Image via WikipediaI think most of us don't mind our money going to help a person who's had some unexpected shit land on them, but there seem to be people out there who've found a way of life that works for them, figured out how to live on the dole, and they just want the tax payers to fund it forever. Shit man, I got problems of my own. Takes a lot of time and work to keep me in this fuckin' lap of luxury. The folks who have fallen through the cracks and lost their place should obviously get help, until they get back on their feet, but the media spins all these stories that lead folks like me to doubt whether or not a lot of the advertised need is real. We see the videos, like the one you posted here, but then you have these investigations showing that a hell of a lot of the guys out there begging on the side of the road claiming to be vets really aren't, or stories about how many of the homeless are drug addicts or alcoholics but can't be hospitalized or institutionalized against their will due to laws passed back in the 70s. Too much doubt and cynicism has been sown to get a lot of people to dig deeper. We all feel like we're being raped by the tax man as it is.
Then you have the TV shows where they follow some guy from where he's panhandling on the road, back to his nice car parked up the block, and then to his house, and come to find out that he's making something like forty grand a year from begging. All the guys with real problems need to find THAT guy and beat his ass.
And why the fuck can't a real vet get a place in a VA hospital if he's sick, or a veterans home if he's homeless? You hear all the time about people living on the street because they don't want to live in a shelter, saying the shelters are violent places. Some of the descriptions I've read leave me thinking it'd be better livin' in my car, or the woods. Went to D.C. early last year to see the sights and saw some dudes, looked to be my age or younger, layin' on cardboard spread over a steam vent to stay warm, right across the street from the White House. It's hard for me to imagine what would lead me to that end, and I think that's the issue; people who live the way I do not being able to imagine how they could be reduced to living like that, and thinking that there must be something out there set up to help that guy, but he's CHOOSING to live the way he does, for some reason of his own.
It's a quandary.
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