Eliminate Welfare Checks? WHaaaaa????
- Thread starter BrainWithAGun
- Start date
Welfare aside, I don't think we can really justify such outrageous military spending while our schools can't even afford to buy the books they need.
I think the leadership of this nation has their priorities screwed up, pretty soon our "Smart" bombs are just going to be too "Smart" and too valuable to actually bother dropping on the enemy, and we'll just resort to catapulting illiterate school children with sticks of dynamite at our foes.
I think the leadership of this nation has their priorities screwed up, pretty soon our "Smart" bombs are just going to be too "Smart" and too valuable to actually bother dropping on the enemy, and we'll just resort to catapulting illiterate school children with sticks of dynamite at our foes.
I grew up in a neighborhood with rampant Welfare. There were also plenty of drug dealers, gangs, and of course, the Mexican Mafia. I always felt that something was wrong, considering that the near by commerical zones always had "Help Wanted" signs in the windows. There was no shortage of jobs at the convenience stores, thrift shops, laundramats, ect. Sure they are low income jobs, sure it is somewhat degrading, but hey it pays the bills. Yet, few people in my neighborhood actively sought jobs. I often asked them why, and the answer was stunning:
The $700-750 a month one would get working a minimum wage job was nearly equivalent to how much one could get on welfare. There is in other words, no incentive in our employment market to get people off of welfare. You could argue that with the proper job training and effort, they could make something out of themselves, but I don't know if they have $2,000 minimum to throw at a technical school. They might with a few hundred dollars attend the local Junior college, but with how our public education fails many children, they often come up short on entrance requirements. Now, I am NOT calling those on welfare blatantly lazy, for who wouldn't like to live their life with basic needs met without effort? It is just the way we humans are. It is the way corporate executives end up too on the opposite end of the same economic scale.
The psycological trap is that when you sit at home with little to do, you get bored awful quick... and of course, that is where things like drugs and the easy money of organized crime comes in to play. Thomas Jefferson's right to property clauses had a good reason. People want things, and if you live off Welfare but want that Mitsubishi Eclipse for street racing, you don't exactly have the nessassary cash to pay for it. You can make an awful lot of money as a drug dealer... a lot more than that $5.75ph McDonalds will give you. And if you live in an area like I did, where organized crime is there to help out... (ie Mexican Mafia) then you have the opportunity to make LOTS if you are one of the lucky few who can survive that kind of life.
Put it in simpler terms... for those who don't have much, the easy money and lifestyle of welfare / drugs / crime is far more profitable... for if you don't have much to begin with, what do you really have to loose? This is I feel, a direct effect of the way our economy pushed for overachievers over intelligent hard-workers. Few people can be overachevers, because achievement to an extent requires you to outperform another person... direct competition between two people. Just where does the "looser" go?
I'm not saying I have a solution... I am saying is that the problem with welfare isn't just an issue of where tax money goes and what people are doing with it, it is how our country and society values and rates people. ANYONE given the tools and a suitable enviornment can susceed. Indeed, it takes propler tools and abilities to susceed in the underground.
Since I feel it is established that the issue is that an honest life cannot compete with how easy it is to susceed in the underground, what are WE going to do about making an honest life far more profitable? We use prison to punish crime but that is obviously not enough. There must become an incentive to make an honest life more pallatable... and that is something education and prison doesn't do alone. It is a cultural issue.
The $700-750 a month one would get working a minimum wage job was nearly equivalent to how much one could get on welfare. There is in other words, no incentive in our employment market to get people off of welfare. You could argue that with the proper job training and effort, they could make something out of themselves, but I don't know if they have $2,000 minimum to throw at a technical school. They might with a few hundred dollars attend the local Junior college, but with how our public education fails many children, they often come up short on entrance requirements. Now, I am NOT calling those on welfare blatantly lazy, for who wouldn't like to live their life with basic needs met without effort? It is just the way we humans are. It is the way corporate executives end up too on the opposite end of the same economic scale.
The psycological trap is that when you sit at home with little to do, you get bored awful quick... and of course, that is where things like drugs and the easy money of organized crime comes in to play. Thomas Jefferson's right to property clauses had a good reason. People want things, and if you live off Welfare but want that Mitsubishi Eclipse for street racing, you don't exactly have the nessassary cash to pay for it. You can make an awful lot of money as a drug dealer... a lot more than that $5.75ph McDonalds will give you. And if you live in an area like I did, where organized crime is there to help out... (ie Mexican Mafia) then you have the opportunity to make LOTS if you are one of the lucky few who can survive that kind of life.
Put it in simpler terms... for those who don't have much, the easy money and lifestyle of welfare / drugs / crime is far more profitable... for if you don't have much to begin with, what do you really have to loose? This is I feel, a direct effect of the way our economy pushed for overachievers over intelligent hard-workers. Few people can be overachevers, because achievement to an extent requires you to outperform another person... direct competition between two people. Just where does the "looser" go?
I'm not saying I have a solution... I am saying is that the problem with welfare isn't just an issue of where tax money goes and what people are doing with it, it is how our country and society values and rates people. ANYONE given the tools and a suitable enviornment can susceed. Indeed, it takes propler tools and abilities to susceed in the underground.
Since I feel it is established that the issue is that an honest life cannot compete with how easy it is to susceed in the underground, what are WE going to do about making an honest life far more profitable? We use prison to punish crime but that is obviously not enough. There must become an incentive to make an honest life more pallatable... and that is something education and prison doesn't do alone. It is a cultural issue.
Last edited:
BrainWithAGun
Registered Member
You liberals! I'd rather spend money on national defence than some lazy person's drugs! But if we cut welfare... just think of all the extra money for education!!! If everyone works hard at whatever job they can find then we wont need welfare! the country would be an almost flawless eutopia!!!! We would all have money and education and national defence!!
BrainWithAGun
Registered Member
They'll be able to get better jobs, being educated an all. Ya know... you dont really put up a good argument.
If workers can be paid a minimum wage for jobs that are abundantly available, then the minimum wage isn’t a problem. Why should I otherwise care that some goods & services cannot be profitably produced when a minimum wage is paid? If a minimum wage means that a basket weaver either starves or learns a more valuable skill, and nobody is starving, that is good for the economy.
Weiser_Dub
Registered Senior Member
no it doesn't... by the way, do you know how hard it is to get disability?
yeah, that'll feed the family (sarcasm)... also, that might not even be true, as they might see you as over-qualified
quote from your own profile: "I sniffed glue brained my damage."
indeed
i remember paying about $300 a semester on books in college... there are always school related expenses
there's also a homeless shelter, but that probably wouldn't be your first choice, if it even is one
shrubby pegasus
Registered Senior Member
schools dont simply waste money allocated to them. typically schools are funded mainly by the local tax base. if you live in a poor town then your school district will not have much money. the funding system for schools is fundamentally flawed in this country. all schools do not have the same potential to educate their students. this is not an argument for vouchers either. that system is fundamentally flawed as well.