Lots of info to look up. Thanks, especially to those of you who posted figures, sources, and links! This is a great place to get questions answered!
-Steve
I was born on welfare. It sucked. My parents didn’t care about anything except booze and how to get something they felt they were entitled to. I got a job when I was 13, so I could support myself (food every day, that kind of thing). I can’t speak for everyone who has ever been on welfare, but from personal experience, there was never enough money to survive, especially if you had to pay for your own beer, too. I grew up, worked hard and would eat rice every day for five years before I ever accepted money from anyone that I had not earned.
The bad thing about welfare is that people “think” they deserve it. That “corporations” should support them. You know what? Corporations don’t just start themselves. They are started by some guy sweating his ass off 15 hours a day to build something. Then the goverment takes his money to support someone else who doesn’t think he has to get out of bed in the morning. THEN, if the government decides not to take as much of his money from him, someone calls that “corporate welfare”.
I suspect that giving mining companies the rights to lease land at artificially deflated (as in 19th century) prices has nothing to do with taking money from an entrepeneur who worked 15 hour days to build his own company.
There is fraud on welfare.
There are certain groups of people who have become generational welfare recipients.
However,
There are individuals/families who are legitimately aided past rough spots in their lives by government assistance.
There are corporations who get lots of government handouts and sufficient tax breaks that they are not paying their fair share.
Tom~
You know, while each American contributes an average of $415/year to welfare payments, they also contribute $1,388 in corporate subsidies. Why doesn’t that stick in your craw?
“It’s easy to get all worked up about a mythical bunch of cheaters and chiselers taking us for a ride… It doesn’t seem to take a whole lot of convincing to turn us against the less fortunate in society. Maybe we should be directing our anger elsewhere - like toward Wall Street. Why is it we never think of Big Business when we think of welfare recipients? Companies take more of our tax dollars, and in much more questionable circumstances, than do those who are trying to heat their apartments with a kerosene stove.” - Michael Moore, Downsize This!
So let’s not get sanctimonious about poor people. Not even over lazy poor people. Wouldn’t you rather get worked up over lazy rich people who take three times as much of your money as the poor people (lazy and non-lazy combined)?
I know a lady (friend of my sister’s) who received WIC assistance with her infant. She wisely chose to breastfeed and so WIC continuted the food vouchers she received during her pregnancy for a few staple items.
I totally agree that breastfeeding should be encouraged, especially in this situation. Babies who are breastfed are less likely to be seriously ill, have dental problems, and allergies. See http://www.breastfeeding.com/advocate.html for more information. This means less tax money spent on subsidized medical care, and a healthier population overall.
Pump rental (for working moms) is about a dollar per day (still less than formula!) and could be subsidized by WIC.
Prairie Rose
If you’re not part of the solution you’re just scumming up the bottom of the beaker.
Exactly how many people is that corporation required to support, outside of those it pays to work?
No, I don’t agree with corporations paying deflated prices, but my point was…a lot of people talk about welfare and welfare reform, but know nothing about it. It’s not pretty. And for the most part, it’s self-inflicted, or else inflicted upon your own children. It’s brutal. It sounds wonderful to provide this service or that service, after all, it’s for the children, but in reality, it never ends.
And, no…I would not prefer to slam rich lazy people over poor ones. They are no better and no worse.
True, but they’re more likely to eat tomorrow. We are not supposed to be running our society by social darwinism, so the punishment for laziness (or for despair, or insufficient skills, or whatever the cause) is not supposed to be death by starvation.
Wasn’t John Wayne among those who were making a good amount of coin by <i>not</i> planting anything on his farmland in Colorado? While I realize we have to keep farm prices up somehow (so family farmers can survive), paying someone to do something they weren’t going to do anyway seems wrong.
I agree that corporate welfare is pretty bad-but what’s the solution? Some of the examples I’m familiar with are the corporate non-farmers (above), the defense industry (keeping production lines mothballed but ready in case of war), and the tobacco industry (for whatever reasons–votes? the will of Satan?). I doubt that if we cut if the farm loot, that rich guys would all of a sudden go out and buy combines, and tobacco doesn’t affect me (hell, the taxes almost outweigh the product cost anyway). What about the defense industry and others I have failed to mention? While I understand the whole ‘swords to plowshares’ concept, it takes a lot of refrigerators to make up for an Abrams tank. Ideas??
-sb
“This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”
I have lived my life and intend to continue doing so under the following beliefs:
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the reasons why companies (and I’m talking about big-butt corporations here, not mom and pop at the corner) can blackmail us into paying them lots of money (in tax cuts, tax evasion, tax credit, and corporate welfare) is so they don’t move elsewhere.
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“A simple decision by the Group of Seven nations that they want their taxes and intend to collect them would be enough to force a change of direction. After all, the billion-odd citizens of the G7 represent the bulk of the consumer market for the products of the large corporations. Ensuring that they carry their fair tax load is a simple matter of cooperation among those who have a right to a percentage of the national wealth.” - John Ralston Saul, The Doubter’s Companion
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a Tobin Tax (very minuscule tax on inflationary currency speculation, which given the volume of such transactions would generate billions a day) if immediately imposed by the same G7 countries would slow down an inflationary bubble which is ready to pop and frankly not that sane to begin with, in addition to instantly paying off the budgets and debts of your average country;
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that corporations are not persons, and therefore not citizens, so they should not have a voice in the government; the people who make up corporations are citizens, and they have no less of a responsibility to act ethically than anyone else; and
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Devastating entire communities, impoverishing or exploiting nations, destroying the social fabric, and causing people to starve is not ethical.
Now I know it will be patiently explained to me that the raison-d’etre of a company is profit. So it doesn’t have to have ethics like the rest of us mortals. Bullshit. Corporate directors have the same moral responsibility for what they do that you or I do. It’s absurd to think that someone loses whatever ethical responsibility they might once have had by being in a company.
Cecil is never going to answer a welfare question because Clinton has dropped welfare.
Next, a woman I know who was on welfare once said they pay you so little because they want more prostitutes. ALSO, none of you mentioned, especially the OP, that people often & still do, have to PAY BACK their welfare grants. They take a sizeable share of Child Support payments to do this, assuming the creeps eventually are prosecuted enough that they finally pay $100 a month for their kid.
Counting the minutes before this topic gets sent to GD…
Actually, I suspect there is more factual input available here, so I’m going to leave it here for now.
But please folks, as a courtesy to your fellow members, don’t turn factal inquiries into debates. It’s really quite easy to open a topic in the Great Debates section, and you can even post a link here if that’s what you want to do. But I’d like to think that people asking questions are entitled to answers, and if I constantly have to send factual OPs to Great Debates because of the responses, the OPs gets cheated.
NYC IRL III
is on April 15th. Do you have what it takes?
Handy’s right. When I was on welfare the governmemt took my child support (all but $50…that is, when I got it). I also had to sign a paper stating that if I do get a large sum of money (inheritance, lottery winnings) I have to pay them back.
I’m glad it was there for me when I needed it, though. I worked and went back to school and was off it in 2 years.
MaryAnn
“I don’t care if it’s the queen!”
Imagine if you were a farmer & someone paid you $100,000 to not farm. That’s how some corporate welfare works. Yuck.
1wel•fare "wel-'far, -'fer\ noun [ME, fr. the phrase wel faren to fare well] (14c)
1 : the state of doing well esp. in respect to good fortune, happiness, well-being, or prosperity
2
Let some of those who aren’t doing well, have some happiness too.