My husband works for Health and Human Services so I know how some of it is set up. Some of it is fair and some of it is full of politics and crazy loopholes. The main idea is provide help for those who need it but then it turns murky after that. I've used the system myself at various points so I can give a better explanation from my point of view. Anyone that works pays taxes so the family you speak of is paying taxes.

WIC only provides a certain amount of food per month per child up to age 5?. When I was on it, it paid for cheese, eggs, cereal, milk, some juice and baby formula. I was so grateful to have the help with baby formula because I wasn't able to breast feed 3 children due to seizure medications.

Food stamps are much harder to get than people think and you don't get a lot of money each month..a couple hundred dollars. Most people my husband talks too or when he does the paperwork don't qualify because of crazy reasons like your car being worth too much. The idea is go through all your "assets" before assistance kicks in. It breaks his heart to say that you don't qualify. A lot of the people he talks too aren't losers trying to take advantage of the system, but every day people.

We didn't qualify years ago because our crappy car was worth too much. So how does my husband get to work if he doesn't have a car we asked? You either sell your car and go on welfare or find other means to barely get by. That turns into a nightmarish circle of poverty because once you go over the amount the government provides (but still isn't enough to even get by) you lose those welfare benefits putting you right back where you were in the first place. Hence the "why work when you can go on welfare and get benefits?" attitude and is the cause of the topic. You are penalized for trying make your life better.

We chose to keep the car and slowly starved until our church found out what was going on. Those were some pretty tough years and in all honesty I still have food issues 15 years later as I still think that I need to save the food for my kids and not eat myself. When I do eat, it's almost like eat as much as you can now, because you don't know when you'll eat again.

I don't get how the tax benefits work like EIC other than we qualified for it. The credits were set up for those who don't make enough to get by but getting a huge refund seems wrong as well due to all the credits. I wasn't able to work due to health issues so the child care assistance never came into issue. I always felt that "why work when all my earnings would go to child care?" I want to raise my kids, not the failing day care industry especially after a devastating child protective service case I went through and my kids were forced into day care. I had a really bad reaction to Paxil after being put on it for a couple of weeks and hopefully someone made the phone call out of concern, not out of spite. Once the doc figured out it was the Paxil, everything was fine.

There needs to be a massive overhaul of benefits, taxes, and health care so that everyone pays in and have benefits, but I don't have the answers. No one group of people should carry the burden of caring for the poor nor should you be penalized for being wealthy. In some ways it doesn't seem fair that I pay for my medications/doc visits/ER visits while someone else gets it for "free" from my taxes. At the same time, if it wasn't for those systems, many people wouldn't have anything like food and health care. I shudder to think what would happen if I didn't have access to my seizure and bipolar medications.

It truly sucks being underemployed as I'm sure the family you are talking about is in. It turns into a massive poverty cycle that is becoming more and more prevalent as time goes by.