NIKA LEANDRA'S BOOKS

Pay or Play  Good morning! We generally tend to refer to society as a two- class society, one being poor and the other one rich or at least richer. However, looking around here a little more closely, the connotation Two- Class- Society takes on a completely different meaning. There's that group of people which is still the majority, and which works diligently and pays their taxes more or less reluctantly. The second group are the needy ones that live on welfare because they are either between jobs, homeless or both. Fact is that the first group supports the latter one. As I understand it, the concept of welfare originally stood for temporarily helping out all those who came back home from the war and had no work, lost their work, got into accidents and thus could no longer support their families, or had no roof over their heads after a fire, flood or other natural disasters. And as such welfare certainly took a step into the right direction. By now though the being of welfare has turned into an oasis of fraud and luxury. Not just that, as a result of all the generally accepted abuse, the second group is growing uncontrollably just like a nightmarish bushfire. Nowadays it seems that welfare mainly carries bums, criminals, drug addicts, work- shy and lazy folks. Hard to believe, but for the working and tax- paying class it might not be easy at all to get on welfare should this become an option for those people usually have assets welfare would definitely lay their hands on as a way of trade- in for their temporary services. I can't help thinking that the second group must instinctively dispose of this knowledge because bums usually have nothing else to lose but their lives, right?
Let me give you two contrary examples to point out the difference here. Michael is a free- lancer and owns a small house and two junk cars. God forbid, should he ever need welfare, if he got it at all, this clearly would come at a price. Michael might well lose his home and/ or cars because the state- run welfare wants their money back. On the other end of the spectrum, there's Jack, a white middle- aged drug addict with a serious drinking problem. Jack has been on and off welfare most of his life.
He possesses nothing but the shirt on his back, and a few bucks in his pockets from odd jobs under the table. Welfare literally keeps him alive with food stamps which Jack barters for cigarettes, booze and drugs. Just like the blind Justicia, nobody bothers checking on Jack's working and living status. They may or may not want to find out that Jack's been playing the system cleverly to his best personal good. In the meantime welfare offers him all those sweet extra bonuses like FREE health care, drug rehab, counseling, as well as psychological treatment programs. How long? Well, all but temporarily -that's for sure. And now get this: Jack need not even scrape small change together to pay for a bus ticket down to the HR- center any longer. No, Jack, drunk and stoned out of his mind, can stay in his mummy's air- conditioned apartment and wait for welfare to knock at her door and deliver the necessary paper work to be signed. Isn't that nice of the welfare people? Jack, the all- time loser, will be able to enjoy free health- care while still screwing those who support welfare and those who execute all those wonderful laws. Michael had better never end up seriously ill or disabled because welfare will not catch him in free fall. Instead he is well advised to hang in there till his last breath so that Jack can keep indulging in this almost perfect life. I wonder if welfare is planning on giving Jack a passport to send him off to an all- inclusive vacation spot to take his mind off the stress of having to deal with all those forms to fill out and to sign. Long live welfare in this two- class society!