As someone who works in community mental health, I sadly have to admit that those criticisms aren’t entirely false. Ironically, I think the fact that the government organizations that implement these social safety nets being underfunded contributes to the problem. Because it takes so long to obtain benefits like disability (SSD/I in America), people don’t want to risk getting a job, potentially losing it, and having to go through the long, arduous disability application process again. So they just learn to be content living on disability pay and food stamps.

But that’s disability. I don’t think the same applies to just public assistance (which you can’t live off of) and SNAP.

Anyway, despite there being a kernel of truth in said criticisms, they’re largely off-base. I think a lot of the critics also confuse socialism with communism, and don’t realize that all most socialists desire is a system like European countries have, which is proven to work and not threaten capitalism. Then there are the really sick fucks who believe in social Darwinism and genuinely think poor people deserve to be so, and that it would be just for them to die off. But thankfully, those are in the extreme minority.

[–] 2FortGaming@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This reminds me of my friend's dad. He got crippled at a machanic job, so he's on disability, but he still wants to be useful in his life and use his skills, so he does machanic stuff on the side. Some people might think this is cheating, but he can only reasonably work on cars like 15hrs a week, or it'll fuck up his back so much he can't walk for a couple of days.

A messed-up situation that some people get into is that some of these programs have a cut-off if you make too much money, but if you actually make that much money in income, you'll have less than you would if you were slightly under that amount, because you have to pay for what those benefits would have given you otherwise.

It basically makes people stuck near the poverty line because these programs don't really give that much assistance. In my state if you're a family of three, the most you can earn is $915 a month in household income and the average payment is $221. This isn't counting the other benefits you'd get booted off of if you reached different income brackets.

I'm looking at this living wage site right now https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/39 and from this page you can see that 2 working adults can't both work your average Food Preparation & Serving Related, Building & Grounds Cleaning & Maintenance or Personal Care & Service job and be above to cover your average annual expenses if you have a single kid. So it's really not worth it to get off these benefits unless you find a significantly better job than what's available. Most of the other employment opportunities need some sort of education or experience as well.

Please correct me if I'm off base on any of this

[–] Tedesche@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

No, that sounds pretty on-point to me. The only additional thing I’d mention is that when you’re working, you’re paying into social security through your taxes, which—if you do it for long enough—sets you up much better for retirement than you will be if you’re still reliant on disability when you’re 65. So, that’s an additional incentive to work, which I tell my clients all the time, but for most of us, planning that far into the future is actually kind of difficult.