Greed

I've got this co-worker, right? You might remember me venting about her in the past. Same one, lest you wonder. Hang on to your hats, this is going to be a long one!

Anyway, she went on this tirade the other day about how she was standing in line at Wal-Mart and the line was stalled by a woman in front of her who was using Food Stamps (I think she was probably talking about WIC vouchers). The woman had picked up the wrong brand of milk by accident and they had to send someone to change it for the right kind because her vouchers didn't cover that brand of milk. Apparently in the meantime, the woman started talking on her cell phone. This sent "Momma" into a tizzy. She became outraged that a woman on "food stamps" would have a cell phone.

She has been ranting about this encounter for days. Every time she starts talking about it, people question her about certain things.

Q: What if she doesn't have a home phone and that's their only phone.
A: Tough! If you can't afford a phone, you can't afford one. Maybe if she didn't have a phone, she wouldn't need government assistance. We're even thinking of turning our home phone off.
Q: So you want someone who probably has a small child at home to not have access to a phone? What if there's an emergency and her child is hurt and she can't get help?
A: Mumble mumble...that's just too bad!
Q: What if it's one of those pre-paid cell phones that doesn't cost much?
A: That money could have still gone toward groceries.

Her complete ire toward poor people rubs me the wrong way for several reasons.

1. This chick's parents send her money ALL the time. Seriously. She talks about it constantly. She's married with a child and she's in her 30's and her parents still regularly supplement her income in major ways ($20,000 to go toward her down payment on her first house, already putting money in bonds for her kids college, she has one of her mother's credit cards to use as she pleases, they recently bought a second new car--which her parents sent thousands of dollars to go towards, their other new car was given to them by her parents, etc.)

Apparently it's OK to accept financial assistance rather than be responsible with one's money--as long as you accept it from family instead of the government?

2. She lives in an upscale neighborhood where the average price of a house is about $250,000, has a housekeeper, the aforementioned 2 new cars, goes on vacations, etc. yet still calls herself 'poor'.

It pisses me off when people who clearly aren't poor at all call themselves poor. There are people who spend every night sleeping on sidewalks because they don't have anything. They have no family support, no house, no assets, no education with which to make a decent living, and no hope of any of that changing. Those people are poor. If you have a warm place to sleep and you have family and friends and you have no fear that you won't eat dinner tonight because you can't afford it, you're not just NOT poor, you're wealthy. To say otherwise is throwing God's blessings back in his face and saying "Look at all the people who have more than I do! You can't do any better than this?"

There are people in this world who are just one hospital visit from being homeless. If one unexpected event happens in their life, there goes the rent money. If you're reading this, you're probably not in that category, so take a moment to THANK GOD. But for the grace of God, there go I.

Greed is so commonplace that we don't even realize we're infected with it, but we all are to some extent. We're not as bad off as we think.