On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:14:09 +0000, Dave Mundt wrote:



Hum...decision making...Yea...while my FIRST reaction is that
I hear this being said with that faintly superior and smug tone
that folks use to indicate that THEY have never made a bad decision,
I am not going to go with that.
Instead...how about a concrete example. I have an
acquaintance who is a single mother with three kids, one of which
has just gone to college. She came out of college with no useful
degree, and, few life skills because her parents, in order to
"protect" her had kept her so isolated from reality while growing
up that she had not, for example, learned to cook. She married
a fairly pleasant-seeming fellow and got moved several thousand
miles from home. Alas, he turned out to be abusive, not a good
provider, so, finally, she divorced him and moved back to her
home town. She struggles along with help from family, and working
when she can, clerking, and, some gov. assistence.
True...there were some bad decisions there, but a big
chunk of them were not hers, nor did she have any control
over them. She has made a bunch of good, but hard decisions
in the past few years, and while they have left her in a
very difficult and scary financial position, she is managing
to raise three bright kids, who are still in school, and, will
likely end up with good moral values and more of a work
ethic than they would have if she had stayed married. In the
long run, a relatively small amount of aid now will produce four
productive citizens who will contribute to society instead of
being a drain on it.
Just to rant a bit further...until one has spent some
time trying to survive in America with an income well below
the poverty line, one should be careful with judgements. One
somewhat under-rated aspect of this struggle is the mental
strain and drag it puts on a person. That constant, nagging
problem of having to balance whether to pay taxes, buy groceries
or keep the lights and heat on in the house causes one to lay
awake at night, and drains energy needed to "get ahead".
There are abuses of the system, of course, and, there
are folks that, if they put as much time and energy into
pursuing a job as they did in working the system, they might
well be CEO in a decade. There are good workers who try to
short-cut these abuses though, but it is really hard these
days to get folks sanctioned. However, a big chunk of the
folks on public assistance are either temporary clients
who have been struck down by disaster beyond their control or
folks that are not going to be able to keep a job because
of mental or physical impairment. I suppose we could
save a few bucks by cutting off the latter catagory, and
letting them become someone else's problem. If we are
comfortable with an increase in stories of folks being
found dead from exposure, or starvation, then that should
not be a problem. We could also change public aid from
a grant to a loan, however, since many of the folks
that DO get jobs tend to remain in the "working poor"
catagory, the likelyhood of getting any money back
would be pretty small.
I could go on, but, this has VERY little to do with
woodworking, so, will cut off with the thought that
the way we treat the poorest and least able citizens
of our society pretty much defines what sort of
society we are. We can be warm and compassionate, or
we can be cold, merciless *******s. It is up to
us.

Another concrete example:

A family member who has had drug problems for forty years. He has been in
treatment many times. He has drained taxpayers money and family money for
forty years. His latest treatment involves wearing some sort of patch
which he trades to his "friends" for money to buy better stuff. We give
him new clothes because he usually looks worse than most street people and
he trades them for drugs. A sister had him set up with low cost housing
and was managing his government assistance money and all was going well
for almost a year. He was booted out because of all the high traffic of
short duration into and out of his apartment. I'd like to hear a solution.

-Doug