Thread by @PoofFloofle

People on welfare are lazy and choose to be poor... 🧵

In 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act & as with most modern legislation, it did the opposite of its claim (moving families off public assistance by helping them become self-sufficient.)
congress.gov/bill/104th-con…

And as much as I'd like to pin this one on Democrats - this one came from a Republican-led Congress. The law was touted as a crackdown on father's who were delinquent in child support payments.

Buried within this noble-sounding mission was one of the single most destructive poison pills in US history.

HR 3734 radically changed the criteria and vetting systems for people to receive public assistance. Once the final failsafe of the poor and destitute, welfare was transformed into a mass-incentive for lifelong underachievement.

Under the welfare law, needing help was no longer a good enough reason to receive it. Fell on tough times? Too bad. Sell everything you own then get back to us.

If you're crazy - no, if you're willing to go on record that you're crazy - to the point of disability, then we can get you on SSI. But, don't you dare try to get your life together pull yourself up, because we'll throw you right back off before you can get halfway outta Hell.

And so the period between 1996-1998 saw a 50-100% increase in the number of young adults on SSI - with the most common diagnosis in the surge group being psychiatric diagnoses.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

The Republican Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act pathologized the poor and created generations of lifelong victims - people who couldn't afford to "be healthy" and risk having the financial rug pulled out from under them and their families.

HR 3734 was the ultimate catch-22. It takes tens of thousands of dollars for a family to claw their way out of poverty. But, if you report more income, you lose your benefits - long before you earn enough to compensate for that loss. Can you say incentivizing disability?

And so here we are now. A country full of people who are too poor to risk living up to their potential unless they can pull off a dramatic wealth increase in a very short period of time.

Make no mistake - you can still pull yourself up by your bootstraps but, it's gonna suck. A lot. Single moms need not apply. And you better nothave aging parents and little dependents to worry about because there are going to be a lot of cold, hungry nights clawing your way out.

You might be willing to rough it until things get better but, is your family? I would never condone "leeching off the system," but under the current law, it's no wonder so many people opt for abysmal, depressing, financially stable victimhood.

Have you ever met someone who used to be full of fire but fell on bad times and now they're trapped in this cycle? A lot of times, the mental health problems become very real and very permanent. So many escape into addiction. So much wasted potential.

The average cost of raising a child in the US is $17k/yr ($1,417/mo) and the average mortgage payment is $1,672/mo (while the avg rental payment is $1,978). Not including housing, the average US cost of living hovers around $3,000/mo.

So, if you're a single parent, living in poverty - it would take over $6,000/mo (over $1,400/wk) to escape poverty. The average American living in poverty earns about $13.34/hr. That means 450 hours in a month or 105hrs/wk. What about your kid?

So, factor in $694/wk for a nanny and you're looking at another 52hrs just to afford someone to watch your kid so you can work that initial 105hrs.
care.com/c/how-much-doe….

Now we're up to a 157hr work week for a single parent, with only one child, to afford to escape poverty. 24hrs x 7days = There are only 168 hours in a week. 🤔

Another goal of HR 3734 was to discourage children being born out of wedlock. The Republicans in Congress in 1996 weren't in touch with real wage to cost of living ratios.

And they did not anticipate the number of people willing to become lifelong pharmaceutical patients in order to provide for their families. Or did they? Pfizer lobbied over $4.2million in 1996.
pink.pharmaintelligence.informa.com/PS029015/PhRMA…

Bob Dole became a lobbyist shortly after leaving the Senate in 1996 and was soon earning $600,000 as a partner with Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand.

The firm’s pharmaceutical clients during that period included American Biosystems, Amgen, Biovail Corp, Eli Lilly, Genentech, and PhRMA.
scmp.com/article/226431…

Dole eventually struck out on his own and formed Bob Dole Enterprises, registering Johnson & Johnson in 2000 and getting paid $820,000 by the company over the next several years.

This is what real welfare queens look like:
#ClassWarfare #CasteNotRace

On top of that, the largest chunk of your tax dollars earmarked for raising up the destitute goes to the vague "other areas" category.

That's a $571billion/yr investment - by our government - into pharmaceutical companies - using our tax dollars. I'm sure no one in Congress receives any kickbacks:

It behooves the pharma giants and their pawns in Congress to keep us little folk splitting hairs over the combined $299 billion for supporting our destitute's basic needs - while turning a blind eye to the $467billion for "other" or the $571billion for Medicaid.

They've got us fighting over $300billion divided between 65million welfare recipients (about $4,615/yr per poor person) while these fuckers make off with $571billion + $467billion = 1,038,000,000 over a TRILLION dollars! !!

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