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Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficient?

What would a welfare that rewards self-sufficiency look like? Select all that apply:

  • 1.) It would not allow recipients more than is needed to survive

    Votes: 5 45.5%

  • 2.) The reward for getting off welfare would be: recipients could afford more than necessities

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • 3.) programs would be temporary (recipients can only be on welfare for a certain period)

    Votes: 7 63.6%

  • 4.) It would grant small monetary payouts for every step forward

    Votes: 5 45.5%

  • 5.) Recipients would experience a sufficiently higher standard of living after getting off welfare

    Votes: 3 27.3%
  • Total voters
    11
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

There's nothing you can do about poverty. By strict neoclassical economic definition, poverty must exist.

People should just be happy they're in American poverty. You should see the stats of what people own when they're below the poverty line.
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

MusicAdventurer said:
One of the big problems people have sited with our current welfare system is that it currently does not provide and incentive for people to get off welfare. How could a welfare system be created so that recipients would be motivated to get off welfare?
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Absodamnlutely.

Lots of people that are living entirely on Welfare can't get any jobs but crappy low-paying jobs. Lots of them figure the pain isn't worth the modest gain, and quit and go back to Welfare.

Well, if you're not entirely unemployable, here's how to incentivize it: Get a job and we'll continue paying you a graduated benefit that will be worth while, on top of your meagre pay... the benefit goes down as your salary goes up, but slowly until you're making good money. We will also pay for you to get job retraining or to go to Tech for a couple years, while paying basic expenses. Actually we could just go with the negative income tax concept and abolish Welfare-as-we-know-it.

But if you're ABLE to be employed and just flat refuse to... well I guess you'll have to move into the Bum Barracks with cots stacked four high, and eat Spam twice a day, 'cuz that's all you get.

2 Trillion in social spending NOW, equivalent to $52,000 per bottom-third household if evenly distributed, but apparently most of it goes to bureaucracy, waste, fraud and corruption... yeah there's plenty of money in the system if only it was reformed and put right.
 
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Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

... or we could just institute the Games for people who could work but won't... Organize them into groups of 64 and pair them off in combat to the death. After six rounds and only one survivor... Winner gets a nice, comfortable annual stipend, cost deferred by selling the videos on Pay Per View. :lamo
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

I'm really against people getting paid to do nothing, and I'm also against leaving people to starve. So my idea is replacing welfare with government jobs. Instead of getting a check every month for doing nothing, welfare recipients could get the equivelent of the welfare money doing a crappy government job with bad benefits and pay. Their work could go towards restoring roads, buildings, schools and libraries instead of being unproductive. The work in the government job would be difficult and low paying ideally so that they are motivated to find other jobs. Just my two cents.

edit: grammar
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

Teh Internets said:
I'm really against people getting paid to do nothing, and I'm also against leaving people to starve. So my idea is replacing welfare with government jobs. Instead of getting a check every month for doing nothing, welfare recipients could get the equivelent of the welfare money doing a crappy government job with bad benefits and pay. Their work could go towards restoring roads, buildings, schools and libraries instead of being unproductive. The work in the government job would be difficult and low paying ideally so that they are motivated to find other jobs. Just my two cents.

edit: grammar
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Not a bad idea, but the unions would crap themselves at the idea of road workers not being part of their union. Something like what happened after the Great Depression would never fly today, unfortunately.
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

The further we get from farming/manufacturing the worse our perspective gets. We are raising an entire society within our society who have no idea what it means to work. Many kids of the well-off have no idea how to work because they were never made to work - everyone knows about the spoiled rich kid. Many kids of the welfare system don't know any other way of life. They're not spoiled, but they're warped. A lot of countries mandate 2 years in the military. Maybe before you get welfare, you should have to serve the country. Safety nets are good. Permanent hammocks are bad. Raising multiple generations on the welfare dole is immoral.

Ever have to borrow/receive money as an adult you didn't earn yourself? Were you embarrassed? That's a good thing. When you start thinking you deserve it, you've lost your conscience. When enough people lose their conscience, society will collapse.
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

GreenvilleGrows said:
Ever have to borrow/receive money as an adult you didn't earn yourself? Were you embarrassed? That's a good thing. When you start thinking you deserve it, you've lost your conscience. When enough people lose their conscience, society will collapse.
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Well, I trust you don't mean getting car loans or mortgages or the like. There's no embarrassment involved in such things, but personal loans from friends and the like, especially if done on a regular basis, should be the basis for shame. However, shame doesn't exist in our society anymore. Everyone is "entitled" to whatever they want and if they don't get it, they whine about how unfair the world is.

Sorry, who ever said life would be fair?
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

Cephus said:
Well, I trust you don't mean getting car loans or mortgages or the like. There's no embarrassment involved in such things, but personal loans from friends and the like, especially if done on a regular basis, should be the basis for shame.QUOTE]

Agreed.

And, speaking of loans and conscience, it amazes me how many people have used other's financial woes to renege on their word.
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Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

Cephus said:
Well, I trust you don't mean getting car loans or mortgages or the like. There's no embarrassment involved in such things, but personal loans from friends and the like, especially if done on a regular basis, should be the basis for shame. However, shame doesn't exist in our society anymore. Everyone is "entitled" to whatever they want and if they don't get it, they whine about how unfair the world is.

Sorry, who ever said life would be fair?
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My X owes me 8k that she had agreed to pay back. She wants to be friends. I told her friends pay their debts or at least make an attempt to before going out and partying.
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

winston53660 said:
My X owes me 8k that she had agreed to pay back. She wants to be friends. I told her friends pay their debts or at least make an attempt to before going out and partying.
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Yeah, I was talking to someone at work on Friday who said when he had money, he always helped his friends out, but when he needed money, nobody was ever around to help him. I told him he ought to remember that next time someone comes to him with their hand out.
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

Gipper said:
There's nothing you can do about poverty. By strict neoclassical economic definition, poverty must exist.

People should just be happy they're in American poverty. You should see the stats of what people own when they're below the poverty line.
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yeah true. It's sad, though.
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

MusicAdventurer said:
One of the big problems people have sited with our current welfare system is that it currently does not provide and incentive for people to get off welfare. How could a welfare system be created so that recipients would be motivated to get off welfare?
Click to expand...

The problem with welfare is that it discourages self-sufficiency.

If a person can goof off, or worse yet, make all the women he can screw pregnant and draw a check, why bother to work and produce anything?

So the solution is obvious: We need to return our country back to what it was before 1913, when there was NO govt-run welfare.

Give a man a fish. He will live for one day. But every day thereafter, he will keep getting in your face to beg for another fish.

Teach a man to fish. he will be able to catch fish on his own and feed himself. And he will also be able to catch some additional fish to sell so he can buy some of the better things in life.
 
Re: Is it possible to create a welfare system that rewards people to be self-sufficie

ronpaulvoter said:
The problem with welfare is that it discourages self-sufficiency.

If a person can goof off, or worse yet, make all the women he can screw pregnant and draw a check, why bother to work and produce anything?

So the solution is obvious: We need to return our country back to what it was before 1913, when there was NO govt-run welfare.

Give a man a fish. He will live for one day. But every day thereafter, he will keep getting in your face to beg for another fish.

Teach a man to fish. he will be able to catch fish on his own and feed himself. And he will also be able to catch some additional fish to sell so he can buy some of the better things in life.
Click to expand...

Cliches? well thanks, but how about some real solutions. I see you forgot to mention cutting of banks and corporations from the government tit. Maybe if businesses were allowed to fail, and regulations existed to insure accountability, the economy wouldn't be in a severe recession.
 
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