# Less welfare= Less poor? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 9, 2005, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771 "2005-09-09T02:48:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Alice\_The\_Goon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Alice\_The\_Goon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alice_The_Goon)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/41 "2005-09-16T05:39:20Z")
> [@OliverTwistofLime](#): > > In my opinion, after one or two children at most…if one cannot afford to take care of additional children, she should not have any. > > It’s very disturbing to see a pregnant female on welfare walking with a stroller with her 18 mo. old and her 3 and 5 year old walking aside her. And you can tell she’s on welfare… how? Does she have a scarlett W on her shirt? Can anyone tell me what, if any, states still allow people to receive welfare indefintely? It’s been a full 10 years since welfare reform first started. I find it hard to believe that there’s still such a thing as “welfare witches”, but I could be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/42 "2005-09-16T21:32:12Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > Middle class families may, possibly, get more indirect government benefits. You assume that: 1) A family makes enough to benefit from a tax cut. 2) That the benefits middle class people receive are anything comparable to the benefits that someone on welfare receives. > > Middle class means you have a fairly comfortable life. Taking $4,850 off the taxable income for a middle class family is a slight increase in their tax return, probably on the order of a couple hundred dollars or so per year, depending on income. Ninety dollars a month for a welfare recipient is usually a large increase in income. Some of the families I knew at the program had incomes of less than $400 a month. Getting a 20% raise every time they had a kid would probably make a difference in the middle class birth rate. Factor in health care costs (free on welfare, costs you if you’re working) and related costs with raising children and the benefits middle class families receive are basically cancelled out, in my opinion. > > My dad’s check took a $400+ monthly hit just providing insurance for the family. That was about 20% or so of his monthly income. My mother was self-employed. Ever look at the taxes for that? Not pretty, and you don’t get any benefits like insurance unless you pay for them yourself. Sure, my mom and dad made enough for us to be comfortable, eventually, but they did it by working their asses off. Both of them were either at work or in transit for about 12 hours out of every day, and my mother still had to do the bookkeeping when she wasn’t at the shop. Our income almost doubled in 10 years, from near-poverty to lower middle class. Whoopee. When my mother got cancer, guess what, half our income disappeared, and worse than that we ended up having to sell the business at a loss, still owing money in some cases. Back to being poor again. > > You’re right in saying that middle class families do receive benefits, but I don’t see that as any kind of a factor in having children for someone with a solid middle class income. You’re also looking at a completely different demographic. To be more fair, compare it to one of the working poor families who don’t make enough money for tax benefits to mean anything at all, but who don’t qualify for government assistance. They would probably agonize over having another child because it would mean major changes in their lives. For a welfare recipient, there’s not a really big change in lifestyle and it’s not a big deal because most of the real immediate costs of child care are handled by the government. You don’t have to worry as much about food, housing, or health care because all of that is provided. > > I’m sorry, but I just don’t think the situations are comparable at all. It costs way more than $90/month to raise a kid and I doubt many people would have one to make $500/month instead of $400. And the $4850 comes to more than a few hundred dollars a year. $2400 of that was a tax credit, which is different than a deduction. The middle class get more breaks for having kids than the poor. I do not think the portrayal you have of welfare is accurate for more than a minority of people who use the system. There are abuses of the educational system too, tons of people get degrees and never use them but we don’t abandon the educational system. ---
**Author:** ![JohnBckWLD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/43 "2005-09-16T21:52:44Z")
For every working poor person you can find, I’ll show you one who makes part of their living under the proverbial table. The major problem with the ‘working poor’ classification is the fact the statistics don’t factor in the portion of people’s wages paid in cash. Laborers Light Construction The Restaurant Business Private Child-Care Givers Illegal activities etc. etc. The list goes on and on. When you factor in the underground economy, the level of poverty and stated earnings of alot of (lower, middle and upper class) people isn’t what the stats seem to say ---
**Author:** ![OliverTwistofLime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b487fb/32.png) [@OliverTwistofLime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OliverTwistofLime)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/44 "2005-09-17T04:15:57Z")
> [@JohnBckWLD](#): > > When you factor in the underground economy, the level of poverty and stated earnings of alot of (lower, middle and upper class) people isn’t what the stats seem to say Excellent point…and those of us who are not in the poverty level class contribute to the underground economy by paying contractors, workmen, gardeners, laborers under the table…the income isn’t declared…no taxes are paid. The underground economy definitely interferes with the proper report of statistical analysis of the topic we are discussing in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/45 "2005-09-17T14:17:39Z")
> [@OliverTwistofLime](#): > > In my opinion, after one or two children at most…if one cannot afford to take care of additional children, she should not have any. > > It’s very disturbing to see a pregnant female on welfare walking with a stroller with her 18 mo. old and her 3 and 5 year old walking aside her. You know there are many religions that forbid the use of birth controll for any reason. How do you propose to suspend religious freedom to save money on welfare? ---
**Author:** ![OliverTwistofLime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b487fb/32.png) [@OliverTwistofLime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OliverTwistofLime)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/46 "2005-09-17T16:17:26Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > You know there are many religions that forbid the use of birth controll for any reason. How do you propose to suspend religious freedom to save money on welfare? As you know, there were until recently religions in this world of ours who believed in human sacrifice as a tribute to their God…Religious freedom is wonderful but when following same causes harm to other individuals, then I think blind following the religious dictum is wrong. I do not want to help pay for the 8th child of a woman on welfare who had all her kids because of her religious beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/47 "2005-09-17T16:26:08Z")
> [@OliverTwistofLime](#): > > As you know, there were until recently religions in this world of ours who believed in human sacrifice as a tribute to their God…Religious freedom is wonderful but when following same causes harm to other individuals, then I think blind following the religious dictum is wrong. I do not want to help pay for the 8th child of a woman on welfare who had all her kids because of her religious beliefs. That doesn’t happen very often though. That is very very rare. [http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/ofa/t03.htm](http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/ofa/t03.htm) 90% of AFDC families are 4 people or less. So even if a tiny minority have more than 4 people, so what? There is corruption in all aspects of government. The military spends $100 on toilet seats and people go to college and drop out, but nobody calls for ending funding for the military and college. ---
**Author:** ![zenith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zenith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zenith)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2005, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/48 "2005-09-18T02:55:50Z")
I’ve always lived in a house whose mortgage interest payments were not sufficient to put me into itemized deductions. Even when I had to foot about $4500 in uninsured medical costs when my wife got cancer, I couldn’t itemize due to the bills’ not being all incurred in the same tax year. When the plant where I had worked for 24 years closed, I asked about unemployment and was told to come back in 12 weeks because my gross severance pay amounted to 12 weeks of gross pay. When I reminded them that, since the state and federal tax codes regard severance as a “bonus”, I was really getting about 7 weeks normal take-home, I was told, in so many words, to move along and let the next person in line be abused by the system. I couldn’t get food stamps because food stamp recipients could only own one car and that one car couldn’t have a book value of over $4700. I was expected to go to any job interview Nebraska Workfarce Development sent me to ( or I couldn’t eventually collect unemployment ), but I wasn’t allowed a decent-enough car to get me to interviews as far away as 150 miles round- trip and to allow me to reliably reach work every day should one of the interviews pan out. And what did my car have to do with whether or not I needed to eat, anyway? I said to Hell with it and took the first job I could get. I never got any of that “social safety net”. Less welfare didn’t equal less poverty for me. ---
**Author:** ![SnakesCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4af34b/32.png) [@SnakesCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnakesCatLady)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2005, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/49 "2005-09-18T04:09:40Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > You know there are many religions that forbid the use of birth controll for any reason. How do you propose to suspend religious freedom to save money on welfare? I don’t propose to suspend religous freedom. If you can’t feed another baby, keep your legs closed. You choose to follow that religion.\* If it doesn’t feed your children, don’t expect anyone else to. - Which is why, when I was seeking my spiritial home, I was totally dumbfounded that the Catholic Church would try to enforce their teachings against birth control in countries where the women could’t feed the children they already had, and would lose the men who were their (and their childrens) sole source of support if they denied them sex. ---
**Author:** ![unophobia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/41988e/32.png) [@unophobia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unophobia)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2005, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/50 "2005-09-18T06:09:45Z")
To hell with social welfare!! What I really want is corporate welfare! What? You mean I have to have a corporation? Aww shucks. ---
**Author:** ![OliverTwistofLime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b487fb/32.png) [@OliverTwistofLime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OliverTwistofLime)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2005, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/51 "2005-09-18T06:35:12Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > The military spends $100 on toilet seats and people go to college and drop out, but nobody calls for ending funding for the military and college. Wesley, show me a poster in this thread who called for ending funding for welfare. Corruption involving other issues should be a separate thread. This one is about welfare. I am saying that the system is fraught with abuse and corruption and needs to be overhauled badly…There are posters in this thread that got screwed royally by the welfare system when they were attempting to find work. Why should some illegal aliens receive health and medical benefits at the expense of citizens of the US who are truly deserving? You seem to discount the fraud and abuse in the system…billions, yes, billions of dollars go for fraud and abuse in the welfare system ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2005, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771/52 "2005-09-18T14:29:41Z")
I don’t think anybody did. But they pointed out minor discrepencies in welfare and acted like the entire system was corrupt. As the charts I listed show the vast majority of AFDC families consist of five people or less, roughly 87% consist of five people or less (that first chart just showed dependents, not total household) [http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/ofa/t01.htm](http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/ofa/t01.htm) Billions go to the welfare system, but billions are spent on people who go to college to study subjects they’ll never use to get a job (music theory, philosophy) or who go to college for two years and then drop out as college graduation rates only hover at about 50-60%. However this doesn’t lead to the same level of outrage that welfare abuses do for some reason. I have no problem with the social welfare system. If anything it needs to be dramatically expanded to include the working poor. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/less-welfare-less-poor/320771.md?page=2)