Looks like the mod deleted my response to your post. What I essentially said was thank you for being open and honest about the help you currently receive - a lot of people don't admit or acknowledge help they receive, especially if it's in the form of connections or other non-monetary ways. But I hope you see the irony in all of this - you gladly accept a helping hand to lift you up, but you don't want to see people further down the economic ladder (who don't have family assistance) receive a helping hand. I truly empathize with your situation and I agree that the middle income citizen is too often neglected, but the solution to that isn't to remove benefits from lower income people.
4 pieces of response...
1. The help I receive is from my own family, not from strangers. It's also in response to the government being directly heavy handed with me. They screw me enough that I don't need them to screw me any more (in the form of higher taxes) to help strangers who aren't helping me in return.
2. In my particular situation, those who do not have the family connections are going to suffer greatly. It wouldn't surprise me to see an abject rise in homelessness and suicides of non-custodial parents who have been squeezed out of their homes and their dignity by an arbitrary GIGANTIC raise on child support payments. Personally, the government's treatment of me these last few years has left me more depressed and hopeless. I love my kids and could never abandon them (including via suicide, which I romanticize every time the government steps in to "help" and "be fair" which is constantly at my own expense), and I am very lucky to have parents who feel the same way (about all of us). None of us are rich. We are middle class, and yet the middle class seems to suffer the most in this country. Let me repeat, if I didn't have help, I would absolutely despair, and it's the government who keeps upping the ante on the insanity. My kids live in a nice place. I have the right to some dignity, so when they visit they don't have to say "Daddy why do you live in that cardbox box?"
3. The government unintentionally makes things worse for a lot of people. This is especially true when they draw lines, so if you make $50k you get all these great deals but if you make $51k you don't. The government incentives people to cap their value production lest they price themselves out of all the free stuff. I don't want "the poor" to think that they always have to be that way, that they are always victims, that they should always accept the free stuff. We need to empower people to try to better themselves and their own situations. Arbitrarily giving cheap housing to some while not others (ie the lottery system to land many of these units) just further hurts everybody who somehow misses out on the benefits.
4. "The poor" is often a misnomer, as people tend to shift among income brackets and make more as they age. Every one of us would have qualified as a "bottom 20%" salary when we got our first jobs in high school or part time during college. Were we all living poor during that time? On the flipside, most people's salaries peak around 50 years old. For those who are in their 50's now, was your salary always this high? Of course not. As you gain skills you produce more value and get more in return. If you choose not to gain those skills, that's on you. Also, one time gains from things like the sale of a house count as income for that given year. Many people in the "top 20%" are only there for a single year, due to an unrepeatable large sale of an asset.
Giving stuff away kind of makes me feel like this...
Imagine Rhino, bigpicture7, king_vibe, and DZH22 were all going to have a big race in 6 months. Let's say the winner of that race would be entitled to 5% of the other 3's yearly salaries, whatever those came to be.
So Rhino prepares for the race by running 5-6 miles a day, hitting the gym hard for legs, and eating right. Rhino shows up on race day 15 pounds lighter than 6 months earlier, ready to rock.
Bigpicture7 spends most of their time hiking, building up stamina and leg muscles. Bigpicture7 shows up 10 pounds lighter, ready to rock.
King_vibe also runs a few miles a day, while reading a book and watching training videos about things like the perfect stride, getting off the block faster, and breathing techniques to win at the given distance. King_vibe shows up in shape and ready to rock.
Then you have DZH22. While the other 3 are training their butts off, DZH22's only training is sitting in front of the couch and eating a large pizza everyday. After 6 months, DZH22 is 25 pounds heavier, and his muscles have deteriorated a bit, and he gets out of breath just by climbing the steps. DZH22 shows up to the race in this sad-sack shape.
"Hey!" DZH22 exclaims. "It's not fair that these 3 people are in shape and I'm not!" Since the judges of the race are progressives, they agree completely. It's not fair that some people are better equipped for a race than others, and all the work that they put in (or in DZH22's case, didn't put in at all) shouldn't be taken into account as that would be "weight-ist" or whatever ridiculous term they come up with next. So to make things "fair" they allow DZH22 to start the race 3/4 of the way through it. In a photo-finish, DZH22 rolls himself across the finish line right before the other 3 racers get there. Now the other 3 racers owe DZH22 5% of their income, because that's the only fair outcome.
I don't think workers should have to prop up the takers, and that starts from a young age with those who took school seriously vs those who didn't. If you studied 3 hours a night, and somebody else studied 0 hours, then you're probably going to end up with the better job making more money. When you sacrificed your own time to get where you are, why should you have to share it with those who did not? You reap what you sow. It may sound callous but if everybody just wanted free stuff, there would be nobody to actually PRODUCE that stuff. I don't like the thought of penalizing the people who put the work in, who made those sacrifices, in order to prop up those who did not. In my case I put the work in (returning to grad school) and am far from a rich person, especially for Eastern Massachusetts, yet the government still sees fit to take me to the cleaners and say that the money I earned deserves to go to somebody who didn't. (and I mean the additional punitive amount in particular, as of course child support should exist)
Now let's return to that development we were talking about. What happens to all the people, LIKE ME, who don't qualify for the subsidies but then can't afford the inflated market rates either? It seems like the people who didn't put the work in often get propped up to the point where they can live better than the people who did. That's the true definition of unfair, and the government is the number 1 perpetrator in this inequity.
Keep going in this extreme direction, and here's where we end up.
