your local farmers market. Anything that you qualify for, take advantage of, because each program will get you a little more space in your life for yourself.
The people I know personally who act like it’s so terrible to be helping someone else have all received significant assistance from the government and their communities.
Please accept the assistance. That’s what you need.
I don’t care if it’s forever. Everyone deserves to eat and a place to sleep and everyone deserves to know that they will still have food and a safe place to sleep later. Just don’t try to keep it from others once you’re back on your feet.
