Reply #2: When poor people claim that they've been kicked out of

[ThomCat]

programs for no reason that they qualified for the reaction is always, "oh, sure, of course you didn't do anything wrong. Of course you were qualified." :eyes:

You can hear the sarcasm dripping.

But when you talk to other people coming out of the public assistance office after contesting their denials, and every one of them were given the identical excuse it becomes very obvious.

I was personally part of one mass denial where everyone at once was told that we made too much money the previous year to qualify for foodstamps. No matter how much money we made the previous year we all were told we were overqualified by the exact same dollar amount.

I think it was $35. I am not sure I remember the exact amount anymore.

For over 200 people to all be told that we were overqualified by that same dollar amount is impossible unless it was a blatant excuse, not a real fact-based denial. They were just purging people from foodstamps and other public assistance benefits just to cut their budget numbers.

Everyone was required to reapply in the hope of maybe getting help reestablished the next month, which meant a best case scenario of 1 month without any assistance. Many people never got back on assistance because they would repeatedly deny applications this same way for no good reason just to keep budget numbers low.

So when you hear that programs are doing this, believe it! Not only have you heard it first hand from someone who who it happened to, you have also read about it in at least this one article that confirms that it happens. I hope you have also been reading other articles here that confirms that it happens, and I hope that you're speaking up about it.

The widespread belief that poor people are automatically liars is a common prejudice, and it's just part of the unnecessary burden of being poor.