This about sums mine up:

http://www.laughness.com/welfare.217

Pretty much, yea.

My girlfriend has rheumatoid arthritis.

When she can't work, she is in serious pain and has to take disability so we can make ends meet. Disability pay SUCKS, and there is a minimum amount of time you have to take. They also make you burn up all your vacation (something you have earned and therefore should be able to save for when you can enjoy it) before getting disability pay.

It's a system that should protect the weak, but too many people take advantage.

I recently got someone I go to school and work with fired for disability fraud, and he is going to be prosecuted soon. He "injured" his shoulder in a motorcycle accident outside of work. (We work in the same area) He would constantly come to school and play football and basketball with the other people during lunch and talk about working out.

I went to security at work and they hired a PI to follow him. I don't feel bad about it, people like that make me sick.

Some people CANNOT help the hand they've been dealt. I don't like missing work, but sometimes I have to because it's retarded for me to try and drive to either job with a migraine, much less be able to perform my job correctly.

There is however no disability for migraines because the system doesn't account for people that actually WANT to go to work, but can't always go to work.

A safety net has value to society.

Welfare is flawed, but partially fills this role.

"The best way to help the poor is to make them uncomfortable in their poverty" Benjamin Franklin

It shouldn't be enough to live on - only a temporary boost.

I think adequate social security is an essential feature of a civilized society. I also realize that there's abuse by some of the people eligible for the government-provided part of that security.

I favor strong incentives for those who are able to work to do so, but not at the expense of the countless people who actually require the help in order to maintain humane standards for everyday life. It seems a tricky dilemma.

In times of olde, the lowest of society had the decency to expire without producing offspring. This modern phenomenon of survival of all will at worst stagnate our species and push us into a sort of anti-evolutionism or at best split us into two species. A productive, healthy one, and a diseased sub-species doomed to be forever poor and supported by the other.

If that was true then anyone of Irish descent wouldn't exist.

Sometimes they have to be encouraged.

ODB

Welfare is necessary & it doesn't actually cost us that much (a very low percentage of GDP). There really isn't anything to discuss unless you want to speak about reform. The amount of abuse w/in the system is close to insignificant when you consider more pressing issues. Most of the people against it are either stupid or simply misinformed.

http://www.benchmarkinstitute.org/t_by_t/pb/welfare_myths.pdf

I had a friend in elementary school who grew up on welfare. He had a nice TV in his room and always got the latest video game systems. Meanwhile my hard working dad couldn't afford that kind of stuff for me. I didn't realize a lot back then, but looking back, it was a pretty disgusting example of abuse.

Naturally, your argument would be a lot more interesting if it were actually supported by the quote. Better luck next time.

"All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of" - Benjamin Franklin

If you're "uncomfortable in [your] poverty," as in not owning nice things, you have a reason to pull yourself out of it. If you're poor and don't have "enough to live on," you are just slowly wasting away without the resources to do anything.

I also don't think you're aware of how little a human being is capable of living on, but obviously nobody who opposes social programs has ever been in the situation where they'd need one. Oh mah gawd, mah morgedge and kh-ar payments and air conditionin' cost me two thousand a month! That means thar state is givin poor people two thousand a month too!

Hey, can I offer an alternative interpretation of your childhood?

1.) You don't need a job to put a TV and a N64 on a credit card.
2.) If you are a responsible worker, you're probably a responsible spender.
3.) "We can't afford it" is parent-ese for "No."

Welfare fraud, blah blah blah.

Yea, Welfare checks are spent on bar tabs and drugs, not video games for the kids.

Jeeze.

Yeah, i'm with Jon'C. I'd go ahead and argue that you COULD have bought it, but it would have been unwise to. They SHOULDN'T have bought it, but they were still able to.

I think this was the exact point he was trying to make.

That's not universally true:

"I've been on foodstamps and welfare, did anyone help me out? No." -Craig T. Nelson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U

from http://twitpic.com/1h8pee:
a response to all the tory whining about benefit fraud in the election run-up

yes, benefit fraud is a problem. no, it is not a reason to remove the safety net for those who need it

Also, if anyone's interested, JK Rowling wrote a great piece about support for single parents recently.

The smallprint is fantastic

I still say Cameron looks like the guy that used to play the trombone on the Lurpak adverts.


Hence why his post started with "Yeah, i'm with Jon'C." and you just didn't quote that part?

I meant that Dash meant almost exactly that.

I think the US could hire people to 'check' on the authenticity of people (ab)using welfare and probably save more money by cutting loose people who shouldn't be using it, than it would cost to staff the people doing the checking.

There are a lot of people who genuinely need the assistance, but there are a lot of low life lazy pricks who don't even deserve to breathe on it as well.

Great thread!

Welfare is more than food stamps and unemployment.

You guys are just *****ing about food stamps and unemployment.

I think welfare should be abolished. I'm tired of paying for fried food for obese black women with 10 kids who can't be bothered to work.

+1

I like how you sign your posts with a photograph.

Maybe we can solve this and healthcare at one go. Use Obama's death panels to kill everyone on welfare!

But if we did that, who would vote for basset hound orphans? Oh, now I see, good idea.

total burn

Not for you!


Red = net withdrawal from welfare
Blue = net contribution to welfare

Anyway, I really posted it because I thought it was funny (not true) and a guy I know made that web site (but not the picture on it).

I fail to see how that deals with the demographics of welfare recipients but if you think it's spiffy well, then, that's good enough for me.

What? Are you trying to tell me that the people who live in the states that pay the most into social services and are the most at risk of terrorist attacks think the Republicans can't do a very good job at either of those things??

LIBERAL LIES

That makes zero sense. That's like all those places that always elect democrats and then complain that the Rebulicans are messing everything up.

People who consistently vote democratic complain about republicans because even though their town or county might be democratic, there are still republicans getting elected on STATE and NATIONAL LEVELS that still affect them.

...how is that not incredibly obvious?

And that is the absolute antithesis of how things are supposed to work in this country and why I have little faith it ever will again. Anyway, that is asinine still. Republicans are generally good for the economy at the national level but places such as Detroit or New Orleans that always elect democrats will routinely flounder. Hell, it only took about two years for the democrat congress to push the national economy over the edge. It's such a self fulfilling prophecy. Democrats destroy things, claim it's the Republicans fault, gain more power and wreak even more havoc. America wakes up, elects somebody like Reagan who shores things up and repairs some of the damage, and then the progressives slowly regain power to reestablish the offense on the country and, thus, the cycle starts anew.

Reagan is the REASON for the mess we are in now.

You're right. The American system was originally designed to prevent a tyranny of the majority at both the national and the local level. For example, an irresponsible government at the federal level shouldn't be able to demolish the local economy of one state. Unfortunately there are a lot of modern factors that effectively prohibit that sort of isolation.

You have no idea what you're talking about. The present-day crisis has roots in financial deregulation pursued by George W. Bush and the Republican majority in the last two years of Clinton's presidency. Reagan's fiscal diarrhea cost George H. W. Bush his second term. The idea that the Republicans are good for the economy is a puerile fantasy.

Virtually all American corporations and industries other than finance and medicine lean to the left. Finance and medicine lean to the right because they profit the most from stupidity and chaos.