Thank you for your comment, Grace. Yes, it is a Catch-22 of sorts. And one of the biggest issues with "work requirements" for Medicaid is that some of the biggest employers (Walmart as one example), have stopped providing benefit packages to their employees—we've been thrown into a gig economy and everyone is fending for themselves. Being employed full time is no guarantee of employer-based health insurance.
Thanks for sharing your story, Joan. We seem to be ok subsidizing corporations and the wealthy with no strings attached, while imposing more austerity on many others.
I totally agree about our subsidizing of corporations which seems to be an accepted idea baked into our system, unfortunately. There is a documentary of sorts that really lays this out called "Corporate Welfare, Where Is The Outrage" . I think it also aired on NPR, but not sure.
I read your essay, “I Was on Medicaid and Food Stamps,” and I want to thank you for your honesty in exposing the mechanisms of cruelty at the heart of the American welfare system. But I need to say this plainly: the dignity you speak of isn’t vanishing—it vanished long ago. And the idea that the system is only now becoming monstrous is a dangerous illusion.
There’s no tragic decline here. There’s only the ongoing perfection of a design that was always meant to punish, surveil, and suppress the poor. The application process hasn’t “become” dehumanizing—it was always a labyrinth engineered to exhaust and humiliate. You speak of “getting No’s” and “crying through the paperwork” as if those are failures of a strained system. They’re not. They are successes of a machine built to exclude and demoralize.
We’ve got to stop pretending the government is still functioning on post-war, mid-century assumptions of social contract, safety nets, or public good. Those ideas died decades ago—what we’re living with now is the corpse, animated by bipartisan necromancy and capitalist extraction. To suggest we need to preserve the old dignity of Medicaid or SNAP is to cling to a myth that never belonged to the working class. These were never entitlements. They were bribes to keep rebellion at bay.
And let’s be honest: the American reflex to keep hoping—*that it’ll all work out, that the government must know what it’s doing—that’s not resilience. That’s conditioning. That’s trauma-response theater wearing the mask of optimism. And when people “choose” to comply quietly, to take scraps and say thank you, they are not being the better person. They are being sacrificed. And worse—this culture of passive acceptance kills others in the process. When you quietly participate in a system designed to kill, your civility becomes complicity.
The trap isn't poverty. The trap is believing that anything the state offers is meant to liberate us.
What’s needed now is not a mourning song for what's being lost. What's needed is a spell for severance. For exit. For refusal. I’m not writing this from a place of despair—I’m writing it from the shadows. And I invite you to join me here. We do not need to be “better people.” We need to become untouchable.
Thank you for your very interesting comment, Mark! I also agree that this loss of dignity is not a recent event—it started (at least in recent times) with President Reagan's deregulation and his much vaunted statement that "government is the problem" I honestly believe our system has to change, not necessarily to change back to any one time, but to change to a government that only serves to help the most people.
1. There are legitimate disabled people who NEED food stamps and Medicaid. My best friend is a spinal cord injury survivor, and my other has early-onset Parkinson's. BOTH needed all of the above stuff and still do.
2. There are turds who do NOT have disabilities who take advantage of the system. There will always be cheaters. (Political Science 101 @ THE OSU)
$1 Trillion dollars worth of free food sounds excessive. Look how much food gets thrown away EVERY year. This is a quote I found with a quick Google search:
"All told, the amount of food wasted in America has an approximate value of nearly $218 billion – the equivalent of 130 billion meals."
I think it's safe to say with the new Grok 4 from Elon Musk - there will be COUNTLESS social problems solved such as homelessness, food waste, government spending, and the like.
Sorry that you had to go on Medicaid and food stamps. Been there. Done that.
(as a child) For most of my childhood.
Picking up cheese and milk from a church ain't fun. Standing in the FREE lunch ticket line in the morning is embarrassing. I know my mom did NOT want to get laid off from the coal mines. She LOVED working.
The government needs to take that $1TRILLION dollars it's cutting from the budget and put it into renewable energy jobs.
The U.S. government can work with Musk and Tesla and MANDATE that EVERY SINGLE ROOF in America get solar panel shingles installed.
How much FREE energy will get pumped back into the grid? How much will this help with golbal warming and climate change? How many new jobs can this create for installation, delivery, and maintenance, and new research?
We HAVE the technology to fix so many things. The U.S. government can build a few less B2 bombers and give out a few less million meals to be thrown away.
McDonald's sucks. And the people that work there are assholes. And the turnover is 2 weeks because of it. BUT - they pay for college tuition. They give you FREE meals with every shift. They provide GREAT health benefits and stock options. They have Hamburger University for leadership and management training. They provide uniforms and a safe, clean work environment. They have all 3 shifts.
Lyft is THE EASIEST job out there.
And there is NO HASSLE. NO human resources. Thank God.
No dress code. No clock in clock out timesheets. You can start driving in less than a week.
You can drive as little or as much as you want. You can listen to whatever music you want.
$100 day is VERY realistic. And you ain't driving for 16 hours.
That's $3,000 month.
But gas prices? Just saw a Get Go for UNDER $3.00!!! last night!
AND you can write off: internet, cell phone, insurance, (you can write off gas mileage if you keep track), car washes, etc.
Hi Zin, thanks for your comment—haven't heard from you in awhile! Unfortunately, they are cutting most federal funds that incentivize the use and expansion of green energy. My thinking, again based on first hand experience, is that it should not be that hard to get government benefits. They literally tell you "no"" when it is a clear "yes"...and I think it is purposeful, at least to some extent.
I receive food stamps, Medicaid, and live in income-based public housing. I’m a disabled, neurodivergent, single parent of two (also on Medicaid). I work as a SPED Paraeducator and I absolutely love it! I have a bachelor’s degree, training in massage therapy and life/somatic coaching, and a college certificate in marketing. I have been on TANF (welfare) more than once and have utilized training benefits through BFET and worker retraining to update my training and job skills. I have always said yes to opportunities to better myself, learn more, and make the world a better place. I’ve worked incredibly hard every day to make my life and the lives of my children better only to continually be met with systemic challenges and bad luck. I am not lazy or a parasite and neither are all the other disabled/single parents, etc. that I know.
This bill and many other policies being enacted by this administration directly threaten the very fragile stability that I have only recently been able to eke out for myself after years of struggling despite trying so hard to succeed. I’m both terrified and pissed off about this situation. I don’t really know what I will do in response to what is happening right now other than continue to do my best.
I’m actively learning to garden and I’m continuing to grow my DIY, mutual aid, and survival skills with the expectation that life is about to get a lot harder. I’m grateful that I have already developed skills and knowledge around herbalism, foraging, healthcare, and stress management amongst other things. I’m hoping these things will allow me to keep afloat and able to support the most vulnerable people in my community.
Thank you for sharing your story here, Nova. I don't think the United States, the supposed richest country on earth, should ask its citizens or residents to carve out "a very fragile stability" to begin with. A good part of our current situation, and it seems to all be the result of policy choices of our elected officials, is what I and other commenters have discussed above—our government choosing to subsidize business and not people.
I don't use my cell phone much Joan. It doesn't work anymore.
why don't you get a new one? Email me @joandemartin@gmail.com
Holy cow- I had no idea about Georgia!!! 🤦🏻♀️
Yes, that is quite the interesting experiment with peoples' lives, isn't it?
Pretty fucked up experiment.
Seems like a Catch 22. You need SNAP because you can’t work or are unemployed.
Thank you for your comment, Grace. Yes, it is a Catch-22 of sorts. And one of the biggest issues with "work requirements" for Medicaid is that some of the biggest employers (Walmart as one example), have stopped providing benefit packages to their employees—we've been thrown into a gig economy and everyone is fending for themselves. Being employed full time is no guarantee of employer-based health insurance.
Thanks for sharing your story, Joan. We seem to be ok subsidizing corporations and the wealthy with no strings attached, while imposing more austerity on many others.
Thank you, Madeline. I'm still embarrassed ...
I totally agree about our subsidizing of corporations which seems to be an accepted idea baked into our system, unfortunately. There is a documentary of sorts that really lays this out called "Corporate Welfare, Where Is The Outrage" . I think it also aired on NPR, but not sure.
https://www.freetochoosenetwork.org/programs/corporate_welfare/
It is all by design. Thank you for sharing.
And thank you for reading and commenting! I agree that the "administrative burdens" as scholars call it, are part of the design.
Dear Joan,
I read your essay, “I Was on Medicaid and Food Stamps,” and I want to thank you for your honesty in exposing the mechanisms of cruelty at the heart of the American welfare system. But I need to say this plainly: the dignity you speak of isn’t vanishing—it vanished long ago. And the idea that the system is only now becoming monstrous is a dangerous illusion.
There’s no tragic decline here. There’s only the ongoing perfection of a design that was always meant to punish, surveil, and suppress the poor. The application process hasn’t “become” dehumanizing—it was always a labyrinth engineered to exhaust and humiliate. You speak of “getting No’s” and “crying through the paperwork” as if those are failures of a strained system. They’re not. They are successes of a machine built to exclude and demoralize.
We’ve got to stop pretending the government is still functioning on post-war, mid-century assumptions of social contract, safety nets, or public good. Those ideas died decades ago—what we’re living with now is the corpse, animated by bipartisan necromancy and capitalist extraction. To suggest we need to preserve the old dignity of Medicaid or SNAP is to cling to a myth that never belonged to the working class. These were never entitlements. They were bribes to keep rebellion at bay.
And let’s be honest: the American reflex to keep hoping—*that it’ll all work out, that the government must know what it’s doing—that’s not resilience. That’s conditioning. That’s trauma-response theater wearing the mask of optimism. And when people “choose” to comply quietly, to take scraps and say thank you, they are not being the better person. They are being sacrificed. And worse—this culture of passive acceptance kills others in the process. When you quietly participate in a system designed to kill, your civility becomes complicity.
The trap isn't poverty. The trap is believing that anything the state offers is meant to liberate us.
What’s needed now is not a mourning song for what's being lost. What's needed is a spell for severance. For exit. For refusal. I’m not writing this from a place of despair—I’m writing it from the shadows. And I invite you to join me here. We do not need to be “better people.” We need to become untouchable.
With nothing left to lose but the leash,
Mark
Thank you for your very interesting comment, Mark! I also agree that this loss of dignity is not a recent event—it started (at least in recent times) with President Reagan's deregulation and his much vaunted statement that "government is the problem" I honestly believe our system has to change, not necessarily to change back to any one time, but to change to a government that only serves to help the most people.
Perhaps, there are 2 sides to every pancake.
1. There are legitimate disabled people who NEED food stamps and Medicaid. My best friend is a spinal cord injury survivor, and my other has early-onset Parkinson's. BOTH needed all of the above stuff and still do.
2. There are turds who do NOT have disabilities who take advantage of the system. There will always be cheaters. (Political Science 101 @ THE OSU)
$1 Trillion dollars worth of free food sounds excessive. Look how much food gets thrown away EVERY year. This is a quote I found with a quick Google search:
"All told, the amount of food wasted in America has an approximate value of nearly $218 billion – the equivalent of 130 billion meals."
(Source: https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/)
I think it's safe to say with the new Grok 4 from Elon Musk - there will be COUNTLESS social problems solved such as homelessness, food waste, government spending, and the like.
Sorry that you had to go on Medicaid and food stamps. Been there. Done that.
(as a child) For most of my childhood.
Picking up cheese and milk from a church ain't fun. Standing in the FREE lunch ticket line in the morning is embarrassing. I know my mom did NOT want to get laid off from the coal mines. She LOVED working.
The government needs to take that $1TRILLION dollars it's cutting from the budget and put it into renewable energy jobs.
The U.S. government can work with Musk and Tesla and MANDATE that EVERY SINGLE ROOF in America get solar panel shingles installed.
How much FREE energy will get pumped back into the grid? How much will this help with golbal warming and climate change? How many new jobs can this create for installation, delivery, and maintenance, and new research?
We HAVE the technology to fix so many things. The U.S. government can build a few less B2 bombers and give out a few less million meals to be thrown away.
McDonald's sucks. And the people that work there are assholes. And the turnover is 2 weeks because of it. BUT - they pay for college tuition. They give you FREE meals with every shift. They provide GREAT health benefits and stock options. They have Hamburger University for leadership and management training. They provide uniforms and a safe, clean work environment. They have all 3 shifts.
Lyft is THE EASIEST job out there.
And there is NO HASSLE. NO human resources. Thank God.
No dress code. No clock in clock out timesheets. You can start driving in less than a week.
You can drive as little or as much as you want. You can listen to whatever music you want.
$100 day is VERY realistic. And you ain't driving for 16 hours.
That's $3,000 month.
But gas prices? Just saw a Get Go for UNDER $3.00!!! last night!
AND you can write off: internet, cell phone, insurance, (you can write off gas mileage if you keep track), car washes, etc.
This is AMERICA. We have options.
Hi Zin, thanks for your comment—haven't heard from you in awhile! Unfortunately, they are cutting most federal funds that incentivize the use and expansion of green energy. My thinking, again based on first hand experience, is that it should not be that hard to get government benefits. They literally tell you "no"" when it is a clear "yes"...and I think it is purposeful, at least to some extent.
I receive food stamps, Medicaid, and live in income-based public housing. I’m a disabled, neurodivergent, single parent of two (also on Medicaid). I work as a SPED Paraeducator and I absolutely love it! I have a bachelor’s degree, training in massage therapy and life/somatic coaching, and a college certificate in marketing. I have been on TANF (welfare) more than once and have utilized training benefits through BFET and worker retraining to update my training and job skills. I have always said yes to opportunities to better myself, learn more, and make the world a better place. I’ve worked incredibly hard every day to make my life and the lives of my children better only to continually be met with systemic challenges and bad luck. I am not lazy or a parasite and neither are all the other disabled/single parents, etc. that I know.
This bill and many other policies being enacted by this administration directly threaten the very fragile stability that I have only recently been able to eke out for myself after years of struggling despite trying so hard to succeed. I’m both terrified and pissed off about this situation. I don’t really know what I will do in response to what is happening right now other than continue to do my best.
I’m actively learning to garden and I’m continuing to grow my DIY, mutual aid, and survival skills with the expectation that life is about to get a lot harder. I’m grateful that I have already developed skills and knowledge around herbalism, foraging, healthcare, and stress management amongst other things. I’m hoping these things will allow me to keep afloat and able to support the most vulnerable people in my community.
Thank you for sharing your story here, Nova. I don't think the United States, the supposed richest country on earth, should ask its citizens or residents to carve out "a very fragile stability" to begin with. A good part of our current situation, and it seems to all be the result of policy choices of our elected officials, is what I and other commenters have discussed above—our government choosing to subsidize business and not people.