Being on public assistance or being a slave to your job---which is worse? They may be more similar than you think.

We all know the image of the stereotypical welfare mom. She is a woman who is 100% supported by the government as she appears to have kids like cats and dogs, while not having a husband. We clip coupons while she buys convenience foods that we wish we could afford, and she doesn't even need, because she's home all day, with food stamps.We cannot stay up to watch a movie that we haven't seen in years, because it comes on at 11pm, and we have to get up and go to work. However, the stereotypical welfare mom can, because she has nowhere to be in the morning and can stay up all night, sometimes tv is her only vehicle for entertaining her male guests, and sleep all day. We trudge through winter's worst blizzards to work, while the stereotypical welfare mom is just turning over and really getting into deep sleep.


Then there are the not-so-typical families on public assistance. There are couples with children who cannot find full-time work with benefits, a single parent father that needs assistance, a recently widowed woman with small children and whose husband left no assets; or dozens of heads of households who make up the working poor---they work full-time but cannot afford health insurance, and paying for rent/mortgage and utilities takes their grocery money. So they relunctantly apply for and receive government health insurance (Medicaid) and food asistance (food stamps or the food stamp card).


It really doesn't matter whether the public assistant recipient is the stereotypical welfare mom or a struggling family, all recipients have to deal with grouchy, overworked, and sometimes arrogant caseworkers at some point or another. But let's go back to the stereotypical welfare recipient.


Compare and contrast that to being a slave on your job. On a job that you hate, but are chained to it because of obligations or poor educational or financial-planning in the past, you must deal with arrogant, power-hungry, and corrupt management. That is along with grouchy and overworked co-worker peers. A redetermination of determining which public assistance that you qualify for only has to take place about every six months. The redetermination interview might take a few hours, which includes time spent waiting to be called. However, dealing with creepy people on a full-time job means dealing with those creepy people for 40 hours each week, which is 2,080 hours per year. Redeterminations, even if they take 4 hours each time and require 3 visits each year, only take approximately 12 hours per year. Basically, it's a choice of being treated like crap everyday versus once every 4-6 months.


And what about all this money that you supposedly make from working versus waiting on a government check at home? Consider the money spent on gas in your car (or bus fare), lunch money (afterall, you cannot starve yourself), clothes and shoes that have to be replaced ever so often (because it's against the dress code at work to show up like a hum drum bum, with faded, raggedy clothes and run-over shoes), and childcare (if your children are under 12, you really aren't supposed to leave them home alone all day while you work, when school is out in the summer). What about the wear and tear on your vehicle? Those expenses disappear when you stop being a working stiff and you stay at home.


However, back to reality. Stereotypical welfare recipients don't build up a stable work history or earn a pension for when they get older. So it's a trade-off. And with welfare reform, welfare cash grants don't last forever. But the comparison can surely make you choose an occupation more carefully.