I personally know a number of people who are on social welfare and planning having a second or even third child. I find this is extremely irresponsible. They can barely afford the children they already have and want to get the state to pay for more? I'd much rather my taxes went to schools and hospitals and better public transport than for paying for these peoples stupid decisions. What kind of life will that child have?

If you cannot afford it, do not have children. I can totally understand if you had the children before you, eg, lost your job or whatever. Things happen, situations change. The problem is the people who don't already have children. Also, if you cannot afford it, you need to be extra careful not to have an "accidental" pregnancy.

Sometimes birth control fails! Like it did with me and my girlfriend a few months ago. My poor ass is now job hunting!

Having children makes people happy. As in deep, deep happy. It's really not as mysterious as some make it out to be.

The player had been unemployed for a while, benefits ran out, savings depleted.

Where the player went wrong was letting things get so desperate that choices were limited.

I would suggest that, perhaps, he has much more of a clue than you'd like to admit. Maybe not about you specifically, but I too have noticed that, in the general case, those who lecture the truly poor have never been truly poor, or in many cases even mostly poor, at all. Full disclosure: I was once one of those assholes.

.

I, personally, have never been in a state of poverty. I've been very lucky. I was lucky to be born male and white in a country (and a state within it) where there were opportunities available to me. I was lucky to be born to parents who were reasonably educated but had enough discipline to take care of a kid (my father did, anyway). And I was lucky that a number of my own decisions, foolish in retrospect but in all seriousness a good idea at the time, did not come back to bite me in the ass.

I would suggest that, when talking about how people should not make those decisions, perhaps you could entertain the idea that they see no alternative. I've certainly been guilty of this before, both politically when in a certain libertarian phase (I got better) and in my professional life, when I drove myself to frustration wondering why person X did this thing that I instantly realized was stupid. Perhaps no alternative is within their view. (Even if you've been there, surely there's the possibility that you have certain advantages, in being able to see "the big picture", that others lack?)

Sure, there's no doubt some of the lazy "welfare queens" that the American right likes to demonize; I'm sure some exist. But I have come to something of an understanding in my own life that those in poverty are much more likely to encounter Morton's forks than others, and I find it more difficult than I did during that libertarian phase to self-righteously castigate such folks for making bad decisions when they have few, if any, good choices to make.

.

From your other posts, it seems like you're not one of the people who's born on third base and thinks they hit a triple, but a lot of folks who write as you do are indeed those people--and the simple fact that you're able to do what you do, to have ended up in a position where you can perform the mental gymnastics necessary to be a (I assume, good) programmer, that maybe, despite whatever else, you weren't exactly birthed in the batter's box.

Just something to think about.

The per-minute rates are generally high (on the order of $0.30/min) and the prepaid time generally expires (in 10-30 days for low-dollar loadings). If you are actively searching for work, you need to have enough time loaded to handle a telephone interview and to be put on hold from time to time. Once that's covered, you need to top up the time at regular intervals in order to avoid losing what you've already paid for -- and that leads to a non-refundable "savings account" with your provider. Prepaid is not significantly cheaper than a low-end contract, and can be more expensive.