Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>  I do NOT believe that everyone who gets welfare, handouts, 
> assistance, whatever we want to call it WANTS to live that way. 


I think you misunderstand Bev's point.  

In threads such as this one, when the consequences of one's choices and 
decisions are considered, it is often pointed out that no one WANTS to be 
sick, in 
debt, overweight, hungry, etc.

Of course not.  When a person lights up a smoke, they don't say, "I'm doing 
this because I WANT to get cancer."   Nobody *wants* to, but it happens 
anyway 
as a result of the sum and cumulation of a life time of decisions each time 
to 
smoke or not smoke.

Where each of us stands today is almost entirely the result, the combined 
result, of all the decisions we have made in our lives.  Getting to some 
other 
place will be the result of all the decisions we make from here on out.

I have heard many times, just as expressed by some in this thread, that 
almost everyone recieving food stamps (do they still call it 'food stamps' 
now that 
it's on those plastic cards?) really needs them and the abuse of the system 
is rare.  Don't see it that way, do I.   Most of our food comes from the 
farmstead here but from time to time I stop by a mart or grocery to pick up 
this or 
that.  After I have agonized over getting the best bit of produce for the 
stir 
fry or the best possible deal on a gristly scrap of meat for tamales, almost 
every time I am in line behind three buggies piled high with things I cannot 
afford to buy and the score is paid with that plastic card with the American 
flag.

Have I ever seen a buggy with flour, dried beans, canned and frozen 
vegetables, ... the things that would make the food dollar from whatever 
source go very 
far ... have I ever seen those things in a basket paid for with the food 
stamp card?   Yes, on very rare occasions.  Mostly I see convenience food and 
expensive cuts of meat the cost of which I could feed twenty people for a 
month.

Am I without compassion.  Very likely.  None the less I have a standing offer 
that if anyone in my area is really hungry, really without food, I will buy 
all their food, family of four, for six months just to show them how its 
done.  
Of course the food will consist of bulk rice, bulk dried beans, whole grains, 
and the like.

In twenty years of the standing offer how many people have taken me up on it.

None.

The way out of that poverty/dependency cycle exists.  It isn't easy, it isn't 
pretty, and it doesn't start by saying "Poor baby, I'm sure this came upon 
you as a fell swoop in a single night and you had nothing to do with ending 
up 
in your present circumstances."

So to say that someone in those dire circumstances doesn't WANT to be there 
is true if by that one means that if you could wave a wand, or win the 
lottery, 
or some such and move to better digs around a better table, then they would 
WANT to make the move.  Buth that's like saying that someone with advanced 
lung 
cancer would *want* to suddenly have intact lungs and be in full health.  
Your reckon?

But when there is a way out of the cycle no matter how hard, rocky, 
unglamorous, difficult, it might be and the person instead remains in the 
cycle, then, 
yes, they WANT to be there compared to the alternatives.