This is another thing that drives me nutz.
If you are so poor.... that if you lose your job, you are instantly going to be without food.....
Why do you have a cell phone? Do you not get this?
Cancel the cell phone, and save up that money you are blowing, into a banking account for when you have an emergency like an unexpected lay off.
As I said before, I've been unemployed many times. Never once have I been in a position that I was needing welfare and food stamps, because if I don't have money in the bank, I don't spend money on anything. ANYTHING. I save up money in the bank until I have enough that if something should happen, then I have cash ready.
Let's say that picture is from 6 months prior to her lay off. $600 in the bank more, can buy a lot of rice. You can feed your kids for weeks, before needing food stamps.
I've done this myself. Now granted the longest I have ever been unemployed was about 2 months, because I get out there, and find myself a job. But even then, I had several thousand in the bank, and cut my spending down to ZILCH. You can last a long time, if you buy the bare necessities, and if you are not dumb as a rock, and blowing every extra dollar out of every check, so you have no money in the bank.
When you are that dumb, why should society be forced to pay for you?
And again.... what we teaching these kids? We are teaching them that as an adult you don't have to be responsible and frugal, and society will bail you out when you don't have money set aside for emergencies.
Then we wonder why we have constantly poor people.
I think somebody covered this before, but a cellphone seems essential for keeping track of either the kids or whoever's watching them.
Plus, by now there are a lot of people who have a cellphone in lieu of a landline. It becomes their only phone. I would do that myself if I had a cell signal where I live. It would cut my costs.
And I'm not sure how you equate 6 months of cell phone to $600. If that's what you're paying you're not much of a shopper. As for "dumb as a rock, and blowing every extra dollar out of every check, so you have no money in the bank", you don't know that's any part of the story here; it's an assumption. It's all very easy to make assumptions about the lot of somebody you don't know and know you'll never meet.
You know, for 6000 years of human history, no one had cell phones, and they still kept track of their kids, and the people who were watching them.
Cell phones have only even existed for a mere 30 years. And even then, they were only widely used since 2000. So in a mere 14 years of wide use, suddenly it is an "essential" for life. Really....
I call that BS. When I was broke, I cancelled my cell phone for months on end. Guess what.... life went on. Amazingly, out of all the supposed "emergencies" of life, I didn't have any that could not wait until I got home. If there was anything super important, they had the number to where I worked. Oddly, in all my years, I have never once had something so important, they needed to call my work.
Right now I have a phone that cost me a whooping $35, and has a monthly charge of $15 to operate.
But it's not a touch screen, smart phone, with texting and data, that the phone clearly pictured there most certainly is.
Now I will say that prices have dropped significantly since I purchased my plan today. The prices I was looking at back when I got this phone, were up in the $70 to $100 a month range. Clearly prices have gone down since then.
But the point still is this.... I dont' give crap what you think phones are... they ARE a luxury. I'm sorry, you are wrong. They are not essential. They are a luxury. People have existed for thousands of years with out cell phone service. You *CAN* survive without a phone. I've done that. It is possible. There are MILLIONS of people world wide that survive their entire lives without a cell phone.
You can do it too. Now, I get that you don't *WANT* to live without a cell phone, and that's fine. I have cell phone myself. But.... I FREAKIN WORK FOR IT AND I DON'T DEMAND OTHERS PAY FOR MY LIFE!
When you are collecting charity care from a charity, then you abide by the rules of the charity. If they are ok with you owning a car, and phones, and TVs and cable, and high speed internet..... fine. That's their rules. They can give you free food, clothing, shelter, and you can have whatever you want and get their charity.
But taxing, stealing other people's rightfully earned money, and coercing them under the gun of Government, to give money to others, no, sorry... you don't get to have a cell phone, and a car, and cable TV, and smoke cigarettes, and still get my money. I'm not going to put up with that, and I'll vote for anyone who says they'll stop you from getting my money.
That's how that works. Too bad we can vote too, eh?
