There seems to be this mistaken belief that welfare is something that ‘those lazy people get’. Not true as most people on welfare pay back into the system as they are only on it a short period of time.
However the idea of giving money to lazy people who don’t want to work infuriates people. So why aren’t we eliminating this for middle class people instead of just poor people?
Eliminate the tax credit for homeowners if people are unwilling to buy affordable housing, eliminate social security and medicare if people aren’t willing to fund their own retirements because they are too busy keeping up with the Joneses (and buying houses they couldn’t afford without the tax credit to do it) to invest their incomes. Eliminate unemployment compensation if people aren’t willing to save and invest before they are let go. Eliminate federally backed student loans, $350 billion in college funding by states & pell grants because nobody wants to pay for their kids college. These are just the welfare programs I know about too.
The reality is if the middle class were more self disciplined & got better paying jobs they/we wouldn’t need all this welfare. But we aren’t we want SUVs, 3000 sq foot homes and health insurance with $100 deductibles at the same time. So the government holds our hands for us and helps pay for our retirment, college and houses.
Why must we pick on the poor, why can’t we pick on ourselves? I’m not giving up my pell grants and my 2/3 funded by the state college education, and I don’t expect any poor person to give up their food stamps.
Well for starters, student and housing loans aren’t welfare. That’s why they’re called loans. You have to pay them back. The government makes money on the deal both in interest and in an overall betterment of the population (which, in theory, leads to a better economy).
In theory, we shouldn’t have medicare or social security or (if you’d really like me to hijack this thread) affirmative action. In theory, we should all be responsible with our money.
We don’t. We, as a people, are irresponsible. And so it falls upon we, as a society, to be responsible for those that can’t, or won’t. So while the best solution is to teach people to save part of their finances for a rainy day, the second best solution is to help them in their time of need rather than evict them from their apartments and step over them as they die on the streets from pneumonia. This is true for all forms of social welfare.
If you think people’s hostility will be lessened by making the middle class give and give and get NOTHING in return, I suspect that you are mistaken.
The benefits which the poor receive are intended to benefit the society as a whole by keeping poverty to a minimum. Are you under the impression that helping keep people in college doesn’t benefit society as well?
“The government” pays? Last time I checked, “the government” was using middle class people’s money to pay for these programs. Again, are you suggesting that we exist soley as a cash cow for the poor, with no right to comment on how the money is used or to realize any benefit from it?
Furthermore, it is incorrect to assume that the welfare rolls are filled with a substantial population of sedentary freeloaders who stay on for ten years at a time. Most welfare recipients leave within the first two years:
The middle class get and get, just like everyone else. But they also complain when others get as well, they sit in their houses they couldn’t afford without tax deductions with their state funded education and complain about the govenrment helping the poor. The poor, like everyone else, pays taxes. I think at the end of the day virtually every economic class pays about the same percentage of their income in taxes, just in different kinds of taxes.
“The government” uses all kinds of peoples money including the poor, working class, upper middle class and various levels of wealthy.
It would be nice if people who get tons of welfare and subsidies didn’t get angry when those with less money then them also got help. That is offensive to me, its like a really fat person eating an entire pizza by themselves then telling a skinny person that they are a pig for eating a candy bar.
Huh? Student loans are subsidized by the Federal government so “poor” people can get loans. There is a formula that calculates how much your parents are expected the provide and from that it calculates how much in Federal loans you can get. I am not sure what the current interest rates are for student loans but I seriously doubt the Federal Government makes money on them. In fact I am nearly certain they lose money.
I don’t think Wesley is actually calling for the elimination of those government programs, but is trying to point out the hypocrisy of middle class conservatives who rail against “those lazy welfare mothers, siphoning off money from the government and me” and then go deduct their mortgage payment and remind their kid to sign off on his education grant and subsidized loan.
Essentially, that people are quick to call for the end to programs that benefit the poor, but would raise holy hell if the programs that benefit them were cut.
Not that this is a new or particularly original observation mind you, but I think that’s what he’s trying to get at.
Yes, but they’re still loans. You even have to pay interest on them. Filing for bankruptcy won’t help you get out of them. You still have to pay them back. I wouldn’t call that welfare.
Whether it’s for housing or education, the government isn’t just giving people (rich, middle class or poor) that money as a gift. Is that interest keeping up with inflation? Earlier this year student loan interest rates were at an all-time low, so my guess is no. FTR, the went down to a little less than 2% but are now at around 3.
But when all is said and done the government will still end up with more money than it started off with and the same can’t be said for what I would consider to be real welfare programs: medicare, medicaid, etc. With those, the only way the average American gains is knowing they’ve helped their fellow man.
So if we want to compare “middle class” welfare to “poor” welfare, we need to find better examples. What government programs give people something for nothing (and their chicks for free)?
The President’s recent budget shows that from 1992 to 2004, the subsidy cost of FDSL was $3 billion on $146 billion in loans. The subsidy costs for FFEL was $39 billion on $413 billion in loans
Most people on welfare aren’t on it forever. It is usually temporary assistance, and the website I posted earlier showed it doesn’t cut incentive to work. So its not just giving people money for nothing, its helping them out until things turn around.
Also considering that a large number of middle class people get college educations and then never use them to find jobs, this is a form of taking but not giving back.
This is why I made my post, like Neurotik said. The middle class feel the poor are getting a free ride by being given free food while the middle class gets their educations paid for via 2/3 state funding, pell grants & subsidized loans so they can study music theory in college and eventually become homemakers or telemarketers.
What kind of crappy cite is this? Now, here is a cite! Despite the low cost of the loan on this cite (1% on the one hand (projected to be negative (i.e. making money in 2006) with the STAR legislations), 10% on the other (9% after STAR), the point is the students are still paying back loans.
Huh? :dubious: If I get a degree in underwater basket weaving and I find a much higher paying job in reading the SDMB, aren’t I getting more value out of the economy, as well as giving more value to the economy (b/c the market is paying me more than as an underwater basket weaver)? Hint: The answer is an emphatic 'yes. ’ Your premise only holds true if the person is unemployed, and even then, there might be societal value by being a stay at home parent. Other people you might be talking about are those people who go and get an education and then go and live off their parents wealth. These people probably don’t qualify for a loan, anyway. And, even if they studied something else and cannot get a job in that field, it really is more a lack of market than it is this supposed student being a drain the economy. The student only becomes a drain on the economy when he ends up on welfare.
I think you shouldn’t be making the exact same type of generalizations you seem to dislike. A great deal of middle-class people have no problem with welfare for people in the lowest income brackets. Stop making into a class war when the real divisions cut along idealogical/political lines.
I know. But in my experience when a person condemns welfare for the poor usually they are not poor themselves, so I used the label middle class. I will most likely end up middle class and I support welfare for the poor as well.
There definitely is a formula. My parents were told they didn’t qualify because their assets were too high. The fact that basically all of them were in the one house was beside the point. The government basically said, “Stop tithing to your church and sell your house, and you’ll afford college for the kids.”
So 3 of the 4 of us went to junior college for two years and got private loans after that.
The poor are getting a free ride. You can even argue that they should get more of a free ride, if you’d like. But it is a free ride. That’s because they don’t pay into the system. Not being judgemental, just factual.
Conversely, the midlle class may receive benefits from the system, you may even choose to call them handouts. But they are not getting as free ride. Why? Because they paid into the system. And if someone chooses to go to college and then not be a productive, contributiing member of society, that person risks becoming a member of the underclass, the poor.
Think of insurance. You may receive a check for $500,000 when you’re house burns down, but only if you have paid into the insurance system, in which case, you are then entitled to it. But if you are not a contributer to the system, you’ll be dependent on your savings and the kindness of others.
Despite the low cost of the loan on this