"Why I Was Wrong About Welfare Reform"

[House Cat]

Present Brick Wall

Bang head against brick wall again and again...

This is more productive that participating in this conversation with people who really don't event take the time to listen to you...

 

[AGBF]

Arkie, I did not want you to think I was ignoring you because I did not reply, especially after your well thought out post.

I am gathering you are not from the US, but I am not sure which country you come from.

arkie is from Australia. She posts often in other threads, so I happened to know that, but she did mention Sydney in this thread as well. Her posts are always well thought-out.(Hi, arkie )

Deb

 

[ruby59]

You have to be more specific then that generalized insult.

 

[Dancing Fire]

According to the liberals wife and I did everything wrong when we were young. We should have depended on welfare and pop out 1/2 dozen babies instead of working to support our two daughters. Yup, live off the taxpayers, free housing,free foods,baby Formulas, free phones...

 

[arkieb1]

Arkie, I did not want you to think I was ignoring you because I did not reply, especially after your well thought out post.

I am gathering you are not from the US, but I am not sure which country you come from.

I can only speak about what goes on in the US and in my small corner of it.

I can only refer to what I see as a help mother in my local schools.

And what my husband in his job capacity comes across.

I can only speak of my driving to work each morning and seeing able bodied men and women obviously not doing the same.

And of the latest news about those who use EBT( cards at **** shops and casinos.

I am an Aussie, so I was demonstrating what examples of child poverty look like on my side of the world, the US statistically is worse than here, you have far more visible poverty than we do. We also adopted the English system of welfare which gives our poor set monetary amounts every fortnight. There have been small numbers of politicians that have attempted to introduce food stamps particularly in communities where the caregivers spend every cent they get in the first two days on drugs and alcohol, to help feed children, but most theorist here wildly reject the idea because they argue food stamps demoralise the people that received them. One of the arguments is it doesn't work particularly well where you live so why adopt it here.

Yes there are people that abuse our system, but it is also a safety net for our poorest and most vulnerable as well and for every person that abuses it, there is another that it helps or whose children it helps out of a life of poverty.

A tiny number of our poor like people that live on the streets don't even take welfare money they have no fixed addresses so they can't get it, many of whom are either young people and have run away from home, young drug addicts who have run away or older homeless people some of whom can be mentally ill or others that do not fit easily into the system. They literally live hand to mouth day to day like so many of your homeless do.

Out of curiosity because I hear it a lot from Americans, there is this notion that people out of work, should work but are there jobs for them? I've lived in a exceedingly poor rural small town with no jobs when I was growing up, then a large rural town with some jobs, and two major Australian cities. We have work for the dole programs here where people go onto farms and do farm work, in the cities they clean up parks and public spaces if they are able bodied and able to do so. Do you have that, and it's not just a question for Ruby59 it is for any of you to answer - I am interested what they have specifically where each of you live.

 

[arkieb1]

According to the liberals wife and I did everything wrong when we were young. We should have depended on welfare and pop out 1/2 dozen babies instead of working to support our two daughters. Yup, live off the taxpayers, free housing,free foods,baby Formulas, free phones...

Maybe the challenge then for your and your wife should be that you move out of your house and live on welfare in your country for a month. One of our politicians tried it for a week. Yeah no flash food, no fancy dinners, not enough money to pay the rates, fuel and so on. Or if you have kids and god forbid one of them gets sick or you have to pay for an autism or assessment for something specific the power gets cut off or you can't afford heating in winter..... Like I have said before sure there are people that abuse the systems regardless of the country but for large numbers of them and for their children it's not the easy ride many of your seem to think.

And before anyone suggests I don't get the US, I was an exchange student there many many eons ago, I was deeply saddened by the level of poverty in your country.

 

[Dancing Fire]

Out of curiosity because I hear it a lot from Americans, there is this notion that people out of work, should work but are there jobs for them? I've lived in a exceedingly poor rural small town with no jobs when I was growing up, then a large rural town with some jobs, and two major Australian cities. We have work for the dole programs here where people go onto farms and do farm work, in the cities they clean up parks and public spaces if they are able bodied and able to do so. Do you have that, and it's not just a question for Ruby59 it is for any of you to answer - I am interested what they have specifically where each of you live.

No, a lot of Americans are jobless b/c our Prez. doesn't know how to grow the economy. Obama will be the only post war President who will not see a 3% growth in GDP during his presidency.

 

[arkieb1]

But DF can you blame him exclusively? Isn't it true that a lot of his initiatives have been blocked by conservatives that don't want him to get anywhere during his presidency? And I guess the question is that if you and Ruby 59 don't want to pay taxes to feed the poor what other solutions can you offer?

I also am not sure I understand this whole thing where Americans whine about how your tax pays for everything especially the poor, we pay exceedingly large amounts of tax here, on top of that we pay a 1.5% (on entire earnings) tax for medicare which is our health care and 10% GST on everything all goods and services. Our food, houses, cars, clothing, electrical goods etc is in many cases twice as expensive as yours.... Ironically it is not lost on me that some of the European countries that pay the most tax have the lowest rates of domestic poverty.

 

[Dancing Fire]

But DF can you blame him exclusively? Isn't it true that a lot of his initiatives have been blocked by conservatives that don't want him to get anywhere during his presidency? And I guess the question is that if you and Ruby 59 don't want to pay taxes to feed the poor what other solutions can you offer?

What the liberals don't understand is that welfare will only keep the recipients in poverty. The solution is for more job growth so that more recipients will be able to work their way off welfare. Don't get me wrong I am in favor of the program to help the poor, but only temporary not for the rest of their life if they are able to work.

 

[ruby59]

Exactly, Dancing Fire.

I too have nothing against helping the poor or the physically disabled or mentally challenged. Yes there is a segment of the population that will always need help.

But when I see able bodied adults doing absolutely nothing to improve their lives because they know they can just stick their hand out, then yes I have a problem with that.

Welfare was meant to get people back on their feet. Not a life long crutch.

 

[ksinger]

Exactly, Dancing Fire.

I too have nothing against helping the poor or the physically disabled or mentally challenged. Yes there is a segment of the population that will always need help.

But when I see able bodied adults doing absolutely nothing to improve their lives because they know they can just stick their hand out, then yes I have a problem with that.

Welfare was meant to get people back on their feet. Not a life long crutch.

So which welfare programs do you object to?

 

[ruby59]

So which welfare programs do you object to?
___________________________

The ones that allow people to take advantage of them.

My husband as part of his job audits some of these programs. And he often brings discrepancies up. Unfortunately, very little is done about it until it makes the papers and there is a public outcry.

Case in point. It was discovered that people were using their EBT cards to purchase items that were not meant to be, like using them at casinos, strip clubs, and liquor stores.

 

[monarch64]

My opinion was not solicited, but I would like to state that I object to Social Security. Old women should have been more responsible in their youth and planned for their financial future. I'm tired of paying for old people who do nothing but sit on their asses all day instead of going out and getting a job--hello, Walmart greeter? Crossing guard? Mall security? Just think, if those women had kept their slutty legs closed and not had all those children they could have been rolling in the dough and we wouldn't be stuck paying for them.

 

[ruby59]

If that post was meant for me, imo it does nothing to add to this conversation.

And that is all I will say about it.

 

[Dancing Fire]

All I can say is that my wife and I was young and stupid for not taking advantage of the system. I have no problem with supporting a better education for our kids and take good care of our senior citizens, but to those who are young and able... GET YOUR A$$ to work!.

 

[Calliecake]

My opinion was not solicited, but I would like to state that I object to Social Security. Old women should have been more responsible in their youth and planned for their financial future. I'm tired of paying for old people who do nothing but sit on their asses all day instead of going out and getting a job--hello, Walmart greeter? Crossing guard? Mall security? Just think, if those women had kept their slutty legs closed and not had all those children they could have been rolling in the dough and we wouldn't be stuck paying for them.

Monnie,

Thank you so much for this! I was getting upset with some of the responses here and then I came to this one!

I guess I don't understand why some of the responses here are so angry. I also pay a lot in taxes and give a lot of money every year to charity. I believe in giving back to those less fortunate. I can't imagine how hard a homeless person's life is every single day and quite frankly I'm very grateful that my life has turned out the way it has. Dancing Fire do you really think most people who receive some form of welfare are abusing the system? I have a family member who makes very little despite working more than forty hours each week. She and her child do not qualify for any of these programs you have listed. She does qualify for healthcare for her child but that's it. Nothing more and believe me she is very grateful for this benefit. So on top of donating to charities I help her out all the time and I'm happy to do so. It's very easy to judge another person without walking in their shoes. It also says a lot about the person's character that is doing the judging. It's been my experience that those who complain the most are the same people who do nothing to help others. I just makes me sad.

It amazes me that people get so upset that someone who needs help is receiving help but think nothing of the bonuses and obscene salaries so many CEO's make.

 

[Dancing Fire]

My opinion was not solicited, but I would like to state that I object to Social Security. Old women should have been more responsible in their youth and planned for their financial future. I'm tired of paying for old people who do nothing but sit on their asses all day instead of going out and getting a job--hello, Walmart greeter? Crossing guard? Mall security? Just think, if those women had kept their slutty legs closed and not had all those children they could have been rolling in the dough and we wouldn't be stuck paying for them.

Monnie,

Thank you so much for this! I was getting upset with some of the responses here and then I came to this one!

I guess I don't understand why some of the responses here are so angry. I also pay a lot in taxes and give a lot of money every year to charity. I believe in giving back to those less fortunate. I can't imagine how hard a homeless person's life is every single day and quite frankly I'm very grateful that my life has turned out the way it has. Dancing Fire do you really think most people who receive some form of welfare are abusing the system? I have a family member who makes very little despite working more than forty hours each week. She and her child do not qualify for any of these programs you have listed. She does qualify for healthcare for her child but that's it. Nothing more and believe me she is very grateful for this benefit. So on top of donating to charities I help her out all the time and I'm happy to do so. It's very easy to judge another person without walking in their shoes. It also says a lot about the person's character that is doing the judging. It's been my experience that those who complain the most are the same people who do nothing to help others. I just makes me sad.

It amazes me that people get so upset that someone who needs help is receiving help but think nothing of the bonuses and obscene salaries so many CEO's make.

And it is been my experience the people complaining the most are those who have not contributed a single dime into the tax system. i.e..there was this lady complaining on TV that cheap materials were use to built the government housing in New Orleans after the flood.. This lady and her family was moving into a "NEW government sponsored house" and she had the nerve to complain about cheap flooring materials.. .. Maybe she was expecting imported marble from Italy?..

 

[ksinger]

My opinion was not solicited, but I would like to state that I object to Social Security. Old women should have been more responsible in their youth and planned for their financial future. I'm tired of paying for old people who do nothing but sit on their asses all day instead of going out and getting a job--hello, Walmart greeter? Crossing guard? Mall security? Just think, if those women had kept their slutty legs closed and not had all those children they could have been rolling in the dough and we wouldn't be stuck paying for them.

Monnie,

Thank you so much for this! I was getting upset with some of the responses here and then I came to this one!

I guess I don't understand why some of the responses here are so angry. I also pay a lot in taxes and give a lot of money every year to charity. I believe in giving back to those less fortunate. I can't imagine how hard a homeless person's life is every single day and quite frankly I'm very grateful that my life has turned out the way it has. Dancing Fire do you really think most people who receive some form of welfare are abusing the system? I have a family member who makes very little despite working more than forty hours each week. She and her child do not qualify for any of these programs you have listed. She does qualify for healthcare for her child but that's it. Nothing more and believe me she is very grateful for this benefit. So on top of donating to charities I help her out all the time and I'm happy to do so. It's very easy to judge another person without walking in their shoes. It also says a lot about the person's character that is doing the judging. It's been my experience that those who complain the most are the same people who do nothing to help others. I just makes me sad.

It amazes me that people get so upset that someone who needs help is receiving help but think nothing of the bonuses and obscene salaries so many CEO's make.

I would argue that you are far more imaginative than you give yourself credit for. You saying that made me immediately think of this piece:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/22/how-voters-personal-suffering-overtook-reason-and-brought-us-donald-trump/

“…struck by the scattershot nature of American compassion. There are many groups in our society that suffer hardship and discrimination, but we confer moral glamour on some of them and not on others. We are never concerned in equal measure about them all. We are inconstant in our decency, which is perhaps the most common form of indecency. The media has made our attention, and therefore our mercies, fickle; from our digital sources we know about all sorts of suffering, and we just live with the knowledge. But our passing sympathies, the soft betrayals of the intermittent heart, are not exactly random. When, for example, politicians and political consultants decided that their fate would be decided by the American middle class, the American poor more or less vanished from our political discourse. More recently, odious events have forced many Americans to acknowledge the selectivity of our solidarity — a year of lives suddenly mattering. The shatteringly long list of young black men killed by police, and the obscenity in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. , rattled even the most devout believer in the progress that has been made in American civil rights and complicated American pride with American shame. The sense of achievement in this struggle has been harshly qualified by the sense that this struggle will be unceasing.

The partiality of our consciences, our inability to care about all who have a proper claim upon our care, is not the result of a constraint upon our budgets, or more generally upon our institutions of politics and government. It is the result of a constraint upon our imaginations. Ethical principles are most commonly ascribed to the operations of reason, but we need to remind ourselves of the role of the imagination in moral action. Without the imagination, we would act only against wrongs that we ourselves have endured. We would be prisoners of our experience — which is to say, the experience of people less lucky than ourselves would be incomprehensible to us. To be sure, it would be presumptuous to believe that we fully understand the agonies of people who have suffered war and famine and pandemic and extreme poverty and slavery and genocide, when we, or most of us, have suffered nothing of the sort. But it would be callous, and a dereliction of our human duty, to believe that their agonies are completely beyond our comprehension, closed off to us, so that fellow-feeling is not possible and acts of assistance and rescue are not obligated.

What brings fellow-feeling into being is the imagination. We identify with pain by picturing it. At the beginning of “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Adam Smith lucidly made the point: “Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. . . . By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him.” Solidarity is created by that “as it were” and “in some measure”: The approximations of the imagination, respectful of the interiority of experience but impatient with it, are powerful enough to establish a commonality between otherwise unshared lives, and thereby the grounds of a moral understanding. Sympathy, as Smith observed, is produced “by changing places in fancy with the sufferer.”

 

[monarch64]

When Church Chat was on Saturday Night Live, I wasn't allowed to stay up late and watch it. But this thread reminds me of Dana Carvey's Church Lady in so many ways. Sorry about the commercial in the beginning...but enjoy!

(Callie, I am so glad someone appreciates my humor. I just hate rotten tomatoes. So slimy! So many fruit flies!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHyW0N5f7zQ

 

[arkieb1]

All I can say is that my wife and I was young and stupid for not taking advantage of the system. I have no problem with supporting a better education for our kids and take good care of our senior citizens, but to those who are young and able... GET YOUR A$$ to work!.

So what is the solution in places where there is literally no work? I grew up in a small rural town that despite being in Australia, it is in many ways not that dissimilar to many small towns with shops closing and nothing going for them in the US..... and there are NO jobs there none zip, zilch, zero.

Job growth only happens when you stimulate the economy, when you start taxing big businesses that IMHO get away with far too much, and give back far to little both in your country and in mine and demand that they put more back into the system..... When you actually have policies and tax concessions that support small Mum and Pop businesses (not just massive corporations) so they too can grow and employ more people.....

I don't really get this hostility either, the thing is when you say there are all these people misusing the system, there probably is but for every one that you see that is, there are probably another or two others, or four others or ten others that you don't see that aren't milking the system and are genuinely struggling and it is legitimately helping.

What you seem to be articulating is that you need a better way of assessing the people that really need help from those that don't and the catch 22 in that is that if more money is spent on that ie enforcing more administrative red tape to screen who does and doesn't get help then this channels yet more money away from the people that need it most....

You also expect them to work, but then the question becomes doing what?

 

[ksinger]

Arkie, I don’t know how much stuff you like to read, but just to let you know that some people in the US do “get it”.

The first piece is from ’97, but could have been penned yesterday. It still applies, in spades actually.

The second is current, and gets to the nitty-gritty details of how the above mindset is playing out.

http://www.spectacle.org/297/trag.html

This is from the above link:

“If the AFDC slashers really admitted where they stood, the argument would go something like this. The more welfare we give, the more lazy people we will create, and they will create more lazy people, by having children and training them to be lazy. If we cut it off today, we may kill some children, but its in the service of a good cause; some adults will return to work, possibly most of them; some will turn to crime and we will catch and jail them; some may die, and good riddance to them--they had it coming. The deaths of a few children is more regrettable, but count as acceptable losses--after all, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

It really all boils down to a simple choice. Assume, since life is so fuzzy, that we can never be 100% accurate in setting solutions that will punish the lazy while protecting the innocent. Therefore, which would you rather do: subsidize a few of the lazy in order to save children, or kill a few children in order to make sure you get rid of all the lazy?

This is the metadebate. If we are compassionate, we will tolerate some lazy people, if that's what it takes to make sure that we have cared for the kids. If. The title of Olasky's book itself promotes a means/ends blur. If it were called The Tragedy of Compassion, we would know the answer: compassion is bad. The Tragedy of American Compassion begs the question: perhaps compassion is good, but the American practice of compassion is bad. "An emphasis on freedom," Olasky writes, "also should include a willingness to step away for a time and let those who have dug their own hole 'suffer the consequences of their misconduct.'" He concludes that we should have "warm hearts and hard heads." One ends the book believing that Olasky feels compassion, albeit tempered by what he himself calls a Calvinist perception "that time spent in the pit could be what was needed to save a life from permanent debauch". Perhaps it is his conditional compassion which makes him unable to confront the question of what happens to the innocent children.”

The second article, so you can see just how deeply embedded the ideas above, have become in our culture.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/12/the-undeserving-poor/266507/

 

[ksinger]

Since I was apparently unclear, I will speak to the intent of my post above.

The "core assumptions" are the ones I see underpinning the stances of people who constantly condemn single mothers collecting a pittance to feed their children, as the demise of America. They are a group whose size is easy to overstate and then to pick on, because moralizing about sex and punishing those women who break the rules of the patriarchy, has never gone out of vogue.

The stats were an attempt to show just how big a slice of the entitlement pie, is the "welfare" is being used by those stereotypically black promiscuous single non-working women who pop out babies for that lavish incentive check.

This is better than that long narrative that was hard to read, K. Can you break this down to one sentence?

Deb

No.

K, I almost posted this link for you yesterday when this article appeared. Maybe you would enjoy it today. I hope that you know that what I posted to you above about further reducing the text of your message was tongue in cheek. This article argues (whether or not you agree with its premise), that Americans find it harder to comprehend some of the ideas that Europeans do, based on the bloodier history of the Europeans.

Actually, I'd welcome your opinion of this notion.

Deb

Link...http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/opinion/americas-new-normal.html

I just now got around to reading your link, Deb. Thank you. It was very good indeed. I bookmarked it.

And I thought so, but wasn't totally sure about your TIC-ness - and I was in a truly foul mood (not "you" related, not PS related) when I read it - but our long association and hopefully a few other life lessons, made me take the high road, and be utterly terse, while denying I could reduce my verbiage any more.

I would agree mostly with the premise, yes. In America though, I would add emphasis to the utter lack of imagination (there that idea is again) of most Americans. They are content enough not questioning the mythos they've been raised on, the one that has the the US living happily and sanctimoniously at the top of every one of their mental heaps, and requires zero personal or collective humility. That's a great gig, so why not? What is there really, to shock people out of complacency? Other than the Civil War, which most find hopelessly yawn-worthy in school, there has been no social cataclysm that has fallen equally on rich and poor, old and young, just and unjust, so it's easy to assume it never will. Americans have never done humility very well, and it's certainly more comfortable. And I also think there is an often subconscious understanding that if one is to look too closely, be too curious, she will find too many things that might cause discomfort. Better to not look. But that not looking, is a luxury that seems to be evaporating at an increasing rate.

 

[ruby59]

So what is the solution in places where there is literally no work? I grew up in a small rural town that despite being in Australia, it is in many ways not that dissimilar to many small towns with shops closing and nothing going for them in the US..... and there are NO jobs there none zip, zilch, zero.
____________________________________________

My home state, Rhode Island, went into the recession hard, and was one of the last states to come out of it. We had 10% unemployment at one time - one of the highest in the country.

And this happened at the same time that my son graduated from college.

So what do you do when the city or town you live in has no jobs.

You do what my son did. He looked for work in another State. Yes he commutes from his home in Rhode Island to Boston every day then has to take some other bus to his job. Commuting adds an hour and a half each way. Apartments are too expensive in Boston and its surrounding suburbs, so living there is not an option.

It is what a responsible person does to support themselves and their family.

 

[Dancing Fire]

All I can say is that my wife and I was young and stupid for not taking advantage of the system. I have no problem with supporting a better education for our kids and take good care of our senior citizens, but to those who are young and able... GET YOUR A$$ to work!.

So what is the solution in places where there is literally no work? I grew up in a small rural town that despite being in Australia, it is in many ways not that dissimilar to many small towns with shops closing and nothing going for them in the US..... and there are NO jobs there none zip, zilch, zero.

Job growth only happens when you stimulate the economy, when you start taxing big businesses that IMHO get away with far too much, and give back far to little both in your country and in mine and demand that they put more back into the system..... When you actually have policies and tax concessions that support small Mum and Pop businesses (not just massive corporations) so they too can grow and employ more people.....

You also expect them to work, but then the question becomes doing what?

Exactly, The backbone of the US economy is job creating by the small businesses, but the ACA (the not so affordable care act) killed our economy, b/c most small businesses will only hire part time employees to avoid paying for medical insurances.

 

[Dancing Fire]

So what is the solution in places where there is literally no work? I grew up in a small rural town that despite being in Australia, it is in many ways not that dissimilar to many small towns with shops closing and nothing going for them in the US..... and there are NO jobs there none zip, zilch, zero.
____________________________________________

My home state, Rhode Island, went into the recession hard, and was one of the last states to come out of it. We had 10% unemployment at one time - one of the highest in the country.

And this happened at the same time that my son graduated from college.

So what do you do when the city or town you live in has no jobs.

You do what my son did. He looked for work in another State. Yes he commutes from his home in Rhode Island to Boston every day then has to take some other bus to his job. Commuting adds an hour and a half each way. Apartments are too expensive in Boston and its surrounding suburbs, so living there is not an option.

It is what a responsible person does to support themselves and their family.

He is in the same situation as my DD#2. She can't find a full time job after she graduated from college thanks to Obama's failed economic policies. He promised to create millions of new jobs for students coming out of college... b/c of his failed economic policies Trump could become the next POTUS. Like most college students my daughter was an Obama supporter. I asked her remember the slogan "hope and change?" now I'm sure she is hoping for a quick change.

 

[arkieb1]

Ksinger, I think a number of intelligent articulate people here do get it. I read your links. I guess I am an idealist, and will always go with the premise of saving the child that lives in poverty (because I have seen and worked with such children) and with the theory that one of them could be the next person that finds the cure for cancer, one of them can potentially save us from that future thing or disease that can and will threaten mankind rather than condemn them as the child of the person sponging off the system that therefore deserves to starve or should never have been born....

I also get this notion of a vicious circle of poverty, we indeed have pockets, towns, places here too, where it is just that, 4th+ generation of welfare recipients with little to no prospects of becoming anything else. Again I will always argue for better health, better education and better opportunities so that each one of their children has ongoing opportunity.

I don't think that it has to be an either/or situation, you can sustain welfare for the most vulnerable and allow able bodied people to work building things like roads, cleaning up and building better infrastructure in general, but again all of that needs a willingness to commit funds to it. I make the observation that your relatively low minimum wages compared to overall unevenly spread domestic wealth has a lot to answer for too. I sincerely hope that DF and Ruby59 read your second link, it substantiates, that not every jobless poor person is willingly trying to defraud the system.

What saddens me, is that there seems to be an increasing US versus THEM divide, rich versus poor, a person of religion x or race y against the next. I look at what just occurred in the UK, and flowing on from that, Trump seems to encapsulate and appeal to this racially motivated egocentric sentiment, I could argue we are in the midst of the personification of the lack of Olasky's compassion, and that it is something that has been festering and growing in popularity in many Western Societies. Be it fuelled by the ongoing threat of terrorism or by economic uncertainty, the notion that the time has come and we must somehow close our boarders and it's each and every person/country for themselves on this metaphorical sinking ship, both economically and culturally. For someone like me, it's simultaneously horrifying and fascinating to observe.

I also think when we subscribe that we are all doomed from over population and retreat back into what I would term narcissist economics, that does nothing to solved our immediate issues, much more intelligent people than I, have observed that it's not that we have too many people on this planet, it's that we don't evenly distribute the resources held by the few to accommodate the needs of the many....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/22/no-population-explosion-too-few-owning-too-much

Having said that if you told your founding forefathers that you would have a black president or potentially a female president many of them would no doubt be turning in their graves. Proof positive that where there is opportunity there is always hope.

Df and Ruby 59. I had to move out of home, as do many young people and move 5.5 to 6 hours away to go to Sydney (one of the most expensive cities in the world) to go to University because there was and is nothing out where I came from, no jobs, no large education institutions, not even the possibility of driving back and forth to save money. So yeah I dunno, if you grow up in a rural or semi rural area here, jobs, universities, are mostly in big capital cities. That is something that just is, we accept it. Many of the poorest people from rural and semi rural areas cannot afford to move or live in big cities so they are stuck where they are.

On the one hand you want to stimulate the economy but on the other you cry foul when you get taxed more. Having said that DF and Ruby59 I actually don't blame you personally at all, I blame big businesses in the US, and the top 5% of wealthy in your country, those are the people that should be paying more to fund programs to help stimulate your economy.

 

[Dancing Fire]

On the one hand you want to stimulate the economy but on the other you cry foul when you get taxed more. Having said that DF and Ruby59 I actually don't blame you personally at all, I blame big businesses in the US, and the top 5% of wealthy in your country, those are the people that should be paying more to fund programs to help stimulate your economy.

Not true. I don't mind paying more taxes IF it go to educating our kids and looking after our senior citizens, but to those who are able to work but don't wanna work their way out of poverty...they can go kiss my A$$!.. Our family are immigrants from the 60's, so we been there,done that!, so have many of my close friends and their families, and a few of them became small business owners.

So no, sitting at home waiting for a welfare check each month "WILL NOT" get you out of the poor farm.

 

[arkieb1]

On the one hand you want to stimulate the economy but on the other you cry foul when you get taxed more. Having said that DF and Ruby59 I actually don't blame you personally at all, I blame big businesses in the US, and the top 5% of wealthy in your country, those are the people that should be paying more to fund programs to help stimulate your economy.

Not true. I don't mind paying more taxes IF it go to educating our kids and looking after our senior citizens, but to those who are able to work but don't wanna work their way out of poverty...they can go kiss my A$$!.. Our family are immigrants from the 60's, so we been there,done that!, so have many of my close friends and their families, and many became small business owners.

Read the examples in the second link Ksinger gives - there are plenty of people out there that want to work that can't find work, there are plenty out there that the system fails. Saying things like they should just pack up and move to where is there work, doesn't take into account they frequently can't afford to do so and end up in a worse position than where they started, when they do.

I'm all for welfare reform too, DF, but I just think generally blaming everyone that can't "work their way out of poverty" isn't going to fix the situation without understanding exactly why they can't and how to introduce steps so that they can, and for those that still fail, there is a safety net to help them as well. And I think the whole point of Deb's article that started this conversation is if they are the children of people who for whatever reason "can't work their way out of poverty" and do happen to be living with nothing to eat then that needs to be addressed as well.

Perhaps we can mutually all agree that for people that are misusing the system that is where you need greater policy reform. But as Ksinger's first article points out, where do you draw the line, take away welfare entirely so that everyone suffers people starve and have no safety net at all, or tolerate a system that does get abused by some, in the knowledge that for every one person that does that there are two others out there that really do need the help. Me, I'm with the view that the kids of these people should not be the ones that should be being punished.

 

[nkarma]

So what is the solution in places where there is literally no work? I grew up in a small rural town that despite being in Australia, it is in many ways not that dissimilar to many small towns with shops closing and nothing going for them in the US..... and there are NO jobs there none zip, zilch, zero.
____________________________________________

My home state, Rhode Island, went into the recession hard, and was one of the last states to come out of it. We had 10% unemployment at one time - one of the highest in the country.

And this happened at the same time that my son graduated from college.

So what do you do when the city or town you live in has no jobs.

You do what my son did. He looked for work in another State. Yes he commutes from his home in Rhode Island to Boston every day then has to take some other bus to his job. Commuting adds an hour and a half each way. Apartments are too expensive in Boston and its surrounding suburbs, so living there is not an option.

It is what a responsible person does to support themselves and their family.

Ignoring the fact that your son had an education and college degree which a very very small percentage of poor people do and can therefore much more easily get a job....

How did your son pay for:

• his transportation out of state including car, gas, bus, etc...
  his transporation to/from work before first paycheck
  his interview suit
  the clothes he wears to work
  a roof over his head until his first paycheck
  his computer to write his resume and apply for his job
  his internet bill, phone, and electricity bill to communicate with the companies he interviewed with
  food to keep him alive/focused
  his college education that got him the interview and the job
  all of the above after is first paycheck if it was less than the living wage
  all of the above if after his first paycheck and he had children (cause God forbid, he made a mistake like humans tend to do)

Those are all I can think of for now, but poor people don't have an extra dollar to spare let alone hundreds to get them an out of state job in the first place. They will never have it no matter how much they "save" so comparing someone on $2/day to your son is pointless.

Ksinger had a great list of assumptions, but I think the best one is ---- If You (universal) were in the exact same circumstances, you would do something better.

I am an American living in the UK and I can say my middle income quality of life and everyone's around me is much better than in the US. If there are systems to feed, house, educate, and provide health care for every single person who needs it no matter what (even lazy moochers), I benefit personally. The job/financial market is better for me because organisations thrive with a large educated healthy workforce. The crime rate is much better - I am 8 times less likely to be murdered and I cannot tell you as a woman how it feels to go from 30 years always having this gnawing worry about my safety to it just slowly disappearing away. I'm not worried about desperate or mentally unstable people hurting me because they exist at such a miniscule fraction of the US. I can tell you feeling personally safe is the most valuable thing I have ever encountered. All these social support systems benefit ME - I am the moocher.

 

[ruby59]

ow did your son pay for:
his transportation out of state including car, gas, bus, etc...
his transporation to/from work before first paycheck
his interview suit
the clothes he wears to work
a roof over his head until his first paycheck
his computer to write his resume and apply for his job
his internet bill, phone, and electricity bill to communicate with the companies he interviewed with
food to keep him alive/focused
his college education that got him the interview and the job
all of the above after is first paycheck if it was less than the living wage
all of the above if after his first paycheck and he had children (cause God forbid, he made a mistake like humans tend to do)

__________________________________________________________

All of my children did exactly what their parents did before them, they started working at age 15. All got after school, Saturday, and summer jobs. And saved every penny.

Also, all my children worked their tails off at school and graduated in the top 10 of their class. So they got academic scholarships. And as much as 2 of them would have loved to experience dorm life, they lived at home and commuted to save money.

As far as your last comment about children, after 1 it is not a mistake. It is an attitude that many on welfare take.

But the hostile tone of your comments is amusing. Yes, we were there for our children as our parents were for us.

However, we did not hand over everything to them on a silver platter. Far from it. They were expected to do their part. And that is what they did. They earned what they have.