Found some websites:
http://www.youdebate.com/DEBATES/congress_corporate_welfare.HTM
Sez here the average taxpayer pays $400 yearly on social welfare and $1,400 for corporate welfare.
(Note: I am just throwing this out as information. I do not know the first thing about corporate welfare and thus cannot debate it.)
If that. And how would you have gone about selling it? How much of your time would that have wasted – time better spent, say, looking for work?
I agree, but I think it only partially explains it. I think control and over-simplification are components as well.
I’ll agree with misstee that some people abuse the system, and that hurts everybody (including, in the long run, those that abuse the system). But draconian attitudes like some of those expressed in this thread are, well, baby, bathwater, and the inclusive throwing out thereof. Sometimes one has to accept a bit of fraud as a compromise when trying to better society as a whole. It comes with the territory.
An allegory would be to suggest that we arrest all citizens in order to reduce the crime rate. It would be very effective, but hardly beneficial to society.
The dinner and the movie, obviously. If you bought an iron second-hand (check the garage sales or Goodwill) you could have saved the money on pressing your shirt and suit. My local library offers free Internet access as well as job postings, but you may not live in my area, so the computer access is a wash.
Congratulations on the job. Perhaps next time you are “dead broke and facing eviction” you could spend your money on the rent and not going out to dinner and the movies.
But no, I would not consider keeping yourself clean and presentable to be a luxury. Fortunately, soap is cheap, and none of this has anything to do with the inherently stupid statement that people are going to starve to death if they cannot withdraw more than $20 a day from their welfare accounts.
No, I, darling, am a taxpayer, who does not care to subsidize the stupid decisions of others.
We already have a number of measures in place to prevent the charity cases of the world from wasting what is given them. My state recently passed legislation to prevent the EBT cards in our welfare system from being used in the ATMs in our local casinos. There is already a list of things you cannot buy with food stamps - liquor and cigarettes, for example. And lots of people are already being prosecuted for welfare fraud. None of these strike me as particularly onerous, and referring to a desire to get the most bang for your welfare spending buck as being “a control freak” is a little too silly to bother refuting.
I have, in common with a number of other people, some life experience. I used to be poor, and now I am not. Therefore, I am familiar with at least one way to do what we want everyone in our society to do - reach a point where they produce more than they consume. This is called “making the world a better place”, and it is something everyone should want to get around to sooner or later.
I know what it is like to live on a limited income. I know what it is like to budget, to choose the cheapest food I can find because it is the cheapest, and I know how to live without a car in a rented room. I also know how to escape the necessity of doing all these things, and eating at McDonald’s twice a week and going to first-run movies at $7 a pop did not form the cornerstone of my Master Plan to Escape Poverty.
Most people who are on welfare get off of it. Many of those who don’t, could, if they would do what the rest of us do - work hard, delay gratification, get an education, and don’t have children you cannot support.
Could do, and should do. And whatever we do to add to that “will do” benefits everyone - the poor because they will tend to cease being poor, the middle class because they don’t have to subsidize some stranger under coercion, and the rich because they won’t have to listen to idiotic claims from losers that their children will starve in the streets if they can’t go to restaurants every weekend.
Regards,
Shodan
This “crap” is questioning weather or not the recipient actually needs the help. IF you in fact, do need the help, I doubt you are going to have a hard time proving you need it. People will get away with what society will let them get away with. If social workers ( or whomever determines eligibility) do not check into matters they make society a worse place for all of us. Would it be easier on people who apply for welfare of any sorts to just give a phone call, and be handed a check, no questions asked? I am not saying all people who apply for benefits are liars who are trying to defraud the system, I am saying that they should be asked to prove to the system that they do in fact need the help. If they have a medical condition that prevents them from working, they should be seen by a doctor and the doctor should submit his findings to the social worker.
Dang it! I hate doing this, but I’m going to have to quote myself because something I said in another thread is just begging to be re-posted here. Although the portion on family planning decisions isn’t really the focus of this pit thread it still belongs because there was discussion of the issue in the thread which inspired this one.
**Enjoy,
Steven
First off, thanks for the congrats.
Secondly, let’s talk about your 2nd statement here. It’s not like I was foregoing rent to eat at Chez Ooh La La every night of the week. The movie I saw was the first movie I’d been to in over 2 years. Had I bought a cheap second-hand iron, I would likely have ruined the only suit I own (I suck at ironing). Yes, I could have used a public computer, but I owe part of my job success to promptly answering my e-mail. It was a time sensitive position, and a delay of a few hours would have cost me the job.
And the eviction? Had nothing to do with my failure to pay rent. It had to do with a new landlord that demanded a 150% increase in rent right away, or I was out on my ass. There was no way I could come up with that money on my own, even if I skipped the 99 cent value meal at Wendy’s for 4 years in a row.
I could go on and on, but do you see how when I explain my circumstances, they make a bit more financial sense? That my situation made sense to me at the time, and I turned it into a success story?
“Ah”, you might say, “But you never explained that.” Or perhaps your response would be “In light of all that, I understand. Why didn’t you mention that in your previous post?”
The answer is simple. You didn’t ask. And this is at the crux of the matter.
You simply assumed my situation, then applied a one-size-fits-all solution. One that would have hurt me greatly.
You must understand, you cannot see all ends. You have no idea what it’s like to be in another city, at another time, in someone else’s shoes. What makes perfect sense to you may not apply to everyone – or anyone – else. You are not omniscient.
Furthermore, when I bought that dinner, I was fully aware of my budget, and of the consequences of exceeding it. I am not an idiot. I knew fully well what I was doing. I would have been greatly insulted had you imposed your will on my life, as if you needed to hold my hand through my every transaction. And the insinuation that you know better than me.
When you say that every single welfare mother in the US can get by on $20 per day and needs no more, you are doing exactly that. When you say you know better than any one of them, you are being ignorant at best.
Give people a little credit to find their own way through life as they deem best. Don’t be such a busybody.
And failing that, please submit your budget to us so that we can dictate your financial situation to you.
No, it’s not. It’s intrusive, demeaning, and pointless.
Why did I, when I got food stamps, have to reprove my income every month? Why did I have to submit to a two hour interview at the welfare office (which was half an hour away by car and two hours by public transportation) every month if I wanted to keep my benefits? When you’re a member of the working poor you can’t afford to take half a day (or a full day) off each month just to maintain your benefits. Oh, and by the way, they pick the date and time of the interview. You don’t. If the date and time they give you is incompatible with your employment schedule you can ask the caseworker to reschedule, but they don’t have to reschedule it if they don’t want to. If you fail to show, your benefits may be terminated. (I personally think the point of all this is to discourage people from trying to hold down jobs while on public assistance. It certainly is the effect. Is that a social positive?)
The system is set up to make it hard to prove. I know people who have been denied benefits for failing to prove that they don’t have a bank account, or failing to prove that they don’t have a job. How do you prove a negative like that?
Who’s going to pay for that doctor to certify the individual unable to work? Doctors aren’t cheap. I couldn’t afford to see one for years when I was poor, for anything, except for the short time I was on Medicaid, and even then they would not have paid for an office evaluation of any sort.
I strongly suspect that more people who deserve benefits are denied them by draconian “fraud control measures” than would gain benefits illicitly without them. “Fraud control measures” are all about control. They have very little to do with verifying deservingness.
No, this is another form of punishing the poor: forcing them to jump through hoops like trained rodents in order to be given their handout. Plain and simple.
You guys are a bunch of assholes.
I sure am glad that when I was five years old being raised by a single mom doing her best to make ends meet I had no clue that that there were whole contigents of people who avidly believe that I should have spent my sixth birthday party chopping cabbage alone while my mom wandered around town aimlessly looking for ‘help wanted’ signs instead of watching a matinee of the Care Bears movie.
Yep, they begrudge my fucking birthday party. A little poor kid’s birthday party. Something she’ll remember as a special day out with her mother for the rest of her life. And it shouldn’t have happened. I should have known better than to be born poor. Maybe if my mom was really needy she could have done like the peasents do and make a cake out of rice and beans.
At least I wouldn’t have had it so bad as my best friend, who was raised on welfare by her aunt because her mother wasn’t mentally capable of raising a child. Now her aunt worked as much as she could, but it was hard when her bones were breaking out from under her because of cancer. She tried to get hired at her job full-time, because it is tough to feed your own kid plus two of your sister’s kids on welfare. They were already crowded into a two bedroom apartment in the ghetto living mostly off food bank donations. But year after year they did not pick her up as a full-time employee. She died the day after her oldest child graduated from high school. According to you all, that oldest kid should have never seen a movie, never tasted food that wasn’t cheaper than beans, certainky have never tasted soda, never had a birthday party, never recieved a present (they could have sold the stuff they got from charity for christmas) never have gone to a prom even in a thriftstore dress, never have gotten a book or used computer, never traveled outside her hometown, and probably should have sold the black and white television they used to watch tv until it broke in 1995 because it was taking away from her job search time.
That is, assuming that they aren’t argueing that they shouldn’t exist at all, which is also apparently an valid point of view. Maybe I’ll tell that to the next poor looking kid I see. I’m sure it will make their day.
In a simple world that would be true. But then you run into all sorts of issues with rights to privacy. And issues with all sorts of grey areas where medical problems might not be so clear-cut.
Really, should one have to subject oneself to a government-ordered anal probe and the opinion of a state appointed doctor in order to receive benefits? (I’m starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist now – :eek: )
tdn, civil rights only belong to the wealthy. Poor people, being subhuman, have no rights.
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This was in response brutus coment that he should not have to pay for public schools since he doesnt have kids. If there are no public schools, then the poor won’t get an education, no matter how much they want to.
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Most people who are on welfare do put forth the effort etc. take away the welfare, and you make them truely desperate. I’m not saying we shouldnt incarerate people who comitt crimes, or excuseing them for doing so…Im saying its cheaper not to put people in that situation in the first place.
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The simple fact is that most crimes are committed by the impoverished. The worst that becomes, the more crime rate rises. Yes, they have other options in life, but when you grow up in poverty, it doesnt seem like it to many. Take away the only safety net many people have, and you see this get much worse.
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I never said anything about a life long bribe, only that if we eliminate welfare as a safety net for people who fall on hard times, we will pay a greater amount in the overall cost of crime.
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Really? Are you sure? slide up there and see who I was replying to…I’ll wait… Brutus said that the government should end all welfare, and implied that public schools should go too.
Read your own link. That 400 billion includes Federal, STATE AND LOCAL expenditures…not just federal.
Mtgman, i’m praying that your post was sarcastic.
I’m confident that it was lezlers
Shodan, you are the very fucking definition of ‘fat cat’, sitting there in your easy chair watching the over the shoulder of the poor saying ‘you shouldn’t have that…OR THAT.’
Ever hear of ‘mental health’ and its contribution to our ability to work and interact with people? tdn had been suffering and was CELEBRATING the fact that he got a fucking job interview. No doubt his spirit was on the edge of broken, he was exhausted, stressed, nervous about the interview, and needed a bit of rejuvenation.
And you have the fucking nuts to come in here and say he shouldn’t have done it, because I suppose in your opinion, poor people should be home wearing a burlap sack and eating creamed toast until they make enough money to satisfy YOU enough that they are allowed to enjoy their finite and rapidly passing lives?
Give me a fucking break.
Well, most peo[ple who are on welfare do work, they just cant make enough. And most people who are on welfafe stay on it less then three years, and most people who are on it more than three years are disabled, elderly or children.
And maybe your friend is screwing the system. But maybe not. My father-in law injured his back about 20 years ago or so. His life is effectively over as far as working, but you wouldnt know if you just met him socially. He looks healthy, seems fine. But ive had to carry him to the hospital on more than one occasion when the pain just got to bad. He will have good days where he can stand around for hours at a time, he used to ride a motorcycle occasionally…then he will have times when he will be bedridden for months at a time. I doubt he would ride a four wheeler, but he gets so bored he sometimes does things that are risky. I don’t see what going to the races has to do with anything. people with back problems often had good days and bad days, and if there are too many bad days, they cant work.
I suspect I know why you have to reprove your income every month. It maybe to do the fraud other people have committed.
Lets say you are working at Burger King, making $6.75 an hour. We all know that $6.75 an hour isn’t going to pay the bills for an individual, let alone a family. So you apply and are granted aid. You jump through the hoops to get the aid started. If they don’t check every month who is to say you are not going to get a better paying job, say at a factory making $12.00 an hour? The difference between $6.75 an hour and $12.00 could make the difference between being able to receive the aid and being turned down. I don’t know you personally, but who is to say you are honest enough to report the increase in income. How many individuals would report and lose the aid they receive?
I do understand that it is hard to lose a half or a full days pay to go to an interview, and some bosses/jobs don’t understand the need to take care of it, but the reason that you have to do these things is because of abuses in the past and these are safe guards. You can’t blame society for not trusting everyone. I don’t believe everything people tell me, so why should a social worker?
You can trust people only so long, before you start to verify the information they give you.
Frankly, no, they do not. You are still spending money you haven’t got on things you don’t need. And your dismissal of suggestions on how you could have done it on the cheap with the excuse that it is too much bother for you to learn to take care of your own clothes bodes less than well as regards the rest of your excuses.
The story about the rent increase is also irrelevant. If, by your own statement, you were “dead broke”, you could not have paid your old rent, let alone a 150% increase. So, rather than retaining any resources for the future, you blow the wad.
As it turned out OK for you, and if you were spending your own money, good for you. If a welfare recipient came to you and said, “I am about to become homeless. Should I save my money and try to build up enough to get a deposit on a new place, or go out to eat, spend more on amusement for myself, and pay a laundry to press my shirt for me?”, would you begin discussing what wines go well with what entrees? Or would you point out that it is stupid to rely on getting a job offer from the only interview you have had in months?
It hurts you greatly to be expected to live within your means? You must have cried yourself to sleep every night of your adult life.
“Don’t waste money on stuff you don’t need”. Maybe not one-size-fits-all, but it sure fits a lot of poor people I know. Rich ones too, but they have a greater margin of safety.
I don’t have to be omniscent to see when someone else is shooting themselves in the foot.
Poor people know how to be poor. Rich people know how to be rich. Formerly poor, currently rich people know how to stop being poor and start being rich. Who do you think is best equipped to advise someone on how to spend their money?
Or put it this way. Who is more likely to move up in the world - the one who says, “Never touch your principal”, or the one who says, “Easy come easy go - I haven’t been out to a movie in a long time, and I might get a job offer tomorrow”?
Since I didn’t say that, I will have to reject your accusation of ignorance. What we were talking about is people whining about how they will starve to death because they cannot withdraw more than twenty bucks per day. If you can’t put together a budget with less than a $20 per diem in pocket money, you got problems that won’t be fixed by letting you blow the wad ten minutes after the welfare checks get cut.
And the day I apply for my first welfare check, you will have every right in the world to do so.
Until then, the advice flows the other way. If you don’t want the lectures and the unsubtle kicks in the pants to get you to budget, and invest, and play the percentages, get your own money, and spend it however seems right to you.
But not on my dime, thankyouverymuch.
Advising people on how to become the second and avoid the first is hardly being a busybody. You don’t like it? Then spend your own damn money. Until then, you will have to deal with the assumption that I do know better than you. Because I can pay my own bills. If you can’t, you are doing something wrong. And I will tell you what you are wrong about, and take steps to make you fix it, so you can stand on your own two feet like a grown up.
Regards,
Shodan
And that is done. My father in law goes through all kinds of very painfull test every couple of years to see if he is still disabled. He has had surgery many times. They have to document the hell out of it. you don’t just get handed a check.
More assholishness. Poor people deserve to be scrutinized and told how to spend every dime, but we should give the rich a pass, and indeed a right to privacy.
Talk about stripping people of their self worth, dick.