Where is my picture?

It's Friday. The beginning of a three day weekend, and also payday.

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

Where is a picture to hang on my fridge?

After taxes my check is a pittance. I can't complain though. I make a decent enough salary I guess. It's not large, but it pays the bills. But after everything is taken out, I'm left with half of what I actually earned.

JW's is even worse.  At least my company charges less for insurance, and I don't have child support coming out like he does. 

But my question is this: Who is getting my tax money?

Taxes are going up and Social Security payments are going down. 

My mother will be 72 this year. She is disabled and supposed to be retired. And yet she still works as much as the government will allow her, so that she can supplement her Social Security so she can pay her bills, live independently, and feed herself.  Why should a disabled 72 year old woman still be working almost 40 hours a week to live? 

The nation is in debt, and Obama is digging an ever deeper hole for us each day. But yet welfare recipients are increasing.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people being on welfare. I know that there are circumstances beyond any one's control, things happen, etc. There are deserving people in the system. I've been on it myself years ago, as a young single parent. But we all know that there are several million people that can easily get off their butts and get a job instead of milking the system. It's not hard to ask "You want fries with that?". 

I've done it. 

But if they can get free money, food, and housing from the government, why should they even bother working? The government is rewarding laziness.

It seems to me that you have to be in a certain clique to get welfare sometimes.

My BFF is unemployed. She was laid off almost two years ago when the big construction company she worked for failed. She had three school aged kids. She was denied welfare. Why? Because she earned a pittance from unemployment and received occasional small child support payments from a dead beat ex.

If she was lucky she cleared enough to pay rent and electricity. No extra for food, clothes, gas money, car insurance. She drove a twenty year old pickup that was held together only by luck and was uninsured. She spent a night in jail for a hot check she wrote for groceries for her kids.  She was a white woman in her thirties. Educated, well groomed, polite, well mannered. Two years later she is hitting the end of her unemployment checks. After countless interviews and job applications, there is still no job that will pay her more than her small unemployment check. She told me today that she will soon be asking "Want fries with that?" when her unemployment runs out. She is grateful for any employment. Any paycheck. Anything.

But welfare said nah when she needed it most. She apparently wasn't in that clique. 

I used to read a financial blog. The lady that wrote it had several rental houses in the metroplex here, as investment properties. The homes were duplexes, all on the same street. She usually had pretty regular tenants. They stayed a couple of years, and then moved on eventually though. After a while she had a few vacancies that had been empty for a while. A potential renter called and asked if she would take Section 8 applications. After mulling it over, she finally agreed. The applicant was a single black mother. Unemployed. On welfare and Section 8. Had a couple of kids. And drove a brand new BMW.  She was dressed in designer clothes, with designer accessories. She was not educated. She had never been married. And she had never worked. Eventually her sisters and her cousin all moved, one by one, into the vacancies on that street. They were all on welfare and Section 8. And they all drove newer cars than the owner of the rentals. They all wore designer clothes, and had designer accessories. As the blogger stated, "They dressed better, accessorized better, and drove cars newer and better than anything I had. And I made in the high six figures as a single, childless, financial advisor, with several investment properties and a relatively new car."

Those women belonged to that clique apparently. 

What kind of system do we have in place that allows this? And what kind of nation are we living in that is letting this happen?

The way this nation is being run into the ground is appalling. Every day we hear on the news something else has happened. Increased food costs, gas is sky high. The cost of living increasing dramatically. People in government making decisions that aren't good for the nation, only good for their pockets or their ratings. Overly sensitive namby pamby babies that think they are doing good for the poor sheeple. And self entitled people boo-hooing over how they deserve this and that, just because they breathe oxygen and are entitled to everything that everyone else has, and to hell with the rest of you!

And yet here I sit, every pay day. Watching my paychecks dwindle.

Watching my BFF struggle.

Watching my mother work herself to death. 

And still waiting for that picture to put on my fridge...