Subject: Re: the work ethic
Chuck,
My spin is that society will not provide jobs to folks on SSI if the benefits were to be removed. Do the terms Workhouse, Poor Farm and Elizabethan Alms House remind you of how the disabled and elderly used to be dealt with?
People spent nights under back porches, in parks and huddled in shop doorways. Missions gave some assistance, but you did have to spend long hours in praising the Lord in order to have a bowl of weak broth, some bread and a mat for the night.
With no wage minimum, common laborers lived in flop houses. Clerks and waitresses shared cold water, walk up flats. Teachers could only afford rooms in a boarding house. There was no job security, no pensions for working class labor, no vacation, no retirement age and if you were sick you waited it out and hoped you still had a job when you felt better.
We are so dulled by the "Let's Pretend" world painted for us by those who want our Souls, that we have forgotten how our grand parents and great grand parents fought to produce the world we now seem ready to allow to be taken away from us.
Let there be no mistake. Those who would try to convince you that the world would be a better place if SSI, SSDI, Medicare, and wage minimum were eliminated, do not have your best interest at heart. They only see you for the dollars they can squeeze out of your husk before they kick you to the garbage heap.
It is a class war and we are on the bottom at the moment. But it can get a lot worse.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----From: ckrugman@sbcglobal.netSent: Friday, June 08, 2012 11:17 PMSubject: Re: the work ethicUnfortunately, the system perpetuates this especially for those on SSI with
work disincentives where when one earns over $65 per month they start to
lose their benefits. Over the years I have wondered whether programs like
SSI while needed actually foster discrimination and a lack of full
employment especially for the blind because it is more expedient for the
government to encourage and allow people to languish on SSI. After all, if
recipients are receiving benefits than society doesn't really have to make a
full-fledged effort to provide jobs for them.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "alice dampman humel" <alicedh@verizon.net>
To: "blind democracy List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2012 7:31 PM
Subject: the work ethic
> Hi, Miriam, Carl, Claude, Charlie, all,
> interesting comments about how we call it "work" because this
> is what society demands everyone should do...perhaps I've fallen
> into that trap myself, but I hope not, I'll have to examine this
> question further.
> It is certainly rampant among our own blind community on
> these lists. There have been quite vitriolic comments in
> discussions of blind people who either are forced to or choose to
> live on SSI and/or disability. Some people have even said that
> all blind people should be kicked off the SSI rolls, look at how
> people on the acb lists make fun of and insult that Eric guy who
> apparently does not work and freeloads his way around baseball
> parks. Even among our own blind community, people who are
> unemployed or underemployed are "looked down on" by some, are
> told they should give up whatever they are doing and go work in a
> call center or something. Prostitution was even suggested as a
> good idea for a career choice if a blind person could not find
> other work...or even if she could. So the attitudes even among
> our own group, and that includes this progressive list, seem to
> head in that direction.
> I guess when I wrote that message about calling these day
> programs "work" and paying the people accordingly I was thinking
> of a friend's grown retarded child who lives in a group home and
> has some little part-time job somewhere sweeping up or
> something...I actually forget exactly what he does. He gets state
> support obviously, and I guess the job gives him pocket money,
> and he's happy as a clam. He loves going to work, being with the
> people, he goes to the movies, buys CD's and things he wants with
> his "wages." I don't know what he is paid, whether it's minimum
> wage or not. For him it works out well. But perhaps for others,
> it does not.
> But that is what I meant when I said I thought this was a rather
> complex issue. But one thing I think we all agree upon:
> exploitation of workers, particularly to benefit and line the
> pockets of the big bosses, as was illustrated in the Good Will
> article is horrible and must be stopped.
> Alice
>
> alicedh@verizon.net
>
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