i know there are... and THAT, is a crime. all so we can give welfare to illegals and drunken dopeheads
Posted on 11/22/2015 4:37:42 PM PST by daniel1212
I can remember when I was "poor." That is, I was just out of the military and working as a rental agent. I could only get 30 hours a week, I didn't qualify for any aid because I had no children, and it was difficult to get another job because I had no car and few skills. So I just worked and went without car, without phone, without insurance, without ever, ever dining out, without anything other than basic cable (I had to be able to watch the news.) Lived on ramen, and rice and beans, and a few veggies and tuna and peanut butter.
But even then, I knew I was lucky. I was living in a nice little one bedroom apartment in a safe part of town. There were a few thrift stores on the bus line. I was comfortable enough. And I knew that by American standards, I was poor. But by India standards... I was doing pretty good! LOL!
I’m laughing because I just had this conversation with my mother last week. I was at an upscale supermarket here in Pittsburgh. All I wanted was one of those rotisserie chickens in the prepared foods section so I grabbed it and headed to that department’s little checkout counter. A woman in front of me had a plate piled high of gourmet prepared foods. $13 I think her total came to and she whipped out her food stamp card to pay for it. This was around two weeks ago so it was early November. My mom is a retired public assistance case worker; I was telling her this and she lost it saying that’s precisely why she doesn’t donate to any food banks. She said the food stamp people spend their money irresponsibly then show up at the local food banks once their food stamps have run out for the month or the use the food bank for their staples and buy junk w/ the food stamps.
Unreal. The system is totally broken.
Oh yeah I would add that I, too, am all for helping the poor but when I look around, it seems to me we have more spiritually poor people in this country than materially poor. Pray for our nation.
There was a time when my mom and dad, both gone now, had to do that. I bought my dad’s heart meds many times because they couldn’t afford them. Before Medicare part D.
Not so sure that’s the case now. The ones who may be hurting are the ones not quite old enough for Social Security. The working poor.
The pastor read this story in church today....
The Rich Family in Our Church
I’ll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was like to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money. By 1946, my older sisters were married, and my brothers had left home.
A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially. When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn’t listen to the radio, we’d save money on that month’s electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us baby sat for everyone we could. For 15 cents, we could buy enough cotton loops to make three potholders to sell for $1. We made $20 on potholders.
That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we’d sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in our church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the Pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before. That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn’t care that we wouldn’t have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn’t own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn’t seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet, but we sat in church proudly, despite how we looked. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt so rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us girls put in a $20. As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch, Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes!
Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 bill, and seventeen $1 bills. Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk, but instead, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash.
We kids had had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our mom and dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the fork or the spoon that night. We had two knives which we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor. That Easter Day I found out we were poor. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor.
I didn’t like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed that I didn’t want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor! I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew we were poor. I decided I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time.
We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn’t know. We’d never known we were poor.
We didn’t want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn’t talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but they need money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, “Can’t we all sacrifice to help these poor people?”
We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week. Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering plate. When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn’t expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, “You must have some rich people in this church.”
Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that “little over $100.” We were the rich family in the church! Hadn’t the missionary said so? Deep down, I knew that we were actually a rich family.
by Eddie Ogan
https://bible.org/illustration/rich-family-our-church
There is ZERO hunger in the USA. Zero. There are no poor people in the USA.
I’ve tried to give away things that I just couldn’t. 15 years ago those items could have been sold instead of given away, yet, no takers.
There are no poor in America.
i know there are... and THAT, is a crime. all so we can give welfare to illegals and drunken dopeheads
LOL, part of being young is to want to get ahead, and not have the means or experience to do so.
I have never, ever, wanted for the basics.
Ever. (Unless you count being in the military and spending all your money stupidly at the beginning of the month, then having to eat but Wonder bread and tub margarine with powdered ice tea to drink for the rest of the month. But that is more stupidity than “want”.)
But, even though I have never experienced real hunger or physical privation due to poverty, I have striven my entire life never to take that for granted.
But part of being young in an affluent society was, for me, the desire to work hard, learn when I could, and move ahead.
I think that happens to a combination of people who thought they might have things handled, and didn’t because of changes in the economy, those who aren’t going to apply for welfare, and those who don’t know how to or are at the edge of qualifying.
I can tell you “yes” to several ofbthose questions. We definitely had to cut back on our grocery bills for lack of money but we’ve always had enough to eat. If everything keep’s going up because of the shyster in office we may not though. Just a few years ago we were producing income in excess of $200K for many years. Taxes kicked our tail every year.
Plus, air conditioning, wheels and iPhones.
Every year, our family has always done something charitable, for example donating food. Then, the past few years, for the first time, we fell on hard times.
I’ve always been very careful with my money, but sometimes circumstances beyond your control happen.
The worst period was this past summer when, for a few weeks, I had less than $1. I’m serious.
When you have no money and a family to feed, you’d be amazed by what you can make with whatever’s in your cupboard, even just flour and water.
Once the cupboard is empty, you’d be amazed at what you can sell, even junk around the house, for some quick cash.
Even though other people would’ve happily helped us, if they’d known, I didn’t want to ask for help. At one point, my sons and I were in a store, with a few dollars, trying to figure out what to buy that we could stretch out. A sweet lady (who happened to be black, a detail I add just because of some of the stuff people write on this forum) must’ve realized what was going on and tried to hand me a $20 bill. I thanked her very much but refused to take it. She looked angry at me, but I knew we were just going through a tough period.
Eventually, everything did work out. But, now I have no trouble believing there must be some very poor people, with very little food to eat, in this country.
Oh, the people who know how to game the system are doing fine, in some cases better than the rest of us.
I’m thinking more of the disabled and/or elderly and/or ill people who might’ve fallen on hard times.
They are eating too much junk foods, fatty foods, chips, sugary foods full of bizarre additives that make them sick and give them diabetes. Diabetes is a rapidly expanding expense for Medicaid.
You are right they are nutritionally deficient from all those crap foods. They are starving themselves this way but not from not getting enough taxpayers money to eat well enough, eat a decent diet. We all know how fat our poor people are these days. Mostly from a high junk food diet and watching their 50" LED TVs all day. Its not hard to cook and eat a lot of beans and rice plus chicken, meat, vegetables and fruits. They choose not to plus some are too dumb to do so.
Their children are also vegetating and become miniature Michelin Tire Men like the six year old boy I saw the other day
the caste system is wonderful.
Hardest time for me was going from a weekly paid job to a monthly paid job. I like the Biblical, pay at the end of the day rule. Electronically they could do it.
Good analysis. I’m continually annoyed by those public service radio ads. They’ve always seemed phony to me too. They act as if there’s a war on hunger in this country, but we haven’t quite won it, and need donations to do so. Actually this asking for donations for food is part of the system. It’s been going on for decades. I suppose doing that is better than just taking more money from people through taxes, though. People can contribute voluntarily and feel that they’re doing a good deed. There’s plenty of food in America, though.
I’m technically classified as poor myself, merely because I retired early on very little income. I have a paid-for house, paid-for car, computer, big-screen tv, and savings, though, and don’t use food stamps or access food banks. I just live frugally. I’ve had savings since I was a poor kid, and collecting discarded bottles for the two-cent deposit to buy candy bars and 50-cent paperbacks. I never made the effort to become rich, but never really suffered any lasting hardships either.
I favor food banks for others because well-intentioned persons who just aren’t very prudent (and a few who are, as others have pointed out) may occasionally find themselves without any money. (And, again, with a few it may be chronic.) They’re irresponsible, but with many persons willing to contribute money for food, there’s no need for them to go hungry or have to beg for food. I just wish I didn’t have to hear the ads. :-)
I'd agree with that, too. :-)
My sister-in-law works for a food bank and says many of the people they help are professional beggars who hit one bank this week, another next week, then another and another till they come back around here.
She sees whole families who are without work because all the family including adult kids living at home are “bipolar” and can’t work.
She can tell the scammers from the people who really need help but must not turn away anyone.
She sees many who cannot speak English and have a child interpret. When she mentions government aid she sees mom’s eyes lite up and knows then that mom can really speak English but pretends not to understand.
Our local pastors at churches who help people in need also know the circuit riding scammers who go from church to church looking for “help”.
But she did face hunger every day (thus she ate), and likely an empty plate (before filling it) and maybe did not have enough money to but the food she (thinks) she needed. Thus she faces food insecurity.
Meanwhile there really are some starving people in the world. At least some agencies like Grahams Samaritan's purse i think, are giving them the heavenly as well as earthly food.
Yes, this is the most Biblical illiterate and morally confused generation America has ever raised.
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