I remember being a kid and being sent home from school with an application for free and reduced price school lunches. My mom launched into an absolute fit about this. She said that no matter how poor we were that she would NEVER take a penny from the Government to feed her children, and if that others did it would destroy the culture and be the beginning of the end for America.
Little did I realize how right she was.
My dad died when I was 5 and my mom really struggled until she remarried when I was 12. I remember a girl in my neighborhood telling my mom that we could get free or reduced lunch. I told my mom there was no way I would do that. I was 8 or 9, yet I didn’t want to be stigmatized as a “poor child”. These days no one cares. There is no shame any more.
Right now in Austin they’ve formed an initiative and advertise on AM radio: enough under-served people aren’t coming in for aid application, so they’re taking the social services scam to people’s homes.
As Charles Payne said on the Varney & Co. show, these are not gifts, they are curses. People don’t understand that just giving people or industries money will lead to their ruin in the long run.
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/library/articles-commentary-blog/subsidies-hurt-recipients-too
Sounds like my dad. My mother wanted to go to the church to get some 'free' government cheese (which we could have used) and my dad said that he would throw it away rather than taking handouts from the government. That was in the 1950s.
BTW. The lady next store got the cheese and gave some to my Mom and Dad ate it, but never knew it was that 'damn' free cheese. ;~))