Quite enjoyed the article, and agree with most of it, except perhaps one point. The gentleman finally got ahead in life by getting an education and climbing the ranks. Its not that education is ever a bad thing, but I almost feel as if we have too many "educated people" and nothing for them to do. It seems that you need a degree just to work at a coffee shop these days as there are enough people looking for a job who have a useless degree so might as well make that a prerequisite. (It seems to be a supply/demand thing where we have an oversupply of college/university grads.) Now I don't know enough about the merits of which degrees are useful and needed in the labor market and which aren't, but the point I'm trying to make is that I don't think higher education should be a necessity of "making it" in life. (By making it I mean the security of a job and food on the table and a roof over your head) Every society needs general labor, be it a cashier in the store or the poor guy working hard for Amazon in the warehouse making next to nothing. My sister thinks that every person should go to university, but I fear that would just mean a whole bunch more of entitled people not willing to work in regular jobs for regular money. Its sad that a regular job these days cannot provide the necessities because I'd say a fairly big chunk of a functioning society revolves around someone doing the grunt work. So from the point of view of the individual, of course you have to try and get ahead as the gentleman did in the article by going back to school, but from the point of view of a society, we need to make sure that the very necessary "regular" jobs are sufficient for raising a family and not living in fear being unable to provide.
The premise that Conservatives hate Government is a myth. Conservatives are strongly for Government as spelled out in the Constitution. His hate thoughts are from someone who is uneducated as to the true values of Conservatives. This is a the major issue with Liberals., they don't have an intellectual understanding of Conservatives values. They believe cutting spending to make budget is done out of hate for the effected group. Silly conclusion.
I think all the underlying factors are irrelevant. The point is that the government that he kept support kept making his life more difficult. Who cares about the outlined values or objections, the end result was that he was struggling. I don't think you have to be highly educated to realize that the people running the show aren't making things easy for you.
Conservatives believe that struggling people should get help. If he hated the Government, he could have gone to any local church group and found help. Help with food, clothing and by meeting people, probably a job. Conservatives also believe in a social support net run by the Government. We believe to keep individual dignity, public support should be more limited.
Conservatism has deteriorated into factions. One may find a list of "conservative values" somewhere but it has no more meaning than a list of liberal values if few can agree on it, much less act on it. Therefore the actions are used to judge what it is that a given group of conservatives believes, and when conservatives work to limit or eliminate aid to those who need it -- contraception, abortion, food stamps, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, etc -- and characterize those who seek it out as parasites, they foster the belief that conservatives care only for themselves. But then liberalism has become factionalized as well and has become in many respects much more hypocritical than conservatism. Too many "liberals" are in the pockets of big money interests (this became abundantly clear when the ACA was being cobbled together). I doubt that anyone could come up with a list of "liberal values" either, at least one that had any meaning in the real world. How Clinton, for example, can be considered a "liberal" is beyond me.
Of course that's what they believe. That's the sermon they hear from the likes of Al Sharpton and DemoCrap leaders.
If conservatives didn't give them so much material to work with, there'd be nothing to sermonize about.
Hardly. Want examples? AR-Sen: Tom Cotton (R) Calls Food Stamp Recipients "Addicts" Then of course there's Todd Akin . . .
You are aware that food stamps were merely meant to be a safety net for tough times. They were never meant to be a way of life or meant to be the sole source of groceries. "Addict" may be a strong word but many people are totally 'dependent' on them and feel they are entitled to them. And why is it that plenty of people sell their food stamps for cash? So they can buy booze, cigarettes, drugs, .....