all forms of welfare have got to go

[Dowding]

Two weeks ago I was diagnosed as epileptic.

Fortunately, it isn't very severe and the seizures I've had were separated by 14 months. The drugs the doctors will be giving me will control it.

But what if it had been very severe epilepsy? What if I was having seizures every couple of weeks, even though I was medicated to eyeballs?

I'd like to think there would be a social security system to help provide for me, since any kind of normal work would be unavailable to. I could do other community based work to give something back, but without the social security my life would not be worth living. Without any income I'd have no means of supporting myself; homelessness would follow. Homeless people with medical problems don't tend to last very long.

Social security should exist to provide a bare minimum, no luxury lifestyle for the unemployed. It should also care for the disabled and sick.

I despise parasitical elements in my society who are work-shy and make false claims to support themselves.

I agree Santa, working and trying to get an education might be very admirable. But those I knew who tried it ended up with very poor degrees compared to those who simply worked in the summer or other holidays.

[mrfish]

when i was in highschool i worked as a pizza deliverer.

i used to dread the 1st and 15th because we would get swamped with orders to the ghetto as people got their welfare checks!

the first thing they would do is order a pizza for some reason. we would start preparing for those days a few days in advance by making extra boxes etc.

our place was owned by a cheap short little man who was the only guy in town who would actually deliver to those neighborhoods. he wasn't one to pass up a chance at a $. ironically, most of the people would argue about their order to try to get a discount anyway...

[zapkin]

EAT THE POOR !

Solyient green is made out of welfare mothers! Its made out of welfare mothers !!

[Yoj]

Ya know - I'd bet some pretty good money that nobody else posting in this thread was a member of a visible minority.  There is a lot of interesting attitude floating between the lines and peeking out of the phrasing  

- Yoj

[NATEDOG]

Did anyone see on MTV a rich rapper pull up in a limo to collect his welfare check? made me sick!  

[Eagler]

Originally posted by Yoj:
Ya know - I'd bet some pretty good money that nobody else posting in this thread was a member of a visible minority.  There is a lot of interesting attitude floating between the lines and peeking out of the phrasing    

- Yoj

huh? please explain..

[fd ski]

Originally posted by Zigrat:
looks like she cast her own lot in life, noone told her to be having sex when she was 15 years old. my sister just graduated valedictorian of her class, and got a full scholarship to college. SHE cast her lot in life, too. Guess who will end up better off.

Well, Zig, maybe her partents weren't around to inform her for those interesting facts when she was 15 ? Maybe they were too busy working for minimum wage like a good citizens ?

If she does take a full time job, her children will be brought up by the streets, sooner or later one of them will commit a crime or two, and everyone will be screeming for his head, while she's working...

Somewhat exaggirated, i know, but you get a point. Single mother with 4 kids who is working part time should recieve assistance. I'm suprized that she's working at all. As per your father's deli, i hope it works out ok. If he has trouble finding people - he needs to raise wages. The free market that everyone is so up tight about, remember ? If the demend is too low you need to increase the attractiveness ( aka wages )

Let's get a count of hands - how many of you folsk here came from single partent families with income lower then 20k ?

[Serapis]

Ya know - I'd bet some pretty good money that nobody else posting in this thread was a member of a visible minority. There is a lot of interesting attitude floating between the lines and peeking out of the phrasing
- Yoj

Actually Yoj, I though this post was a bit mild in that way compared to some of the others I have read. Still, I do imagine many of the "Angry White Males" circa 1994 do have a colorful image in their minds when they think of these issues.

Coming from a family of varied economic circumstances, I can attest that it is not a race issue as much as it's a poverty/environmental issue. I have one distant relative who is currently working very hard to get on disability -- which is not uncommon in his part of Applachia (along with stepdads sleeping with their teenage daughters, multiple unmarried parents for multiple children, etc. - real Jerry Springer stuff).

Here's a quote from another board (H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine) that goes into the welfare perspective better than I can trying to rehash these points:

 

I think what I have most often heard is that many people view poverty as a black, urban underclass phenonmenon and, by extension, assume the same of welfare. And welfare is most often understood as AFDC, with food stamps, SSI, WIC, Head-Start, various forms of housing assistance, medicare and medicaid, etc. Every now and then someone will choose to make an issue of state-run general assistance programs. These definitions, as I note below, are not necessarily the only ones possible and I would strongly urge you to pay attention to them when people start making any sorts of claims about social policy.

Poverty, of course, is not exclusively a black urban underclass phenomenon - au contraire. There are zillions of sources you can look to to confirm this. See, for instance: Christopher Jencks' "Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty and the Underclass", Harvard U Press, 1992 or Michael Katz' "The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare, Pantheon, 1989. However, what we find is that while there are far more poor white people than poor black people, poverty rates are higher among black people than among white people. Among white people the poverty rate is only around 11% or 12% while among black people it is over 30%, if I remember correctly.

As for division according to who receives AFDC, according to Jencks (citing statistics from the House Ways and Means Committee from 1989, see page 264 of his book, note 7), nationally recipients are about 40% black, and 39% non-Hispanic white. He doesn't say who the other 20% are. One would suppose that virtually all of the recipients are women, since the program is (currently) designed to aid single mothers. This is not true of all "welfare" programs. In any case, the division of aid recipients by "race" varies widely from place to place - where the majority of the population is white, say, in rural Minnesota, the majority of aid recipients are as well. Its a big country, after all, and policy is not necessarily best served by broad generalizations about who gets what aid.

In fact, if we redefine social welfare spending to include all the programs I cited above, aimed primarily at poor people (except Medicare), as well as things like college loans and military pensions, social security, various forms of home loan assistance, etc., the majority of such spending goes to the middle classes. Jencks' writes (p.76), "In 1980, only a fifth of all social-welfare spending was explicitly aimed at low-income families, and only a tenth was for programs providing cash, food, or housing to such families." Which of course suggests that overall social spending is oriented towards white folks, since more of them are middle-class.

I am sure others will chime in here with lots more relevant references and stats. I should point out, however, that the question you ask really ought to be followed up with others: why do we think its significant to analyse program participation by "race"? How sure are we of who belongs in which "race" (as in Jencks' missing 20%)? Does welfare lift anyone, anywhere, above or even near to the poverty line? Does it lift some people, but not others? What part of the federal budget is taken up by social spending on poor people and, more broadly, by social spending in general? What part of state and local budgets?

Enjoy.

David Beriss


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David I. Beriss
Department of French and Italian
University of Southern California
THH126
Los Angeles, CA 90089  

Of course, he leaves off corporate welfare programs like energy policy and the missile defense initiative, to name a few, from recent headline  

Charon

[ 08-03-2001: Message edited by: Charon ]

[NUTTZ]

Zigrat, My thoughts... I also own a small business, and Medical for my family or employees is just unreachable. I do have a family doctor and my duaghter has really bad asma(SP). I've paid Cash ( on the spot) out of pocket for all her medication and doctor visits, Dental and everything else. 6 years ago I was diagnost with cancer, and had 2 operations. I paid cash for all test up to the Operation itself, Since i do pay taxes i had to lay myself off, and go on unemployment JUST TO GET FREE MEDICAL!!!! The state picked up the tab, AND gave me more money per week than i was taking home self employeed. What really got me pissed was, forking over $2,400.00 dollars for a test ( cash) and waiting for the receptionist to figure out WTF to do since NOBODY pays cash in a hospital. While waiting for her to figure out what to do, A young couple walked in with a 1-2 year old,, flashed the Public assistance card, and was screaming because her 1-2 year old Lost some of his gold rings!!!  They were head to foot jewelryed out. I looked down at my only peice of jewerly i owned ( a plain gold wedding band) and gave it a kiss.  Sometimes we need to step back and enjoy what we HAVE , not complain what we have not.

NUTTZ

[Zigrat]

i amnot against welfare for its cost (which is relatively low compared to other federal expendatures) i am against it for its negative effect on business. it is hard to start up new business or expand to new markets when you are unable to find people to do teh work for you.

btw nuttz that sucks. my dad lived for 40 years without health insurance. just this past  year his business finally started making money and he got health insurance, and went on his first vacation (to visit his father in italy) since iw as born (22 years ago - could never leave the store because noone good enough to replace him - now my brother and i are old enough and we ran the store whilehe was gone) and he had a heart attack on his first vacation. just bad luck.

[Tac]

im with zigrat. Welfare should end...but for those who dont need it.

FL has recently put in some amazing restrictions on welfare recipients, almost dumping 60% of the current users out of the program because they were leeching off the system without any reason. Those left, or those who managed to squirm from the restrictions are either elderly, disabled or in hardships (aka, 18 year olds with kids and trying to go to college.. people who are TRYING to better their lives). The healthy 28 year old with a broken pinkie finger is suddenly deprived of his HBO, friday pizza & rented movie and has to flip burgers or starve.

Funny thing is, people actually re-applied for welfare a few weeks after that.

I think the idea should be to HELP those in need, not to SUSTAIN them.

[Zigrat]

hey tac that sounds good


my topic heading was a bit harsh, i guess im just against the leechers mostly. sounds like florida has a good program. i'd like to see it nation wide.

[715]

Of course, he leaves off corporate welfare programs like energy policy and the missile defense initiative, to name a few, from recent headlines
                               Charon  

There's welfare for the poor, but then there's welfare for the rich.  Example: there is a new IT contract for the Navy won by a Texas company (whos ads show 'cat herding').  This contract is $7B.  Yes.. that's seven Billion.  Since I work for the Navy, I will be getting a computer off this contract (actually I am forced to whether I need it or not).  It is a Dell.  I went on the Dell web page (for normal acquisitions) and the identical computer is listed at $799.  I am being charged by the Texas contractor $12,000 for this computer (ie my government account is- you, the tax payers, foot the bill).  This is no lie.  It's about $3000 a year and refreshed every 4 years.  Even funnier: if my CURRENT computer, which I (ie you the tax payer again) already paid for, meets the specs- the Texas contractor still charges me $12,000, gives me nothing, lets me keep my current setup, and TAKES POSSESSION of my current computer.  I get reimbursed nothing.  The contract includes internet connection, but even at $40/month for a high speed line that doesn't come to $12,000/4 yrs now does it?  That Texas contractor is making a monster profit: welfare for the rich.

By the way, unemployment is not 2%.  It's 4.5%, and that isn't accurate either.  That number counts only those who are applying for unemployment insurance.  If you run out of unemployment insurance and still can't find a job, you are not counted in the 4.5%.  You just become invisible to the statistics.

[ 08-03-2001: Message edited by: 715 ]

[mietla]

Welfare can't be a "choice". Make it support you so you won't die, but make it suck big time so you have no incentive to stay on it.

The problem we have in US is that the welfare is a much better alternative to the low-end job. And, since the politicians are interested in getting as much folks to apply as they can (they love slaves and ZOO kind of people), many people double or tripple dip. Their "thinking" is pretty simple, why would I refuse "free" money. Obviously they do not "think" far enough to figure out whose stolen money pays for it.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure that this is some rich guy's money that pays for it"

Think again  

[mietla]

Last year I have "earned" less than half of the money I realy earned.

This means that in addition to suporting my own family, I am actualy supporting another family who lives as good as mine, has a same kind of house as mine (I pay the mortgage), same number of cars, and they vacation as frequently as I do.

Ain't that nice. An they (whoever thay are) do not pay a frik... n penny for "my" lifestyle.

I'm still waiting for a "thank you" card.