Welfare (in USofA) - opinion

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

The US's welfare system came up in another forum, and it got me thinking about it again.

Sometimes, I think I'm in the minority about it.

Most folk, who I discuss it with, seem to be of the opinion that most welfare recipients are "lazy" or "freeloaders" or abusing the system.

They talk about those unfortunate enough to be on/in the welfare system as if those folk could actually DO something about their situation-- as if all they needed was a swift kick in the !ss.

That may or may not be.

But, I don't look at it like that at  all.  I suppose it's my "Enlightened Self Interest" approach, but I look at the total picture, and not the individuals.

What, exactly IS the total cost of the welfare system, to an individual such as myself?

That is, how does this safety net affect ME personally?  That is the bottom line, is it not?

And the facts are, that the individual cost of this program are pennies a year.   The welfare system is a very tiny part of the HUGE budget that is the USofA's financial obligation.

So, I turn it around, when someone says, "Look at that free-loader. Buying steak on food stamps." I say, "So what?"  And I go ON to say, "Who gives a friggin' lark WHAT they buy with their foodstamps? And furthermore, WHO CARES if they are 'working' the system?"

"We, as a RICH Country, can WELL AFFORD a tiny percentage of our population to be freeloaders.  You think those folk are HAPPY?"

Moreover, what, if anything, is the Alternative?  What would these folk be DOING if they were not freeloading on the rest of us?

Close examination of the sorts of folk who are content to be freeloaders, demonstrates that if we DIDN'T hand them some sort of income, they would likely 'scrounge' for that in less savory ways.

And, believe me, it is MUCH cheaper to give them foodstamps than to house them in jail. Or to clean up the results of their actions - for illegal drug-culture is one of the many ways many of these unfortunates turn to, when they are cut off.

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But, let us also look at another aspect of the welfare system.

What about the majority of those who use the system (reference: the welfare bureau, from late '80's and my sometimes-spotty memory) and then return to the workforce?  I seem to remember the rates were better than 70% - closer to 90%? That is, the rate of people who used welfare for a short time 6mo to 2 years, and then returned to the workforce.

What would THESE folk have done otherwise? Turned to crime, most likely.  A few would simply have starved to death, but it's a rare human who won't turn to stealing, when their babies are hungry ...

It's a cheap solution, in my opinion, to help these poor folk out for awhile.  VERY cheap, I think.

And, SO WHAT if they need to return to welfare in another year or three? Again, it is CHEAPER to YOU, as in individual, than the alternative.

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I have ignored completely, the compassion side of the argument - mainly, because I can not count on others' to HAVE compassion.

But, I CAN count on other people, like myself, to have their OWN SELF INTEREST in mind.

And I do not mean to be cynical, either - just practical.

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What are YOUR thoughts, if any, on this subject? 

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

And, here is a Newsweek Article that is VERY topical.

It is about a study of children, and their attitude about "unlucky" people.

WELL worth your time to read, I think.

[Sibling Chatty]

Well, ya know ol' Ronnie Reagan told us all about those Welfare Caddilac Mothers that were all living in their rented mansions with their bought-with-foodstamps Caddilacs, and that was Saint Ronnie, so we ought to believe every word he said.

Welfare no longer gives an applicant the ability to get off and stay off. The Clinton administration, vowing to "end welfare as we know it" did a heck of a job. Where previously, a 'welfare mother' (most recipients are single women with dependent children) could apply for assistance, and have a social worker helping her into training progran\ms, and getting daycare for the time she's in training, the new rules only allow for minimal job training, because of the LIFETIME limit.

The average recipient needs remedial educational work. A woman with barely an 8th grade education will NOT be a success in a program that pretty much needs a HS diploma to understand. So, now we have to take her from where she is to that 'starting point'. If it takes her only a year to progress the four years of education she needs, we have one more year to train her for a job that will provide a living wage for herself and her children. (As a working individual, her children lose Medicaid.)

Speaking of her children, if they get sick, the 'doctor's office' they'll go to is a clinic where you line up and hope to be one of the lucky ones to get a "today" appointment. That means the kid is running a high fever or is actively bleeding. Otherwise, it's a lottery and a waiting game that can take several days. What about Mom's training? She's missing it, thus proving that she's irresponsible and unable to hold a job...even if she calls in, the instructors don't understand the Medicaid clinic set-up that might take 3 days to see a kid with an earache or bad chest congestion. And, no, she can't send the child back to daycare, because there are other kids to worry about infecting.

So, Mom misses 3 days of training to see the doc, and two more days to get the kid 'sorta' well enough to go back to daycare, and then she's a week behind. She's talked down to and reprimanded for missing, for being irresponsible enough to have a sick kid, and for having kids in the first place. (Of course, no 'normal' kid ever caught something at daycare.) Then, when she's already feeling bad enough, she's thrown back into a program that's moved on without her for a week.

Do we begin to see a problem?? Add to that the problem of inadequate training or support for a good job, and there's a complete set-up for failure. Two years and off, remember? So if the job ends and there's no job available...quite often now the whole bunch ends up on the street or in a shelter.

There is a woman with 2 small children living at night in the handicapped restroom down the hall from the ER at the hospital in a town near here. They're in a car or one of the waiting rooms by day, and they sleep in the restroom at night, on pilfered blankets and things she keeps in the car, a 1978 Pontiac. She went through her 2 years of welfare and had her older child hospitalized with a congenital illness almost 1/3 of the time. If she wasn't with her at the hospital, Social Workers tried to take the child away because the mother was neglecting her. But, she couldn't go to her job training AND be at the hospital with her child at the same time.

The social worker accused her of only wanting to keep her daughter because they got extra food stamps to provide the specific diet the child needs. Anyway, her 2 years was up, and the welfare stopped. The resources that might help aren't available. They weren't funded. Someone gave her the barely running car as shelter, and the hospital is her best source of warmpth and cleanliness. She's hoping that there will be space for her at the family shelter soon. She's missed several openings because she doesn't have a phone where they can reach her. (Hi, I need to live in your shelter. Call me on my cell when you have an opening, K??)

Monday night when I was there, I had $7, and I gave it to her. (My 3rd trip there in 2 weeks, and one of the cleaning ladies told me about her, that she'd not take the kids in and put them down while I was in the waiting room if she saw my cane, so I hid it.) That was all I had, it was all I could do.

MAYBE IF THE POOR VOTED MORE REGULARLY, WE WOULDN'T EXPECT THEM TO STARVE OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL. OF course, you really need an address to vote. "Old Pontiac in the far hospital parking lot" doesn't cut it.

But that's OK, because it balances out. Well to do working Moms are leaving the workplace and their much-education-required jobs will be open http://www.alternet.org/stories/45557/?cID=403149#c403149
AND the CEO for Goldman, Sachs got a $54.3 MILLION bonus. http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/C78AD9870B3F06C68625724B0013BF74?OpenDocument

See?? Balance.

Of COURSE the poor are poor because they deserve it. If they had any sense, they'd have been born middle-class at least, and definitely white or at least well-educated. Stupid things chose to be born to POOR people.

Hmmph. And they want US to bail them out. No, make that YOU to bail them out, because i'm poor, too, dammit. I chose to be terribly, terribly ill, and have multi-millions of dollars in medical expenses. And I had NO SAVINGS!! Well, OK, I did, but it took about 3 weeks to burn through them...so it's MY fault for not saving more, right??

Merry Christmas, y'all.

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

They have a policy up here that really bothers me: if you own a house, you are ineligible for social assistance.  If you need welfare, you must sell your home first before you see a dime.

Of course, if you live in a rural area (i.e. 80-90% of the province), you don't generally have rental housing available near you.  This means you have to uproot your family to the city, leave your support network behind, become one more unskilled labourer in a giant pool of unskilled labour, and pay through the nose to live in a crap-hole apartment.  Bah.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

That's atrocious!

I personally don't like welfare, for a fundementally selfish reason: It's my money. They need to make their own, period. Why should they benefit from my labor, while doing little or none themselves?
Charities seem a better way to go. They can adapt much faster the the needs of the people.

[Aggie]

That's atrocious!

I personally don't like welfare, for a fundementally selfish reason: It's my money. They need to make their own, period. Why should they benefit from my labor, while doing little or none themselves?
Charities seem a better way to go. They can adapt much faster the the needs of the people.

So, when misfortune befalls you, and your money runs out, who will feed you?  There's a reason it's called Social Insurance....  something paid into to wipe our collective butts when sh!t happens.

There is and always will be something fundamentally wrong with society until EVERYONE has enough to eat and a warm, safe place to sleep, and EVERYONE WORKING 40 hours a week can provide these things for themselves at a level above those who aren't. 

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

I personally don't like welfare, for a fundementally selfish reason: It's my money. They need to make their own, period. Why should they benefit from my labor, while doing little or none themselves?

Where to start on that one... 

Reason 1 is summed up in an old saying: "there but for the grace of God go I."  It's only blind dumb luck that has kept most of us out of the gutter, not because those who are employed are intrinsically "better".  The idea that welfare recipients are lazy people who just don't want to work is one that has come out of political spin and is not generally grounded in fact.

Reason 2: selfishness.  I believe that the costs to society are much, much less to help someone out who is in need and get them back on their feet than it is to leave them to either scrape by or die.  Unfortunately, many modern welfare systems don't actually acheive this goal, but it's the ideal behind them.  If, for a small initial investment (in the form of their taxes), someone who's destitute can be made a "good consumer", then Adam Smith's butcher and baker get a customer for life, which means they make slightly more money (which generates more taxes, both from the former welfare recipient and from the butcher and baker).  The government putting the "seed capital" into a welfare system like this is no different from attracting businesses through tax cuts or grants - it's a payment made with expectation of later gain.

Reason 3: IMO, it's morally wrong to leave people to starve.  Everyone has the right to the bare necessities of life.  In our society, these rights are best protected by the government (and, out of necessity, paid by taxes).  Simple common decency (and justice) says that we don't sentence people to death for being unlucky, or, at the very worst (and at the least frequent, IMO), lazy.

Reason 4: The government allocates its money based on perceived need, and taxpayers can't pick-and-choose where it goes, even if it doesn't mesh with their own particular values.  If things did work this way, I know many pacifists who would see to it that their countries' defense departments would not get their money.

Side note: the question you ask works from both the left and the right, and it could also be asked of the folks who live off the share dividends of the companies that hire labourers: why should they reap the rewards of labour without doing anything themselves?   

While I think the majority of charities are noble, I've seen "charities" that were little more than fronts to line the pockets of the directors.  I don't think they're the only answer. 

Also, I think most charities, while they do good work, need government help to actually combat the root causes of the problems they address; last weekend I saw the head of my local Habitat for Humanity chapter speak - he said (roughly) that he hates the fact that his organization is necessary, and looks forward to the day that it's disbanded because it's no longer needed.  As crappy as government is sometimes, they're often the only agency that has enough size, power, and money to effect real, lasting change.

[Aggie]

Reason 2: selfishness.  I believe that the costs to society are much, much less to help someone out who is in need and get them back on their feet than it is to leave them to either scrape by or die.  Unfortunately, many modern welfare systems don't actually acheive this goal, but it's the ideal behind them.  If, for a small initial investment (in the form of their taxes), someone who's destitute can be made a "good consumer", then Adam Smith's butcher and baker get a customer for life, which means they make slightly more money (which generates more taxes, both from the former welfare recipient and from the butcher and baker).  The government putting the "seed capital" into a welfare system like this is no different from attracting businesses through tax cuts or grants - it's a payment made with expectation of later gain.

I forgot that angle, but when you consider the money that goes into policing alone to deal with problems related with extreme poverty (including those arising from homelessness), it starts making dollars and sense.

One aspect that could be better addressed....  if welfare systems allowed recipients who are not able to work at full capacity over the long-term (single mothers, the disabled, etc) to be employed part-time or at a reduced capacity without losing all benefits, then we may see reduced dependence on handouts. If one can't improve one's situation by working, there is no motivation to work.

Up here (in BC at least) there are some very good programs that allow special needs people to work and earn money at their own capacity while supporting other programs - my mom is a special needs worker for a school lunch program which prepares bagged lunches for children who might not otherwise get anything to eat, gives their 'clients' (special needs people) something constructive to do in a supportive environment and a chance to earn money, and keeps the costs of running the lunch program reasonable (because two programs are being subsidized at once).

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

One aspect that could be better addressed....  if welfare systems allowed recipients who are not able to work at full capacity over the long-term (single mothers, the disabled, etc) to be employed part-time or at a reduced capacity without losing all benefits, then we may see reduced dependence on handouts. If one can't improve one's situation by working, there is no motivation to work.

I agree - that's one problem we've got here.  Parents get child care and full health insurance* while doing job training, but they lose these when they go back to work, even at a part-time minimum wage job.  The result is often that even though their take-home pay may be more than their welfare cheque, they just can't afford to be employed - even if you gamble that your kids will stay healthy and don't get supplementary insurance, your job often won't pay enough to cover the child care that you need to enable you to work.


* contrary to what might be thought in the US, Canadians don't have all their health care paid for by the government.  Trips to the hospital and family doctor are covered, but not optometrists, dentists, or prescriptions, and things like prosthetics and wheelchairs are only partially covered.

[goat starer]

If I were asked to come up with a measurement for the maturity and ethics of states it would probably be a function of the number of welfare claimants and the development of the welfare system.

To me a truly mature state would have comprehensive safety nets for people who fall through the cracks but would have the creative opportunities for individuals to thrive such that welfare was not the most attractive option. As long as states fail to give adequate opportunity to the most vulberable and poorest to do anything valuable and worthwhile there will always need to be a robust welfare system. Even if equality of opportunity and welath of opportunities existed there will always be some who for any number of reasons find themselves in real social and economic trouble.

[Aggie]

* contrary to what might be thought in the US, Canadians don't have all their health care paid for by the government.  Trips to the hospital and family doctor are covered, but not optometrists, dentists, or prescriptions, and things like prosthetics and wheelchairs are only partially covered.

Yes, the $1200 I just laid out to Blue Cross will attest to that, and THAT doesn't even cover all of my dental.

[Sibling Chatty]

The concept that charities can meet the needs of those in need is--unrealistic, uninformed and, bluntly ignorant. The costs of sheltering and feeding and caring for the poor and needy is a MINISCULE amout of "YOUR MONEY" that goes to taxes.

Watch THIS

http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/

(Transcript for the video impaired.)
http://www.truemajority.org/fun/oreotrans.php

Now, about YOUR money...you want more of your money in your Libertarian pockets?? No problem. Off the internet. Taxes helped pay for the development. No driving on public roads. Don't call a doctor!! Medical schools are underwritten by public funds. So are hospitals, even "private" ones. No police, no fire department, and you'd better improve all those pioneering type skills fast. Learn to live without most commercial products: the transportation of most of what you buy is also partially at public costs.

Just hope your job doesn't depend on any public funding, even indirectly.

Sorry, hon, but that application of Libertarian is just a polite word for GREED. The man who told me that?? Michael Badnarik.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Badnarik

(I'm a resident of the Texas 10th District, in which he supposedly ran for office. He made ONE actual appearance, near Austin, for a seat that covers a 150 mile long area. Way to be taken seriously...)

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

What could I add? My siblings have covered everything that I thought of, and more.

It's also a "warm fuzzy" feeling that I'm not alone in thinking that a welfare system is MUCH cheaper (in MY taxes) that what would replace it-- increased crime is only the beginning. 

When I read your FIRST response/post, Chatty, I had to quit internet forums for an hour or three - I was so upset by what I'd read.

It's even worse that what I thought it was. 

*sigh*

BTW, did anyone read the newsweek link I had for the 2nd post, in this forum?

Here it is again: News bit about Welfare

What'yall think?

[Sibling Chatty]

Michael and Denise had to be at the hospital for testing today. The woman was in the old car with the kids, as it was raining, so they couldn't be out in the park across the highway. She recognized my van (they're driving it until they can get a new used tire for their car, after the 3rd) and waved, then realized it wasn't me, but them. She got out to see if Michael was OK, or if they were coming back to the ER again.

Some of the hospital employees had brought shelf-stable foods that she could keep in the car, and a group of dietary aides have started putting an extra tray on each of two carts that have to go past a place where they can hide the food for her and the kids when possible, then sneak them out the door while the patients eat, and pick them back up on the way back to the kitchen.

The dietary aides have put in a good word for her with their boss, and she'll be interviewed for the next opening. It's a minimum wage job, it requires that you have 3 sets of scrubs and proper shoes, but they're gathering up what they can spare to provide her work clothes, and one of the dietary workers is going to get her mother to keep the children while she works. (The mother has 2 of her other daughter's kids during the workday, so it'll just be two more.)

The people at the shelter told her MAYBE, after New Years, there might be a place.

Please understand, this is in a place that's considered to have some of the better social services in the state.

Denise cried because there wasn't anything she could do, or anything she could give her to help. But, today, we took apart the couch and went through pockets and doublechecked drawers for gas money to get Michael to dialysis tomorrow and Sunday. There is no more to give.
Gas money for dialysis until the third is going to be interesting. Prescription money for now until the third will be, too.

<font=irony>It's a shame that these lazy, benefits sucking people don't just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, you know??</font>

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I think I'll address Chatty's arguements first.

First: I disagree.
Charities don't function as wll now as they ought due to lack of funds in my view. I give when I can, personally, even though it's a tiny amount.

IF we had the Libertarian flat tax, there would be more money for all. Therefore, there is more to give, if one so chooses. This is where I deviate from the total flat tax folks, I support write offs for individuals and companies who donate to charity. I know plenty of people who give to schools and charities to prevent the government from getting their grubby mitts on their money.

Second, forgive the cherry-picking as Bob called it: Throwing money at schools will do little to help. It needs a fundemental re-organization, putting most of the power back into local and state hands, IMO.

Third: Police and Fire are part of the government's reponsibility as part of protecting the people. In my view, the only responbility of the government is to protect the people from those who violate the most basic laws (commiting fraud, arson, etc,) and from outside forces, like terrorists and foriegn powers.
Although I wonder if fire ought to be private owned. It seems to be fairly efficient now, though I have little knowledge of that area.

I will finish my responses later, since I apparently have things to do,and I'm loathe to retype all of this. Apologies.