Scientology’s “Purification Rundown” screwed my digestive system for good.
While I know it meets the technical definition, it’s hard for me to look at her activities as “fraud.” If she were making the equvillent of a salary which could support her family, and greedily cashing the state checks, I’d say prosecute her to the fullest extent of the law.
But, we’re talking, at most, fifty extra dollars a week. Usually, it’s around thirty. It seems to me that there ought to be some sort of exempted amount. That way, recipients could pick up a tiny bit of extra money which might pay a bill, or buy part of that week’s groceries, rather than being forced to be 100% dependant.
I see nothing ethically wrong with what she’s doing. In fact, such activities should be encouraged, if for no other reason than it gives her a small sense of pride that she’s earning some of her money from the sweat of her brow. This is a woman who wants to work, and is only prevented by circumstance. It doesn’t seem right to me that this sort of initiative and drive should be punishable.
Your description of Sarah’s plight paints a bleak picture. It saddens to hear about someone who barely has enough money to survive even with the meager help that welfare provides. At the same time, I am encouraged that I help others in need through the taxes that I pay.
I’m not sure what would convince welfare nay-sayers that the system can and does work. At times I feel overwhelmed by the number of "pull yourself up by the bootstrap” stories. Just last night, Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke at the RNC about how he was able to succeed after coming to this country as a poor immigrant. It as if every person can succeed if only they persist. Doesn’t our culture and environment play a role? We can’t all be governors of California and multi-millionaire movie stars.
As other posters have pointed out, our government can do more to fight poverty in this country. We can provide better education for kids and adults, we can provide better help the poor with childcare, medicine and housing, and we can provide benefits for the working poor that fall between the cracks.
I would like to hear more stories of families that are helped by various welfare programs. I don’t imagine that these would be heart-lifting tales. These are living, breathing adults and children we speak of. I would not wish even the smallest threat of starvation, suffering without medical care or living in a box upon anyone. We must help each other in addition to ourselves.
I’m very conflicted on welfare (never mind the fact that I just started working for our state’s DPW department…). On the one hand, I can’t advocate a position that would leave people who are victims of fate to fend for themselves with no help whatsoever.
On the other hand, I’ve seen enough of the lazy, perpetual-victim, don’t-WANT-to-help-themselves variety of generational welfare leeches in my three months at the county CPS office to make the flaws in the system stand out in high relief. There are an awful lot of people who’d rather wallow in passive-aggressive self-pity than actually do anything to help themselves or their families. People who can’t even manage to do the bare minimum to take advantage of charity services on behalf of their children, who complain bitterly that “no one tried to help them” because the caseworker wouldn’t drive them everywhere they had to go, wouldn’t fill out the forms for them, wouldn’t deliver the forms for them, wouldn’t personally make sure they got to their appointments on time…I seriously wanted to slap more than a couple of these people, and I was only reading dictation! Just in the three days I’ve been working for the welfare office, I’ve seen people who seemed VERY put out that they actually had to gasp! COME INTO THE OFFICE to see their caseworker in order to get their benefits renewed.
And not all of these people (around here, not even a majority) are black, so don’t start heaping that steaming pile of bullshit on my head. Ambivalence about welfare because of lazy goddamn wastes of skin doesn’t have anything to do with race.
In their defense, one of the problems that plauge the poor is a lack of reliable transportation. In areas unserved by public transportation, options are even more limited. Friends and family may be unreliable or unable to take the person in to the welfare office when needed and taxis are expensive.
I can somwhat understand their resentment if this is their predicament. To them, it may seem that the case workers are being obtuse or insensitive to their situation.
I look at it this way. There is only a limited amount of resources in the welfare system. If “Sarah” is taking benefits that she’s not entitled to, due to limits on outside income, or what have you, then isn’t she in effect taking away benefits from other people who might need them?
Lancaster has an excellent public transit system, for a city this size. It goes, on several routes, as much as 15 miles out of town proper to outlying cities and back, for 1.50 to 2.50 a ride.
She’s in need herself, so no, I really don’t feel she’s taking away from others. Her needs are just as real as the next person’s.
She simply could not survive without welfare money. The little extra she earns on the side does not go for luxuries, but to help pay for necessity. Welfare does not pay enough to prevent every month from being a struggle. The little she makes is certainly a help, but is not nearly enough to improve her overall situation.
I don’t have any answers for her, or for the thousands of others in her shoes. Yes, the welfare system has problems, but I cannot imagine what would happen to her if she didn’t any benefits. As bad as her situation is, it could be much worse.
Firstly as I said in my original post a big problem with the welfare system is we penalize welfare recipients as they are trying to move off the system.
Say you’ve lost your job.
You have three kids. You’ve had the job for a decent amount of time. You get a severance package and you’re on unemployment for quite some time. By the time your unemployment and severance money has run out, you still cannot find a job.
You have to go on welfare. You’re receiving the government checks, getting food stamps, et cetra.
After six months on welfare, you finally find a job. A very low paying one, you find a job as a cashier at a supermarket, your salary is roughly $5.25/hour, a pittance above minimum wage. You’re pulling in at max around 35 hours per week (store doesn’t need you for anymore than that.)
Now, the problem is, you’ve got a job, but it’s still way too low paying. But welfare is cut back drastically when you get a job, any job.
That’s a problem.
Now, I’ll be the first to say that I don’t feel sorry for most poor people. I grew up with poor people, I grew up all around poor people in rural West Virginia. In fact there weren’t any people I knew of within a 20 mile radius that wouldn’t be considered poor.
I don’t feel sorry for them because most people perpetuate their poverty by bad decision making. The economic system shouldn’t hold bad decision makers aka poor people up on some kind of pedestal like they are saints down-and-out because of bad luck.
My family and many of our neighbors lived paycheck to paycheck. What is truly sad is it didn’t have to be that way. There was certainly a shitload of money spent on booze and cigs that didn’t have to be. There was in fact a lot of money spent very stupidly that did not have to be.
Even actively trying to improve my lot in life, getting very good grades in High School and scoring well on my standardized tests AND receiving full scholarships to some good schools I just couldn’t afford to attend.
There are lots of costs of going to college, for yourself and for your family, that no scholarship, not even a full ride, can cover.
So at age 17 I joined the Army. After my tour of duty was up (was 23 at that time) I attended college, having saved a substantial sum of money privately (enlisted men don’t make much money, but there aren’t many expenses as the army subsidizes a lot of your life when you’re active duty) and receiving of course full college costs paid for by Uncle Sam.
Anyways from that point on my life is an interesting story, I joined the Army again, lots of other places and occupations have been had in my fairly short life after then as well. But this become tangenital.
The fact of the matter is I have little respect for most poor people. Most of them are there simply because they are chronically stupid and bad decision makers. Education is offered to many people back home that I know who are on welfare. Many cousins of mine with 5+ kids are milking the gov’t for all they are worth, despite the fact I know they could easily have turned out differently if not for apathy towards life.
Despite my complete disrespect for the majority of poor people, their chronic poverty and child-rearing is a drain on the economy.
So if we are going to be putting them on welfare in the first place, we have to have a good structured system to get them off.
Drastically reducing benefits when someone gets a job is bad. I think there should be a period of say 3 months we’ll call it a “grace period” where you still receive full benefits despite being employed (exceptions would be made if you suddenly have a job paying very well.) This will give people time to get on their feet.
After that period is up maybe give them yet another 3 month period where they receive reduced benefits.
After that they will be off the dole. But they can have their case reviewed at this point. IF they can prove that they are still slightly in rough straits I’d say let them continue to use certain goverment programs like Medicaid and give them certain special subsidies for their children.
Now, this is a strange stance for a fiscal conservative to take. But I think that the welfare system and people on it are sort of a self-perpetuating cycle.
People like my cousins that are receiving various forms of government assistance at any given time (3 of them I know haven’t been off food stamps in 15 years) are examples of being a chronic vacuum.
I think if we structured the exit system better, we could more easily move people completely off government assistance without having a high rate of recidivism.
As another safety net we need to strengthen protections that keep people from going on welfare in the first place.
Eventually through a managed welfare policy I think we will be able to get many of the able-bodied peopel (with and without families) off the dole and we can slowly move the economy in the right direction.
That’s a long term goal that is more of an ideal than something I realistically hope to see.
In the here and now I think some of my proposals represent what needs to be done to insure welfare goes more to people who need it and less to people who are just on it because that is how they think they are supposed to live.
Obviously permanently disabled people are a whole separate class from low-income individuals and should be considered so (and in fact are.)
In the case of children here are a few things that I think needs to be done:
- More after school programs.
A lot of schools in my area (up to Junior High/Middle School) offer an after school program that basically babysits kids for the parents. It only costs around $35/week. I think the price of that is far cheaper than you will find trying to find child care yourself.
I’m sure a good chunk of the costs come from local bond money, in fact I think it definitely does. But I’d say the costs to the economy are lower than the costs of making child care unavailable for welfare mothers and in turn keeping the mothers from attaining a job that has any chance of getting them off the dole.
- No more children
If you go on welfare I don’t think you should be allowed to continue to produce more children. There should be a tradeoff in stealing other people’s money for yourself. If you want that money then you should agree not to acquire anymore dependants during the period you are on the dole.
If it sounds like authoritarianism, I don’t really think it is. Because people shouldn’t consider welfare free, they should be forced to accept some tradeoffs, and if they decide they want another kid so damn much then the government should say “no more money for you, oh, and now it looks like you cannot adequately take care of your 17 children, so we’re taking them.”
I certainly see the common sense behind this statement, but there are a couple problems with this stance.
First, childbearing is considered to be a human right. We don’t stop retarded people who obviously cannot care for the child from reproducing.
Secondly, what does one do with folks like Catholics, whose faith forbids them to use birth control?
Thirdlly, what’s to be done if a woman accidently gets pregnant despite measures to prevent it? Do we force her to abort? What about those who believe abortion is morally wrong?
I think that there are two main problems with the welfare system:
-in many states, welfare assistance is just the beginning. You may also be eligible for free/reduced rent housing, food stamps/surplus(free ) food, educational benefits, and free health care. Compared to a minimum wage job ,why would you EVER want to get OFF welfare? If you add all of the benefits up, you get far more than you could ever get by working.
-it is far too easy to scam the system. In many places, women have children (without a married spouse), then have the children cared for by a grandmother (all at public expense). In Boston a few years ago, a multi-generational family was on the roles for 45+ years …in three generations, NOT ONE member of this family had ever held a job!
I recently read an interesting profile of two good friends in DC. Both were single mothers on welfare. One was in a transition-to-work program, and it was working out pretty well, with her benefits dropping (she got less money, and her rent went up) as her earnings rose and she could pay her own way. The researcher noted that she had to take six buses and walk two miles to negotiate getting from home to school & daycare and work and back again each day. That’s a big hassle factor. They didn’t mention what the costs of the public transportion was, however.
Yes, she is. There is only a finite amount of money available for welfare payments. If she’s taking payments she’s not entitled to, some other family isn’t receiving the help they need.
Well, a Malthusian might say that to feed them is to allow them to breed, so the poor must be allowed to starve, lest greater calamity fall on the next generation, with even more poor. This is a bit simplistic.
On the other hand, a lower-class kept fat on the dole is not forced into revolt or crime for sustenance; this protects the upper classes from violence. Further, in a popular democracy, the masses will vote for at least minimum sustenance.
Dole/welfare programs can be understood as a sort of inevitable policy, rather than a “good” or “evil” to be advocated. Of course they’ll be advocated, in a libertarian/democratic system like ours, where some people can be stripped of property, but can still vote. Their will be a welfare program unless the poor are stripped of franchise or somehow nearly abolished as a class (through extermination or through uplift).
Of course, as a pro-violence Malthusian, I find it all very disappointing… [jk]
I see this as a matter of a technicality. She’s definately entitled to her welfare checks-- she couldn’t survive without them and the state has deemed her worthy of recieving them. I just don’t see how getting thirty or so extra dollars a month should cancel out that entitlement.
As I said, I understand that what she is doing is technically wrong, but I don’t see it as being, in any way, ethically wrong. If she were earning enough to support her family and taking the assistance checks out of greed, I’d fully agree with you.
When you pay the kid next door to mow your grass, you’re tecnhically supposed to report it. If your parents give you money at Christmas, or if your buddy pays you to help put in a new deck you’re supposed to report that, too. Most people don’t, and it’s not taxable under a certain amount, anyway. But you are supposed to report it on your income tax return. I have serious doubts that any poster on this board has ever reported every cent that has come their way, or that they’ve paid out for odd jobs.
A kid who mows lawns all summer can save up a nice chunk of cash. He’s not paying taxes on it, and it can be argued that technically he’s comitting tax fraud. However, the IRS would’nt bother with prosecution because the dollar amount owed is simply not enough to justify proceedings.
I see “Sarah’s” situation in a similar light. We don’t inforce income reporting laws so harshly on everyone else, so why should we with welfare recipients?
I’m afraid you’re still not getting it. There is a finite amount of welfare benefits available. If Sarah is taking more than her share, then Jane is getting less.
Didn’t your parents teach you that money doesn’t grow on trees? :rolleyes:
Sarah is getting exactly what the government has determined that she is entitled to recieve, no more. Jane is not affected in the slightest by Sarah getting thirty dollars on the side.
I know exactly where Sarah’s money is coming from: my tax dollars.
Part of the formula that the government uses to determine what benefits Sarah receives is based on income. If Sarah is misrepresenting her actual income, she is getting more benefits then she ought to. It is fraud, plain and simple.
Jane is definitely affected by Sarah’s welfare fraud, as there are now less benefits to go around.