Lloyd,
I understand the picture you have painted, below. Please let me intersperse a bit, to flesh out the possible picture.
A teenager gets pregnant.
Yup, the School Board had voted to teach nothing but abstenance in their "sex education" classes, to molify the right-wing conservatives.
About the same time, with the fascist gummint, with it's taxes and rules to benifit the rich far more than the poor, had so screwed up the economy that when her Father got laid off
from his twenty-year job and couldn't find a job, over-qualified for everything, he shot himself, just after his wife divorced him
for not being a good provider.
So, not wanting to live in the streets, who went out to find herself a job, to support herself, but with teenage unemployent rates at near 20% (as they, in fact are, right now), she found that the minimum wage had priced her out of the market. She'd have been happy to have offered to work for 4.00 an hour to get the training, but that was against the law.
Desperate for survival, with mom and dad gone, and despising the gummint schools who forced her to memorize bullshit that was irrlevant to her life at the time, she met a guy who had lots of money.
Yup, he'd turned the gummint's war on humans who use drugs
into a cash cow, with the gummint creating the job for him.
He was kind of a low-life, though, as you might expect. Before
she had even decided to move in with him, seeking someone who cared, he threw her on the floor one night and raped her.
Teffiried, with no where to turn, she sought out her families
Catholic Priest for advice. Well, he'd been arrested, you know what for, so the sub. Priest advised her. "Whatever you do, don't get an abortion, or you will go to hell".
She, didn't, but one night, digging through garbage cans, some
guy offered to pay her for a lay, with him seeing beauty behind
the dirt. He hit her a few times, but the money was good.
Not good enough to buy the folic acid to keep her baby healthy, but she was doing all she could to hang on herself.
In a flash, the baby was born. It was unheathy, but still she loved it. She started dressing up in tight clothes, and short skirts to promote the only way of survival she had been able
to find.
But one of her Johns beat the baby one night, for crying.
She went in search of a "mutual aid society" one day, but was
told they'd been driven out of the charity thing by gummint by welfare.
She checked into the gummint welfare thing, just hearing about it. They treated her like shit, worse than a number.
She felt like she had sold her soul, but at least she and her
baby would have shelter and food.
Then one day, teaching herself to read, more than any government monoploy had, she read about the Free State
Project. Reading about it, she had shivers of joy, and the first hope in what was now so many years.
When the state was selected, she hitched there with her
young son. Long story short, she was elected the first
governess of the FSP, running on a platform of "abolish all
welfare, but do it incrementally. Start at the top, and don't
go taking gummint food out of the mouths of babes until that is the last step to achieve true liberty!!
She won in a landslide, peeing of a few right-wing conservatives who didn't belong in the FSP, anyway.
*****
So, my friend, you can paint a picture. So can I. I maintain
my picture is much more accurate than yours, given the incipent fascist state we all live in.
A few years ago, after many years working as a purchasing agent, I was unemployed so long, losing hope, that garbage cans started to smell real good to me and my dog.
One week away from being kicked into the streets, I found a
part-time job to survive on. Now, later, I have a real good job.
Tell ya this, though, I have not since reacted to the claims of
right-wing conservatives that welfare reciepients are just lazy free-loaders who vote for big gummint. When I read that claim, these days, I think to myself: I hope you are unlucky enough to discover the truth of it yourself, smelling the sicky sweetness of garbage cans.
Now, please don't take offense. I'm not so much writing to you as I'm writing to all libertarians, FSPers, and especially right-wing, conservative, Rush Limberger nuts.
Sincerely,
Larry