Welfare

Should the US abolish welfare?
Should the US limit or restrict the either the number of people on welfare or the amount that they receive?
Should you stop receiving welfare incremments after a set number of children?

Now consider the facts: Well over half of the people on the welfare program are drug users/abusers. The reason some people are on welfare is because they know they can make a living without having a job; as long as you ‘attempt’ to get hired once every 90 days the government will continue to pay you. A person on welfare can have his entire college education payed for, whereas a diligent student will have to pay for his. What’s wrong with this? Well the person paying for his education actually wants to learn, and the individual on welfare is indifferent as to the outcome of his years in college.

Why should hard-working taxpayers have to support lazy slobs? (Now I do realize that not everyone on welfare is a lazy slob. However, a majority do not put forth their full potential in trying to get a job. Some women even go so far as to have children just to increase their welfare check)

So, what actions, if any, should be taken as to the state of our welfare system?

Steve obviously youve never been on welfare.

You should look at things from another person’s point of view instead of trying to demean those on welfare as being either indifferent, or a drug dealer or both.

My mother was layed off her job as a textile employee due to the NA free trade agreement. Now because the goverment allows this they have to make sure that her and her family(thats me!) dont start to death. They payed for her education, and she is now working as an accountant thanks in mostly to her education.

And that is why the dole is there, if it keeps one child from starving to death is not that enough evidence to keep it?

'Is it called welfare, ‘cos it’s well fair?’ - Ali G.

I’m going to side with Blutgi on this one. What you described Steve, is what economists call the ‘dependency trap’ - when it is more rational for the person in question to stay on benefits, than to work, be it for personal reasons (regarding the environment he/she chooses top stay in) or because the extraordinarily flexible labour market in the US, guarantees little in terms of worker’s rights (compared to in continental Europe at least). The Washington neo-liberal consensus that gained particular momentum in 1980 adopts a vision of the economic realm of social life, as more law-of-the-jungle than in Europe. This encourages a culture of comfort and consumption, of a kind of selfish individualism, which is adopted by all people in society (because it is the accepted value in society, as projected by a media who is also part of the Washington consensus). This includes those on benefit, who will make life decisions based on what benefits them as individuals. If that means breaking the law, or leaching off the state for survival, then so be it. But you must prealise that whilst in an ideal world all people would not have to be dependent on the state, the problem you articulately describe is a symptom of the political economy your governmental establishment, or your people, have chosen. It is a political economy based on the principle of economic liberalism. In many industries, the interests of businesses supercede the interests of the least fortunate in society, in the eyes of government, as reflected in government policy.

The value of social justice, is a value which does not recieve the same publicity or credence in US government policy as it does in Europe.

In Britain, a new government was elected in 1997 whose welfare policy was far more benign than in the US. The policy was designed to recognise the responsibility of the state to ‘iron out’ the imperfections of a rfee society.

This policy was the New Deal, and Welfare-to-Work programme. An idea ironically initiated by the US government to help those poorer members of society after the Wall Street Crash, and the Great Depression. This policy is designed to give those on long-term unemployment the chance for education, to accumulate the skills they need to enter the job market, and be employable again. To get them, quite literally, from welfare, to work. The condition with this policy is that the state benefits they recieve is removed if they refuse point-blank to take the opportunity of this free training. The government also created a complex network of links with businesses who wanted to employ the people who had come through the Welfare-to-Work programme. The policy has been hugely successful (despite a few technical hitches) and has seen the unemployment/claimant count (as measured by those claiming unemployment benefits from the state) fall to the lowest level for nearly 30 years, following the mass unemployment of the Thatcher and early Major years.

This different approach to the welfare/unemployment problem was based on a different approach to those who have been less fortunate in life. A government that actually engages with these peoples’ problems is more likely to actually solve them, for the individual good, and for the good of all society. Even if viewed in economic terms, you can notice that each person is a resource in themselves. If an employer is using that resource, it not only benefits them, but also that person being employed too (depending on the nature of the job, and tyhe nature of the person).

By moralising about how those who abuse the welfare system should ‘get their act together’ and stop being ‘lazy slobs’ leaching of us hard-working tax-payers, you actually get nowhere near the core of the issue, which is the government’s failure to find the cause of their problems, and try to help them, rather than dehumanising them and portraying as an enemy to those who follow the Christian work ethic to the word.

A problem should be fully understood before you start thinking of policies to solve it. Rational government.

I think you are right Steve. Lets abolish it. Leave the lazy bastards without food, home or a single penny.

:confused:

Give us a break…

I don’t think you can cedit the low unemployment levels to the policies of the Labour government, they inherited a very good and rapidly growing economy from the conservatives, unemployment was bound to fall. Also Labour has started using new ways of ‘measuring’ unemployment which automatically leads to a drop in unemplyed, so it’s all a bit of a sleight of hand. The high unemployment rates during the conservative’s reign was due to the previous government taking the country into a huge recession and the Conservatives are the ones who worked us out of the recession, not Labour.

Also Labour’s policies on unemployment have been shown to be fundamentally flawed but 6 months ago with the publication of a report showing that for the majority of unemployed and impoverished, it is only a transitive phase which they fall into at one point and tend to pull themselves out of regardless of the help they are given. WHat they need tends to be enough to survive through that period. I can’t remember which Labour minister it was but he’d worked on the assumption (maybe intuitive) that someone might be born into poverty, live through poverty and die in poverty. The actual reality is quite different.

That’s also a reason for a welfare state, as these people will (in all probability) become a ‘useful’ memeber of society again (that is a member who will contribute to the state through taxes, etc. not just take off the state), but not helping them out in their hour of need you are reducing the future number of contributors.

Actually, and I’m gonna sound harsh but it’s very very true, No. It’s not.

In fact it wouldn’t be if it saved 10, or 20, or a 100. There is a line where you have to start helping, but it’s way away from 1.

That particular argument is akin to saying, why not wrap everyone up in bubble plastic so they can’t hurt themselves.

In order to maintain a welfare system, there is a certain level of support that the other citizens in a country can justifiably be expected to bear on top of their own responsibilites. Beyond that it is not fair to start saying they should live in near poverty just so that no child in the country dies from poverty. It’s a fallicious argument.

Another comparable argument would be, everyone should drive at 5 mph so that no serious accidents could happen. Yes, this would save thousands of lives a year (probably 10s of thousands, I’m not sure of the statistics of accidents here in England). But there’s a price. The economy would suffer heavily (infrastructure is a key need), people’s lives would suffer, they wouldn’t be able to easily go and see this or that, etc., etc. The cost of this out weighs the benefits.

There is a moral argument for a restricted social state. A complete welfare state like your comment suggested Blutgi is just insane.

But I d agree with you that SSSteve must never have been on the dole, I’ve known people on it and let me tell you, they didn’t like it at all.

What you (SSSteve that is) do need to accept (and this may sound like the opposite of the above) is a certain level of abuse of the system is acceptable as long as it’s benefits outweigh the cost. It’s the same point, but used at the other end of the specrtrum.

So a little out of everyone’s pockets who don’t really notice the loss can greatly benefit a few who need it desperatly. And this may be slightly abused as the realtive cost of that is less than not having the welfare system at all.

I also think your figure of 50% of spongers (as we call them) is highly questionable and if it is really true must show that there’s something seriously wrong with the implementation of the system in America, rather than the reasoning behind the system itself. Welfare should be uncomfartable enough to make people want to get a job (and most of the time the psychological factor of hating being on handouts is enough), but comfortable enough so that these people are not at risk.

matt i wanted to diagree with you but your right. Politically politicians dont care if one child dies or not as long as its not their child, but of some pore person’s child. but because welfare is a polar like system you either have it or dont, then you either kill a whole lot of children or you safe them all.

You’re still looking at it from the wrong way slightly. Sounds like you’re one of these sanctity of life people, thrown up by the soft western nations that barely deal with death. I mean the reaction to Princess Di’s death was absurd.

The life of a single person is not worth all that much if you really think about it. Is it worth making everyone live in poverty to make sure no child ever dies of hunger. Or is it better to have a few deaths but the ones who survive have a hugely better quality of life? Why not put all our money into the NHS. Make sure no-one ever dies cause they don’t have enough money.

There’s a saying, “You can’t put a price on a human life”. Actually that’s what’s done everyday, by virtually everyone. I choose to run across the road to get home quicker cause I’m cold. I could trip and get run over. The price of my life was getting home 20 seconds earlier. Was it worth it? In hindsight, after I get run over, no. But at the time the risk is worth taking cause the probability of my death is so small. Money is just a means to an ends for quality of life (apart from those stupid people who think it’s desirable in itself, I agree with Marx that that is a terrible view).

It’s a bit dangerous to think of life like I’m suggesting and you have to be strict with yourself, or you’ll start thinking life has no value, which it does.

However, the main thrust of my point is, making sure that no-one ever dies is tantamount to making sure no-one ever lives.

Welfare is government-run charity, with the exception that it’s paid for with money forcibly taken from those who have earned and given to those who haven’t. Regardless of how many lives it might save, regardless of how wonderful the results might be, that fact alone–that it is forced, that participation is non-voluntary as far as those who are paying for it is concerned, is why welfare must be abolished completely and unapologetically. The end does not justify the means.

Totally forced? No. You can always vote for a party that proposes abolishing welfare. If not, you can move to a country with no taxes!

The decisions were made by yur forefathers in what they thought would be everyone’s best interest. If you disagree with them you can become a politician and try and abolish welfare. You’d be surprised how much resistance they’d be to such an extremist policy.

So there is nothing forced about it at all, at any point in time you can vote in a new government, or you can move. You are the one disagreeing with everyone after all, and yet, if you’d lived in Britain, have had the benefit of the roads, the street lights, the regeneration schemes, the grants to help prop up industries or revitalize them, the security provided by the police forces (not as good as it was, but better than none at all), and the thousands of other things that a government provides for you. If you disagree with them you have a democratic right to get involved and say why.

But if you don’t agree with their decisions, you don’t have the right to do what the hell you want. You still have the option of moving somewhere where you can do what the hell you want.