this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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To me the negative connotation of "welfare" is, Kafkaesque bureaucracy used to gate access. Actually being on it feels more like you are playing a fucked up game than receiving assistance.
People acting like gaming welfare is easy. Fuck me, it's a full-time job getting anything at all.
For example: Been thinking about trying to get some food stamps. Wife works, I'm unemployed, maybe get a little of the tax money back from when I was making bank? Maybe get a pittance of unemployment? I can scarcely imagine navigating all the bullshit if I wasn't technically capable. Kafkaesque bureaucracy indeed.
...i've claimed unemployment benefits a couple of times in the past four decades and the administrative burden was onerous-enough to substantially disrupt my liberty to look for work, the release of benefits delayed until i'd already found work the better part of a year later, and the benefits such a token pittance as to be eclipsed by interest on credit i used to make ends meet in the interim...
...i supect their fraud-prevention programs cost more to administer than the actual benefits they're supposedly protecting...
I got fired from a job, rather unjustly, and attempted to file for unemployment.
It made no sense, I could not navigate my states website (which didn’t want to play well with Linux anyway), so I gave up. Which is the point.
One time an employer fired me and refused to pay me after discovering I was trans, and it literally took 6 months to get that check. The system is designed to fuck people.
I hear this, and also some flavor of people gaming the system.
I don't like that I hear these things. But something definitely weaseled its way in.