Lifestyle on Welfare

Factual Questions
1

I’ve heard a lot of vague tales about how people on welfare or begging for money make a good living. They usually say something like ‘welfare homes have color TVs, satellite dishes, etc.’ or ‘a guy can make more panhandling on the street than in a minimum wage job.’

I’m a bit skeptical of all this. It strikes me that people and the gov’t aren’t really all that generous, and that these stories may be propaganda or to convince voters that welfare should be reduced or eliminated, or urban legends.

What’s the dope on this? How good a living can a welfare recipient possibly have? How much does the gov’t give you? I know this will vary from state to state, but I’m curious.

Thanks,
-Steve

“Heyyyy sexy mama! Wanna kill all humans?” -Bender, Futurama

“Your game shows reward knowledge. Ours punish ignorance!” -The Simpsons

2

There are a couple of different issues, here.

Panhandling is a form of “selling” in which the panhandler “sells” either a good feeling (for having helped an unfortunate), a sense of relief (for having escaped a beggar), or entertainment (depending on how good the spiel is). A good panhandler can probably make much more than the minimum wage. This is not a new idea: Arthur Conan Doyle had a story in which he was hired to find out where a respected man was disapearing each day–he was panhandling; the Three-Penny Opera used the idea of organizing panhandlers as a basic plot device.

On the other hand, the typical strung-out druggie or new-to-the-city runaway kid is not likely to be among the best of panhandlers, and they probably barely get by.

Welfare, as an issue, is pretty large, too. Over two thirds of the families who go onto welfare find themselves there under extraordinary circumstances and work their way off in less than two years. (This is why the recent “Two years and out” rules were so popular among politicians. They knew that, statistically, the majority of the working poor and middle-class (the ones who might vote) who suddenly found themselves looking for assistance were not generally going to be affected by the two-year limit.) Of the remaining third, some number would have gotten off welfare in three years, four years, etc., down to the (unfortunately sizable) group of people who have become an underclass with multiple generations living on welfare. As with any good-sized group, there are people who know how to work the system. Sometimes through “off-record” jobs and sometimes through crimes, many of these people are able to set themselves up in a lifestyle that almost seems affluent. This is not “typical” of those people, but real numbers are hard to find and most people use the numbers that agree with their own expectations.

My wife provided home health care in the inner city for people whose only access to medicine was through Medicaid. She encountered obvious frauds and she encountered people who lived in constant desperation. She did not come home with an accurate census (or even a reliable statistical sampling) of how many people fit into each category.

The problem, at this point, is determining who and how many people are skating by on our tax money. Depending on your personal background and political leanings, you are liable to say talk about the poor, oppressed masses under the heels of the people-grinding capitalist system, or you are liable to talk about Cadillac-driving welfare queens who laugh at honest working folk.

The reality is not at either end of that spectrum. The conservatives have taken great (justified) delight in pointing to states like Wisconsin (which instituted workfare and two-year limits several years before the Feds) and noting that the welfare roles have dropped dramatically and we are not finding the bodies of massive numbers of starvation victims in the streets of Milwaukee and Madison. The liberals (at this point) point to the ever-expanding economy that we are currently experiencing (which allows far more people to find jobs) and note that a hiccup in that progress may, under the new rules, actually cause people to starve.

There is enough propaganda on both sides to choke any honest seeker of truth.

Tom~

3

I checked out the California state budget at the California Budget Project, figuring California is a large state with a substantial urban population.

The top four expenditures for FY 2000-2001:
[ul][li]K-12 Education at 42%[/li][li]Health and Human Services at 27% ($56.6 billion)[/li][li]Higher Education at 13%[/li][li]Corrections at 8%[/ul][/li]
From the The California Department of Finance Health and Human Services Budget:

Of the HHS budget (at $1.1 billion, including local contributions), almost half (40.6%) is spent on Medi-Cal, California’s Medicare supplement program.

If Cecil Adams did not exist, we would be obliged to create Him

4

Panhandling isn’t a real measure of self-sufficiency, in my book; living without a fixed income, address, or employment and the accompanying benefits isn’t my idea of taking good care of yourself. Though I admire Bertholt Brecht and have read the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, I’d need something more than two literary works to even consider tomndebb’s claim that panhandling can pay well.
wevets has got a pretty good grasp on the subject of welfare - the rhetoric spouting from Capitol Hill and the White House is aimed at eroding public resistance to the slashing of benefits. The gristle that particularly sticks in my throat is the rhetoric on ‘Black welfare queens’, indicating that the welfare programs are being sucked dry by hordes of lazy minorities, when in fact the majority of welfare recipients in the United States are white.
I do agree that a large number of people on welfare spend approximately two years on the rolls, due to exceptional circumstances; I disagree with the policy that people whose situations are worse than that should be made to conform to those guidelines.
Wisconsin’s program certainly has not generated a Third World state of things by curtailing its welfare program, but it has had negative effects. On particularly telling example is the rise in clientele at food pantries run by churches and other charities. More and more of this clientele is made up of families, even families where one parent is employed.
tomndebb bring up a salient point, however:

Considering the fact that Congress recently passed a raise in the minimum wage of $1.00 an hour over the next two years but had to tie a $123 billion inheritance tax cut that benefits only the richest 2% of the U.S. population, I’d say it’s pretty easy to spot who that is.

All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…

5

Sorry, that should read:

“…had to tie in a [tax cut] in order to ensure its passing, I’d say…”

All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…

6

This subject is an interesting one for me. Used to believe that welfare was a temporary situation-caused by a job loss, death, etc. However, it seems clear that there are a significant group of recipeints who look on collecting a check AS THEIR “JOB”. I’ve noticed another curious thing-nobody ever points out that welfare itself is only one small part-there are(1) housing grants/vouchers(2)clothing allowances(3) free medical care (4) education grants (5) food stamps (6) free job training, etc. If you add up all of the cash/non-cash benefits, you would find that “welfare” probably offers a higher living standard than many jobs. If this is indeed true, why would we expect any rational person to abandon it?

7

You got the left half correct I think, but we on the right half generally don’t make the argument you attribute to us. We’re more likely to talk about the fact that you get more of what you pay for - pay people to stay home and have kids, and that’s what they’ll do. At least more people would than would be doing it if we weren’t encouraging it.

At the risk of having this tossed into the Great Debates heap, Olentzero, the fact that Congress resisted a hike in the minimum wage while rolling back the estate tax doesn’t IMHO have to do with who gets the money, but with more fundamental issues of right and wrong. I think it’s fundamentally wrong for the government to tell me that if I agree to sweep someone’s floor for fifty cents an hour, and that someone agrees, that our agreement is illegal. It’s none of their *&#@ business. And if I work and make an income to provide for my family, paying tax on that income, it’s fundamentally wrong for the government to confiscate half of it just because I die.

8

As has already been pointed out, the vast majority of welfare recipients are off welfare within two years, and often in much less time.

The people who stay on, often, can’t get off, despite genuine efforts on their part. Let’s say you’re the head of a family out in, I don’t know, Boondocks, Iowa. You aren’t educated past high school, if that. You don’t have any particular skills. Now you’re on welfare. How do you obtain job skills? Where in your town can you get training? And let’s say you do get training-- why should anyone hire you? How do you make a good impression at an interview when new clothes and in some cases basic hygiene are unavailable?

A high percentage (I’ll try to find the exact number) of welfare recipients live in rural areas, belying the ghetto stereotype. Rural America faces some unique issues that are easily overlooked. Family farms are becoming rarer and rarer, and even farm conglomerates are often operating under generations of debt. When farms go under, where do the families go? It costs a hell of a lot of money to move, even if employment is found elsewhere.

And a lot of times, the employment available just doesn’t make ends meet. A job with BP (meat packing) or Wal-Mart or Target pay minimum wage, rarely more, and full-time positions, even at mimimum wage, aren’t always available. So a person can easily be employed and still need welfare assistance.

Anyway I think the instances cited in the OP are extremely rare. Sure, there are people who work the system, but mostly welfare is supporting people who are using it honestly, and are still barely above the poverty line.

“It says, I choo-choo-choose you. And it’s got a picture of a train.”
– Ralph Wiggum

9

Congress didn’t resist the pay raise, Curt. They passed it. But they had to throw in a sop to the absurdly rich in order to get it passed.
And I think it’s fundamentally wrong for someone to offer someone else fifty cents an hour for work when a) the employer makes that much more profit off of his employee’s work by keeping the wage that low, and b) fifty cents an hour is nowhere near enough to live on. Hell, if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be about $15 an hour these days. But I see you’ve boiled the question down to what rights the government has to tell us this or that, so I’m guessing you’re a libertarian, correct? Fundamental conflict of perspective here, and if I kept answering your challenges there’d be no way this thread could escape the Pit. And I prefer not to consign threads to that fate.
Beadalin’s got a good grip on the question, too… I’m firmly in that camp.

All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…

10

It’s been awhile since I’ve studied this subject but at one point it would cost more to track down the few people that work the system than what they were actually taking from aid programs. Some volunteers got together and did stuff like make sure no checks were being mailed to people that were incarcerated and stuff like that. I don’t know if that’s still going on.

It is important to remember that most people that receive aid are in a temporary situation that was not planned and could not have been forseen. Others have permanent disabilities which do not allow them the opportunity to get off of aid. We can’t forget about those people when we are making reforms.

Now, I want to talk about WIC. Why are we paying money for artificial infant milk when the mothers have the good stuff for free? It’s much cheaper to feed mom some food than to buy the infant milk formulas. (I won’t even go into the lower medical costs from a healthier baby) And when did WIC become a dumping ground for surplus agricultural products instead of a nutritional program? Or was it always like that? No, it’s still a great program because it at least tries to teach the recipients about nutrition, but what food the families receive is directly related to what is a surplus at the time. It makes no sense to me. I believe at the moment the items that they are giving away in huge amounts (that no one could possibly use that much of) are cheese and peanut butter. About twenty years ago it was cheese and butter. Now butterfat is more demand.

11

Hey, wevets, if you are talking about Corporate welfare, you’re talking some really big money…

But I suppose it’s social welfare? Alright lets get some real numbers. In 1998 a mother with one child in mid-California got $479.00
cash & about $60.00 in food stamps. That’s all. The rent for a one bedroom in that area, about $600.00. PG&E about $40.00 a month.

By comparsion, a person on a min wage job at $5.25 an hour would make about $850.00 per month & would pay taxes; but get most of that back as a refund.

A deaf person selling cards, ‘Im deaf, Im selling this card …’ can take in about $1,500 -$2000 per month in a major area, like SF or SD.

12

I think that probably most welfare recipients are actually foreign agents attempting to sap the will of the American people… No cites, but I think I recall reading this in “American Nutjob” sometime in the '80s

My point is that if you’re making a point about what’s actually happening (e.g. “If you add up all of the cash/non-cash benefits, you would find that “welfare” probably offers a higher living standard than many jobs”) then you need to support your assertion.

Cites please!

If Cecil Adams did not exist, we would be obliged to create Him.

13

In some cases, people can create a pretty good lifestyle for themselves by knowing how to take advantage of all the various programs available, ‘double dipping’ into two programs that offer the same benefits (i.e. getting food stamps, then collecting free food from charitable organizations, subscribing to child-nutrition programs, etc.).

Some areas have loopholes that let people essentially get paid twice for the same hardship (i.e. a free lunch program for the kids, plus a food subsidy that includes the cost of kid’s lunch). Rent subsidies add to the effective income, although they aren’t shown as such in the figures you see for how much welfare recipients earn. Welfare recipients often get other subsidies or services that add up to a LOT of money. Free bus passes, medical care, clothing from Goodwill or the Salvation Army, free legal services, free education or employment training programs, etc.

The catch to all this is that a lot of people who are on welfare are on it because they lack precisely those skills that would allow them to figure all this out and take advantage of even all the legitimate programs available to them, let alone to figure out how to scam all the other ones.

On the other hand, if you’re a low-income working person supporting a family on $15/hr, your standard of living may be lower than a welfare recipient after you pay for the cost of employment, health care, job training, transportation, taxes, etc.

14

The argument I had heard for folks that can’t get off welfare revolved around child care. Say you have two young kids, and try to get a straight job working at Bob’s Burgers. Bob’s pays $7.00/hr, so that’s $56/day before taxes. My guess is that child care for two young kids for 8-9 hours leaves very little extra (if any) for rent, food, and so on. Plus, Bob’s might not have as good a medical care program as the gov’t is willing to shell out for the disadvantaged. And of course, transportation-even the city bus isn’t free.

Does this jibe with other folks’ perceptions?

“This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”

15

Well, I did have to quit a job that I enjoyed (minimum wage) after my daughter was born because I couldn’t afford childcare. Luckily my husband had a good job with insurance and everything. We figured it out after 3 months and I was making $10 a month after gas and childcare.

16

If the government paid for abortions, then there would be fewer children for people to pay for out of their income. I’m not saying that people on welfare should be forced to abort, but having the option would help those who would rather not have kids.

Yes, I know abstinence is a good way not to get pregnant or to get someone pregnant; but I think most people would prefer not to practice it. I think it would be cheaper for the government to subsidize abortion-on-demand than it would be to support a child for 18 years of school, medical care, etc.

“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry

Are you a turtle?

17

Well, getting away from the political debates, you might want to check out this link: http://www.pbs.org/weblab/needcom/focusgroup/
which will have more opinions on beggars and panhandlers (from both actual panhandlers and from typical net folk looking to babble about something) than any one man could ever want to read.

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

18

Hmmm… the link I gave, while accurate, doesn’t go exactly where I had hoped. Look at: http://www.pbs.org/weblab/needcom/focusgroup/primbio.html
instead. According to some of these people, the amount they make averages from $8/day to $100/day depending on the person and their approach. Quite a range but even an average would fall around the $40-$50 range.

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

19

Now, I want to talk about WIC. Why are we paying money for artificial infant milk when the mothers have the good stuff for free? It’s much cheaper to feed mom some food than to buy the infant milk formulas. (I won’t even go into the lower medical costs from a healthier baby) And when did WIC become a dumping ground for surplus agricultural products instead of a nutritional program? Or was it always like that? No, it’s still a great program because it at least tries to teach the recipients about nutrition, but what food the families receive is directly related to what is a surplus at the time. It makes no sense to me. I believe at the moment the items that they are giving away in huge amounts (that no one could possibly use that much of) are cheese and peanut butter. About twenty years ago it was cheese and butter. Now butterfat is more demand.

WIC does endorse breastfeeding, and will consistently persuade these mothers to breastfeed instead of bottle feed. They do believe that breastmilk is best. But, not every single person is going to do this, so WIC has the responsibility of making sure the baby gets fed, which is why they do distribute infant formula (only iron containing). Also, the allowed foods on the mothers shopping list aren’t necessarily surplus foods, and the lists dont change according to what the government has more of. Just my two cents…

back to the topic of welfare…i’ll agree that some on welfare do not appear poor, nor choose to spend their money wisely…which is why they may be on welfare in the first place…

“I am so smart, I am so smart, s-m-r-t, i mean s-m-a-r-t”

20

spankboy, you have the right assumption.

YOO HOO Folks, as if you didn’t notice, Clinton abolished Welfare like two years back. It’s not happening in the US anymore. Corporate welfare is, however.

Note: If you want house assistance, you can only get a min. situation. In other words, you are LIMITED to how high the rent is, which they set on a market analysis [some of these analysises are 5 years old]. Then you MUST get an apt or house that is at that rate or lower.
Like for example, $500 [for a one bedroom barely gets you in the ghetto].

The Dictionary of Misinformation, if you can find it, covers the old welfare misinformation. If you read the section on welfare, it explains that these people really want to work.