@LarsB

Your situation actually illustrates my argument! I have no trouble saying that a safety net ought to be there precisely for people like your situation. But reflect on this:

10-15 years ago, our government had a fight over whether we should extend a certain program to households whose income was up to 400% of poverty level. That is not a typo. I wondered what 400% of poverty level was, and to my shock I realized that my household would have qualified for benefits!

Let's put this in perspective. I own my house, I own my car, at the time I was sending one of my children to a private school, I was sending my wife & children to visit her family most summers (my wife is an immigrant, so it was quite expensive), some years I was going as well, and most years we also spent a week at the beach. My household does not need government support!

This was no accident of statistics where I was lucky. Advocates of expanding the program rolled out a television ad featuring a family that supposedly needed the benefit. Well, an enterprising journalist dug into it and found that this family owned two homes, one of them beachfront property in a very expensive area. Naturally the program's advocates were unashamed in their outrage that someone had invaded the family's privacy.

When policies and programs are instituted to ensure that people like that family and mine qualify for government support, who suffers? People who actually do deserve the support: that is, people like you.

That's what I mean when I say that government ought to have a real safety net, not a policy of subsidizing a middle class lifestyle. I agree that government should do something, but it can't do everything, statistics often lie, and you can never, ever underestimate politicians' appetite for buying votes. The potential for corruption and waste is immense.

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I've decided to follow an awful lot of people I respect and leave AmigaWorld. If for some reason you want to talk to me, it shouldn't take much effort to find me.