We have an enormous unemployment problem. Is it that they were good useful citizens until the company outsourced their jobs. Then they are suddenly big drains?
In 2001 an act was passed limiting recipients of welfare to a 5 year lifetime limit.
They have to take work training classes
They are easily terminated from the program.
There are not lifetime Americans living on the dole. When Reagan talked about welfare queens, the NYT spent 6 months trying to find some to make the case. They failed. But he was successful at demonizing the poor. That has persisted, we still enjoy slamming those who are in trouble.
I realize that’s the question you’re asking. I’m asking what a tentative answer to your own question would be.
Good grief, I think I’ve entered the pedantic board. No I don’t know, I’m happy if you tell me it’s different. I’m starting to wish I hadn’t asked any questions why is everyone so aggressive today?
Are there no people it the US who have been brought up on welfare and who know no different? I know there is a limit to welfare, so how do people survive after their two years (or whatever it is) are up?
I’m not pushing a right-wing agenda, I’m wondering if the right-wingers have some truth on some of the things they say.
It’s very tough, I think you can’t say ‘nothing should be done’, at least not in all situations. I guess help to find jobs (I know it’s tough in current times, but when there are jobs), education and training programs. I really don’t know, I’m not sure that cutting off welfare is a good solution though. That’s why I want to hear other people’s ideas.
A report came out this week saying 1 in 6 Americans are living in poverty. 46.2 million Americans. Lots of them are children who are in food risk. We did not develop a bunch of people who will not work. We just ended millions of jobs. I suppose you can figure out how many can’t pay for health insurance. We need jobs here and now.
Okay, some facts, when Reagan brought it up it wasn’t true. Has anything changed since then? I’ve seen people on TV, US citizens, who seem to spend their lives drinking, fighting and just generally causing trouble. For all I know 80% of the population is like this (does seem unlikely though). Are you saying they don’t actually exist?
Well, just to be anecdotal, there are six people in my immediate family. One is retired, one is on disability, and one is an infant. The other three are currently working and paying taxes. Of course, this could change in a year. If I retire and my daughter decides to have another child, there will be only ONE of us working for a while. But don’t you dare call any of us useless!! Especially not the baby!
Now, if I expand the field to some relatives living out west, there are another eight people. Two of them are retired, three are children, two are working and one is a completely useless arrogant deadbeat who doesn’t pay child support and thinks the world owes him a living.
So my total count is one worthless bum, three retirees, one disabled, four children and five working men and women.
How the heck do you define “useless,” anyway? A couple of folks are labelling certain political groups “useless,” but I hope that’s simply being facetious.
ETA: I think our familiy’s one arrogant deadbeat is the one who would show up on TV. Just in case you haven’t been told this before, most TV shows are not documentaries. If you had evaluated the country based on TV shows in the 1950s you would have believed that the nation consisted mostly of white middle-class families and a couple of “colored” maids and gardeners. Women stayed home and cleaned house while wearing high heels and pearl necklaces.
It’s a cheap trick to try to pretend to present yourself as the opposite of your real political beliefs. “Look at me, I’m a right wing conservative, and I’m starting to agree with people who say we should smash the state and put the means of production in the hands of the proletariat.”
It is shocking, when we see what real poverty is in the US compared to poverty here in the UK (not to take anything away from the poor here, but boy it gets very bad in the US).
I know Obama said something about a jobs plan, has there been any details yet? Does it sound reasonable to anyone?
As an American writing to a Brit, I don’t think I could come up with more useless people in our society than your royal family. I’d rather pay for the local mentally ill homeless guy to have a place not to freeze to death than pay for a group of inbred ninnies.
Well I agree, not everyone who is poor or who is on welfare is ‘useless’, of course not. However I suspect most of us know at least one ‘useless’ person. There are people who think the world owes them and they don’t have to give anything back. I’m wondering how many of these there are. Not counting the children, your statistic is 1 in 9 (I think), that’s a pretty big, if inaccurate, percentage I’d say.
I can’t disagree with you there, but it’s not really germane to the op. Although I would say that your system of government is not exactly proving itself so brilliant at the moment
This thread is all over the place. What exactly is your definition of useless?
Math fail, it was 1 in 14 and nothing the poster said indicated that the deadbeat was getting money from the state, instead it sounded like he was sponging off other people, including his own family.
edited to add: I just saw your latest post, enjoy your thread. I hereby withdraw my question and am done with this thread.
There are no useless people in America. Its not the job of the citizens to be useful to the government, it is the job of government to be useful to the people. We aren’t ants with everyone working for the hive mind. Nobody (except for a politicians) is “taking” from the government. The government offers, people accept. If the point was for each person to get only as much in the world as they have personally earned the we can do without government all together.
Both my dad and my father-in-law served in the military and later worked for the government. Both have sat on their asses for the last 30 years collecting pensions and doing no useful task for the nation. Are they useless? They are if you believe the goal of every citizen is to continually advance some government agenda. I believe they made a deal with the government and are now collecting their side of the bargain, nothing more. Same with my wife’s deadbeat ex. He didn’t sneak into the treasury and take the money he gets, it was freely given by the government for some reason.
Unless the state or federal government is working that guy like a slave, then yeah, they’re pretty damn useless to normal society.
I think the OP’s aiming at people like a certain guy I know, named “Geraldo” who shacked up with one of my wife’s friends for a while.
Geraldo lives in a central Texas city. Geraldo is profoundly dumb. Maybe not mentally retarded, but really not a bright guy. He’s never had a real, full time job, has 3 kids out of wedlock, owes tens of thousands in child support that he has no intention of repaying, is occasionally violent, and seems to leech off everyone who’ll let him.
He sponges off of the public services when he can, for health care and things like that where he can, but because he doesn’t want to pay his child support back, he’s not paying any taxes, and as far as I know, isn’t counted in the census either, not having a permanent abode. He’s also a somewhat habitual cocaine user, and chain smoker.
Geraldo’s dumb-ass children actively game the WIC and food stamp programs, and take half-assed care of his (again) illegitimate grandchildren, as well as steal from everyone they seem to come into contact with.
Geraldo and his family definitely qualify as useless in my book. If they were suddenly teleported 200 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, the city and state would be better off, and I wouldn’t shed a tear either.
If only there was some sort of solution for all this societal dead weight in the US I keep hearing about. I mean - World’s Wealthiest Nation and all that, “Oooo-Rah!”, and yet all these parasites keep dragging the Good Ship Liberty down. They must keep popping up like toadstools in the forest.
“Are there more ‘useless’ people now than ever before in history?” I don’t know, have the priesthood and the career politicians grown as a class lately?
Okay, sorry everyone, I give up. I didn’t mean it the way everyone seems to have taken it, and I’m guess I’m not expressing myself well. It seems that either there are no ‘useless’ people, or half the population. I’ll try harder next time I post, sorry for wasting your time.
There certainly are useless people. The problem is that there’s no good definition for useless that won’t trap some useful people, and no good remedy for a liberal democracy that “solves” this problem without creating numerous new problems.
What field are you in that it’s that hard to get employees?
We know that his plan is held together with a nasty looking paperclip, which according to some folks, makes his entire plan useless.