Up until three years ago, my wife worked in a processing department at a large bank. Many of the people she worked with were "welfare-to-work" (W2) workers, who needed to work X numbers of hours a week in order to continue to get welfare payments.
My wife became friends with one of the W2 workers, "Big Deb." Big Deb worked 20 hours a week, and lived in a house paid for by the county welfare program. One evening my wife gave Deb a ride home, and Deb mentioned a movie she'd bought on DVD. My wife said we didn't have a DVD player. Big Deb was shocked that we didn't have a DVD player.
My wife told me about that when she got home. She felt bad about it, until I reminded her that Big Deb lives in a house that our taxes pay for, while we slave away to pay our taxes, as well as mortgage payments. My wife thought about it for a minute, and got mad.
Last weekend my wife went to Chicago with one of her gay friends. He has a very small antique shop, and was taking some items to sell. When he arrived to pick her up, he saw the McCain sign on our lawn and had a fit.
When my wife got home, she once again felt bad.
"Why should you feel bad?" I asked. "Gary lives on welfare. His rent, food and everything else is paid for by our tax dollars. Of course he's a Democrat."
My wife has many other liberal friends who, in one way or another, suckle at the government teat, and then give her a hard time for having Republican yard signs on our front lawn.
My oldest friend is a former member of the communist party (he quit when he decided that the party was too moderate). He has a job with some city-funded poverty agency that really doesn't do anything, and doesn't require him to do much of anything, either. In fact, it doesn't much matter if he even shows up. He'll come to visit every so often, on the city's time, to have me help him plan his vacation trips out west.
Our next door neighbor recently had all of the windows on his home replaced, the siding replaced, and a new garage built. A substantial portion of the cost was paid for by county grants, because the paint on the windows, siding and garage contained lead. He's very adept at finding government subsidies.
When he was laid off from his job, he not only collected unemployment compensation, but he and his wife got food stamps. Not a bad deal, considering that they have three late model cars, a beautiful home, and all sorts of toys (motorcycles, etc).
A few years back, I had a neighbor who worked for Briggs and Stratton. Every summer he'd get laid off, which he loved. He had an entire summer for vacation, living off of his unemployment compensation insurance.
That sort of grated on me, since I was paying 5% on my pay and the my employee's pay into the unemployment compensation insurance fund, even though I as the owner of the business could never collect a dime should the business fold.
A former range buddy of mine is now retired, although he freely admits that retirement isn't really any different from when he was working. You see, he had some sort of injury on his goldbrick city job back in 1985 and hasn't worked a day since. He's physically fit, and can do anything. 23 years of living off of taxpayer dollars, hanging out at the range every day, and becoming a crack shot. When I mentioned that I wished I could get in that kind of range time, he said, "your problem is that you have to work."
When we bought our second house back in 1992, I didn't want to go over $100,000, even though we were qualified at that time for as much as $400,000. We bought a fixer-upper, because I didn't want to run the risk of having a business downturn and struggling to make a large mortgage payment.
Some former neighbors of ours bought more house than they could afford, and got caught up in the credit crisis. It now looks like they'll not only be able to keep the house, but they're going to get a great deal on their new mortgage. It's an even better deal when you consider that you and I are paying for it. It's a beautiful house, much nicer than mine.
Why bother to work? Why bother to be frugal? There's free money out there if you know how to game the system. You can live fairly well without having to bother yourself with a full-time job, or even a part-time job. You can get the government to pay your rent, subsidize your mortgage, pay for home improvements, pay for your food, rent, clothing...hell, you can even have enough money left over for luxuries like the latest electronics gadgets.
I want to take all that free stuff, too, but I can't. I can't bring myself to bleed someone else.
I'm an idiot.
