I think if you truly need it, it's great.Con Carne said:
I think however some people abuse the system by being lazy arseholes and make the people who really do need it look bad, which is a shame!
Welfare, wel-"fair"!?!?
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I think however some people abuse the system by being lazy arseholes and make the people who really do need it look bad, which is a shame!
The system of welfare in of itself is fine, it's a good system to help those who need it. Granted, there are people who abuse the system but that's par for the course with any kind of assistance system. All I can really say is that the government needs to enact new requirements and enfore new regulations to prevent as much abuse.
I work in a hospital, so I see quite a few people on government assistance programs. But I see even more who don't even qualify for those, despite being physically unable to work, or having some other exceptional barrier to them sustaining themselves. Is there abuse to the system? As long as there are people who put "#1 first," of course. But I cannot for even a second imagine living in a country where there wasn't some measure of governmental aide for the poor.
A lot of people like to talk about "stealing" and "forcible redistribution of wealth," which is hilarious to me, as I don't remember the IRS man kicking down my front door and jacking my PS3. The government provides countless services to each and every American citizen, and unless you want to actually pay a subscription fee each month to make sure firefighters and cops take your calls and you can drive on roads, then you need to accept that the government will be taxing you and spending the revenue on programs it deems necessary. When I pay a guy to fix my car, I don't get to tell him where to spend that money. But even more than that, I wonder why there would be such a strenuous objection to tax dollars being put towards helping people become productive members of society and thus generating more tax revenues. Not just welfare, but even proposals to expand public works projects to give unemployed people jobs is demonized. There's a fair argument that such jobs don't last forever, but this ignores the appreciable benefits of holding a job, no matter how short, such as job experience and developing references, as well as possible networking opening up new employment opportunities. A lot of people suggest cutting benefits to encourage self-reliance, which is a good idea, but for two things: 1) a person who refuses to work (like the theoretical abuser, a person able to work but unwilling because of this cushy welfare thing)will continue to refuse to work, even if his lifestyle suffers, because they value their "independence" or whatever you wish to call it more than a working life; 2) have you ever tried to encourage yourself to lose weight by keeping clothes that *used* to fit you? How did that work out for you? Did the pounds melt off, or did you get stressed out, frustrated, and end up gaining more weight, until you threw the old rags out?
Of course there's abuse. But people use guns to rob people, and cars to smuggle drugs. I don't see people crying for the unequivocal, absolute abolishment of the Second Amendment and the highway system due to abuse. What is most troubling to me is not the assault on a program I like, but how it's framed. Quite frankly: most people who complain about abuse and "welfare queens" talk about people living in the city. The "inner city." I've yet to meet a person in real life who, when pressed, wouldn't confess that there was a certain "type" who they thought abuse welfare. A certain color, if you take my meaning. My problem with attacks on welfare is that they tend to be grounded in an attack on minorities. One poster said it, (and to clarify, the post I read was inoffensive, though describing an offensive thing. Not picking a fight with the poster.) that when he applied for welfare, he was told he was too white. The majority of people I meet on government programs are Caucasians, and every single abuser I know (and I know a few) are lily-white products of the good old-fashioned, hard-working, true-American-values-havenin' South. If you don't like welfare, fine, it's a valid topic of public discussion. But let's not have some coded, proxy debate about what to do about all them colored folks runnin' about.
Some people have asked for numbers in this discussion. I would like to provide a few figures for people who complain about the guvment stealen thurr dollars, asking if they are not entitled to the sweat of their own brow: http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/taxes/p148855.asp
Also, an interesting story on one of the highest-taxed countries on the planet: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123126942
Brotherhood and freedom, comrades.
A lot of people like to talk about "stealing" and "forcible redistribution of wealth," which is hilarious to me, as I don't remember the IRS man kicking down my front door and jacking my PS3. The government provides countless services to each and every American citizen, and unless you want to actually pay a subscription fee each month to make sure firefighters and cops take your calls and you can drive on roads, then you need to accept that the government will be taxing you and spending the revenue on programs it deems necessary. When I pay a guy to fix my car, I don't get to tell him where to spend that money. But even more than that, I wonder why there would be such a strenuous objection to tax dollars being put towards helping people become productive members of society and thus generating more tax revenues. Not just welfare, but even proposals to expand public works projects to give unemployed people jobs is demonized. There's a fair argument that such jobs don't last forever, but this ignores the appreciable benefits of holding a job, no matter how short, such as job experience and developing references, as well as possible networking opening up new employment opportunities. A lot of people suggest cutting benefits to encourage self-reliance, which is a good idea, but for two things: 1) a person who refuses to work (like the theoretical abuser, a person able to work but unwilling because of this cushy welfare thing)will continue to refuse to work, even if his lifestyle suffers, because they value their "independence" or whatever you wish to call it more than a working life; 2) have you ever tried to encourage yourself to lose weight by keeping clothes that *used* to fit you? How did that work out for you? Did the pounds melt off, or did you get stressed out, frustrated, and end up gaining more weight, until you threw the old rags out?
Of course there's abuse. But people use guns to rob people, and cars to smuggle drugs. I don't see people crying for the unequivocal, absolute abolishment of the Second Amendment and the highway system due to abuse. What is most troubling to me is not the assault on a program I like, but how it's framed. Quite frankly: most people who complain about abuse and "welfare queens" talk about people living in the city. The "inner city." I've yet to meet a person in real life who, when pressed, wouldn't confess that there was a certain "type" who they thought abuse welfare. A certain color, if you take my meaning. My problem with attacks on welfare is that they tend to be grounded in an attack on minorities. One poster said it, (and to clarify, the post I read was inoffensive, though describing an offensive thing. Not picking a fight with the poster.) that when he applied for welfare, he was told he was too white. The majority of people I meet on government programs are Caucasians, and every single abuser I know (and I know a few) are lily-white products of the good old-fashioned, hard-working, true-American-values-havenin' South. If you don't like welfare, fine, it's a valid topic of public discussion. But let's not have some coded, proxy debate about what to do about all them colored folks runnin' about.
Some people have asked for numbers in this discussion. I would like to provide a few figures for people who complain about the guvment stealen thurr dollars, asking if they are not entitled to the sweat of their own brow: http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/taxes/p148855.asp
Also, an interesting story on one of the highest-taxed countries on the planet: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123126942
Brotherhood and freedom, comrades.
Well there's only one magical forum on the interwebz where that can happen...The Escapistteh_pwning_dude said:Seems that way. Isn't it weird to have a civilised end to a political discussion on the internet?BlindMessiah94 said:Well I guess we agree to disagree then
Yeah, I think the system is essentially just broken here in Canada. I also don't think the people are the responsibility of the all. Guess I should go make my own country then?
Blatherscythe said:
The only problem being that there's no evidence at all that family size is a product of potential welfare payment. That argument relies on stereotypes, hyperbole, and anti-welfare sentiment.
For instance <url=http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-welfaremothers.htm>note that:
Just one of these studies' findings is that states with higher benefits do not see higher birthrates among its welfare mothers. According to a 1992 study by Child Trends Inc., the five states with the highest birth rates among 18- and 19-year-old women - Arizona, Arkansas, Mississippi, Nevada and New Mexico - all have AFDC benefits below the national median. The four states with the lowest birth rates among 18- and 19-year-old women - Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Vermont - all have AFDC benefits above the national median.
In August 1993, New Jersey became the first state in the union to experiment with the "family cap," a policy of denying additional benefits to welfare mothers who have more children. Conservatives predicted the new policy would curb the rise of single motherhood and illegitimate births, even though other conservatives feared it would drive up the abortion rate.
A more serious, 5-year study is being conducted by Michael Camasso at Rutgers University. The Rutgers study is comparing two groups: mothers who would receive more benefits if they had additional children while on welfare, and those who would be denied increased payments under the family cap. In a letter published by the Washington Post, Camasso wrote: "From August 1993 through July 1994 there is not a statistically significant difference between the birth rates in the experimental and control groups."
A Harvard Law Review article <url=http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlg/vol291/smith.pdf>noted that:
Social science research, however, consistently concludes that women on welfare do not have additional children for the purpose of obtaining an increase in beneªts.33 Family caps, although based on the assumption that benefit levels impact the child-bearing decisions of welfare recipients, were supported by scant data in state AFDC waiver applications: ?Despite the political attractiveness of caps, there is little empirical support for expecting
them to do much beyond reducing costs. By far the dominant conclusion of the literature on welfare effects on fertility is that such influences, though present, are small and uncertain....Mothers who received AFDC for their first child were no more likely to have subsequent children than mothers who did not.
A 1996 literature review concluded that the results of twenty-three studies were mixed "but generally show[ed] no direct relationship between AFDC benefit levels (or differentials) and family size." A 1998 evaluation of the data reported ?there is considerable uncertainty" surrounding the results of the research "because a significant minority of the studies finds no effect at all, because the magnitudes of the estimated effects vary widely, and because there are puzzling and unexplained differences across the studies by race and methodological approach." A 2001 Urban Institute report, documenting attitudes toward welfare rules and
non-marital childbearing among both TANF recipients and non-recipients, discovered that women recently receiving welfare were much less likely to agree with the statement that welfare encourages young women to have children. Moreover, in reality, the median benefit increase for a new child?seventy-one dollars per month - is barely enough to cover the monthly
costs of diapers, formula, and clothing. As one welfare director stated: ""anyone who thinks that a woman goes through nine months of pregnancy, the pain of childbirth and 18 years of rearing a child for $45 more a month . . . has got to be a man.'"
Simply <url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0254/is_n4_v54/ai_17599588/pg_6/?tag=content;col1>put,
For those who believe that the linking of welfare support to the number of children promotes larger family sizes, these statistics provide substantial evidence that having children on welfare is a losing proposition.
Screw the unions. I've been forced into them time and time again and I hate them. Bunch of corrupt bastards.RoboPenguin said:
Anyways, I think if you regulated it the right way it could be completely turned around.
Rather than giving people checks. Send the money to their electric company, landlord, and so on. That's why it's being exploited is because the money that is given out can't be regulated. If you cut the person on Welfare out of it and the money goes straight to the bills necessary to survive then it would cut costs in half.
The only thing that should be given to the person are the food stamps themselves. Want gas to drive around? Get a job. Want new clothes? Get a job. Want a new car? Get a job.
Jobs aren't that hard to come by as people might think. The problem with Welfare is you let the people live without working. So make them work if they want a check.
A good idea gone bad. I can understand and get behind people who need a helping hand during dire situations. But that is all that welfare is supposed to be, a helping hand. People live off of it, and that's unacceptable. In the animal kingdom you die. You have to be able to support yourself. We can refine the system however, let's start with mandatory drug testing. No drugs = welfare money. Any drugs = go make your own way in the world.
Wow, seriously? That's some seriously fucked-up bullshit right there.Con Carne said:
Single mothers with small kids already have the odds stacked against them. It's hard to get a job when you have little kids, so what exactly are they supposed to do? I know someone who was on welfare for this very reason -- she had two young kids, one disabled, her husband walked out, and she couldn't make ends meet on her own. The idea of someone removing even more of her precarious support structure because of some arbitrary need to punish women for making choices they don't approve of is absolutely horrifying to me.
Just out of curiosity, did this guy also claim to be pro-life? Because that would be hysterical, in an incredibly depressing kind of way.
welfare is good to a point. If it gets to a crazy point to where it cannot be sustained (like Greece/Italy) then its a bad thing and it drags down others with it.
My point is, its better to have a country with some welfare to ensure that the populace works to support themselves than it is to cover everything, bankrupting the country and its allies and end up covering nothing.
Its all about balance.
For the record, if Greece survives this, they should thank the citizens of the U.S and Europe every fucking day till the end of the world for our tax dollars bailing them out.
My point is, its better to have a country with some welfare to ensure that the populace works to support themselves than it is to cover everything, bankrupting the country and its allies and end up covering nothing.
Its all about balance.
For the record, if Greece survives this, they should thank the citizens of the U.S and Europe every fucking day till the end of the world for our tax dollars bailing them out.
I sure hope you never go to the hospital, or drive on roads, or call the police/fire department, or go to public school, or eat FDA-approved foods, or travel by plane, or drink tapwater, or breathe air. You're leeching off my tax dollars just as readily as the woman I saw at the supermarket the other day paying with foodstamps.ender214 said:
I am strongly opposed to welfare, for not only is it so frequently abused, it is economically unsound. By giving away welfare grants, the government is rewarding non-productive resources, essentially throwing away money. If a person can't be productive in society or take care of themselves, then they should "exit the market," to continue the economics terms. In other words, they should either mooch off their friends or relatives, or failing that, kill themselves.
Not so fast, cowboy. All those things you mentioned benefit society as a whole. No doubt you've done most of those things, and that's your tax dollars helping the common good. But when we start giving away welfare, the only people benefiting from that are the few who qualify, and it certainly doesn't benefit society. Like I said above, it's rewarding non-productive resources, and it's abused like mad; all it does is hurt society. Why, back in the old days, poor families used to be tight-knit survivors, where both parents would have jobs and the kids would collect cans or sew clothes, just so they could scrape by. Nowadays you can see some lady having five babies from different men, marrying none, and living in presumably better conditions because of the welfare check she gets from each one of her children. And what of those children? They grow up in poverty and without a father, so they turn to each other for support and form gangs, terrorizing the land. Welfare's just a bad scene all around.atalanta said:
For me, I have to go with welfare being something that weakens a society rather then making it stronger. I know it helps, and I can understand that need, but here we are a few decades later and now it's not looked as a last resort for the needy, but as a right. As much as I don't like feeling this way myself, there at least used to be a bit of embarrassment if you couldn't make it on your own that would have many wanting off the system.
Take another bit I'd seen where a city wanted to set up a program where those living in government housing would be required to do some cleaning to the places they lived. This would not only give them a stake in keeping up the place, but also take out the need for a contract to have the property cleaned, saving tax payers money. But no, the ones that lived there made a fuss about how it would be humiliating to have to clean there homes and it was dropped. I don't even see what they are talking about, you mean when I go out and mow my lawn I should be embarrassed that I have to do it?
The entire idea is often called a safety net, unfortunately after the time to toughen up it's no longer that and it's become a hammock.
Take another bit I'd seen where a city wanted to set up a program where those living in government housing would be required to do some cleaning to the places they lived. This would not only give them a stake in keeping up the place, but also take out the need for a contract to have the property cleaned, saving tax payers money. But no, the ones that lived there made a fuss about how it would be humiliating to have to clean there homes and it was dropped. I don't even see what they are talking about, you mean when I go out and mow my lawn I should be embarrassed that I have to do it?
The entire idea is often called a safety net, unfortunately after the time to toughen up it's no longer that and it's become a hammock.
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?atalanta said: