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Welfare: Keep, Reform or End?

Welfare: Keep, Reform or End?

  • Keep it!

    Votes: 15 23.4%
  • Keep it, but it needs SEVERE reform.

    Votes: 33 51.6%
  • End it

    Votes: 9 14.1%
  • Other

    Votes: 7 10.9%

  • Total voters
    64
There has never been and ever be full employment. Get unemployment down to around 4%.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Data ← fer christ's sake click that
don't confuse them with grown up facts, yeah believe it or not we were nearly at 'full employment' back in the days of boosh yanno ancient times
2006 to half way through 2008 and I snapped this pic at the gas pump cuz I knew I'd never see this kinda thang again
(Dec-15th 2008)
2884d3b.jpg
 
No I'd abolish Medicare altogether
you won't have long to wait, I recall reading it on page 792 paragraph 3 in the Affordable Care Act
"forthwith all old folks will be turned into soylent green"
 
you won't have long to wait, I recall reading it on page 792 paragraph 3 in the Affordable Care Act
"forthwith all old folks will be turned into soylent green"
You make that sound like a bad thing?
 
TOL since your return you've lost your spark
we haven't anything to worry about the government will see to all our needs cradle to grave
just get used to the new normal, Ingsoc demands the complete submission – mental, moral and physical
 
Yes, of course, let's throw the disabled under the bus as well.
 
Fair enough, that was an interesting fact you brought up. Well you learn something new every day. :)

Most welfare recipients are not allowed to hold jobs while they are on welfare, if they were than perhaps your argument would be valid.




....but they are encouraged to LOOK for a job, so her point "is" valid..
 
Might as well, they can not be worked to death in the Gulags of Siberia it would cost more to ship them there than it's worth.
 
No I'd abolish Medicare altogether, but I enjoyed your appeal to ridicule.



Ghostly Joe's appeal to ridicule is more clever than this one.

Thank you. Thank you. I do try. :)
 
La di Dah wait till we get towards the end of Obama regime, then take a gander at the pie chart I posted earlier.
Imagine the new slice that will have been added there for the 'affordable care act' the only pie that's growing is the gubberment pie
get yer slice today!
 
Reform It

First of all, most people are unaware that the majority who receive some type of welfare have jobs. And these people desperately need it.
But much can be changed, including many things that should be viewed as a compromise.

#1 Minimum Wage - Raise it significantly which would lower the hell out of the number of people receiving welfare.
A living wage is required. A living wage means a wage that allows an individual to live and feed them self without assistance.
My guess would be $14.00 an hour or so but to be sure it does not sting the economy I would suggest an incremental increase starting at around $10.00
Are you aware that the average age of a fast food worker nation wide is 29? We're not talking about kids here. We're talking about mothers and fathers.

#2 Unemployment - Change it in such a way that it is easy to get for the first 3 months for legit cases. But after the 3rd month the person must report to the state parks for work.
Those who are physically fit will move dirt all day. Those who are not, will have tasks assigned that are suitable to their ability.
Sounds cruel I know, but the only ones that would show up would be the ones that TRULY can not find a job. And they'd find a job very quickly.

#3 Food Stamps - The Food stamp allowance is so low it is almost worthless. A single person gets $150.00 per month. This includes crack heads gaming the system, but it mostly includes people who need it severely. People with mental disabilities, extremely low IQ's, physical handicaps, and etc.
Double the food stamp allowance at the very least. The Food Stamp System is the least abused of all Federal Systems.

#4 Public Housing - Drug test everyone that lives in Public Housing. Create a financial incentive to leave. Have 2 classifications A) People that will always need assistance for a defined reason such as mental or physical disability. B) People who simply have it hard and need help but who should be able to find their feet.
Put a time limit on all class B individuals.
Give all B) individuals a limited free education. Help them with daycare. Help them with transportation. Give them a chance in hell, then give them the boot.

#5 Disability - This one is tricky. For starters, raise the amount of money they are allowed to earn without losing their disability, significantly.
Many people are put on it for life but only needed it for a decade. There has to be a way to do re-evaluations without clogging up the court system and without being unfair.
I just do not know what that way is.

#6 All Welfare Programs - Emphasis should be taken away from payouts and placed on elevating these people. Evaluate them and make the ones who are able, choose between hard physical labor or free technical school. Give them the tools they need to get off welfare rather than simply bitch about their existence and throw money at the problem.
 
Federal Welfare. Should we keep it the way it is, severely reform it or end it completely?

It definitely needs reform. No question about that.

But at the end of the day, it is what it is: it's a system of living without working. There is no way to completely eradicate abuse.

And I think that while we could certainly make it less vulnerable to abuse, we also need to be looking at the cultural mindset that leads people to abuse it as much as they do.

We've had welfare for nearly a century, and it wasn't always like this. We didn't always have an entitlement culture. But it isn't just entitlement that leads people to sit on the dole: working also used to be better-paid, and less abusive towards the employee.

What motivation does someone have to take a job if all they can get is part-time minimum wage, and they won't be able to live on that? Working used to give people a sense of self-sufficiency, because by working, they really COULD afford to live decently. Wages have been stagnant for 30 years, and that is no longer true at the lower-paying end of the spectrum, especially since most new jobs are part-time with no benefits.

If your choices are working 35 hours a week because your employer wants to keep you under the full-time benefits threshold thus getting no health care or sick leave and STILL not being able to pay your rent, or going on welfare and getting health care and being able to pay your rent, what will you choose? It doesn't take an entitled person to decide the former is more beneficial.

Add to that the fact that college has become increasingly unaffordable, whereas formerly it used to be heavily subsidized or even free, and it's harder for people to ever get out of the lower-paying work bracket.

America has the least social mobility of any Western developed nation. Almost half of those born into poverty will never escape. And you have to admit that our society makes it rather hard for them to do so.

Is there an entitlement culture? In some social milieus, yes, there is. There are absolutely segments of society that feel entitled to all the benefits with none of the work.

But there are also a lot of people who feel genuinely empowered by making their own way, and simply can't, or wind up in a situation where they are temporarily disabled from doing so. That's even happened to me. I sustained an injury in the middle of moving cross-country, and since I obviously changed jobs and hadn't yet been there long enough to get medical, I had no insurance. I had to go on state medical assistance for a few months, and if I hadn't had a place to stay while I mended, I would have been on welfare too. And I'm very thankful it exists, and I didn't wind up in thousands of dollars of debt over something I had no control over, but why didn't I have any non-welfare access to medical care to begin with, even with a job? It's the 21st century.

Workers no longer feel as empowered, because working is not rewarding anymore. Workers get paid less, work more hours, get fewer benefits, and have increasingly little bargaining power (say what you like about union abuse -- which does exist and should be addressed -- but unions are directly correlated with worker pay, and were highest during our most prosperous years as a country).

We have had welfare for a long time, but we have not had this problem with abuse for a long time. Something has changed culturally. We can't simply ignore that, in our effort to get people working again.
 
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First of all, most people are unaware that the majority who receive some type of welfare have jobs. And these people desperately need it.

Even relatively high-earners feel they desperately need about 20% more than they have. Desperation is relative. Usually there are alternate options, i.e., "I desperately need X, or else I will decide to do Y."

#1 Minimum Wage - Raise it significantly which would lower the hell out of the number of people receiving welfare.

Only 1.35% of American workers are over 25 years old and receiving minimum wage. Raising it marginally doesn't do anything, and raising it "significantly" eliminates jobs (so it helps a few and hurts a lot). This is a overall a very bad idea, sorry to say.

Are you aware that the average age of a fast food worker nation wide is 29?

No. Cite it. Does this statistic include salaried corporate staff?

Even if this statistic is straightforwardly true, that the average burger flipper/cashier at a fast food retailer is 29, it would tell me something even more alarming, which is that middle-aged people are hoarding the jobs that should be left for teenagers to use to build experience. What position will THEY be in in a few years, having had no opportunity to build some low wage work experience?

We're not talking about kids here. We're talking about mothers and fathers.

Half of the minimum wage work force is under the age of 25. Most minimum wage workers qualify as "never married." Consult the Bureau of Labor Statistics if you don't believe me.
 
So none of you seem to think there's an issue with the fact that ALL of your solutions are to be Enforced by the government?
"insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"
 
It definitely needs reform. No question about that. But at the end of the day, it is what it is: it's a system of living without working. There is no way to completely eradicate abuse.

And I think that while we could certainly make it less vulnerable to abuse, we also need to be looking at the cultural mindset that leads people to abuse it as much as they do.

I don't think the poor are abusing welfare. I think the very nature of welfare is abusive. People simply do what is in their best interests, which for the poor means doing whatever affords them the most for the least effort day-by-day. That is not inherently abuse of the system. It's the system's fault for enabling that behavior, not the people's fault for responding rationally.

There's no "honor system" with welfare. The very essence of the federal government meeting otherwise-autonomous adults' needs is a passively abusive system.

See signature line below:
 
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America has the least social mobility of any Western developed nation.
so I'm going to jump to the conclusion that you will never succeed financially, and it is the 'country' that is to blame for this?
 
What we really should do is let it die a nice painful death. To my glee that will happen and no meaningful reforms will come to pass. The government will just continue to add more and more welfare programs and will never get around to fixing their other pet projects. Still, I would love to just end the little bastards.
 
so I'm going to jump to the conclusion that you will never succeed financially, and it is the 'country' that is to blame for this?

No. I'm doing pretty well, actually.

However, the REASON I'm doing as well as I am is very indicative of exactly what I said.

The reason I am doing well is that although I am 24, I have not yet finished college, because I refuse to go into more than a few thousand in debt.

I am lucky enough to be one of those people who was simply born knowing what I want to do, so I am more skilled simply through practice than most people my age, degree or not. However, it is no sin to not be born knowing what you want to do.

Most of my peers tried to go to college right away, and they were starting with skill development from scratch, because most people don't know what they want to be at 5 years old. So they went into huge amounts of debt in their teens, some to the point where they could not finish, and now they were stuck with the debt, but couldn't get a good enough job to pay it back.

Even those who did finish are being pushed out of entry level jobs by a combination of unpaid internships and older people taking lower-paying jobs that fresh college grads would normally take.

The fact that I didn't try to do college all at once, and that I am "one of those people," is the only thing that has saved me from being in dire straights.

There is no reason that going to college should put you in a worse socio-economic situation than you started, but that is exactly what is happening.
 
oh it will end with a bang not a whimper
 
ok we'll get back together in 30 years and see how you did but I'll be 84 by then so you'll have to remind me OK?

So I assume you have no real argument, and you don't intend to address anything I said.
 
I don't think the poor are abusing welfare. I think the very nature of welfare is abusive. People simply do what is in their best interests, which for the poor means doing whatever affords them the most for the least effort day-by-day. That is not inherently abuse of the system. It's the system's fault for enabling that behavior, not the people's fault for responding rationally.

There's no "honor system" with welfare. The very essence of the federal government meeting otherwise-autonomous adults' needs is a passively abusive system.

See signature line below:

Yes, your right. Thus the rest of my post: most people aren't abusing it, so much as they are deciding in favor of their survival.

But why is working less favorable to so many people's survival? There is a problem in the job market.

I don't think it is wrong for a government to have a system in place to help people stay alive when they have experienced a run of bad luck. And that can happen to even the most motivated us -- see my personal example.

However, in the absence of incentive to work or means to improve ones working prospects, and in the presence of employer abuse as a rule, both working and welfare become disempowering to a great number of people.

Welfare was not always an abuse system. It was a highly effective system that played its small role in America's most prosperous years. If you want to speak of the knowledge and prudence of the poor, perhaps we should stop robbing them of opportunities to get an education, and allowing employers to abuse them.
 
So I assume you have no real argument, and you don't intend to address anything I said.
"America has the least social mobility of any Western developed nation."
that's correct there's nothing I have to talk to you about, perhaps in 30 years but tonight, nope
 
Yes, your right. Thus the rest of my post: most people aren't abusing it, so much as they are deciding in favor of their survival. (fast forward)I don't think it is wrong for a government to have a system in place to help people stay alive when they have experienced a run of bad luck.

Survival is not the next layer down from where we are. Many things would happen before people would suddenly start dying.

The reason welfare has proliferated concurrently with the rich getting immensely richer is because they are using welfare to prolong the status quo and prevent social unrest.

Again I must quote Malthus:

"The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor."
 
oh it will end with a bang not a whimper

Indeed, but that will happen regardless. No matter what we do it will end in violence, but then, it's violent right now. The only difference is the illusion will be torn way and people will see it for what it actually is. Of course, no one will learn a damn thing and they will just rinse and repeat, like usual.
 
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