Welfare, wel-"fair"!?!?

[SilentHunter7]

I support welfare, because really, some people really do need it. Sometimes you get dealt a bad hand. Like men who lose their jobs, people who have largely unforeseeable debts arise, or a Widow with children and the father had no life insurance. These are the people we should be helping.

Unfortunately, otherwise able-bodied people with no real expenses outside of Food and utilities, use welfare as a way to get paid for not working.

Personally, I think they should make welfare fraud a capital offense.
Also, I think that if you have a kid after 9 months of receiving your first welfare benefit package, you should get them cut, and your children taken by Social Services.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Employ them instead of giving hand outs.

At the end of the day unless you're putting unemployed people to work at things normally done by volunteers you're taking jobs away from other people. I'm pretty sure people would get pissy about having their jobs taken away and being replaced with people on the dole.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I support welfare, though seeing as I'm on a disability pension I'd be a massive fucking hypocrit to be against it.

Sure, people game the system as well as outright abusing it but they're not as common (in Australia, anyway) as a lot of the anti-Welfare rhetoric would have you believe.

Hell, IMO, gaming the system is no different to squeezing every last deduction out of your tax returns.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Such a shame if you have triplets isn't it?

Well they'd probably let you keep one of them.

 

[major28]

Welfare is good.

End of story.

This, but there must be some limits.

Like maybe there should be some kind of Welfare Police/Inspectors that frequently come by your residence and make sure that you're not cheating them.

couldnt agree more i also think that there should be a cap oon how much people recieve per handi cap/ illness for instance if 200 people have liver cancer and there is a cap of 500000 for liver cancer. so now no one victim can recieve more than 2500 $ (this was a bad example but you get the point)

 

[major28]

I support welfare, because really, some people really do need it. Sometimes you get dealt a bad hand. Like men who lose their jobs, people who have largely unforeseeable debts arise, or a Widow with children and the father had no life insurance. These are the people we should be helping.

Unfortunately, otherwise able-bodied people with no real expenses outside of Food and utilities, use welfare as a way to get paid for not working.

Personally, I think they should make welfare fraud a capital offense.
Also, I think that if you have a kid after 9 months of receiving your first welfare benefit package, you should get them cut, and your children taken by Social Services.

ok taking somebodies child mabey crossing the line but it may be worth it to see the tangent glen beck goes on... oh beck is crazy

 

[atalanta]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. The bill is aimed to keep people from having MORE kids after you're already on welfare. So if you have 1 child and need assistance then you can qualify for welfare. But if you're already on welfare and have another child then your benefits get cut in half. And if you have a 3rd child while you're on welfare, then you're cut off. Makes sense. Why should people be having more kids that they can't support?

Yeah, that's still wildly fucked up.

A hypothetical situation: she's married. They use birth control, but a condom tears, and she hasn't been able to get access to hormonal birth control for months now. She either tries to get an abortion but can't (she's railroaded, she lives in South Dakota, Medicaid won't cover it*, what have you) or won't (she's firmly, passionately religious and thinks getting an abortion is tantamount to murder). So I guess that dumb whore deserves to starve to death, right?

Or hey, here's another one: she's a single mom. She's so busy between trying to care for her daughter and trying to make ends meet that she hasn't so much as looked at a man in years. On her way back from work (she takes the bus; she can't afford a car), someone drags her into the bushes and rapes her.

I know people who have gotten pregnant while on welfare. You think they didn't agonise over whether or not to have the child, or give it up for adoption, or whether or not they should abort? Do you really think poor people are gleefully pumping out babies left and right, cackling over the tears of the rich dudes they're swindling? Or, for that matter, that parents only think of their children as bargaining chips for a little extra dosh? Furthermore, what about their kids? Even if their mother is some kind of deranged harpy, (somewhat ineffectively) striking back against society using solely her uterus, do they deserve to be malnourished and diseased because of the circumstances of their birth?

Yes, some parents abuse the system, and yes, some parents drink away the money that was supposed to go to their kids, or beat them, or rape them, or force them into prostitution -- I'm not arguing that any of that doesn't happen. I'm saying that it's almost certainly the exception, not the norm, and that removing support from people who desperately need it, especially when there are kids involved, is wrong and cruel.

(*On abortion availability: Medicaid funding varies from state to state. Federal standard says Medicaid must fund abortions in the case of rape, incest, or when the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother; some states use their own funds to cover other reasons. Here's the full list. [http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparetable.jsp?cat=10&ind=458])

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I'm saying that it's almost certainly the exception, not the norm, and that removing support from people who desperately need it, especially when there are kids involved, is wrong and cruel.

Your POV is coloured by your obvious bias in seeing welfare recipients as people in all their varieties rather than a horde of faceless, cackling drugfiends looking to cheat the system as if they were defence contractors.

 

[atalanta]

I'm saying that it's almost certainly the exception, not the norm, and that removing support from people who desperately need it, especially when there are kids involved, is wrong and cruel.

Your POV is coloured by your obvious bias in seeing welfare recipients as people in all their varieties rather than a horde of faceless, cackling drugfiends looking to cheat the system as if they were defence contractors.

j_j damn my bleeding-heart liberal blinders!

 

[Tassadar_waz_framed]

I think its alittle ridiculous to ask people to give up money that they have busted their asses for to give to some pregnant welfare mom who hasnt worked a day in 4 or 5 GENERATIONS.

I'll admit that there are people who genuinely need it but they could just as easily be served by charity organizations like the salvation army or Red Cross, and they [Salvation army] are a hell of a lot better at stamping out abuses and determining who actually needs the money than uncle sam could ever hope to be.

And lets think about efficiency real quick, it takes people to redistribute that income to people who need it or don't. That means we are actually paying people to giv e people other people's money. We all joke about how the government can't do anything effectively why do we ask them to do stuff that impacts our lives so heavily? Shift half the cash being payed for welfare right now to charities and put the rest towards paying off the F@#$-ing deficit and i think we would genuinely be in a better place. Then again that wont happen because its an intelligent idea and politicians are allergic to those.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

I prefer a capitalist system with welfare to a capitalist system without welfare. Capitalism isn't really properly geared to providing welfare, and I think that eventually we'll either need to go socialist (which I support) or tell everyone to piss off and fend for themselves, but for the time being the welfare system works alright.

 

[octafish]

If liberals had the fucking balls to do anything rather than trying to appease everyone this country would have wel"fair" Focus should be on cutting the fraud out of welfare and actually getting the money to people that need it. For once I wish dems would nominate a guy I could vote for out of support rather to just keep out greedy conservatives. We need more FDRs and Bill Clintons (minus the BJs in office)

Maybe a couple of LBJs?

 

[Worgen]

welfare is as good to what you think about socialism....not that I'm implying that the U.S is socialist however welfare has it's socialistic traits

the us is socialist, all western nations are to some extent, really they have to be

 

[Ekibiogami]

I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Benjamin Franklin. Nuff said.

 

[Rishtaka]

I forget which state this happened in, but, the governor of a state wanted to pass a bill.
You have 1 child, you can get welfare.
You have another child your benefits get cut in half.
You have a 3rd child, you lose your benefits entirely.
I think it's brilliant.

Personally I think they should throw in a half price sterilisation/free sterilisation at 2/3 as an addition. So yeah, you lose your money, but on the upside, you can make sure it never happens again.

 

[AlphaOmega]

Welfare is one of the best human inventions, it makes it so that people that are less capable have a shot at a decent life at a very low (you won't even feel it under normal circumstances) cost.
There are a lot of unemployed people, not by choice. or people that are mentally or physically not 100% that can use it.


The problem lies in the abuse of the system by both receivers and the people that are in charge of it.

 

[AlphaOmega]

I'm sorry. But I couldn't resist after reading "wel-fair" in the title.

I had not even one little job and my mom got all scared and said "you're signing papers and going on welfare!"

You sir, Earn this:

 

[Thedutchjelle]

Welfare is when unemployed people get money 'for free' , right?

I'm fine with it. The rules to recieve such a 'salary' here in the Netherlands are pretty strict. You have register yourself at a national institution for unemployed people (not sure how to describe it), you've to make an attempt to apply for a job/position every week, you must be available within 2 weeks if the insitution found a job for you. Also, if it's the person's fault he got fired, he won't get welfare money.

The size of the 'welfare income' a person gets decreases over time. Around 3 years, the rules for Welfare money no longer apply (the person no longer has to make an attempt to search a job) but his income isn't really awesome anymore. But you'll always get _some_ money, as we don't really like people starving/being homeless because they don't have an income anymore.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

charity organizations like the salvation army

The Salvation Army is not a charity organisation. It's a church that does a lot of charitable work. Most of the time they keep the religious parts and the charity parts seperate insofar as operations go but sometimes a local operation ends up in the hands of a zealous fuckwit and Jesus starts being pushed in people's faces.

Also, charity organisations tend not to have mottos saying "Blood and Fire".

 

[Valksy]

Having had something of a mental breakdown (hallucinations..wheeee!!) for the third time I'm currently on the modern variant of incapacity benefit in the UK. Getting taken seriously was a mission, it took me more than six months and having to go to a tribunal in front of a judge (hearing lasted long enough for me and my cheering section of friends to confirm our names, judge apologised and told me that I had won my case - took less than 60 seconds).

I really cannot figure out how people seem to end up on 30-40k a year unless they are profoundly dishonest - or are popping out kids like the woman's womb is a freakin clown car.

Now the thing is this - I worked for many years and paid in to my "national insurance" fund as a cushion against exactly what happened to me so I refuse to feel guilt or shame at where I have ended up (although the media tries to tell me that I should). I do understand why people in the UK are becoming frustrated by supporting those who have never worked and probably never will and are content to sit back and take benefit, that does need to be looked at more closely.