Um…
Way to go on avoiding intentionally inflammatory terms and sticking to a factual rather than emotional basis. And you did an especially good job of correctly characterizing my position. Go crack whores!
Seriously, I’m done. Feel free to declare victory if you like.
All,
I am going to be fairly busy for tonight at least and maybe the next couple of days as well, but I will respond, please bear with me.
Kimstu,
Excuse my ignorance, maybe you know and can save me the trouble of looking it up. TANF caps don’t apply to things like WIC, SSI or food stamps, do they? I don’t think so, but I may be wrong.
Braniac,
Now do you see how ridiculous exaggerations derail a discussion? If you want to talk, lets talk, but attempt to discuss what I say, not how you want to characterize it, OK?
Weirddave: TANF caps don’t apply to things like WIC, SSI or food stamps, do they?
No, but those forms of assistance are very limited in the type of support they provide and the qualifying recipients. SSI is specifically for the aged, blind, and disabled who have little or no income. WIC provides specific kinds of supplemental nutrition to pregnant women and children under five. Food stamps are for the elderly, the disabled, and EMPLOYED people with low incomes and assets; there are time limits to food-stamp benefits for the unemployed.
So none of these programs could accurately be described as a source of long-term support for able-bodied but lazy layabouts who just want to live off the government, which is how many people seem to (incorrectly) imagine welfare recipients. I’m not saying there aren’t a few scam artists who can cheat their way into a comfortable living off government assistance, but the notion of large numbers of able-bodied, working-age people spending their lives indolently being supported by the public dole is a myth.
So the amount of your taxes that actually goes to “supporting deadbeats”, as you were worrying about earlier, is pretty inconsequential. The amount of your taxes that goes to supporting low-income children, elderly, disabled, and temporarily unemployed is more significant (although still probably not as much as you pay for servicing the national debt), but are you really grudging those people a little help?
Good luck with the baby.
Yes, I do see how ridiculous exaggerations derail a discussion. I don’t see where I made them, but if you’re willing to discuss things rationally (in a couple of days) we can try to pick this up again.
The OP describes a single parent who has to work 60-70 hours a week to support her children, and a young girl who can only get an education if she can play basketball.
…and some of you think that what’s wrong with this picture is that there’s too much welfare?
I have no issues with using the system as a stepping stone, but don’t use it as a way of life.
You see it in my area all the time.
I love to see someone get out of a brand new car and pile up on crap in a grocery store and pay with foodstamps.
I did need the system for a while I used it (like a few other in the thread) as a leg up not a lifestyle.
The woman who hit my son a few years ago left me up to my ears in debt. My insurance at my new job hadn’t kicked in yet, and hubby and bio-dad’s insurance fought covering because they wanted for her to pay for it.
And, she should of.
But you see she was on welfare and no lawyer in two states would touch her. Soon after that she got a new car and a new residence.
There are ways around the five year limit.
I could have sued her and gotten a judgement in our favor, but could not afford that because of out of pocket expenses for my sons medical care.
This hasn’t been brought up yet, but in some areas they have something called Promise jobs. Basically in order to get any aid you have to take classes on how to fill out job applications and you have to turn in so many applications in a certain amount of time. Then you have to actually get a job to continue getting benifits.
I was a teenage parent. I had my own apartment finished highschool with two children and most of the time carried two jobs, but always had one job. It was rough.
Similar to another story in this thread. My second childs father had a decent job when I met him but quit shortly after our son was born and never really held a job much after. I busted my butt.
It is sad to see people abuse the system and it is sad that those are the people who’s stories we are most likely to hear. Rarely do we hear the good stuff. Basically it doesn’t sell.
Seriously, we have heard a few success stories here, but would they have made the papers? Just the ones who mess up.
I do not support a life-time ban on people who have commtted welfare fraud. At the same time, however, Kimberley Rogers’ death had nothing to do with a lifetime ban, and in fact she was receiving social benefits at the time of her death.
The sad fact is that she was a forty year old woman with a history of mental problems. She accepted full student loans for several years while studying social services at college. In Ontario, student loans are tied to the welfare rate, so when she also took welfare payments, she was double dipping, and she knew she was double dipping. That led to the fraud conviction for scamming about $33,000.00.
She could have done her time in jail, but she instead asked the court to let her do her time at home. The court let her do this.
At home she continued to receive benefits, less a 10% penalty for the fraud conviction. That still left her with $468.00 per month. She chose to pay $450.00 per month for accomodations, despite living in a city where rooms went for about $200.00 per month. (About three years earlier, I rented out a room in one of the nicest houses in that town for $200.00 per month). Had she chosen to rent for a reasonable amount, just like any other student, she would have been fine financially.
She died from an OD. She did not die from a lack of food or shelter. She did not die from a lack of opportunity to better herself through education or employment.
The sad fact is that mental illness takes lives, and despite the best efforts of communties and social agencies, some people will kill themselves. What Kimberley Rogers did to herself in life and at death had nothing to do with a lifetime welfare ban that in fact had not affected her.
Some people simply can not get by in life. Perhaps mentally or physically ill, perhaps inadequately socialized, perhaps immature, perhaps dumb, perhaps emotionally out of control, perhaps lazy, perhaps unlucky, perhaps poorly educated, perhaps of the wrong social, economic or ethnic background, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps . . . .
There are so many reasons that people need help that no one-size-fits-all solution will solve all, or even most, problems. All social assistance does is provide a necessary stop-gap which helps a great many truly needy people. Unfotunately, some people become dependant on the system, and a few people deliberately abuse the system. A life-time ban or similar draconian restriction may be just for the few that abuse the system, but only creates further stess for the great many who are truly deserving. Instead, I suggest that incremental rewards and penalities be specifically targeted where necessary with a view to getting people productive if possible. This leads to three points:
First, from an ethical position, one should help others to the point that their basic needs are met. Welfare helps as a stop gap, but just as importantly one must address the underlying issues that result in people ending up on welfare.
Second, from a theoretical position, if resources are put into dealing with the underlying issues, then fewer resources will have to be put into welfare and the criminal systems, and more people will be procucitve citizens for greater periods of their lives.
Third, from a practical position, if people’s basic needs are not met, then crime will increase. Might as well pay money into a combination of proactive effort and welare than suffer increased crime and pay even more money into the criminal system.
Can a country function well if there is full (100%) employment, or must there be some level of unemployment so as to provide a flexible labour market?
If it is in the best interest of a country to have some level of unemployment, then should the country as a whole pay for the benefit it receives from having a flexible labour market?
I have a coworker who has a theory (I don’t prescribe to it, but it’s relevant, so I’ll tell it to you):
Every male, upon turning whatever age (he says 18, but since it’s very possbile to have kids before that, perhaps earlier) gets a vasectomy, free of charge from ol’ Uncle Sam. You want it undone so you can have kids? You gots to pay for it yourself. Seem unfair and cruel? Tough shit! Having a kid is a huge responsibility, and you’d better be damn well prepared to go through with it! Plus, if you can afford to have a vasectomy undone, you can afford to have a kid.
Personally, it’s a dumb theory. Would it prevent this sort of thing? Yes, to an extent. However, it’s highly unethical. HIGHLY unethical. Amazingly, HUGELY, unethical. Plus, you make all these teenagers sterile, and suddenly the ones that would normally have the common sense to use a condom, so as not to get pregnant, might no longer use them. This could lead to a huge spread of STD’s. yes, I know plenty of people would still use them to protect from STD’s, but I also know that a lot of people only see pregnancy as the big “uh-oh” of sex, and would gladly not use one if they were sterile.
So, as I said, bad idea. But the underlying concept, trying to ensure a couple is ready to have a kid before they do, is a good one, but unfortunately there’s no practical way to evaluate people as to whether they can have a kid, and it really is there right to have sex and make as many babies as they want to.
Muffin: Can a country function well if there is full (100%) employment, or must there be some level of unemployment so as to provide a flexible labour market?
The latter is what economists seem to think. That’s the principle behind the concept of the “NAIRU”:
In the US, the NAIRU is generally assumed to be somewhere around 5%, though IIRC it dropped below 5% in the late '90s without triggering inflation.
Muffin: If it is in the best interest of a country to have some level of unemployment, then should the country as a whole pay for the benefit it receives from having a flexible labour market?
I think that’s only reasonable. Since federal economic policy is set up to maintain a certain nonzero minimum level of unemployment for the health of the economy as a whole, so that unemployed people will keep putting downward pressure on wages to avoid wage inflation, then I think we’ve got some responsibility to help individuals deal with the consequences of that policy.
That’s scary. I said nearly these same words about fifteen minutes before reading this post.
Somebody needs to stop camping in somebody else’s head!
Hey, I was here first. I have squatter’s rights. 