Friday

The now-unemployed tenant finally showed up last night - well after I went to bed of course. She obviously doesn't want to face me - she owes me money. Not a LOT, but enough. She stuffed $30 in an envelope, wrote a note saying she would be spending today trying to find a new job.




She SHOULD have been doing that since the day she got fired. I had NO idea she was going to be gone this long, I figured if she skipped a weekend for a free vacation, no big deal, she's been gone almost an entire week.



Do you ever see people walking through the grocery store with one or even two carts just STUFFED with all kinds of food? You're looking at 2 or 3 hundred worth of food, at least. I'm always curious how these people are going to pay for that stuff, and sure enough, 99% of the time, a Qwest card comes out. That's the modern-day way to use food stamps, like a debit card, it swipes through the reader and automatically deducts that much from your account.



I'm not necessarily slamming people on food stamps, as a temporary buffer against being totally broke (ie: you got laid off from your job) and a way to keep food on your table, great.



As a permanent, life-long ideal of living off the government and really having no great reason to get off your @$$ and go find a job (ie: they also get rental subsidies through HUD so they aren't paying for their place to live, no, instead, WE are paying for their place to live).

August 6, 2010 6:00 AM

Anonymous said...

This is the problem I have with food stamps. The news reports that a record number of people are on food stamps right now. Well duhhhh, the economy is flat, now they're talking potential deflation, people are broke and yes, they are still hungry. I can understand the temporary use of food stamps, I get it.



But, how many billions of dollars are being given out freely to people who aren't going to work whether the economy is good or bad? Just like unemployment benefits, people should NOT be able to just live on them forever unless there is a good reason for it - someone that CAN'T work because of some physical limitation, stuff like that.



Rental subsidies the same thing. Give them for 6 months, a year at most and then push them out.

There isn't anything more motivating that I know of than facing living on the streets to force your lazy, sorry @$$ to get up and go out and find a job. I don't care if it IS a minimum wage job, do SOMETHING and be a productive citizen in our society instead of a LIFELONG DRAIN on it.



I don't need to hear about how these people are uneducated, either. If they really want education, they can get grants or at worst case, student loans. Go into the military and get the deal where they pay all of your schooling expenses once you get out. Heck, you can find some great career opportunities through some of the things you can learn IN the military, I know that for a fact: my oldest brother learned skills in the Navy that landed him a job building Apache helicopters, he has been at the same company for something like 25 years and is making GREAT money.



The point is, the opportunity is there. I debate back and forth with myself whether to go back to school - but the costs of going to school far outweigh any great benefit from it. I am 46 years old, paying off student loans for the rest of my life isn't exactly an appealing thought. But I'll tell you right now, if I lose my job in the trucking industry because of the VERY strict regulations that are coming out (look folks, with these new regulations, your CDL license could be suspended if you simply haven't filled out enough of your paperwork correctly!), then yes, I would go back to school.

August 6, 2010 6:02 AM

Anonymous said...

I know what I would do, too. But, I am not a lazy @$$ and I don't have to make excuses for why I am not working: I have BEEN working since I was 10 years old and before that I was doing jobs around the neighborhood for folks, usually yard work. I did the lemonade stand thing every summer for years: our street was THE street to take to get to the public pool and it was a LONG walk for most folks. I did great business sellin lemonade! I'm sure mother wasn't too happy me taking all of her lemonade all the time ((hey, I was a kid, that stuff was up in the cupboard, it must be free, right? lol), but, I learned early about money. Not that I have EVER had enough of it to do much of anything, but I'm not complaining about it, either.



Whatever. I saw that food stamp article and that got me going, I am so ever-loving sick of this lifelong cycle of families living in poverty and want and using the system to continue the cycle seemingly endlessly.



And here we go again with extreme heat in places that people are not used to such. I can't help you, I am IN that heat every day for several months out of the year, I have a very good idea what it is like to have to endure high temperatures and try to stay cool enough to continue working. It's NO fun. August will soon be over (I'm thinking that way, anyway, even if it IS only the beginning of the month) and then it will gradually start to cool down here.



I guess what gets me are all of these areas where houses are not built with central AC systems. My gosh, people, if you don't have cental AC, you DO at least have a window unit or 2, don't you? A nice window unit will keep whatever room it is installed in VERY cool. If it's a newer unit and you don't get carried away with it, the energy consumption won't be too terribly bad. That's what I used to do in previous houses I had that had only evaporative cooling.



Try living in a house that has only evaporative cooling when it's 117 degrees outside - it will be around 95 to 100 inside the house.



Well, freight truck showed up early, ate into my pre-login hours, now I have worked even more for free : )



G'day



ben