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I've seen how "crappy" these single moms with 4 kids live.

Out at the bars every night, 2-3 carts of groceries paid for with a swipe of the card while her 4 kids scream and run around the store, than taking all 3 carts of groceries to her SUV that is 2 years old.

Ah yes, sounds crappy to me. I must realize I have it so lucky that I can buy my 1/2 cart of groceries with my UI payments that also need to go to heating my house this winter and actually having to pay for my groceries and than pushing my 1/2 cart of groceries to my 12yo car that isn't worth the insurance I'm paying on it.

Yeah, I feel sorry for that single alcoholic mom with 4 kids and her 2yo SUV. I wish my life was that rough (well I could do without 4 kids but that's beside the point).

Okay. UI is a social program but my point still stands that it is not welfare in the sense that I have to look for work while I'm laid off, I get NOTHING other than 2/3rds of my highest paid quarter spread out over 26 checks. If I want such luxuries as heat and medical care I need to pay for them myself. I don't get those "free". Those are all part of the busted welfare system.

Fateweaver wrote: (well I could do without 4 kids but that's beside the point).

No it isn't. Its a question of lifestyle, and the presence of 4 children certainly affects lifestyle.

Fateweaver wrote:
Okay. UI is a social program but my point still stands that it is not welfare in the sense that I have to look for work while I'm laid off, I get NOTHING other than 2/3rds of my highest paid quarter spread out over 26 checks. If I want such luxuries as heat and medical care I need to pay for them myself. I don't get those "free". Those are all part of the busted welfare system.

Of course its not welfare, they're different programs. Why would you ever equate them in any sense other than a socialist one?

Adding my two cents its certainly similar here, you never saw that famous "wife swap" with the now infamous Lizzie Bardsley on? :S

You can read about her here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzy_Bardsley

The finances part was particularly depressing, i think they got about $60,000 dollars a year. They had way more disposable income than the nice middle class family they swapped with, both chain smokers, drank 80 cans of beer a week, the whole usual stereotypical shebang!

Fateweaver wrote:The economy keeps me from finding work. Even gas stations in my area aren't hiring. Moving is not an option. It takes money to move and relocate.

UI is not social in the US. My old company pays extra tax to ensure that if they have to lay me off I'm taken care of. You don't pay for it, neither does dogma or Frazz or Shuma or any other poster on here. I know none of the dakkaites owns the company that laid me off so nobody on this site can claim "they are paying for me to survive".

Internet is free and or cheap. I can take my laptop anywhere and get free wireless. The internet is the one luxury I have at home.

Like I said I live decent but people who never make an effort to work live better. I HAD to work to get UI payments. Welfare leechers DON'T. THAT is the difference between me and them.

Youre Ui premiums amounted to about 5.00 per cheque, right?
Then your company put in about 5.00 per cheque as well, right?
Into a program administered by your government, right?
Well then that money which was submitted to you're government (state level I believe) is then sent out to people who become unemployed. That means that if there is a Dakkite who lives in your state, then, yes petunia, there is a dakkite who is co-paying for you to be on UI.

You are being subsidized by the government to live at home while you cannot find work. Now here's where those numbers get sad you see. UI doesn't last forever, then it is down to the Welfare line.
Oh, and I fixed your tense in the final sentence.

While it's obvious that their are problems within the welfare/social programs systems,the idea of "endless hordes of welfare freeloaders" lounging in luxary,waiting on the "free money" to roll in forever is extreamly niave.
I've known 3 "welfare moms",and according to them they recived between $230 and $380 dollars a month (that's welfare checks),along with this they recieved about $250 to $300 dollars in food stamps a month.
In order to recieve these benifits all of them were required to attend employement classes through the dept of labour and make 30 work contacts a week (job aplications).
On top of this, there " assistance",meaning the money they were getting, only last for 48 months,after that their cut off...permently.

It's not broken down. I pay State, Federal and Social Security. I typically lost 70-80 per check for SS so it might have been 5, it might have been 60.

You feel how you want efarrer. Morally UI is not the same as welfare.

Dogma, you said yourself UI payments are welfare. You reached that conclusion for me. I don't agree with your conclusion and now apparently you contradict yourself.

The point of my statement was that financially welfare moms with a certain number of kids live better than some of the pipeliners I know who work a dangerous, dirty crappy job 50 hours a week. Blue collar jobs might suck from a prestige sense and maybe a safety sense but making $30/hour to lay pipe into ground all day, pay wise, isn't that crappy. Moms with 3+ kids collecting welfare get nearly as much per month in pay PLUS free assistance with heat and medical care + WIC + they can go out and drink and party and get high and not lose any of that.

Show up to work drunk and you get sent home and lose a days pay, do it too often you get fired.

That is the problem with the welfare system. That is why as it stands it needs to go away. Better for the country that way no mater what anyone says.

Fateweaver wrote:The point of my statement was that financially welfare moms with a certain number of kids live better than some of the pipeliners I know who work a dangerous, dirty crappy job 50 hours a week. Blue collar jobs might suck from a prestige sense and maybe a safety sense but making $30/hour to lay pipe into ground all day, pay wise, isn't that crappy. Moms with 3+ kids collecting welfare get nearly as much per month in pay PLUS free assistance with heat and medical care + WIC + they can go out and drink and party and get high and not lose any of that.

Show up to work drunk and you get sent home and lose a days pay, do it too often you get fired.

That is the problem with the welfare system. That is why as it stands it needs to go away. Better for the country that way no mater what anyone says.

Anecdotal evidence much?

Is there a way to determine how much welfare pays in benefits to the average "welfare mom"?

Fateweaver wrote:
Dogma, you said yourself UI payments are welfare. You reached that conclusion for me. I don't agree with your conclusion and now apparently you contradict yourself.

I assumed you were using the word welfare in the general sense, in which it refers to any social program that subsidizes the poor. When it became clear that you were referring to a specific program I changed my stance.

Fateweaver wrote:
The point of my statement was that financially welfare moms with a certain number of kids live better than some of the pipeliners I know who work a dangerous, dirty crappy job 50 hours a week. Blue collar jobs might suck from a prestige sense and maybe a safety sense but making $30/hour to lay pipe into ground all day, pay wise, isn't that crappy. Moms with 3+ kids collecting welfare get nearly as much per month in pay PLUS free assistance with heat and medical care + WIC + they can go out and drink and party and get high and not lose any of that.

They also have to deal with three children, which is certainly not easy. It seems to me that you have a bit of gender prejudice in your argument.

Fateweaver wrote:
Show up to work drunk and you get sent home and lose a days pay, do it too often you get fired.

Mistreat your children, and social services takes them away; depriving the welfare mom of income.

Fateweaver wrote:
That is the problem with the welfare system. That is why as it stands it needs to go away. Better for the country that way no mater what anyone says.

No, it actually matters a great deal what other people say; especially when they say things based on reason, rather than personal chagrin.

@Fate

I don't know where your getting your figures from man,but I've never ever heard of any welfare recipient getting $6,000.00 dollars a month.
As I said,from the 3 welfare moms I've known,it's closer to $700.00.

I doubt the three child welfare queens you describe are representative, Fateweaver. Most
likely, if they're living that way, they're doing so on supplemented income and/or
credit card debt. You would probably be justified reporting them to child protective services.

FITZZ wrote: @Fate

I don't know where your getting your figures from man,but I've never ever heard of any welfare recipient getting $6,000.00 dollars a month.
As I said,from the 3 welfare moms I've known,it's closer to $700.00.

I do not know exactly how the system works, but the actual chances of a person being able to recieve 6 grand a month, are slim to none. There is a very slight possibility that there may be a few individuals that can manage to work that kind of money out of the government, but a possibility so slight, as to be considered substantially lacking in any real substance.

He is pulling numbers out of his butt, and waving them around like they actually mean something... in short.

Anyone with children knows how expensive it is to raise one, I could tally up the generic cost to around a minimum of 500$ a month, and that is if you are a serious penny-pincher. Subtracting the cost of raising just one child, that leaves in the region of 200$ for other expenses, and not eating is not an option for a human being. Welfare, is notoriously hard to survive on, and I know people that choose to live on the street, because living in an apartment, eats up their entire check due to the fact that they get less while living indoors.

FITZZ wrote: @Fate

I don't know where your getting your figures from man,but I've never ever heard of any welfare recipient getting $6,000.00 dollars a month.
As I said,from the 3 welfare moms I've known,it's closer to $700.00.

The 'welfare queen in her shiny new caddy' was a myth popularized during the Reagan presidency, and it still gets a lot of play because it's a powerful image, even if there's no truth to it. It makes a really easy platform for people who want to argue that the 'welfare is bad!' to climb up on, without them actually having to think about the subject and come up with an actual defensible stance, because when presented with an opposing argument all they have to do is rant about, 'she got four screaming kids and a two year old SUV!!!!!!' That lets them ignore any opposing viewpoints, while still hitting hot buttons, because those are our tax dollars filling that brand new car.

efarrer wrote:The person in that video wasn't just talking about the neglectful, he was talking about the poor in general. He made a blanket series of statements to justify his desire to cut off funding for paying for student lunches for the poor. You can try to redirect it to say it was just for the neglectful but it wasn't. He was targeting the poor and his manner of the targeting the poor was to aim for the children.

I am not defending the personn the video, I am stating my own position.

Fateweaver wrote:I must say if a woman/couple can't afford to feed their kids without getting welfare than don't have any.

Sure it's a right to have kids but welfare isn't a right, it's a privilege. If a woman who makes $500k a year wants 4 kids good on her as I know my tax dollars won't go to feeding their ass. If a woman makes $12k a year as a waitress and wants 4 kids then I say "stop the train". Stop at 1 kid or don't have any and feed and clothe them herself, not expect the government to help her out.

Thing is, same problem applies. Of course a person should not have kids if they cannot afford them, but it is not the fault of the child that their parent had no self-restraint, so it is not fair to punish the child.

True that but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

If our desire is to make sure that welfare benefits children to the greatest extent possible - and to their parents (personally) the least - wouldn't free school lunches be a good way of going about this? After all, the parents won't be able to get free school lunch. It would seem the more services the school provides the children with taxpayers' money the less taxpayers should need to provide their parents with money (that is supposed to go to providing services for the children, but often does not).

Fateweaver wrote:True that but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

And who has the moral authority to draw that line?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Orkeosaurus wrote:If our desire is to make sure that welfare benefits children to the greatest extent possible - and to their parents (personally) the least - wouldn't free school lunches be a good way of going about this? After all, the parents won't be able to get free school lunch. It would seem the more services the school provides the children with taxpayers' money the less taxpayers should need to provide their parents with money (that is supposed to go to providing services for the children, but often does not).

Yup. Free school lunch is probably the least likely to be abused program ever... That food is terrible.

On a serious note, I love the programs that sends a sack lunch home with kids on weekends.

Gornall wrote:And who has the moral authority to draw that line?

There is no need to draw any line.

Effectively dealing with the issues that children from low-income families, is the real issue. I have seen no evidence that their is a large issue that would point to a need for such drastic measures to be taken, as to put that many children in harms way.

Help the kids, don't gamble on a hunch, because you (not you specifically, Gornall) think their parents are bad people.

On a serious note, I love the programs that sends a sack lunch home with kids on weekends.

I would love to see more community-based activities, designed around helping children. I do not doubt that most parents of a low-income, try as hard as they can to provide for their children. There is a problem when the community that they are a part of, puts that hardship squarely on their shoulders alone though.

"It takes a village to raise a child", is a very appropriate term in this instance.

Community gardens, Community child-care (through various programs), Tutoring for school, etc... these are all great ways to help overcome the hardships that would otherwise be relatively unattainable by one or two individuals.

Respectfully, some sort of line must be drawn. We can't have poor kids sent to Disney World every couple of years on public expense, it would get ridiculous.

We are, in a sense, discussing on what side of "the line" various programs are on already.

I would hardly call that any kind of metaphorical line in the sand, that can be adjusted to personal philosophies and morals, though.

What I think this sub-conversation (main conversation? I dunno...) is going towards, is the practical limitations to what can be provided; not the moral lines that people like to draw with sticks in dirt.

I'm not sure if I see a difference; to me the practical reason that poor kids can't go to Disney World is that it represents an unjust burden on the nation's taxpayers. And after all, what "practical" reason is there to feed poor children without making a moral judgement as to the importance of protecting minors when their parents refuse to do so?

I suppose the simplest way to put it, would fall well within your reasoning. By that, I would have to consider all spending morally biased, which I suppose is true, at least to a degree.

Maybe I am being pedantic, but it does seem that there are reasons that extend well beyond the realm of morals, and into the region of pragmatism. If we have x amount to spend on anything, at any given time, the actual need of any of those examples, could be boiled down mathematically to simple cost effectiveness. Not that I am trying to explicitly say that children are worth more than a missile or a tank, but that is basically what I am saying.

Again, you are generally correct.

Well, I suppose even the Evil Empire does need enough children to conscript into their Legions of Death at a later date.

You need lots of kids to brainwash with "deathtoys".

The question here is one of efficacy. Justice, fairness, and all those other emotional notions are irrelevant; outside of individual willingness anyway. A useful line is a good line, and that should be our barometer of choice.

Sending kids to Disney World accomplishes nothing, but feeding them does. This is one of those lines that is really quite clear.

Well, one could argue that feeding poor children only achieves the need to feed them again the next day, whereas if you leave them hungry for long enough, then eventually the need to feed them is a problem that goes away...

(JOKING!)

Eventually everything goes away, whether the movement is by the perceptual agent or otherwise.

(I did laugh)

Before drawing a line it would be useful to decide what is the objective of having welfare and establishing a line in it.

For instance, some right wingers like the Governor think there shouldn't be any welfare because withdrawing it would force lazy spongers to get off their arses and find a job. It would also reduce the taxes people pay. This might work if there are jobs to be found, of course.

However, an increase in poverty would also cause an increase in crime, which would cause an increase in expenditure on the criminal justice system, thus raising taxes. So perhaps a modicum of welfare is completely justified and cost effective.

From that viewpoint, there are practical social reasons for welfare payments.

A long term solution needs to include education and training for poor people so they can get better jobs, and the development of an economy which provides good quality jobs for people to take. More and better jobs also increases the amount of money to be taxed by government, so the rate of taxation can be set lower and achieve the same numerical result.

Whatever happens, there will always be a few truly lazy or selfish people who would rather sponge off society as a whole than get a job even if there are jobs available. That does not make it fair to tar all poor people with the same brush.

dogma wrote:The question here is one of efficacy.

You can't have efficacy without assigning some things as positive (contributing to efficacy) and others as negative (detracting from efficacy). In the context of social desirability this necessitates assigning value to things, doesn't it?

Kilkrazy wrote:A long term solution needs to include education and training for poor people so they can get better jobs, and the development of an economy which provides good quality jobs for people to take.

But how does, say, a Bachelor's Degree make a janitor more productive? Or a garbageman, or a truck driver? Not everyone can be a middle manager, after all.

Orkeosaurus wrote:But how does, say, a Bachelor's Degree make a janitor more productive? Or a garbageman, or a truck driver? Not everyone can be a middle manager, after all.

Don't you know... that's what the illegal immigrants are for.

TBH, I'm not really following Orkeosaurus's discussion. To many big words that I cannot process.

Orkeosaurus wrote:You can't have efficacy without assigning some things as positive (contributing to efficacy) and others as negative (detracting from efficacy). In the context of social desirability this necessitates assigning value to things, doesn't it?

Yes, but it isn't an emotional, or preferential sort of value. Feeding children has a positive effect which can be noted, and described using traditionally physical terminology; whereas notions of fairness and justice are essentially attempts to 'transcend' reality by discussing existence.