# How I think welfare money should be distributed. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 14, 2011, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-think-welfare-money-should-be-distributed/588959 "2011-07-14T02:04:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-think-welfare-money-should-be-distributed/588959/41 "2011-07-15T20:49:16Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > So what? What’s the goal here? _MY_ goal is “spend less of my money on better outcomes for poor citizens”. > > It is not in any way the civic responsibility of a shelter or a social worker to evaluate whether a given recipient is using any substance whatsoever or not, IMHO. > > So in other words, you’d rather we as a nation pay more money to jail them and hospitalize them and bury them, than pay less money to house them and let them live a quiet life with some semblance of dignity. > > That’s what it boils down to. Cutting welfare leads only two places–either you are letting people starve to death in the streets, since we KNOW private charity doesn’t cover everyone; or you are electing to pay MORE money for the benefit of increased suffering. Those are the only two options. People do not magically become responsible just because you cut off the food. No, i live in a nation of laws. I would like the law followed, period. If they cannot, then they need not bother applying for help. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-think-welfare-money-should-be-distributed/588959/42 "2011-07-15T20:55:13Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > No, i live in a nation of laws. I would like the law followed, period. If they cannot, then they need not bother applying for help. IMHO it’s a morally reprehensible view, since it implies you’d’ve been pro-slavery and turned in people on the underground railroad in the 1840s. “They’re breaking the law”, after all. “Scrupulously follow the law” is a very poor way to figure out the right solution to problems. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-think-welfare-money-should-be-distributed/588959/43 "2011-07-15T20:59:05Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > IMHO it’s a morally reprehensible view, since it implies you’d’ve been pro-slavery and turned in people on the underground railroad in the 1840s. “They’re breaking the law”, after all. “Scrupulously follow the law” is a very poor way to figure out the right solution to problems. How did we get from ‘to get welfare, one should follow the law’ to ‘you must be a racist dude who wishes we would go back to the good ole days of slavery’? ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-think-welfare-money-should-be-distributed/588959/44 "2011-07-15T22:26:07Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > How did we get from ‘to get welfare, one should follow the law’ to ‘you must be a racist dude who wishes we would go back to the good ole days of slavery’? I didn’t say racist or that you want to go anywhere. I said, if you REALLY believed that law trumps correct, then you’d have been pro-slavery in 1840. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-think-welfare-money-should-be-distributed/588959/45 "2011-07-16T08:29:57Z")
Note: the law prescribes fines and prison terms and so-on for drug use (or rather, possession). To argue that drug users should not receive welfare is not to argue for the following of laws, but instead for the change of laws and the addition of new punishment. Laws exist to give limited punishments to limited crimes. They do not exist to justify post-legal exclusion from social goods, and that is precisely how you are using them. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-think-welfare-money-should-be-distributed/588959/46 "2011-07-16T09:08:01Z")
With your plan, you encourage ruthless employers to offer jobs with increasingly bad conditions to people who don’t have a choice. Yes, it is against the law, but it exist nonetheless, for instance those employers who prey one illegal immigrants. ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-think-welfare-money-should-be-distributed/588959/47 "2011-07-16T17:00:59Z")
Poor people are just lazy. People who aren’t born into middle class white backgrounds like me should just kill themselves. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-think-welfare-money-should-be-distributed/588959.md?page=2)