If a bridge were built over this divide, I feel like I'm standing right in the middle. After showing up to work at restaurant one night to be told that the doors would be closed the next day and that we all were out of a job (my un-cashed paychecks also bounced...), I filed for unemployment. It only took me a few weeks of putting my nose to the grindstone before I landed a new job. Once I was receiving a steady income my benefits ceased, which was fine. I was 22 years old and didn't care to be a charity case. I kept in touch with a many of my co-workers who were also receiving unemployment checks and fully intended to cash in on the free ride for as long as possible. We were all in a situation where we had our financial rugs pulled out from under us, but the money we were given in assistance came from taxes taken out of other hard-working Americans' paychecks - something I thought about each day that I wasn't earning my own money.
A few months later, I was riding my bicycle and was hit from behind by a car. The driver fled the scene and I woke up in the emergency room of HCMC with a head injury, broken bones and missing several teeth. I wound up with almost $10,000 in medical bills and no one to claim responsibility for my injuries. I am still making monthly payments to the hospital. Though I understand how a universal healthcare plan (Obama-care) may result in a slight decline in the quality and expedition of medical treatment, the thought of a working class family incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt because of a sick child makes having to wait longer at the doctor's office seem like a worthwhile sacrifice.
I also used to make regular deliveries to the wellfare office in downtown Minneapolis. What really struck me was the number of AWFUL parents who were dragging their poor kids through and around that building while waiting to collect their checks. Parents smoking cigarettes in minivans packed full or youngsters or cursing at, slapping or dragging their kids when they were upset (probably on account of the cigarette smoke). There were security guards everywhere to deal with the seemingly inevitable domestic situations which broke out regularly. The misappropriation of taxpayers' dollars to financially support this kind of behavior made me sick, especially considering that across the street, there was a homeless shelter where residents were required to pay $8/night for a meal and a cot. The fact that these men and women had to beg for change for a warm night's sleep during the depth of a Minnesota winter and a few yards away, others were receiving government assistance in the form of money and food stamps (shady corner stores will accept EBT for the purchase of cigarrettes and beer) was truly baffling. On top of all of this, as a working student I was used to eating "spicy peanut butter rice" and "tuna mac-n-cheese" while making well below the income cutoff for food-assistance. Again, I didn't want to feel like a charity case.
I would consider myself a liberal in that I generally vote for Democrats, yet a lot of my beliefs lie with the TRUE foundations of the Republican platform (fiscal responsibility, smaller federal government/states' rights, etc). As a nation that has managed to rack up such an astonishing deficit while still thinking we need to spend just short of half our federal budget on the military, we should also think about the responsibility we have to the taxpayers of this country to use our government revenue effectively and for programs that better our country and the quality of life for every American by closely examining not only where and how effectively our money is being spent but also holding recipients accountable for its proper use.
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