Outdated stereotypes based on outdated perceptions from decades ago. You can't stay on welfare forever anymore, you must participate in employment training, and you have to jump through many more hoops to qualify for benefits. It's mostly unemployed women and children. The shiftless alcoholic, druggy types you describe (and we've all seen them) are mostly unemployed men, not supporting dependent children and not on welfare. The old "welfare" was the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program, created as part of the New Deal in 1935. Most of the single-mother beneficiaries of welfare were then widows; by 1988, most of these women with children were either unmarried or divorced. The program tended to discourage fathers from being present and encourage having more babies and a single-parent family could stay on welfare for decades. In 1996, Bill Clinton worked with the Republican Congress to pass the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act which completely remade the program. Among other changes, a lifetime limit of five years was imposed for the receipt of benefits, and the limited nature of the new program was emphasized by calling it Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. "A broad consensus now holds that welfare reform was certainly not a disaster--and that it may, in fact, have worked much as its designers had hoped." -- The New Republic
and you are the other end of the spectrum. However, you couldnt be more wrong with this part of your post.
I notice that you didn't dispute anything I said here, or that we are moving away from socialistc type programs, even in the private sector. you just said I love the nanny state. IMO, people are more on their own now than they were 40 years ago.
You could very well be writing about my husband's entire family (parents and two brothers.) They are absolute mooching bums, and though they used to receive various assistence, they don't anymore. Perhaps it's the welfare reform that was passed. I honestly don't know. Their welfare these days is calling up my husband and asking for money. My husband's cousin is getting married in Chicago next month. My husband's uncle is paying airfare and hotel for my mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, and nephew. We are paying our airfare and hotel and now, apparently, my other brother-in-law's airfare (he's 33 and has a job, but must be working poor). Am I wrong to resent folks like my in-laws? I think they are moochers, and they'll take a handout anywhere they can get it. My mother-in-law once asked my husband to buy her a new bed, and after he did (though he said we needed to save our money for expenses like our daughters' college funds), she called us "the two most selfish people she'd ever seen."
You shouldnt resent them, but just oppose future dealings with them. Mooches usually are ungrateful. Just like alot of folks on welfare, probably think the should be receiving more.
Believe me, I've been trying to oppose future dealings with all of them for years. Perhaps (wishful thinking?) something will happen at the wedding to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Yes, they do think they should be getting more from us, and they do resent us.
If the relationship is that strained you might as well get the shyt out in the open, since they resent your marriage. Why pretend? Id tell them not to ask me or my spouse for anything else, since the resentment is their.
I think it's quickly coming to that. I never wanted to believe that my mother-in-law could "guilt" my husband into paying airfare for his 33-year-old brother to fly free to Chicago, but apparently, that day has come.
