Let’s talk about the ‘social safety net” in America.
Or lack therein. As many Americans are finding out, it’s grossly undermanned, underfunded, and purposely difficult to navigate and punitive. My family did so well because as a disabled single parent of a disabled child, I’d spent ten years fighting with it. So when my husband lost his job because of Covid-19, it was a lay up for us to get in line. I knew where to go, what information would be needed, the best way to contact DSHS and that you couldn’t be complacent and just expect the system to work. Because not working is how it was designed. When welfare was gutted in the 90s after 10 years of centrist and right wing demonization, what was left in place only served the most destitute and was purposely difficult to get and maintain. The income requirements in most states for SNAP and TANF are unbelievably low and TANF is for five years for life. Including minors. If you use up all your TANF and your kids TANF when they’re young, they will never have it when they’re adults. Social security is even worse. The income threshold for receiving SSI is so low disabled people cannot marry because if their spouse makes more than $10 an hour, their combined income will be too high and they will lose their SSI and Medicaid. Any income of any kind is supposed to be reported so it can be deducted from their monthly allotment. That means birthday and Christmas gifts. Anything of value being sold also has to be declared to be added into the ‘outside income’ and will be deducted from their SSI. Medicaid is constantly changing what it will and will not cover, leaving doctors and patients to scramble to make sure people get the medicine and treatments they need. The income threshold is also painfully low, so disabled people who can work are also usually excluded, forced to use private employer insurance to cover expensive meds and procedures. Until the ACA many of them were denied coverage altogether. Pregnancy was considered a pre-existing condition and well child care was not covered in normal plans. Unemployment Insurance is set at painfully low levels across the the states. Some offer only $60 a week to live on and have difficult requirements for proving job searching. The best states offer work programs that help pay for schooling, retraining, transportation, and work clothing, but most do not. So when the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.7% overall (up to 30% for some minority groups), this purposely weak and ineffective safety net collapsed under the strain. The addition unemployment insurance helped, but because the system was so badly maintained and outdated in places, it moved slowly and was vulnerable to exploitation by bad faith actors. DHS employees busted their humps, but people fell through the cracks anyway. We need to stop believing poverty is a character flaw and establish safety nets that actually work and help people get on the track to careers. We need living wages and affordable housing. We need affordable healthcare and the end of insurance companies denying paying for anything they can. We need to actually lift people up instead believing in this delusion of ‘rugged individualism’ and ‘bootstrap’ mentality. These are propaganda the haves tell themselves so they don’t have to feel bad about the misery of the ‘have nots’. I would hope the pandemic would have opened some people’s eyes about how ridiculously ineffective and cruel our welfare system is. But because so many conservatives have bought into the prosperity gospel blasphemy and see anyone who isn’t a good little obedient wage slave working themselves to death for crumbs as ‘lazy’ and a ‘waste of resources’ and most of them actually believe the pandemic is a hoax, I hold out no hope. But I will call out this inhumane system until the day I die, in hopes it will be changed so people in the future get help instead of demonization and cruelty like I did for so many years.
