welfare and the goverment

[sjones]

I may get flamed for this but I have to say it.Don't the people that are on welfare realize that the more they take,the more the goverment has them under their thumb.I've seen people going into the 3rd generation that are on welfare without ever giving anything back to this country,all they do is take.How long can this go on ? All I want from the goverment is to be left alone,stay out of my life. sj

 

[ConnRadd]

Well, one way to look at it... If or when the gravy train has dried up, the ones who knows how to survive will make it. All the leeches that were taught to strip the system so they don't have to work, will free up more oxygen and reduce the "carbon footprint".

 

[DCortez]

Free Man > Kept Man


I'd rather be poor than be anyone's bit@#.

 

[M. Sage]

No fire from this sector. You're dead on with your observation.

TANSTAAFL = There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[Jason]

Don't the people that are on welfare realize that the more they take,the more the goverment has them under their thumb.

You seem to be under the impression that they would care...

They DON'T, like the old saying... "Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?"

 

[sjones]

I'm really getting discouraged about the way this country seems to be going downhill.Whatever happened to people knowing right from wrong and contributing to the good of this country?You can probably tell by my tone I am a conservative.I have written my congressmen and senators but it doesn't appear to be doing any good.I pray for this country every day,hoping people will wake up and see whats happening.

 

[boycan]

You seem to be under the impression that they would care...

They DON'T, like the old saying... "Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?"

I still see stories every day about people still waiting for their house to be rebuilt after the hurricanes. They are entitled right ?

 

[BigShooter11x14]

An older gentleman I worked with 30 years ago posed the question to me, “why would our government pay people on welfare more than minimum wage?” I have never forgotten that bit of wisdom!

 

[Texas1911]

Americans are spoiled, and a large majority of them just live their lives for themselves. They won't wake up until the house falls down on their heads. All you can do is play the game and watch out for your family and friends.

One person talking to their Congressman produces nothing. We need a majority of a constituent to put the fear into Congress, but they are too busy doing other things... mostly bitching and moaning about how things don't change.

 

[Okierifleman]

This country is past the point of talking....JMHO.....Congress doesnt care what their constituents think, nor does BHO. The enabled have taken control of this country, courtesy of the enablers. It will take a revolution to undo what we have allowed this country to become. Again, JMHO

 

[TxPhantom]

I'm really getting discouraged about the way this country seems to be going downhill.Whatever happened to people knowing right from wrong and contributing to the good of this country?You can probably tell by my tone I am a conservative.I have written my congressmen and senators but it doesn't appear to be doing any good.I pray for this country every day,hoping people will wake up and see whats happening.

Our elected political critters operate under the theory that if you take from Peter and give to Paul, you will always get Paul's vote, and there are a lot more Pauls than there are Peters!

 

[sjones]

I dunno,theres plenty of peters in DC.

 

[DirtyD]

No, not enough peters, to many @s4holes and b!tches.... Need a real dick to slap some of these limp wristed liberals around and make em man up.

 

[HKUSP45C]

Well, I'm probably going to get called a pinko commie liberal for pointing out that there might be some misinformation floating around about how much money we're doling out to welfare recipients, who those people are and how long they are staying "in the system."

I've been researching this topic for quite some time now (a couple of weeks, hell, I'm practically a scholar on the topic) and have found some interesting data to provoke a bit of thought and discussion.

I'm also going to preface this post with a disclaimer stating, unequivocally, that I do not think government sponsored charity is a solution to poverty or joblessness. Nor do I believe you can tax a nation into prosperity or drag people from poverty by raising minumum wage or any of that other nonsense.

BUT,

I turns out that the FedGov passed a comprehensive welfare reform bill in 1996 which put time limits on benefits. Since the passage of those reforms, enrollment numbers have dropped by over 50% nationwide. Texas actually beat the FedGov with our own welfare reform laws passed pre-emptively to Clinton's law.

Texas has the ability to use its "block grant" from the FedGov (essentially the feds give Texas a chunk of cash to manage our welfare system so they don't have to do it anymore) to fund its welfare (TANF) and child welfare systems (CHIPS and others). Texas also has the responsibilty to ensure benefits are terminated in 60 months (lifetime) from initial enrollment (this does not apply to "child only" recipients). Texas is allowed to exempt only 20 percent of its case load from the time limit. Texas also has one the lowest enrollment rates of the republic and spends the least on its welfare systems than all other states. In fact, everyone who recieves welfare, even if they could get every single benefit available (some of course are exclusive, if you get one you can't get another) including food stamps and housing subsidy would still be living well below the poverty line in the US. Which isn't to say they're in shanty shacks in a Hooverville but, they aren't "welfare queens buying jumbo shrimp at 7 dollars a pound" as someone suggested here a couple of weeks ago, as a general rule.

In the weeks I've been googling this and reading the stats it seems that many of the things I've heard of welfare recipients just aren't true. Probably the most interesting fact was that, nationally, children of hispanic immigrants are grossly under-represented in the welfare system compared to their "native born" contemporaries.

So, it would seem that there is waste and abuse (in a government program *GASP*) but that it's a very small portion of the entire population who recieve benefits at all (about 2.2million in '07) and of those people the majority (about 53 percent, like clock work) are off of the system in 2 years or less. and those left only a small portion MIGHT be able to argue for the time limit exemption. Finally, under the new TANF regulations the recipients still have to fullful work requirements to the state including communinty service if they are still unemployed after the first 4 weeks on the program.

There just isnt a whole lot of room to cheat the system and even if you do, successfully, without getting caught, the amount of money you're sucking up, in the grand scheme of things is statistically insignificant.

So, are people cheating, some are, certainly. Some people are getting income from other sources (both legal and illicit) and not reporting (this may explain the anomolous "shrimp queen") it. Some are continuing to lead a life of irresponsibility and squallor, on purpose. Some are just unable to recover from what ever circumstance put them in a position to request assistance in the first place.

I dunno, I'm all for being a "big boy" and handling your business and working for the money you get. I'm also all about helping the needy (I'd prefer a very local approach nearly devoid of "government") and lending a hand.

However, the numbers I'm seeing in my research show we're blowing approximately 4 percent of our GDP on the poor (not including SocSec and Medicaid/care) in total, the smallest number of any "developed" nation.

Maybe, just maybe, it's a tempest in a tea pot. When it comes to government waste I think welfare is a very small and mostly "self correcting" problem.

 

[Texas1911]

I've seen, personally, rampant abuse of the Lone Star food stamps program here in Texas as well as WIC. I can count into the hundreds the numbers of people that I checked out at HEB that had WIC / Lone Star purchases and then separate luxury purchases. Stuff like cases of beer, big steaks, cigarettes (not as prevalent), etc. that one really doesn't need to survive. I understand the need for a treat here and there, especially for people that are dealing with economic hardships, but these people came in once a week for this crap. They'd expend $200 on groceries in cash, then use their Lone Star card and WIC vouchers for whatever they could put onto them. Most did not speak English, and the cash only makes me question the validity of their citizenship.

I can't comment on the entire welfare system, and it seems like HKUSP45C has pretty much covered that end of it, but I can comment on the WIC / Lone Star program.

 

[HKUSP45C]

It's important to point out that Texas uses it's Lone Star card as a means of distributing its TANF (welfare) funds as well as food stamps. So you may be seeing some overlap from the two systems. Both systems are also supported by the same "block grant" from the FedGov (near as I can tell, it gets nebulous when you start trying to get granular, the USDA also contributes to the program) and fall into the same numbers I discussed in my earlier post/essay.

And humans, being fallible creatures, will nearly always take as much slack as you will let them. It doesn't surprise me for a second that people getting "food stamps" also like drinking beer. If food stamps are feeding them (the intended purpose) and they're able to buy luxury items with whatever other income they have .... well .... I can live with that since most people on food stamps also have jobs, just not jobs that fulfill all of their monetary needs. Now if they are buying 200 dollars worth of luxury items to go along with the 200 dollars of free groceries we just bought them, I would certainly have a problem with that.

Is that the kind of behavior you're witnessing? (this is not sarcasm, I'm genuinely interested in your experiences)

I sure would hate the kind of world where we would consign a poor family to a life of the bare necessities as a condition of providing assistance. I guess I can live with a little "slop and bloat" in a system designed to get people back on their feet.

Maybe I AM a liberal.

ETA: Illegal immigrants are (ostensibly) ineligible for "food stamps" and alsmost all other TANF benefits. Getting a civil servant to actually check on the validity of forged documents is another matter altogether.

 

[sjones]

I have personaly seen people come into my dads meat market and buy 70 or 80 dollars worth of bar-b-que,cokes,potato salad,chips and pay with food stamps,when they could have bought round steak,hamburger meat,things like that,not once in a while but every week end.I have known families that were on welfare and their grown children also.There is at least 2 generations,so don't tell me it can't or doesn't happen.

 

[M. Sage]

Americans are spoiled, and a large majority of them just live their lives for themselves.

I do this. I live my life for my benefit, and mine alone. However, there are some moral lines that I will not cross, mainly because I wouldn't want those lines crossed on me. The Golden Rule can work just fine...

That said, a lot of the things that are in my best interest are in the best interest of the world at large, too. Fighting things like gun control, criminality and Obamacare (three of the same thing if ever I've seen it) benefits me and everybody else.

 

[Texas1911]

Is that the kind of behavior you're witnessing? (this is not sarcasm, I'm genuinely interested in your experiences)

In the instances I mentioned, I would consider their activity as excessive, and not within the constraints that one would consider impoverished.

I sure would hate the kind of world where we would consign a poor family to a life of the bare necessities as a condition of providing assistance. I guess I can live with a little "slop and bloat" in a system designed to get people back on their feet.

Again, I personally don't mind if someone that is on hard times, and is honestly trying to make it work, decides to buy a six pack, or a pack of cigarettes, or a nice ribeye or sirloin. You have to have some degree of humility for people.

My problem is that there are numerous people that use the system as an enabler into their own free lifestyle. I've pushed Lone Star purchases out to $35,000 Yukons and Suburbans, Lexus's, and once even to a freaking modern Mercedes E-Class. These people are what everyone abhors and give the system a bad name.

I've seen on numerous occasions families that came in with numerous WIC and Lone Star cards. Everyone above the age of 18 seemed to have one, and they bought ALOT of stuff.

Maybe I AM a liberal.

Liberals don't bother to actually read about something and rationalize it. They just feel that people should have stuff, so that's just the way it should be.

 

[Texas1911]

I do this. I live my life for my benefit, and mine alone. However, there are some moral lines that I will not cross, mainly because I wouldn't want those lines crossed on me.

The point is that you are aware of your treatment of others in retrospect to how you'd like to be treated. Alot of people aren't, and will do or say anything to get their way.