How not to be poor

[onewhippedpuppy]

How about removing them from welfare so they have to get, GASP, jobs!

I think it would be nearly impossible to support any numerical claim as far as how many people are on welfare/ disability really need it. Really, how would you go about it, send out a questionare? Then, most would lie because they don't want to lose their benefits. I think you would have to define specifically what does and does not deserve benefits, and then send people out to personally investigate each and every case. Of course, then the government wouldn't do anything about it. The guy I worked with reported several of the supposed bad back disability cases that were faking injuries, and there was never anything done. Typical government efficiency.

[Burnin' oil]

Anybody and everybody involved in social services, at least in California, knows that fraud is rampant and that the system is abused. They also know that the administration of the services is heavily weighted in favor of the recipients so that even in the face of outright fraud, the benefits continue. There are certainly those who cannot support themselves and need help, but personal experience indicates those are in the minority.

[stevepaa]

Not sure everybody in social services in Ca knows that fraud is rampant, there yes, but not rampant. Something that my social worker friend does mention is the large number of deadbeat dads, some quite well known in the bay area.

[Burnin' oil]

Steve, talk to a Social Services investigator sometime

[MysticLlama]

My experiences were based on welfare families in CA, so maybe that's part of the bias?

I lived in a border town close to OR, people moved across specifically for welfare, so it was probably worse than usual in our town. We did have an unusually high number of trailer parks and low-rent apartments per capita.

[CamB]

What if there are no jobs?
Should all solo parents work?
Does the fraud of some justify tightening or removing programmes to the point of damaging the genuinely needy?

There are people who need welfare. Generally the system tries to target them, and them alone, but there are people who screw the system.

There are also people who defraud companies, or don't pay their taxes (can all those reviling welfare recipients put their hand on their hearts and say they have paid every tax $$$ owed by them - never done a job for cash, never paid cash for a job?).

[Jims5543]

Originally posted by CamB
What if there are no jobs?
Should all solo parents work?
Does the fraud of some justify tightening or removing programmes to the point of damaging the genuinely needy?

There are people who need welfare. Generally the system tries to target them, and them alone, but there are people who screw the system.

There are also people who defraud companies, or don't pay their taxes (can all those reviling welfare recipients put their hand on their hearts and say they have paid every tax $$$ owed by them - never done a job for cash, never paid cash for a job?).

Do you need it for a lifetime?

There are jobs to be had as well. Fast food chains now offer well above the minimum wage just to entice decent employees.

Its not a matter of needing welfare but choosing not to help yourself and milking it for a lifetime. There is lack of accountability for mothers squeezing out kids with the state picking up the maternity bill then getting money and aid to raise it.

What sucks is the fact that they have the freedom to do this 7x over without consequence. Each time putting that much more of a strain on the system and diminishing the quality of life for the other siblings.

Watching what happens in the school system is enough to convince me something needs to change. As my son enters middle school they will now seperate the kids based on ability. This is where the kids with horrible home lifes get left behind and its sad. Teachers fought for the first 6 years of their schooling to keep them on par with the rest of the class, even holding back to an extent the rest of the class to keep the slower ones up to speed.

Most of these kids end up graduating high school with a 5th grade education at best. Their last 7 years of school, if they finish, is basically wasting space in a classroom.

Sound mean? Its the truth. A 19 y/o I have working for me described the public high school scene. He was is in a crappy math class. The teacher spends most of his time trying to shut the kids up who couldnt give a crap about being there rather than actually teaching. In some cases as he has attempted to detain unruly 18-20 year olds they shove him out of their way and leave the class.

This problem is complex. A solution? I wish I knew, its a real mess and I am unsure how to fix it. Especially in this era of PC.

[MysticLlama]

We got a little focused on welfare here, and sure, that can be a problem, but there is more than just that.

A lot of the issue is just the attitude of the people. Sometimes, welfare can make it easier to have that attitude.

For instance, we had a lot of people move into town with no jobs, knowing that they could get money.

I don't know about anyone else, but I would never just move into a town known for not having many jobs without having a job. What's the point in that? (Edit: Actually, some of them just figured that people of the same religious background in town would help keep them afloat, same sort of rant I got into about morals, but that's a conversation for another day)

Even from when I was 12 years old, I wondered how these people thought they were going to get along moving into a town without having work lined up? What's the difference in that and staying where you were before? And how could you expect others to take care of you?

Some people that are on welfare, even for legitimate reasons such as a town with no work still brought it upon themselves.

That's why there will never be an accurate figure on this. There are those that abuse the system, and that's a small number, sure. Then there are those to actually need it, but wouldn't have if they would have moved somewhere they could have found work, and I have a hard time feeling sorry for them.

I've pulled unemployment before, but over half of my company was laid off, it wasn't any fault of ours for not doing our work, etc. Also, I considered it an insurance benefit since I've spent years paying into that. I feel entitled to claim unemployment just like I'm entitled to get car insurance money from an accident, I pay for that right.

A lot of the people everyone is referring to have never paid in, or have paid in very little.

I think unemployment is fine for the most part, as long as you're diligently looking for new work. I think disability is fine if you got injured and can't perform in your trade for an amount of time. (If you can be retrained for another form of work, that would be my choice, but I like to work or I get bored easy) If you are pulling disability because you're overweight, I don't feel sorry for you, quit eating so damn much. (Yes, some people have medical conditions, but not the majority) If you're on welfare because life gave you lemons, because you're a single mom and your husband ran out on you, or whatever reason, fine. If you're perfectly capable of working, it's not fine, and you should feel bad about it.

It's the people that think the assistance is a right that I have a problem with.

I justify my position at work by saving the company at least double my salary per year in efficiency. Why couldn't we allow PIs to work on this or something and give them 10% of the benefits recovered because of being found fraudulent? Easy, because they would work too hard to screw the good people as much as the bad and we'd just have the reverse problem.

Okay, I'm done with my completely incoherent post now.

[MysticLlama]

Originally posted by Jims5543
Do you need it for a lifetime?
Sound mean? Its the truth. A 19 y/o I have working for me described the public high school scene. He was is in a crappy math class. The teacher spends most of his time trying to shut the kids up who couldnt give a crap about being there rather than actually teaching. In some cases as he has attempted to detain unruly 18-20 year olds they shove him out of their way and leave the class.

So true. On a given school day, I received maybe 2 hours of instruction. Between 15 minutes to settle the kids down, 10 minutes of them being rowdy towards the end of class, time to walk between classes, breaks, lunch, etc. there was no time to learn anything.

I skipped high school completely and did home school. I got the books, taught myself, took the tests. (Went to the local college for math, that's hard to teach yourself)

9th grade with an almost identical curriculum to the local HS took me two months working about 1-1.5 hours per day. I finished the entire thing in two years, working a couple hours a day, and had almost 2 full semesters worth of college completed by the time I was 16.

I don't know what I'll ever do with my kids, you need to go to school for the social experience, but I've always seen it as such a huge time waster. Private school maybe.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Take them to a private school that doesn't tolerate kids running the classrooms. It's so sad that our modern era of PC BS means that teachers are unable to punish students that are disrupting their class, even to the point where they have to tolerate intimidation from their students. Where did the world go wrong? Sorry to break it to the doubters, but you cannot succesfully do anything without hurting someone's feelings, or pissing somebody off. Our constant struggle to make the world warm and fuzzy for everybody is an underlying problem to many of the issues we have discussed on this thread.

[widebody911]

Originally posted by onewhippedpuppy
Our constant struggle to make the world warm and fuzzy for everybody is an underlying problem to many of the issues we have discussed on this thread.

That, and refusing to take responsibility for one's actions, are the two major things wrong with this country. In my day, if you screwed off in class, you got dragged to the principal's office and beaten (no, really, corporal punishment was still 'in'). Now you get medicated and 'counseled' and if you continue to **** off in class, it's the teacher's fault.

[Tim Hancock]

Wow, I actually agree 100% with something Thom said!