Bah! :O
Can't you all see we're all just cows to the government. Wait WAIT! :O. Sheeps. Sheeps. That's what most people act like anyways. About welfare and all, Kthulhu is right. Being on welfare is no joyride. The way the system is setup the moment you start making money, they start taking it away from you. So say you get $100 housing, $150 in foodstamps and a $500 welfare check every month.
Once you get a $6.50 an hour job. You get no welfare check, or they supplment your wages with that welfare check, so the company who hired you doesn't have to pay you a dime. You're working for that check. Then your housing goes up to about $300. Your foodstamps are cut to $60. Great? Great? You were barely making it before, how are you going to scrape by now?
It's a fucked system that is in place just to keep a bunch of fat asses employed. They give you such shit for going in and needing assistance. There is massive amounts of paper work to fill out and then if you don't get a job ASAP they'll stuff you in a JOBS program. This is where you spend 30 - 40hrs a week in their seminars, with another well paid fat ass, telling you "how to go get a job" and they help you fill out your forms for Taco Bell & Burger King ^_^. Oh don't forget to tell them you're on welfare so they get that FREE wage extemption.
Welfare breeds more welfare cases. Kids don't have enough money for college they get a crappy job, they try to make it. They fail at it. Whoops back on welfare.
Then you have another problem. Illegal immigrants. I've seen welfare offices that don't even require verfication of your citizenship. Then you have the whole "Do you need a spanish speaking clerk to help you fill out your welfare forms?". If you're coming to America to get assitance can you please speak english. I understand that Mexico is a shithole right now, but somehow many illegal immigrants are getting thousands of dollars together to get shipped across the border and die in horse trailers.

Where are they getting these thousands of dollars.
Also illegal immigrants are a haven for shitty businesses that take advantage of their status. Tyson chicken awhile back go in trouble and yes alot of farm workers get taken advantage of. "No green card, no problem ~ but we'll only pay you $1/hr or less". How they survive is making arrangements with landlords to stack 20 people in a room with them all making $1/hr. This problem is agrivated by Mexico being mostly a Catholic country and people are encouraged to have children. Birth control = no no. That's why I see so many Mexican people with 6 kids in tow and I am wondering "WTF?".
Corporate america is no better. There is such a thing as corporate welfare. The powers that be are corrupting this country from the inside out. It's been done for so long now, people just accept it. Cheney and his Enron scandel. Bush and his destruction of the tax on chemical and oil companies that pollute so that it can aid in SuperFund cleanup sites. Bush and his little Oil war. Bush and his Alaskan oil drilling ideals. Cheney and his insistance on the need for Nuclear power. This isn't even including the massive tax right offs and how the government keeps allowing jobs to be shipped over seas. <a href="
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/08 ... html">Read this</a> companies don't even need to send operations over seas. They can just import and exploit these people legally in the United States, while shafting hard-working American employees.
Another kind of welfare is the family welfare. Why do you receive tax credit for having a kid? Why do you get more exemptions for having kids? Why add to the problem. There are six BILLION people already. We need no more. Everytime I hear people talk about "OMG you're have a kid congrats!", I think "OMG Another useless human being.". The point is in this world human life is worth SHIT. S-H-I-T. Technically you could probably sell body and it's fluids for nearly 45million I believe. But of course you would be dead. The lie that "All men are created equal" is just that, a lie. I believe in no tax cuts, no nothing for people bringing another child into the world. If you think you're ready to raise a kid, bring another comsuming body into this world, be prepared. I am so tired of parents going... get this let me make the emote for this...
ermm.
;_; --- no wait bigger
;_;
IT'S SO COSTLY TO RAISE A CHILD THESE DAYS, I HAVE SO MUCH DEBT I NEED THESE TAX CUTS TO ASSIST MY FAMILY!
WRONG! You should have decided that before you thought it was wise to have a baby. Or two or three babies. I constantly here "I have a wife and two kids to feed and a mortgage due at the end of the month?". Guess what, no one gives shit. Not just me! But corporate america and your governement. The real reason why people get tax breaks. Notice the tax breaks really don't do alot. They're like $400, which is a help. But it's not massive. It in no way offsets the actual cost of feeding, clothing, keeping a kid healthy and all the goddamn fucking time it takes or the cost of having someone else raise your child. There are a few reasons this is done. 1)There are fools who have the idea that everyone should have the chance to raise kids and be REWARDED FOR BEING RETARDED. 2) There are people of religious conviction that believe it is our duty to rape and pillage and consume every fuckin square inch of the land. 3) There are people out there who pray off of the desparation of others. The whole fucking work cycle is desparation. How do you make people desparate. A very obvious way, and one we're seeing now, is NOT ENOUGH JOBS TO HUMANS RATIO. More kids = more humans = more desparation = more money and power for those that are already here.
I am not even bitching about the added benefits that people receive from having a kid and working. It costs me $35 to cover my health insurance for one month. But for them, they can cover their wife, kids, themselves for $80/month. Kids get more sick and cost more than a healthy grown adult. Kids are more likely to injure themselves. Kids are more fuckin' costly, but what's this. A four person family is paying $20/month per person, over me paying $35. Not to mention they're more likely to get ill than I am. I used my insurance once. Someone with kids probably used it 10 times.
In the end, there is going to have to be radical changes to this society. Yes, and people won't like the changes. Lots of people say that though and it never happens. :p Maybe I am spouting lies. But with the way the economy is setup, with the way everything is. There is really very little chance of anyone succeeding and becoming fullfilled in life. Sure there are some who's dream is to have two kids get married and then get in debt by getting a house, going to a job 60hrs a week... BUT ATLEAST THEY GOT THAT NEW TV, or that SHINY card that they only pay $350/mn for. That they don't even own. Fuck they don't even own their house. The Tv is probably bought on a credit card. Yiah for not really owning things but having the idea that you do own it, but you really don't and continue to be a consumer whore.
Truthfully. If everyone was equal right now. If everyone had the exact same amount of money. This world would crumble. Because no one would have the whip in their hand cracking it on the backs of others. Just the way money flows in this world. It's like a river with deep pockets and little channels that sorta close off into ponds. Maybe it's like a mountain, since the moutain packs alot of snow, but occasianly it trickles down to the masses below it. :p Something like that.
Face-it >_> you have a better cahnce of being a 40yr old balding divorced bastard with debt up to his head instead of that astronaut, fire figther or rock star you always wanted to be :p.
I am not saying people can't be happy, that there is no way to be happy. I think there are alot of ways to be happy. But this society is fucked up and yes I feel like blaming it for alot of things.
It's BROKEN! :O