Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and ROBERT GEBELOFF
Published: February 11, 2012

LINDSTROM, Minn. — Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

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Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html

[Beartracks]

1. "They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty...

... for taking it and resent the government for providing it."

That about sums up a lot of conservative rancor. Classic case of misplaced anger. They're misplacing it based on dis-information provided to them by those who benefit from the resulting combination of wrath, fear and ignorance -- namely, the rich.

=========================

[Scuba]

3. What they need to understand is that those who would pay higher taxes to provide...

... Medicare for All (for example) can easily afford it, and it will stimulate the economy (read: create jobs) much faster in the hands of nurses and radiology techs than it will in Swiss bank accounts.

[ejpoeta]

2. that's the thing. they will bitch about it while receiving it at the same time.

But it's different when it's you. I got that from my family. When they'd go on about welfare people and blah blah blah I'd make sure they knew they were talking about me. But it is different for me. We made too much for the earned income credit this time around. We have three kids on Child Health Plus and they get reduced lunches at school. I had WIC for my daughter but have stopped doing that because I was not using the checks. Trying to use the checks was a hassle. But if I feel we need them again I will sign back up.

These programs are there for a reason. And we ALL pay into them no matter what people want to say.

[southernyankeebelle]

4. Every time you see a teapublican you must remind them of what they receive. Yes even the tax breaks

that their business is getting thanks to the government and our tax dollars. Remind them if your parents didn't get medicare or social security their care would be on your back like back in the old days.

[Heywood J]

5. I guess he's going to stop

driving on those gubmint-built roads and drinking that gubmint-provided water, or forget those gubmint zoning bylaws that keep chemical plants from buying his neighbor's house and setting up shop.

[Snarkoleptic]

6. Gotta love the I've got mine, screw you quote from the article.

"But many older residents in Chisago say this problem belongs to younger generations. They paid what they were told; they want to collect what they were promised."

My generation will the first in a very long while that won't be better off than the prior generation. It angers me to hear all of this austerity talk from "self made men" who went to public schools, attended college on the GI bill, got pell grants, etc. What really grinds my gears is tebagger talk of eliminating the EPA, Department of Education and the like. There is a RW faction of that generation that seems OK with sucking the marrow from the bones and leaving future generations to fend for themselves.

They fail to recognize the fact that we do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.