Welfare

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Red Eye Racer

Red Eye Racer

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The state of Michigan is currently debating whether or not to include drug testing among welfare recipients. The proposed plan requires that 20% of welfare recipients are to be tested every six months to be eligable for the program.

What do you think about drug testing and it's possible effect on governemt programs?
 
And to answer your question, you should be drug tested if you wish to collect free money from the government. Why should taxpayers pay for someone's drug addiction.
 
Originally posted by Klostrophobic
And to answer your question, you should be drug tested if you wish to collect free money from the government. Why should taxpayers pay for someone's drug addiction.
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I'm totally opposed to drug testing, but I'd never considered it in this context before. I totally agree with Klos.
 
Originally posted by Red Eye Racer
I wasnt aware that all welfare recipients were lazy :odd:
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They're not. But some most certainly are. I have experience in renovating public housing projects.

In adjoining units of a subsidized duplex, I've seen a house with a 17" B&W TV, a couch that sat on milkcrates, a cheap dining room table with 6 mismatched chairs, and nothing but a mattress on the floor in each bedroom. It was also spotlessly clean and neat as a pin.

The other unit was filled with rental furniture, it had several game systems piled on top of the big color TV, and it was a total pig sty. I would have eaten off the floor in the first unit and I wanted to wear rubber gloves in this one.

I've also seen people who have lived in the same unit of the same complex since it was built - in some cases, more than 20 years. That's not what welfare is for.

I support manditory drug testing for welfare recipients - mandatory and continuing. If you test positive initially it is not an offense. But if those toxins don't move out of your system at the proper rate, it's back off the public teat for you.

I also support manditory drug testing of arrested suspects. Again, not as a primary offense - but if you're convicted of the crime, testing positive at arrest means an automatic doubling of any penalty.
 
Originally posted by neon_duke
I've seen a house with a 17" B&W TV, a couch that sat on milkcrates, a cheap dining room table with 6 mismatched chairs, and nothing but a mattress on the floor in each bedroom. It was also spotlessly clean and neat as a pin.

The other unit was filled with rental furniture, it had several game systems piled on top of the big color TV, and it was a total pig sty. I would have eaten off the floor in the first unit and I wanted to wear rubber gloves in this one.
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Speaks volumes about more than welfare.
 
Welfare has devolved into a hand out system instead of a hand up system. It was never intended for generations of people to live and die on welfare.

I think if you have the money to buy drugs, which are not cheap, then you need to be off of welfare. I agree with the State of Michigan imposing drug testing.
 
The thing that really gets me is knowing that my generation pays for welfare and also knowing the money's drying up probably fast enough so that my generation won't ever get to go on it.
 
I think 100% of welfare recipients should be screened. If somebody uses crack, they shouldn't get welfare. My family is not on welfare, but I have a good friend whose family is, and I don't think it's right to be saying that welfare people are lazy druggies. Some people just aren't as fortunate. What would happen to your family if the person who earns the money for your family ended up dieing, getting abducted, or a serious unjury where they could no longer work? What should families do when both income makers are given the pink slip because some company made an error by giving the head person extra digits in their pay checks, then something happens to one or both of those income makers when they're unemployed and seeking another job?
Don't make fun of welfare people, it's not cool, funny, or smart. In fact, it's all of the converses.
 
Well, why should someone have to pay for someone else just because they're "unlucky."

Maybe I'm too strict a capitalist, but I would not be able to take money from people just because I couldn't go out and get a job.
 
Originally posted by Klostrophobic
Well, why should someone have to pay for someone else just because they're "unlucky."

Maybe I'm too strict a capitalist, but I would not be able to take money from people just because I couldn't go out and get a job.
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How noble, could you say the same thing while living out of your Pinto during a Boston winter?

As has already been said, welfare has always been meant as "hand up".
It's a matter of compassion. Sometimes you get burned when you help others, but it is better than doing nothing.

As far as getting a job. We're not even taking into account that working full-time at the BK for minimum wage will pay the rent or buy food, not both.
The average rent on a house in my neighborhood is $800 a month. At $5.25 an hour and 40 hours a week that leaves $200 for EVERYTHING else you need in your life, Oh and that's without taxes taken out.

Before you get bent out of shape, understand that I believe that we probably should do drug screening. Not that you can buy drugs with Food Stamps. You can't buy liquor or Cigs with them either, for that matter. But if you think about it, it will be just one more level of degredation of the honest folk trying to get on or back on their feet, (There's nothing like kicking a man while he's down), and those who intend to stay in poverty/squalor won't give a flying **** at a rolling donut anyway.
 
I think I could make the same thing while living out of my pinto during a Boston Winter. The only thing is that won't happen to me.

If I can find a job that pays 9 dollars an hour and I'm 17 with no high school diploma I think someone on their own could find a job that at least pays that.
 
Originally posted by Klostrophobic
I think I could make the same thing while living out of my pinto during a Boston Winter. The only thing is that won't happen to me.

If I can find a job that pays 9 dollars an hour and I'm 17 with no high school diploma I think someone on their own could find a job that at least pays that.
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That's still only $1440 a month, before taxes. You cannot easily live on that. Maybe, alone, if you don't mind the poorer ghettos, but certainly not with a family.
 
Originally posted by Gil
Before you get bent out of shape, understand that I believe that we probably should do drug screening.... But if you think about it, it will be just one more level of degredation of the honest folk trying to get on or back on their feet....
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I see that, and it makes me cringe, but there's no real other alternative. Drug testing wouldn't have to be an every-day thing, it could be something like once every other month, or once every three months. For honest people trying to get back on their feet, yes, it would be humiliating, but think of the angst they see now when some people on welfare waste the money given to them on drugs, when it could be distributed better to honest folk. I can't say how long people trying to get back on their feet are on welfare because it's always different. Some people are on it their entire life because a spouse died or of an injury and they're still trying to overcome it. Others are on it for a matter of years. I saw a special on TV (forget which program) and it was about a man who had to care for his infant and himself while he was homeless because he got fired and his wife or girlfriend(I think wife) left him with the child. He and his son lived in a subway bathroom for many months, maybe near a year, possibly many years. Imagine: you have a son that you must care for when you can barely care for yourself; to bathe your son, you wash him in the bathroom sink of a dirty subway station. But he worked very hard, gave work all his effort, and now he's a CEO and gives out soup every Friday at the soupline that he use to go to some 15 or 16 years ago.
 
Originally posted by Klostrophobic
So, umm, don't have a family if you can't support it.
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What you don't seem to understand is that life is fragile. You are chugging along at 100% and you get sick, or have an accident. Your life is changed forever. Do you give the family back now and go on alone and live under a bridge?
Or do you take "for better or worse" seriously?
 
I don't take it seriously. Peopl get divorced all the time, so how could I?

I think there are so few people who actually NEED welfare compared to generations of lazy people who don't need it at all but have it anyway.
 
Originally posted by Gil
That's still only $1440 a month, before taxes. You cannot easily live on that. Maybe, alone, if you don't mind the poorer ghettos, but certainly not with a family.
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Yearly, it translates to $17,280 meaning very little tax money would be in order in the first place - it's not absurd to think somebody could live on $16,800. Additionally, 'family' implies - especially in the ghetto - at least one more income.
 
I work for a company that the largest of t's kind in the world. I have recemtly seen it close the doors on many plants that aren't making money. Over 10,000 people have lost their jobs in the last 2 years from this company alone. We are fortunate to have a good team at the location I work at and we make money every month. But I wonder what would happen in let's say 20 years when I am too old to be hired by someone else and the company closes our doors. What would I do? We couldn't make it on my wifes pay alone. I wouldn't be old enough to draw social security. Fortunatly by then my son woll be out of college and making money so I won't have to worry about him. I could never go to him to get money to live because chances are he will be just starting his own family and will need that money for them. I wonder how many people that our company laid off are too old or too unskilled to get another decent paying job?
I don't like welfare when it's abused but if it is used properly then I don't have a problem with it. The problem is policing the welfare system. It's so huge that it would take more money to police it than it pays out.

How do I feel about welfare? I'm not sure. I hope I never have to figure that out.
 
I got thru college with subsidized housing, WIC, and medicaid.
I worked my a$$ off on work study during the school year.
During the summers I pushed a mower for $3.35 an hour for 40 hours a week. One summer I got lucky enough to work at a Sears 25 miles from home, With the cost of gas we did just a little better than breaking even. Another summer I worked for the Census Bureau, for $5 an hour. Trust me, as a black man in rural, backwoods TN, knocking on strange folks doors, up little unused roads...It was a bit scary. Thank God I never ran upon any moonshiners.:eek:

We would not have been able to survive, and get our COLLEGE educations without the welfare system.
 
Originally posted by Klostrophobic
So, umm, don't have a family if you can't support it.
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Klos,
Before you berate someone, or look down your nose at them because of their station in life, Walk a mile in their shoes.
 
Originally posted by M5Power
Yearly, it translates to $17,280 meaning very little tax money would be in order in the first place - it's not absurd to think somebody could live on $16,800. Additionally, 'family' implies - especially in the ghetto - at least one more income.

Gil wrote $1440 per month..........
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FYI,...... the average ANNUAL household income in the US is $12,000 :eek:
 
Originally posted by Red Eye Racer
FYI,...... the average ANNUAL household income in the US is $12,000 :eek:
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Yes, and the "poverty level" is at $15,000/yearly.

The thing that I found really dis-heartening when I was in college, there was a factory in town. Most High school kids dropped out of school at 16 to go to work in the factory. It paid like $9 an hour. Thier reasoning was this: "If I go to work in the factory now, by the time I'm 18 I'll be up to $11-12 an hour."
How do you convince kids in that environment that 'higher education' is important?
 
Aside from comments like many of the ones here, you never hear about welfare success stories. They take what they need, use it wisely, and get back on their feet because they want to. It is humiliating for them to be on welfare, as it would be for me, and just want it to be over with.

But what Klos and others are talking about is a real phenomenon. Generation after generation of welfare families who have no incentive to better themselves because of government patronage. This has been curtailed a great deal recently by welfare reform. But the problem still exists.
 

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