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Originally Posted by knight_shadow
PiKA's first post:
Nothing about that screams fraud.
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Read his next post. I don't really know what your point is here either. I don't believe people should be judgey asshats because they think they know better than the poor people, because duh they're poor. That's not the same as talking about the system the way AOIIA and DP are.
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We all don't work in your field, so we may not know all the inner workings of these types of programs, but you have to admit that hearing someone with a large flat-panel TV, a gaming system, and a cable box talk about energy assistance can lead to a few questions.
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I don't work for public aid anymore, but if anything it should drive home exactly how many people are hurting. If my dad lost his job for that long, we probably wouldn't have sold the TV or cable box, or my brother's Xbox but we wouldn't necessarily have cable or Xbox Live either. Selling them wouldn't make us enough money to heat our house either. If someone said "hey, isn't that weird, does she really qualify?" then that's someone trying to correct their ignorance, but when someone says "she shouldn't do X, she should do Y, I know better than her and she's probably a terrible person who's mismanaged her whole life" they're being assholes.
This woman could have saved every spare dime and received every fancy thing in her home as charity or gifts, and after being out of work for a year be down to the last straw. Or she could have been living paycheck to paycheck and is now just barely managing on public assistance/unemployment/with help from others.
I'm horribly bothered by people who think that poor people should never have nice things, should cook all their food from scratch, and should basically be 'better' people than the person spouting such beliefs.
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If I am standing next to my Hummer and complaining that I can't afford gas, it wouldn't be THAT big of a stretch for people to ask questions.
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"Hey, k_s, why'd you buy a hummer if you were struggling with money?" vs "You irresponsible bastard, I hope my tax money never goes to help you out. You probably bought that car with my money in the first place so now I, personally, get to dictate how you should act. If you don't sell your car and ride a bicycle to go look for a job then you're not really hurting."