I don't know you, but I would venture to guess, you are about 2 paychecks from being homeless. If it ever happens to, IMHO, it couldn't happen to a bigger ahole!
Years ago I was living out in LA, and while walking home, a couple approached me and asked for a few bucks. I was a student at the time, and didn't have much cash, but I could see that they were not stoned and were extremely desperate. I gave them five bucks, and the looks on their faces told me they were actually going to spend it on food. This was 20 years ago, and I still think about it once in a while, and I have no regrets about it. I'm pretty damned conservative politically, and I do believe that enabling someone is very dangerous ground, but the OP is referring to something which could happen to any one of your relatives in the near future. I think you may be very young, and you haven't yet been able to distinguish between philanthropy, charity, handouts, and enabling. Maybe mschey is right, and you just need to experience it yourself for a while to open your eyes.
You are right. All of us on these forums have too much that we take for granted. These are times that try menâs souls.
I'm not that old...I've never seen times like these. Everyone I know who is older has said there simply is no comparison between now and 1981, with now being far worse, and the ones who are in their 60s or older have told me that they've not seen the kind of pain for average people this bad since the 1940s and 50s. These are mostly business owners, and a few bankers, and they've all said the biggest differences are the amount of debt people have and the fact that good paying jobs that used to be available to children of the middle class really are going overseas - even for college grads, now, and not just blue collar. There is a massive company in India that has radiologists who read and interpret x-ray, MRI and CT Scans for American Hospitals, and I just saw a few days ago that American Attorneys are using Indian Lawyers to write and prepare briefs and contracts, which they then review and sign off on. It used to be just the assembly line worker getting outsourced; now, no one is apparently immune.
I'm not in my 60s (or 50s for that matter), but I can vouch that 1981 wasn't nearly this bad. When I was a kid, an unskilled laborer could support a middle class family as the lone bread winner. Maybe lower middle class, he'd have to do his own car repairs, home maintenance, etc. and wouldn't have fancy satellite TV service and giant screens but it was very possible. Not any more.
Nope. No comparison. It seemed like people were more hopeful in the early eighties. National leadership is morally bankrupt this time around.
recently the WSJ explained how the government has been displacing private initiative in assistance. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123793074783930483.html "The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality--it drains some of the life from them. It's inevitable. Families are not vital because the day-to-day tasks of raising children and being a good spouse are so much fun, but because the family has responsibility for doing important things that won't get done unless the family does them. Communities are not vital because it's so much fun to respond to our neighbors' needs, but because the community has the responsibility for doing important things that won't get done unless the community does them. Once that imperative has been met--family and community really do have the action--then an elaborate web of social norms, expectations, rewards and punishments evolves over time that supports families and communities in performing their functions. When the government says it will take some of the trouble out of doing the things that families and communities evolved to do, it inevitably takes some of the action away from families and communities, and the web frays, and eventually disintegrates."
I'm not sure if things were worse in the early 80s (or mid-70s) or not. The massive difference is that those were fed-induced recessions to deal w/an inflation problem. Interest rates in the early 80s were in the high teens. Thus, there was the opportunity for massive stimulus via lower rates once inflation receded. What we have now is a debt-deflation. Rates can't go any lower. The Fed is all in, yet the economy won't respond because there is too much debt in the system and too much over-capacity. That is what makes things worse now - there is no light at the end of the tunnel.