Once upon a time, I worked for one of the biggest banks in the United States. I won’t name this bank officially, but I will say that when they laid off 35,000 people in the wake of receiving a $80 billion bailout from the United States Government in 2008, it was not fair. It wasn’t fair because I was one of those 35,000 people who was out of a job and a paycheck, and it wasn’t fair because they were the portion of the wealthy who have screwed over our country, and have sat back and laughed in our faces while doing it.
At the time of the lay-off, I was a single-mother and was solely financially responsible for the care of my then 3 year-old son. Losing the salary that I worked hard for was devastating; I received a mere $68 in food stamps when I applied for assistance, and I had to wait almost 8 weeks for my first unemployment check. To say this was a luxury or entitlement is laughable; I dutifully looked for another job to make ends meet, as I was laid off with no severance pay.
I remember the outrage I felt; there was no bailout for me or any of the other laid off workers, but the CEO’s of this particular bank were celebrating their multi-million dollar bonuses and slapping each other on the back for a job well-done.
The American economy and it’s people have been effectively screwed over by the wealthiest people in the country, and these elitists have had our government’s support through all of it.
And what about the middle class? With stagnant wages and rising living costs, the middle class has rapidly crumbled under this plutocracy of wealthy overlords, some of which call themselves the United States Congress.
These particular Congressional overlords voted in September to slash $40 billion in funding from the SNAP food stamps program over the next 10 years. A program that aims to feed the poor, disabled, elderly, veterans, and working poor who need the program often just to buy milk for their kids or meat & cheese for their lunches.
They couldn’t possibly spare the expense from the war in Afghanistan, which is racking up a bill of $100 billion a year. Or perhaps close a few of those tax loopholes that prevent many of them from paying taxes on things like their private jets or yachts, or the money some of them have stored in off-shore accounts.
Yes, you read that right: a Congress that consists of mostly millionaires (who are not debating where their next meal comes from) are passing the economic bill off to those who can barely afford to buy mac & cheese.
These wealthy [expletive] are laughing at the American public all the way to the bank, and perpetuating the lie that “lazy welfare users” are responsible for the nation’s economic woes. In reality, the percentage of lazy people on programs like SNAP cost the average tax-payer very little, especially when compared to the percentage of corrupt politicians and their corporate lobbyist cronies who are manipulating the system for their own financial gain and driving the middle class into the ground.
According to the Census Bureau, Spokane County has a population of roughly 300,000 people and about 106,000 people in Spokane County rely on the SNAP food program to put food on their tables each day. That’s a third of the population in Spokane, and many of these people are not “lazy mooches.” They are the elderly or disabled, who cannot work. They are families of veterans who have served this country. They are single-mothers, who work full-time and still cannot afford basic food expenses. They are the homeless, the destitute. They are folks who have been dealt a bad hand with corporate downsizing, just like I was in 2008.
This is not people choosing to live high-off the government hog, this is poverty. Poverty is not fun, and no one realistically chooses poverty. We need to address the fact that a working family could possibly make such a lousy wage through their full-time job that they would need food stamps. Why is this okay for corporations to do to workers, but workers who need food stamps are shamed? That seems a little backwards.
Why aren’t Americans calling Congress in droves, and reminding them who they really work for? Why aren’t we in a state of civil disobedience against these rich [expletive] who think that it’s acceptable to slash essential food services to people struggling just to make it every day — but can’t stand to actually pay taxes into the system themselves?
Robert Kennedy said it best, “I believe that, as long as there is plenty [for the rich], poverty is evil.”