They who?
It would be a boarding school in that it wouldn’t just be a place to stick kids until they were 18, they would be getting an education. I feel it would save money in the long run because that should break the cycle of poverty/welfare.
As for the country not getting behind the idea, I’m well aware that most people in the US are incapable of thinking of children with their brains rather than their emotions.
Wow did you forget your own one sentence post this quickly?
Is that a declarative statement or not? You didn’t say could or might,
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No, but I did use modifiers like most, and very few. If it’s too difficult to adhere to for most people, it won’t be money well spent, in my opinion. It needs to be accessible to MOST people and so far, I don’t see that happening as you’ve laid it out.
It has to work for “most” to be effective. “Some” isn’t enough for a welfare overhaul.
It’s very simple. It’s not the same thing as a regular employee so someone has to manage the program. In addition, a large population won’t be able to work for their welfare and that program will have to be administered as it is now (or something similar). In effect, you will have two parallel programs – one for those who work and one for those who don’t. And I’m not convinced it will be easy or cheap to manage time and attendance, choose the positions and hire the workers, provide training, document everything, supervise the work, and then do it all over again when the people find real jobs. There will be revolving door-style turnover because MOST people don’t stay on welfare for extended periods.
Nothing naive about that. I just don’t think it’s as easy as that. We’re talking about a fluid population.
Agreed.
Starting or maintaining a savings account is an important step on the road to financial stability (assuming someone qualifies) – I’d rather a welfare recipient save a few dollars here and there as proof of foresight, not to mention the ability to delay gratification, than see them punished for not spending every cent every month, as if that’s proof that they’re getting more money than they need.
Sigh. The suggestion was to take away children from people who conceive or bear children while on welfare. Taking them away from their mothers, presumably at birth, would require them to be put, not in school, but in orphanages. You may not know this, but infants don’t go to school. Most children do not attend school until 2 or 3 at the earliest. Consequently, these infants would be put in orphanages, or “warehoused,” if you will, just like stray animals in shelters, with probably as much individual attention and genuine love as animals in shelters. Or do you think government employees would love these children as well as their shiftless, welfare-receiving mothers do? I find it unlikely, if not impossible.
And yes, children do need love. This is not an irrational belief: children need physical affection to grow into properly functioning adults. It is well-documented that babies need lots of touch and intimate contact in the first two years of their lives to develop properly. From Infancy and America:
Is this really a fate merited by the misfortune of being born to a mother who is on welfare? I would say no. I’m wondering where you got the idea that having a child be raised by government employees sans maternal affection would somehow break the cycle of poverty and turn these children into adults who will not be poor. Rather, it seems it will likely turn them into lower functioning, possibly damaged adults. Your conclusion is not supported by any studies I have seen, as you are assuming that being on welfare automatically makes you an inferior parent to a paid government employee. Rather an extremely harsh view of women who conceive and bear children while on welfare.
If you disagree with my reasons for thinking these “boarding schools” are a poor idea, please offer cites to counter mine. Maybe you can convince me that I’m wrong, but this is GD, so proof will be necessary.
Also, I have to say, your sudden, new found faith in the government is puzzling. I find it ironic that you think that government-run orphanages, or euphemistically labeled “boarding houses,” would provide a better education and parenting than welfare mothers who send their children to government-run public schools. You have repeatedly expressed zero confidence in taxpayer funded public education, yet you are advocating for it now, replete with dormitories and full-time, round the clock infant care. What changed?
I don’t think your idea is particularly well thought out nor based in reality or logic, for reasons outlined above. You may not be thinking with your heart, but you are not thinking with your front brain either.
Not to mention it is boatloads cheaper to have welfare Mothers care for their children than it would be to create massive orphanages for tens of millions of children.
I don’t think it would be tens of millions. More like 5 million or so, a wild guestimation based on census numbers on women who receive WIC. Still, that’s a lot of kids to put in “boarding schools.”
Foster children almost universally end up with major emotional problems that lead to poverty and crime. The foster care system is one of our greatest failures- but there is no better alternative.
Children absolutely need love and affection to grow up right. If we take them away from that, we will certainly be creating future burdens on society.
All this talk of encouraging/forcing people to work instead of being on welfare is based on the idea that there is work available for everyone. There isn’t.
Western countries have been moving manufacturing (and any other industry they can do it to) to poorer countries where wages are low and there are few (or no) worker health and safety laws. Those jobs no longer exist in western countries. Try getting a factory job - there are dozens (sometimes hundreds) of applicants for every position.
We now have a large underclass of people who have no chance. People for whom there are no opportunities. The jobs that these people would have had in the 50s or 60s or 70s are gone. There is nothing to replace them.
You can spout as much happy right-wing bull as you like about how these people should be forced to find work - there isn’t any work for people in that position. It’s not like they’re turning down work because they prefer to be unemployed, it’s that there is no work for a large percentage of society.
Heh-heh…reminds me of Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin. “I think I’m in the wrong army. I was supposed to be at the one with the condos.”
Um, not in your first post you didn’t, which is where the declarative statement came from. It’s no big deal, but you did make a declarative statement and then modified it in later posts. No matter.
Why does it need to be accessible to most people?I haven’t set a condition that those unable to work won’t receive aide. I see it as a relatively simple part of the application process that already exists. An addition to the form.
I’m not sure why you think it has to be available to most or why it wouldn’t be. It would be just as available as welfare is now, the difference being those able to work will work.
I see those problems but they don’t seem insurmountable. Lot’s of businesses function with a high turnover rate as long as key people remain in place. It’s not two parallel programs. The separation is done in the application process but it’s all the same welfare. States already have employees in place for work so those supervisors could also supervise and record the work of welfare recipients. Modern technology would make it easier or a simple phone call to see who’s assigned to what job.
The hardest part I see is that in most cases it’s more expensive to check up on recipients in an attempt to prevent fraud than the money you might save.
In basic menial tasks the revolving door wouldn’t be a major issue. In other areas where you are training people it gets more difficult but still not impossible. Trainee’s work with established state employee’s Yes it seems like a revolving door but no more so than classes in a class room. Teachers are state employees right. Companies do it all the time. You train someone and they move on.
IMO you really haven’t shown why the problems you point out are so insurmountable. They seem to be the same problem’s companies face every day and still mange to do just fine.
It’s all speculation anyway.
I don’t think it’s impossible. I think it’s going to be much more costly to do it. While I think there will be a benefit with regard to getting work done, instilling a work ethic in those who don’t have one, etc. (the human side of it), I think taxpayers would balk at the the substantial increase in cost to find work for, administer, and manage a fluid workforce on a large scale.
I think one way to offset the cost would be to increase taxes on those who receive benefits and then return to the workforce and work their way out of poverty. An example of what I’m thinking of would be something along the lines of:
- Welfare recipient receives benefits and training for 6 months, or receives traditional benefits and then goes back to work.
- Welfare recipient moves from Income Bracket A to Income Bracket B (this would need to be a substantial jump in earning power) within a prescribed period of time (3 years? Five?)
- Worker might be taxed at a higher rate for a period of time to “pay back” benefits.
Obviously, you wouldn’t do this for people who didn’t substantially improve their earning power…it would just put them back below the poverty line. But if a person’s income moved from say, $15,000/year to $25,000/year, the person would be flagged in the system. So you might take an additional 2% for a period of 3 years or something like that. There are ways to make it less of a drain on the workforce. Obviously, this is just off-the-cuff, but I think it’s worth exploring.
Yes, I understand and even agree with that. However I was describing a situation where addicts had been made responsible in that they had served their sentence. Then conditions were imposed on them that were IMPOSSIBLE for them to meet. Not just difficult, IMPOSSIBLE. That’s not making someone accept responsibility, that’s cruelty…
As I said, your budget is your business. Just sayin’ I would have made different decisions, and I fully expect you’d disagree with some of my priorities.
As I read it, you were offering solely hormonal therapy as the default and anything else would require and exception - I say you offer the options up front instead of saying you have to get an exception made for anything but a particular one.
OK, let’s do it your way - we say that if you save $1000 then >boom< you’re off welfare, AMF YOYO. Just cut the bums off. A month or two later they’re out of money and back on welfare. This accomplishes… what?
We can certainly discuss what is “reasonable” - perhaps it is $500 per person in the household, or some other number, but allowing people to accumulate a nest egg for emergencies will help keep them off welfare once they leave the system. Otherwise, it might not take much to put them back on it.
From my viewpoint it’s a lot like when I was on unemployment - I was able to earn a certain amount without being abruptly cut off for just any paid work. It was set up so I definitely had an incentive to work, as I would always come out with more money if I worked at all, but the benefit paid by unemployment was gradually reduced as I earned more. I think the maximum amount would have been an amount 150% of just unemployment alone, but at that point most of the money would have been earned and not from the state. Something similar could be done for recipients of various forms of welfare to give them an incentive to earn money without cutting them off too abruptly. The advantage to the taxpayer would be that while you’re encouraging the desired behavior the cost to the state gradually goes down as the people become more self-sufficient. Another benefit is that they are more likely to stay off the system once they get off it.
For those who are supporting themselves the recommendation is 3-6 months living expenses in cash or equivalent. Well, my hypothetical $2000 is less than two months for my husband and I at our most frugal (including relying in part on our garden for food). Perhaps you think it unreasonable, but allowing people to accumulate two months worth of nest egg before cutting them off the system makes sense to me.
Good for you. We have neither where I live. Perhaps where you live it would be reasonable to demand a lower ceiling on assets. Where I live mass transit will not get you to work unless you work in Chicago and have a car to get to the train station to take you there. We don’t have dental coverage on medicaid. Therefore, where I live having that “nest egg” for welfare recipents makes more sense.
I live in a dirt cheap place and it wouldn’t take my husband and I past two months. Gee, maybe different regions have difference cost of living.
There is nothing that forces a child raised in poverty to remain in poverty all of his or her life. There are many examples of people raised by impoverished parents who went on to middle class or even wealthy lifestyles. Poverty is not a genetic disease.
In other words, remove children from their parents and put them in orphanages. You know, we stopped doing that because the results sucked. Rubystreak had a fine post in regards to this, #146 in this thread.
Well, not everyone has living relatives or family to fall back on. Not everyone has an RV (for the family I mentioned in regards to this, they lost their one and only vehicle in the house fire - being parked close to the home it, too, burned completely, so living in their vehicle was no an option, either). In what way do you think living in a hotel differs substantially from a shelter? In fact, putting homeless families into subsidized hotel rooms is not an uncommon way for social services to deal with a lack of housing.
And why are you so adamantly opposed to a shelter anyhow? Have you ever even looked inside one? They aren’t pestilential hell holes. Not as nice as your own place, no, but more than a cell and a slop bucket. Hell, some of them are even privately owned and operated. What is your objection to shelters?
Yes, but planning ahead can account for all potential events. As I pointed out, virtually no homeowner’s policies cover flooding - if you were rendered homeless because of a flood are you sure your insurance company would be there for you? If you aren’t 100% sure on that do read your policy, for your own sake.
That’s because locking a dog in a house for 12-16 hours a day IS cruel. As it happens, starwarsfreek42 did not do that. If she had, though, I would have altered my statement not one bit.
Me, too. Odd that we have such different opinions, though.
And if you had - so what? It wouldn’t make you a bad person. If you were poor, but not poor enough to qualify for welfare, or if you managed without welfare good for you. That in no way makes you a better person than someone who did accept welfare of any sort to survive.
A valid point. That is a gritty detail to be worked out.
As it is, in many locations you can have $2,000 in the bank and still qualify for food stamps, as an example. It’s not that radical a departure from what currently exists in many places.
If that’s what it takes to achieve the end goal, yes. The end goal is to teach and encourage responsible behavior, yes? As I said, a small reward to encourage the behavior we want to see: fiscal responsibility. A carrot instead of a stick. I realize that sticks in the craw of a lot of people, but currently the system encourage people to spend all by the end of the month and never save, which is not the behavior we want.
I don’t buy that because the system already performs audits. I was audited while on unemployment (being an honest and organized person I also satisfied the auditor I was in the right by the end of the same business day I was notified). All the welfare programs I am aware of reserve the right to conduct an audit.
I agree completely. However, if people have become destitute enough to be state dependents for awhile then a little empirical, as opposed to theorectical, education doesn’t seem out of line in my view.
Well, I’d like to think a “free” education would be enough, too, but a slight bonus for, say, a 3.5 or 4.0 grade point might encourage greater efforts on the part of the students. Seems to me if the state is paying for the education the state has some interest in maximizing the results. Doesn’t have to be a HUGE reward - a token amount would be sufficient. Heck, a book of coupons for McDonald’s could function as motivation for some people. Nothing wrong with recognizing someone’s hard work.
However, if an “extra bonus” encourages responsible behavior why do you object to it? Do you object to car insurance companies giving reduced rates to good drivers with clean records? Do you object to people who pay their bills on time getting better interest rates on a loan? There are a LOT of incentives out there to encourage people to be “responsible citizens”, why should that suddenly end if you become poor? If anything, we should provide more encouragement to people on the lower socio-economic levels than we do to the middle-class or wealthy.
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If you’re working two jobs already I’d say you’re off the community service hook. Obviously you ARE trying to do the right thing in that case, imposing more work requirements would be detrimental. The “community service” requirement would only apply to able bodied adults not employed.
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Employ some of the welfare/unemployed as child caretakers.
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As I mentioned, in my state in order to get unemployment benefits you are either looking for work or in job training. If you’re in a recognized job training program you’re off the community service hook.
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We are already paying people to work in the social servcies area. I don’t see that as a valid argument.
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Reduce the number of people in the community service pool via what I said for 1, 2, and 3 and I don’t think the resulting number will be unmanagable. The community service requirement would only apply to able-bodied adults who are NOT working and NOT in job training.
While working for the Census Bureau recently I got into a discussion with a co-worker who is receiving some forms of state aid for herself and her two children (as it happens, she was plunged into poverty after her husband was killed in a car accident). In order to continue to receive those benefits (largely subsidized daycare in her case) she must provide proof that she is either working, looking for work, or in school. So, she reports to a caseworker - I earned X this week/month, I applied to these four want ads, here is my class schedule this semester, etc. Is it annoying? On a certain level, yes. But no more so than my weekly reporting requirements while receiving unemployment benefits. You don’t have to hold peoples hands for most of this - just tell them what they need to satisfy reporting requirements and how often they must report and who to call if they have questions/issues. This isn’t rocket science. And yes, audit people. As I stated, I was audited while on unemployment. It was annoying, but not unreasonable. We already do these things, any system we consider implementing will have to do these things.
That is EXACTLY why we need robust job training programs - not just for those without skills or experience, but also te RETRAIN people whose skills and experience are now obsolete. What I used to do is no longer much needed - thank Og I’m healthy and strong enough to do physical labor, as that is the only sort of work I have gotten these past couple years (even the Census work I did requires 8 hours a day of walking - even a lot of people considered able-bodied would find that difficult or impossible to keep up with for more than day or two).
Currently, I am looking into some vocational training but I face two major obstacles: 1) money for tuition - it has to come from somewhere, and 2) since I already have a college degree most funding/grants/programs/etc. are closed to me, the assumption being that somehow a college degree, any college degree, guarantees employment. It doesn’t. Maybe in the past it did, but not anymore.
Now, I will probably find a way to get the money over the next couple years. Meanwhile, it will be a very hand-to-mouth existence. Personally, I’d much rather start my re-education NOW. I’d love to have an arrangement where by retraining now I would be able to repay the tuition costs via some sort of service commitment but I know of no such program I’m eligible for. It’s a damn shame, because it would be a win-win for everyone - my family gets a higher standard of living and the larger society gets the benefits of my time and education.
Just one more thing in this lengthy post - I’ve seen comments here about cellphones being frills. Not always. BOTH my two current jobs require me to have a cellphone. I’ll say that again - both of my two jobs REQUIRE the employee to have a cellphone. It’s not a frill in my case, it’s a necessity for my jobs. It’s an example of why people shouldn’t be too quick to judge.
Now, that said - I also have a rock-bottom, minimal service cellphone plan. The Census bureau training course even had a list of suggestions for acquiring a cellphone for the least amount of money that would satisfy the job requirement (required both because the supervisors need to be able to contact the fieldworkers, and because they want the fieldworkers to be able to call 911 for help if they get into a bad situation while in the field). Fact is, though, you can’t tell from looking at my cellphone whether I have the dirt cheap plan or the bells-and-whistles plan. On the other hand, a hypothetical caseworker could observe that my family has ONE cellphone, held by the breadwinner, and not a tricked-out iPhone for every member of the household.
I understand that, especially with today’s economic situation. I was thinking of those who simply won’t work, even when everything is booming.
<I snipped the part about the racial and ethnic groups as that is not the part I was interested in, or disputing>
Math is not my strong suit, but it appears that they have more than 100% up there. Nearly half go four months but a bit over 3/4 go a year?
Actually, they could and this is why I have such a hard time supporting welfare. Those senior citizens could have been on and off welfare all of their lives AND raised their children on it AND their children are also now on and off welfare and raising children on it. There just don’t seem to be any studies on the generational affect, only stories from case workers.
Also, I am not of the opinion that welfare mothers make up a majority of those recieving benefits but I wouldn’t be surprised if they take a majority of the funds!
Well, considering it’s been at least a day, it wasn’t all that quick but that isn’t the point. You wanted to know if that is the kind of people “they” are and I wanted to know what “they” you were talking about.
A few dollars isn’t significant savings. I asked that question because someone (I forget who now) gave an example of a person on welfare with $2000 in the bank. Quite a bit more than a few dollars!
Wow. Math ISN’T your strong suit, huh? Here is the quote to which you responded:
“Almost half of ‘poverty spells’ (as measured by receipt of welfare) lasted 4 mths or less and more than 3/4s lasted a yr or less.”
Seriously… you actually can’t understand that? Are you joking?
You mean like the daycares that so many mothers use these days?
Doesn’t seem to be an issue in daycares.
I didn’t say anything about them getting a better education, tho it would probably be far more likely that they would actually go to school, and finish high school. If it was really well run, it would also be less likely the girls would be pregnant at 14, they would most likely be better fed and so better able to absorb an education.
Kind of interesting that you keep calling them orphanages, when the children wouldn’t be orphans but wards of the state. Mommy gets a job and gets off welfare, she can have the kids back, just like it is done now with foster care. You know, where kids are warehoused now?