I have a lot of problems with the current welfare system, but a large one is the same as a few others have hit on - rewarding people. Parents on welfare get free health insurance for their children - but a working single mother who earns enough to feed and house her children without help, can't afford a hospital visit for her children. Unless she quits her job, or gets an even higher paying job, basic health care isn't an option. But people on welfare not only get basic necessities for free - each child they have equals a bigger check. And though there are programs to get them employed, I have personally seen many who stay on welfare - if the checks aren't enough for luxuries, they just pop out another child and go right on with it. Housing is covered, utilities are covered, food is covered (yes, there's a limit of foodstamps per child, but more children = more money, so the solution is simple, have more children and feed them less, you get more money that way - look at families who've been on welfare for years, there's a reason people complain about welfare abuse).
And sadly, I think welfare has its benefits to those who don't abuse it. I've seen it used by people who only take as much as they have to before they can bounce back into the job market - and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm happy to pay my share to support them. The problem is that while I'm paying taxes to get health care for a woman's 3 children (with another on the way since she doesn't have anything better to do than to get pregnant as she sits around her free apartment), I can't afford a checkup for my one child.
Welfare is a great thing until you realize those paying for it can't afford the same things they're giving to the poor. Most of the people I knew growing up were on welfare, since I lived in a generally poor neighborhood. My mother was on it for 4 months when I was seven. And then she got a new job and wasn't qualified. So while my friends - whose parents *didn't* work, got free health care, we had nothing - because my mom *did* work - she made too much to qualify for assistance, but not enough to buy basic necessities. When that happens, there's something wrong with things. And there have been a number of changes to the welfare system since then, but welfare mothers still get that free healthcare for their children, while single mothers who make enough to feed their children by themselves get nothing - and they have to pay taxes to give that very health care that they can't afford to people who don't work. There's something very wrong with that.
And every penny of taxes I pay to support those people who *need* and deserve the help, is just more support of the system itself. But I can't stop supporting welfare because some people *do* need it. In the end you can't win - either you pay for the abusers, or you hurt the needy - so you pay. It's a messed up system. While we're paying people to have more children, we should be paying extra taxes for a nation-wide healthcare system. Other countries manage it - you'd think the US would at least attempt the same. So far each 'welfare reform' has merely shifted the nature of the payment - the basic necessities (including healthcare) are still included, with perks for those who have additional children.
But don't mind me too much, this is a topic that comes up a lot around me, and considering my mother is an accountant (who's been happy to inform me of the complaints over the fact that the new tax exemption doesn't pay people for having children - it merely gives some money back to those people who payed *more* than they should have, and for some reason people think those who don't pay any taxes should receive checks as well - merely for having had children - I tell them to get on welfare if they want the handouts, a tax payback is for those who pay taxes), it's a hot topic.
Where does the church get $55mil?
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Arigatomina
- Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2003 3:04 am
- Contact:
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kthulhu
- Joined: Thu May 30, 2002 6:01 pm
- Location: At the pony stable, brushing the pretty ponies
Well, as klinky mentioned, the problem with welfare is that, if you do the right thing and get a job (voluntarily or otherwise), the system takes away whatever you earn from your welfare benefits. So not only do you have a job and the new transportation/child care/time problems that can entail, you're not really getting ahead. In fact, you might be falling further behind.
A minimum wage job (even in states that go over the federal limit, like here in Oregon) isn't worth shit for many people. Maybe one person in a studio apartment and living simply can wing it on one, but not a single parent of even one child. Minimum wage jobs are not really meant to support a family on, AND THAT'S PART OF THE PROBLEM. The welfare system thinks "A job's a job!" and will push people to take low pay work, then pat themselves on the back for reducing rolls.
This helps no one. The working people get shafted, and the welfare people see no point in trying to get off (for good reason).
The system will stay the same until the situation changes.
As for public healthcare, it's not that great. Doctors seem less inclined to deal with poor people on Medicaid equally, at least in my experience.
A minimum wage job (even in states that go over the federal limit, like here in Oregon) isn't worth shit for many people. Maybe one person in a studio apartment and living simply can wing it on one, but not a single parent of even one child. Minimum wage jobs are not really meant to support a family on, AND THAT'S PART OF THE PROBLEM. The welfare system thinks "A job's a job!" and will push people to take low pay work, then pat themselves on the back for reducing rolls.
This helps no one. The working people get shafted, and the welfare people see no point in trying to get off (for good reason).
The system will stay the same until the situation changes.
As for public healthcare, it's not that great. Doctors seem less inclined to deal with poor people on Medicaid equally, at least in my experience.
I'm out...
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Propyro
- Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2003 9:09 am
- Location: Ontario
About the kids ... yea i usualy feel the same... Actualy i feel the same about myself as well. lets say all my plans go well and i get out of college in 7 years with two postgrad programs under my belt and get a job as a computer engieneer. Will i accomplish anything that will make me vaugely useful to the human race? Ods are that i won't. that automaticaly makes me a write off to the population. Step two, lets say somehow i get married and have a kid or 2, or 2.3 like every one else. Odds are that kid won't ammount to anything either like his farther and his mother. so thats two wastes of flesh bringing in another waste of flesh.Klinky wrote: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.
Byteh way klinky, the materials that make up an adult human body woudl be worth 45 cents dehydrated. If they were left with fluids and in a recgonizable form they'd probalby be worth more, and probalby close to yoru 45 million mark.
/|\
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Arigatomina
- Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2003 3:04 am
- Contact:
True, but they'll look at you even worse if you go in and say you have no insurance and you plan to pay with a check.kthulhu wrote:As for public healthcare, it's not that great. Doctors seem less inclined to deal with poor people on Medicaid equally, at least in my experience.
And don't even get me started on credit cards... The best reception I got was when I emptied my savings account for my sister a few years back and paid with cash - I've never had people in white coats look at me like that befoe. 
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Arigatomina
- Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2003 3:04 am
- Contact:
Just keep them around for blood and plasma donations - you'll get more money off them, and you can keep 'em on a liquid diet and pay less for food.Propyro wrote:Byteh way klinky, the materials that make up an adult human body woudl be worth 45 cents dehydrated. If they were left with fluids and in a recgonizable form they'd probalby be worth more, and probalby close to yoru 45 million mark.
I think everyone who wants more than one child should have to adopt one before they're allowed to have a third - it would even things out a bit.
Then again, I've supported the 'license to breed' for years. If driving a car is taking other people's lives into your hands, breeding is just as dangerous.-
Propyro
- Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2003 9:09 am
- Location: Ontario
Actualy thats a pretty good idea .. licnece to breed ... this way you don't wind up with half as many pointless fuckups and you curb our population's growth curb ... though i think it needs to hit a table top rather then a curb... Whats the worldpopulation right now? 6.6 billion? cut it down by about 4 or 5 billion totaly randomly selected around the world and you'll probalby slove a lot of problems. THough everyone would need to ahve an equal chance to be selected for termination other wise if ti's done by human hands there will be bias' comming into play and it will merely become a genocide rather then an equal population control method.Arigatomyna wrote: Then again, I've supported the 'license to breed' for years. If driving a car is taking other people's lives into your hands, breeding is just as dangerous.
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kthulhu
- Joined: Thu May 30, 2002 6:01 pm
- Location: At the pony stable, brushing the pretty ponies
With better transportation and fewer shit politics, we could feed everyone on the planet and then some.
With more education and the suppression of inferior cultural practices (such as Islam in the Middle East and bullshit Christian fundamentalism), we could peacefully begin to reduce the birthrate.
With a global lifestyle movement, we could make the world into a great place to live, where everyone has a good life.
And with a final global movement, we can begin to move off the planet.
Now, to take the first step.
With more education and the suppression of inferior cultural practices (such as Islam in the Middle East and bullshit Christian fundamentalism), we could peacefully begin to reduce the birthrate.
With a global lifestyle movement, we could make the world into a great place to live, where everyone has a good life.
And with a final global movement, we can begin to move off the planet.
Now, to take the first step.
I'm out...
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klinky
- Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2001 12:23 am
- Location: Cookie College...
- Contact:
[quote="Propyro]
Byteh way klinky, the materials that make up an adult human body woudl be worth 45 cents dehydrated. If they were left with fluids and in a recgonizable form they'd probalby be worth more, and probalby close to yoru 45 million mark.
[/quote]
Well I was speaking of organs and fluids :p
http://in.news.yahoo.com/030702/137/25lkz.html
I'm not gonna write a fucken essay, but yeah.
[/quote]
How does that make sense at all? I am only paying for myself so I have to pay MORE?
Ok.
Family A:
1 Adult Male
1 Adult Female
2 Kids
Total = 4 people
They pay $80.
Single Guy
1 Guy
Pays $35
So because they have 4x as many people, they only have to pay 2.6x as much? Yes that makes perfect sense. Who's more likely to get ill, a aging male/female with two kids who are known as "germ factories" or a 19 - 29yr old healthy younger male?
Buying insurance in bulk makes no sense.
Actually if I remember correctly when looking at my comapnies COBRA plan. COBRA is the ability to continue your current benefits from the job you were fired from/quit from @ FULL INSURANCE PRICE. Why this is usefull, I'll never know. But for me it would be aout $295 RAW. For a family it was closer to what it should be, but still not there, something like $900 - $1000. This is PER MONTH.
Obviously it looks like my old job & the insurance companies were giving families a rather LARGE break. Especially with those sickly little rugrats.
I think the problem is everyon is PROMOTING having kids. Like the human race is going to die off. Many many people are already dying of hunger and shitty living conditions. More or less, many people are dying because of people having too many kids. Look at China or India. Those are great hellholes to live. Look at where everyone needing to have a kid has gotten them.
Then we have a whole country that has a pretty fucked up sex stigma. Sex is ok if it's being sold to us or something is being sold with it. But once realy sexuality issues come up then OMG! Hush, that's dirty. Let's take for instance all the hyper-idiot parents who are against having birth control available at high schools. OMG That'll just make people want to fuck each other. Yeah well they're fucking each other already. Miseduction is deadly.
Arigatomyna: I can see how you can feel that way. But you seem to blame the people on welfare for the reason why the system doesn't work. This is basically what happens when you overpopulate. You have alot of excess 'waste' :p. Oh isn't that a term to use. But literally peoples lives rot away in poverty. While I am not a fan of people sitting on their asses for nothing, welfare is not usually a sitting on your ass doing nothing type of ordeal. There is alot of paper work. There are alot of attitudes. There are alot of power-trips from case workers. It's not nice when you're trying to make something with your life and you try and get across town on the bus to this far off welfare office to setup your housing assitance only to arrive 5minutes late and have them smile at you while they say "We're sorry you just lost your housing assitance becuase you were 5mins later.". They actually got off on that. It's just sick.
I think a major problem is that there is not much meaning to work now adays. Back in the old days. You could OWN a house, OWN a car. There was such a thing as community. There was a reason to work. Though shit wasn't perfect back then. Everyone was really fuckin' uptight. But now adays making it is LEASING a house, LEASING a car, getting LOANS to go through college, buying food with your CREDIT card. There is no real value. The object of todays game is to go out and get stuff that you don't actually own.
There is a huge cost if you plan on buying a car outright, plan buying a house outright, plan going to college outright. You can't do it now adays. Just great. But many people and me especially, after working two years and getting no where and seeing what shit everyone else was working for. You know what, I'd rather sit on my ass then have to goto work 60hrs a week just so that I have my house with it's pretty lawn that's an 1hr away from my job. The only time you could play with your 'toys' that the 'American Lifestyle' has given you, is on weekends and if you have kids kiss that goodbye.
I think there just needs to be more to it than owning all the objects that everyone else already has. Isn't there more to life than objects and money? No one really seems to care.
Just like everything else and as I said earlier, kids cost money. I think there should be a basic test before you can have a kid. Damnit, poor people who are from a certain bracket should be sterilized. People who can't pass a basic test. We need something done. That would prevent the 6 kids on welfare. That would prevent the illegal immigrants with 4 kids on welfare, or 4 kids out in the berry fields.
In the end, I think we need to change. But humans rarely change. Everyone is caught up in their own dramas and shit to really give a damn. Everyone is also scared of something changing. People don't like change. People like things the way they know them and that's the way they like it dag nabit!
And Rachel in the future you can always right an essay.
Byteh way klinky, the materials that make up an adult human body woudl be worth 45 cents dehydrated. If they were left with fluids and in a recgonizable form they'd probalby be worth more, and probalby close to yoru 45 million mark.
[/quote]
Well I was speaking of organs and fluids :p
http://in.news.yahoo.com/030702/137/25lkz.html
It cost that much for you because you're only paying for yourself. I mean, that's pretty obvious.Fyrtenheimer
I'm not gonna write a fucken essay, but yeah.
[/quote]
How does that make sense at all? I am only paying for myself so I have to pay MORE?
Ok.
Family A:
1 Adult Male
1 Adult Female
2 Kids
Total = 4 people
They pay $80.
Single Guy
1 Guy
Pays $35
So because they have 4x as many people, they only have to pay 2.6x as much? Yes that makes perfect sense. Who's more likely to get ill, a aging male/female with two kids who are known as "germ factories" or a 19 - 29yr old healthy younger male?
Buying insurance in bulk makes no sense.
Actually if I remember correctly when looking at my comapnies COBRA plan. COBRA is the ability to continue your current benefits from the job you were fired from/quit from @ FULL INSURANCE PRICE. Why this is usefull, I'll never know. But for me it would be aout $295 RAW. For a family it was closer to what it should be, but still not there, something like $900 - $1000. This is PER MONTH.
Obviously it looks like my old job & the insurance companies were giving families a rather LARGE break. Especially with those sickly little rugrats.
I think the problem is everyon is PROMOTING having kids. Like the human race is going to die off. Many many people are already dying of hunger and shitty living conditions. More or less, many people are dying because of people having too many kids. Look at China or India. Those are great hellholes to live. Look at where everyone needing to have a kid has gotten them.
Then we have a whole country that has a pretty fucked up sex stigma. Sex is ok if it's being sold to us or something is being sold with it. But once realy sexuality issues come up then OMG! Hush, that's dirty. Let's take for instance all the hyper-idiot parents who are against having birth control available at high schools. OMG That'll just make people want to fuck each other. Yeah well they're fucking each other already. Miseduction is deadly.
Arigatomyna: I can see how you can feel that way. But you seem to blame the people on welfare for the reason why the system doesn't work. This is basically what happens when you overpopulate. You have alot of excess 'waste' :p. Oh isn't that a term to use. But literally peoples lives rot away in poverty. While I am not a fan of people sitting on their asses for nothing, welfare is not usually a sitting on your ass doing nothing type of ordeal. There is alot of paper work. There are alot of attitudes. There are alot of power-trips from case workers. It's not nice when you're trying to make something with your life and you try and get across town on the bus to this far off welfare office to setup your housing assitance only to arrive 5minutes late and have them smile at you while they say "We're sorry you just lost your housing assitance becuase you were 5mins later.". They actually got off on that. It's just sick.
I think a major problem is that there is not much meaning to work now adays. Back in the old days. You could OWN a house, OWN a car. There was such a thing as community. There was a reason to work. Though shit wasn't perfect back then. Everyone was really fuckin' uptight. But now adays making it is LEASING a house, LEASING a car, getting LOANS to go through college, buying food with your CREDIT card. There is no real value. The object of todays game is to go out and get stuff that you don't actually own.
There is a huge cost if you plan on buying a car outright, plan buying a house outright, plan going to college outright. You can't do it now adays. Just great. But many people and me especially, after working two years and getting no where and seeing what shit everyone else was working for. You know what, I'd rather sit on my ass then have to goto work 60hrs a week just so that I have my house with it's pretty lawn that's an 1hr away from my job. The only time you could play with your 'toys' that the 'American Lifestyle' has given you, is on weekends and if you have kids kiss that goodbye.
I think there just needs to be more to it than owning all the objects that everyone else already has. Isn't there more to life than objects and money? No one really seems to care.
Just like everything else and as I said earlier, kids cost money. I think there should be a basic test before you can have a kid. Damnit, poor people who are from a certain bracket should be sterilized. People who can't pass a basic test. We need something done. That would prevent the 6 kids on welfare. That would prevent the illegal immigrants with 4 kids on welfare, or 4 kids out in the berry fields.
In the end, I think we need to change. But humans rarely change. Everyone is caught up in their own dramas and shit to really give a damn. Everyone is also scared of something changing. People don't like change. People like things the way they know them and that's the way they like it dag nabit!
And Rachel in the future you can always right an essay.
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Arigatomina
- Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2003 3:04 am
- Contact:
Yes, I blame the people who abuse the system - but I also blame the fact that the system seems to *encourage* abuse. I don't know who said it, but 10 years ago it was better to stay on welfare (for single mothers) than to get a low paying job that won't cover basic necessities but pays too much to get assistance.klinky wrote:Arigatomyna: I can see how you can feel that way. But you seem to blame the people on welfare for the reason why the system doesn't work. This is basically what happens when you overpopulate. You have alot of excess 'waste' :p.
A few years ago I was in a class (yes, just hypothetical theories) where we went through the system trying to find a way to 'fix' it - but it didn't work. The only solution was to scrap the current system altogether and start over with something new. Because every 'reform' we've done to public welfare has ended with the same problems that already existed.
I don't blame people who need welfare, and I've always been willing and happy to donate voluntarily to people who need it - and to pay taxes for national welfare because a lot of people *do* need it. But I don't like supporting a system that is inherently flawed, and so far everyone seems to agree that for every person who honestly needs the assistance - there are still people who remain in squalor because - it's easier, and when it comes down to it, it's better for a poor mother to stay on welfare and take care of her children than it is for her to get a low paying job and go hungry.
And I know welfare workers can be pricks - I've met more than my share of them considering where I've lived, but don't think the people using welfare are all victims. There are a lot who don't mind the hassle if they're going to get free housing out of the deal. The lifers will be happy to explain the benefits to mass-producing children versus getting a job. There aren't as many of those people as there are families who stay on welfare for a year or less - only when they absolutely *have* to, but there are still a lot of abusers. And yes, I think the system is designed to allow and encourage that to a certain extent.
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fyrtenheimer
- Joined: Sun May 05, 2002 11:34 am
I don't WANT TO write an essay. Yes, it's write not right.klinky wrote:How does that make sense at all? I am only paying for myself so I have to pay MORE?Fyrtenheimer wrote:
It cost that much for you because you're only paying for yourself. I mean, that's pretty obvious.
I'm not gonna write a fucken essay, but yeah.
Ok.
Family A:
1 Adult Male
1 Adult Female
2 Kids
Total = 4 people
They pay $80.
Single Guy
1 Guy
Pays $35
And Rachel in the future you can always right an essay.
The thing is mr klink, that there's other things they have to pay for their family. More money on food, bigger house is usually bigger rent, mortagage, whatever, clothing for those beautiful children and whatever else. It only MAKES SENSE to get a 'discount' on important things like healthcare.