The Dark Side of Welfare

[johnstown_johnn]

Children having children out of wedlock to make Welfare a Career is against God’s plan for humanity. It is anti-family in that the State becomes the breadwinner and the State has no further restrictions on more pregnancies but instead increases the allotment for every new child born in this unit.

Is there something wrong with this picture or is it just me?

 

[boppaid]

Children having children out of wedlock to make Welfare a Career is against God’s plan for humanity. It is anti-family in that the State becomes the breadwinner and the State has no further restrictions on more pregnancies but instead increases the allotment for every new child born in this unit.

Is there something wrong with this picture or is it just me?

There is something wrong with that picture. But what do you do? Let the extra children suffer because of their parents’ wrongdoings? Mandate artificial birth control?

 

[RMH]

It is the welfare system that has destroyed the families of the poor. It forced fathers out of families by not providing help for intact Families. Real help would have required families to stay together, fathers to work, mothers to care for their children, and have suppliments given to them to help them in financial hardships… It is the fault of the welfare system that there are so many extremely disfunctional people in America. What I think they should do (though they won’t because it is probably too politically incorrect) is require welfare recipiants to be intact families. Fathers and mothers should be married,(NOT 2 mothers or 2 fathers but a man and a woman). The father should have a job and the mother should be required to take care of all the children untill the youngest are at least school aged. If needs be give them marriage counceling and parenting class. These requirements must be met unless it ti impossible(ie one parent died or some such thing). Artificial birth control is not an answer. It does not work. Teaching abstinence is better, but it is hard to teach a girl from a broken, fatherless family that she is valuable.

 

[boppaid]

It is the welfare system that has destroyed the families of the poor. It forced fathers out of families by not providing help for intact Families. Real help would have required families to stay together, fathers to work, mothers to care for their children, and have suppliments given to them to help them in financial hardships… It is the fault of the welfare system that there are so many extremely disfunctional people in America. What I think they should do (though they won’t because it is probably too politically incorrect) is require welfare recipiants to be intact families. Fathers and mothers should be married,(NOT 2 mothers or 2 fathers but a man and a woman). The father should have a job and the mother should be required to take care of all the children untill the youngest are at least school aged. If needs be give them marriage counceling and parenting class. These requirements must be met unless it ti impossible(ie one parent died or some such thing). Artificial birth control is not an answer. It does not work. Teaching abstinence is better, but it is hard to teach a girl from a broken, fatherless family that she is valuable.

Wait…force marriage on people? What if it was a one-night stand? What if one spouse is an abuser? Is that really better for the kids?

Also, what if the parents choose not to get married? Or what if they cannot afford for one parent to be the sole bread winner? (Especially if it’s a non-skilled job.) Do you just deny the children proper food, clothing, shelter, and proper health care? The state cannot take children away because someone doesn’t want to get married. That’s ridiculous.

 

[exoflare]

and what of the kids who don’t have wealthy benefactors to fund them through college?

Well gee since they live in bad neighborhoods, I guess they have no hope for their lives just like that poor entrepreneur.

 

[RMH]

Wait…force marriage on people? What if it was a one-night stand? What if one spouse is an abuser? Is that really better for the kids?

Also, what if the parents choose not to get married? Or what if they cannot afford for one parent to be the sole bread winner? (Especially if it’s a non-skilled job.) Do you just deny the children proper food, clothing, shelter, and proper health care? The state cannot take children away because someone doesn’t want to get married. That’s ridiculous.

Hey, boppaid, I did say it was Politically INcorrect! however don’t you think if fathers and mothers were required to care for their children TOGETHER to get state aid there would be fewer girl getting pregnant for a free ride. Would guys be more cautious about one night stands? As for abuse that would be a ligitimate reason to be single. (the only divorce kids seem to recover from is when physical abuse was the reason).

May be people who choose not to get married should also choose not to have children!

As for families affording only one bread winner, I believe these families **are deserving **of financial help! This is where the welfare system failed America in the first place. Instead of supplimenting the income of low wage earning dads, while their kids were growing up, they forced the fathers out of the homes so the wives and kids could have enought money to survive. There by creating the generations of broken families that got by on welfare. SO how can that be fixed now?

I never said any thing about the state taking kids away from their parents… I don’t know where you got that idea, not from me!

 

[boppaid]

Hey, boppaid, I did say it was Politically INcorrect! however don’t you think if fathers and mothers were required to care for their children TOGETHER to get state aid there would be fewer girl getting pregnant for a free ride. Would guys be more cautious about one night stands? As for abuse that would be a ligitimate reason to be single. (the only divorce kids seem to recover from is when physical abuse was the reason).

Oh, I’m not saying it’s politically incorrect. I’m saying it won’t work, and it’s wrong. Domestic violence and emotional abuse will be on the rise. Children will suffer.

May be people who choose not to get married should also choose not to have children!

In a perfect world, maybe. But I think that people already don’t think ahead to the consequences and wouldn’t then either.

I never said any thing about the state taking kids away from their parents… I don’t know where you got that idea, not from me!

I’m sorry…you’re right, you didn’t say that. I guess I assumed that, under your ideal plan, if the parents refused to marry someone they didn’t love, then they would not get government benefits…in which case they,t hemselves, wouldn’t be able to properly feed, clothe, and take care of their children. Thus, the children would be removed. I shouldn’t have assumed you meant that. What would happen to the children, under your plan, should the parents decide not to marry someone they don’t love (or even like?)?

 

[OFlaherty]

When I first glanced at the posts here I was appalled. I was on welfare as a single parent for years, worked for a while, and now am on permanent physical disability. It took years to get approved for disability despite several physical problems.

I was not lazy or working the system. But I was often accused of such by anyone who could corner me to blast me. So, forgive my initial defensiveness when I happened across this thread. One doesn’t forget being treated badly and talked down to, even decades later.

However, as I pondered what’s been posted here, I have to agree with you all. I live in geared-to-income housing in a city of a half a million. There are several seniors and legitimately disabled in these four huge buildings (I am on the top, or 18th storey, of my building). There is a huge percentage of single welfare guys in here. Young men, not a blessed thing wrong with them. I am stunned at the number of people who party the first few days after “cheque day” and then beg or steal off us the rest of the month. A case in point is a man near me who plays guitar and sings. He can make up to 150 dollars at a performance. He doesn’t always make money, but I know for a fact he has hundreds of dollars hidden away in his apartment, a credit card with a 4,000 dollar limit he consistently pays off. His aged father pays his cable and phone, his grown son sends him grocery money every week, and he has suckered the welfare system into giving him extra for groceries.
He is living better than most around here. He’s been on welfare for ten years, claiming a bad back and demanding permanent disability. Yet he plays guitar for hours, practices for hours, standing in one spot. As someone with degenerative disc disease, arthritis and fibromyalgia, I find standing for too long in one spot excruciating. No way is anything wrong with his back.

I am not upset with him for my sake. I have my regular income, I volunteer to try to give back, I have good friends who love me and my strong faith. It’s the people barely getting by that this man makes fun of that upsets me.

He is not alone. There are so many using the system blatantly and terribly. I do not understand why any able-bodied man or woman would want to live on welfare. It boggles my mind.

I don’t know if I was on-topic, I just wanted to get off my chest my frustration at my neighbour and others like him.

 

[johnstown_johnn]

Living a life of indolence and fraud will have to be answered to in both general and final Judgment.

Heaven is a reward for HONOR and pleasing God.

The behavior described is neither.

 

[jc-servant]

Drawing on these various data sources, this report provides a number of key indicators of welfare recipiency, dependence and labor force attachment. Selected highlights from the report include the following:

• In 2003, 3.6 percent of the total population was dependent in that they received more than half of their total family income from TANF, food stamps and/or SSI (see Indicator 1). While higher than the 3.2 percent dependency rate measured in 2002, the 2003 rate is lower than the 5.2 percent rate measured in 1996. Overall, 3.4 million fewer Americans were dependent on welfare in 2003 compared with 1996.
• Although data are not yet available to show a clear trend in dependency rates through 2004, available data suggest that the rate may not change from 2003.
• Trends in dependency are similar to the more well-known changes in TANF and food stamp caseloads. For example, the percentage of individuals receiving AFDC/TANF cash assistance fell from 5.4 percent to 1.8 percent between 1993 and 2004 (see Indicator 3). Food stamp recipiency rates fell from 10.4 percent in 1993 to 6.1 percent in 2000 and 2001. Since then, the food stamp recipiency rate has increased to 8.1 percent in 2004. This increase in food stamp recipiency may explain the increase in overall dependency since 2000.
• In an average month in 2003, more than half (53 percent) of TANF recipients lived in families with at least one family member in the labor force. Comparable figures for food stamp and SSI recipients were 58 and 36 percent, respectively (see Indicator 2). Although there was a decline in labor force participation among TANF families from 2002 to 2003, full-time employment increased considerably among TANF families during much of the last decade.
• Spells of TANF receipt in the early 2000s were much shorter than spells of AFDC receipt in the early 1990s. Half (50 percent) of TANF spells for individuals entering the program between 2001 and 2003 lasted 4 months or less, compared to 30 percent of AFDC spells beginning between 1992 and 1994 (See Indicator 7).
• Longer-term welfare receipt was much less common during the 1990s compared to earlier decades. Less than 4 percent of those with some AFDC/TANF assistance between 1991 and 2000 received assistance in nine or ten years of the period, compared to 12 percent and 13 percent of AFDC recipients in the earlier two time periods
  This is from the 2006 report to Congress regarding Temp. Aid to Needy Families (formerly AFDC). Congress passed “welfare to work” and a time limit on how long people can receive back in the '90’s. I believe the original article posted sets up a somewhat slanted picture of “welfare” and who is receiving it. This situation is actually improving nationally regardless of the slant given in the media. Even when I worked at a state agency in the 1990’s there was a small percentage of hard core recipients who did not want to train and find work. More than 75% of people on our state rolls turned over in a relatively short time as they got training or found work. It was not a large permanent welfare class and most of them were not unwed mothers either.

Millions per year were spent in our state on Medicaid beds at nursing homes for parents of middle class people who don’t want to care for them or pay for it themselves. Those homes cost 1000s per month for each individual as opposed to a couple of $100 in food stamps for a family. I never hear anyone complaining about this “welfare” program for the middle class and suggesting that we should let those old folks who don’t do good financial planning (or who have greedy kids) fend for themselves.

 

[gam197]

originally posted by jc-servant
In an average month in 2003, more than half (53 percent) of TANF recipients lived in families with at least one family member in the labor force.

I am not sure if this a mom or dad working but this is good. Many of these families do have a dad but they just don’t report it or they would lose their benefits. Many of the men live off the women.

I say 'Go the Way of the Chinese", which means “no work no pay”.This is the way it was when most of our ancestors came here yet they struggled and made it. I doubt if they have welfare in the Hispanic countries. We should study how they work and follow their lead.

 

[JimmyV]

I have no idea what this means … “Parrot advocated wider use of long-term, multi-dimensional, community-based programs” In the good old-days we called that school, sports, girl scouts, etc. and I’m only 41; so the good old days aren’t that long-ago. But it will be expensive, lots and lots of well-paid college professors and educators telling young girls there is more to life than marriage and children - get a job at Wal-Mart!

 

[vern_humphrey]

I have no idea what this means … “Parrot advocated wider use of long-term, multi-dimensional, community-based programs”

If you don’t grasp an idea the second time you read it – there is no idea there to be grasped.

Herbivore’s Second Law of Epistemology

 

[strngrnrth]

I have no idea what this means … “Parrot advocated wider use of long-term, multi-dimensional, community-based programs” In the good old-days we called that school, sports, girl scouts, etc. and I’m only 41; so the good old days aren’t that long-ago. But it will be expensive, lots and lots of well-paid college professors and educators telling young girls there is more to life than marriage and children - get a job at Wal-Mart!

It means the government can’t do it all. The people who live and do business where the problem happens should help: Teach all kinds of skills in school, provide non-dead-end jobs for youth, give them something enjoyable to do (sports, arts, nature appreciation, etc.), and in other words, sart functioning as communities again. Jobs are a good start. It takes small businesses to provide jobs for youth that don’t equal wiping chairs all your life, though. And that’s just what’s dying out.

 

[joab]

Millions per year were spent in our state on Medicaid beds at nursing homes for parents of middle class people who don’t want to care for them or pay for it themselves. Those homes cost 1000s per month for each individual as opposed to a couple of $100 in food stamps for a family. I never hear anyone complaining about this “welfare” program for the middle class and suggesting that we should let those old folks who don’t do good financial planning (or who have greedy kids) fend for themselves.

When I used to work for the county, we had most people trying to save their houses,farms,businesses, etc. for the children. They and their children felt that it was not their responsibility to pay for mom/dad in the nursing home. They felt they had a right to their “inheritance”. This thinking and hiding of assets forces the taypayer to support the mom/dad so that the “kids” can have their inheritance. I consider this stealing. My dad spent 6 days in a nursing home before dying. He spent the previous 2 years being cared at home by family members, he refused hospice. I don’t want to go through that again, but I will if I have to with my mother. I work in a nursing home. The government pays most of the bills. Most people are on the “dole” in a nursing home. The government also caps the wages of the employees. So as a taxpayer, I support other people’s parents so they can have their inheritance and have my wages suppressed (avg. wage in nursing home for nursing asst. in MN is $9.50/hr) so that I can continue to support these elderly.
If you check the budgets of Social Service Departments, the former AFDC program is not the big or the biggest chunk of it. It is the elderly and adults with DD(development disabilities).
Welfare for families(MFIP in MN) is a time limited program. It punishes you for not working or for working enough. As families are hitting the end of their time limit, food shelves are rocking from the upserge in usage. I don’t know the solutions, but see a problem with the fathers being tossed out of the equation except for their ability to supply cash in the form of support.

 

[josephdavid]

Indeed it is – it is no charity to create a system that traps people for generation after generation. Saint Paul was right – we should have listended to him.

If it was not for welfare my brother and I would of had nothing to eat. As adults we are not on welfare and successful in our careers. So it is not completely true.

 

[josephdavid]

It is the welfare system that has destroyed the families of the poor. It forced fathers out of families by not providing help for intact Families. Real help would have required families to stay together, fathers to work, mothers to care for their children, and have suppliments given to them to help them in financial hardships… It is the fault of the welfare system that there are so many extremely disfunctional people in America. What I think they should do (though they won’t because it is probably too politically incorrect) is require welfare recipiants to be intact families. Fathers and mothers should be married,(NOT 2 mothers or 2 fathers but a man and a woman). The father should have a job and the mother should be required to take care of all the children untill the youngest are at least school aged. If needs be give them marriage counceling and parenting class. These requirements must be met unless it ti impossible(ie one parent died or some such thing). Artificial birth control is not an answer. It does not work. Teaching abstinence is better, but it is hard to teach a girl from a broken, fatherless family that she is valuable.

I am some one as a child lived on welfare. I do not believe my mother was the one who decided my father leave the house to go prancing around on expensive trips while we lived on welfare and at one time in a garage. I do not believe my mother enjoyed working two jobs to just to keep the lights on and a roof over our head.

Does anyone believe a child chooses to live in poverty and ask for government assistance?

Perhaps it is too simplistic to just blame the welfare system, when it is society living selfishly. Welfare did not create the problems society created the problems, welfare was created to help the victims (i.e. the children) of a selfish society living in reletivism. So I ask do we punish the children for their parents mistakes?

 

[vern_humphrey]

If it was not for welfare my brother and I would of had nothing to eat. As adults we are not on welfare and successful in our careers. So it is not completely true.

It’s not completely true that the sun comes up in the East and sets in the West.

But it’s true enough.

There are whole families on welfare. There are whole sections of some cities and counties where virtually everyone is on welfare. And the poverty rate, which was dropping like a stone in the late '40s and '50s, has leveled off – mainly due to people trapped in the welfare cycle.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Perhaps it is too simplistic to just blame the welfare system, when it is society living selfishly. Welfare did not create the problems society created the problems, welfare was created to help the victims (i.e. the children) of a selfish society living in reletivism. So I ask do we punish the children for their parents mistakes?

“Society” is everyone. And if everyone is at fault, no one is at fault. You can’t hold society responsible – what higher earthly power would preside over the lawsuit?

But “society” created the self-perpetuating welfare system. And it’s a system that holds children hostage – we can’t change it, as bad as it is, because “it’s for the children.” Of course, it ruins many a child.

Others have discussed programs like Habitat for Humanity – where people work and gain home ownership. Now there’s a program that offers hope – not just another generation on welfare.

 

[boppaid]

I am some one as a child lived on welfare. I do not believe my mother was the one who decided my father leave the house to go prancing around on expensive trips while we lived on welfare and at one time in a garage. I do not believe my mother enjoyed working two jobs to just to keep the lights on and a roof over our head.

Does anyone believe a child chooses to live in poverty and ask for government assistance?

That’s what I was trying to say as well. I wonder, will anyone answer to your specific situation how you or your mother were at fault? All I’m reading about, in response, is the “greater picture”. Well, the greater picture doesn’t mean anything when children and single parents are hungry. His situation isn’t unique. There are so many children on welfare. SO many single parents who tried and are trying their best.