It’s not a perfectly clear article, but what I understood from it was that when she couldn’t find work she started drawing from her social security benefits, but the amount they sent her was always wrong. She never cashed them because from her perspective she would never get the correct amount if she did that.
So she could have been getting all that money over the years, but it would have been the wrong amount. I wonder if it would have been enough to keep her off the street?
She clearly had several options for being not homeless, among them invitations from family. She stubbornly refused until she got her money in the correct quantity.
I suppose her sacrifice highlights the inadequacy of the system…
Sure, but why were the payments so variable? What would have actually happened if she’d cashed the cheques, etc. Sure, this is her story, but it had the potential to be generally informative, rather than specifically narrative.
Also, what do you make of the bit about “all those years in the machine shop and, before that, behind a grocery store cash register”?
Not so much sought after when you’re a 65yo woman, especially if she had specialized skills for a machine that is no longer used.
For about 100 years, corporate America solved this problem with a pension system. Then they discovered they could save money by switching to 401(k), which is never enough to pull anybody out of poverty, but certainly does save money for the company.
