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If welfare suddenly stopped, the government personnel and their families and corporate buddies's welfare would continue as special grants, cancellations of unpaid taxes, extravant salaries and retirement plans, paid trips, free meals, and entertainment, and would increase exponentially.
it's coming down the road. Make as many as possible dependent upon the governement then pull the rug out from under them and CONTROL them.
This is what the Communist Manifesto, Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radials, and other books teach.
Whack-job conspiracy theories are rather unhelpful at this juncture.
I think those who are wrapped up in this insane notion that the government is this big boogyman out to control you are the ones being controlled. Being bamboozled by fear mongers, conspiracists, and weirdo Kool-Aid drinkers is just another form of control. Welcome to the party, pal.
A great deal of people on welfare are there because they are lazy. I know because I have relatives who would prefer doing nothing than working.
Heh.
I was wondering when the anecdotes would start. It was only a matter of time. Whenever discussions about welfare and the poor crop up, someone always enters the fray with a story about some relative or another who is hopelessly lazy and collects welfare.
And suddenly, because of this relative - or even because of a handful of relatives - almost EVERYONE who collects welfare is now lazy. Wow. Weren't you taught better than to rely on stereotypes? Anecdotal stories are among the worst forms of "evidence" imaginable - and it isn't even admissible in court because it's considered hearsay.
Ergo, trying to paint everyone on welfare with the same brush you paint your anecdotal relatives with is highly disingenuous. You have to take people on a person-to-person, case-by-case basis. It's nigh impossible to come up with some catch-all, carte blanche descriptor for any class of people - including the poor. One thing I have noticed, however, is that those who use stereotypes and anecdotes always, without fail, do so to vilify the poor but never to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I'm just waiting for the tired old meme that says:
"I was in the grocery store the other day - and the person ahead of me had a cart full of steak, lobster, and potato chips. And she was paying with a food stamp card! She also had on designer jeans, was talking on a tricked-out smart phone, and drove away in a high-dollar SUV (usually a Cadillac Escalade). Why should she get things even I can't afford and I work for a living!"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Howard Roark
I'd be more specific but this is public. I'll just go to say that when the economic outpatient care is stopped, the patient becomes resourceful and gets a job.
No ... that's not what usually happens.
People like you think that there are jobs galore out there paying a livable wage - in fact, there must be an actual labor shortage so tight that businesses will hire just about anyone!
On another forum not so very long ago, a group of business owners were gabbing away on their own thread about how people on welfare just need to get a job. "How dare they live on my tax dollars grr grr growl!!!"
Well, I decided to crash their little party by asking them a very simple question. I asked: Would you really hire a person that has a scant work history and has spent the last several years on welfare? Would you pick that person over another candidate who has experience, a solid work history, and possibly even a college degree?
Of course it ended up a NIMBY situation. Yeah, they should get a job, but not with MY company. Someone else can hire them.
Hence, they remain jobless and end up back on the welfare train. It's not enough to be able-bodied. You have to be employable - and unfortunately businesses nowadays expect you to have a near perfect resume. Even if they are eligible for a job, often it's for poverty wages and no benefits - which is significantly less than what they can get from the government. Pride in their work takes a backseat to having food on the table and access to health care.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Howard Roark
So if welfare stops, the people on the receiving end will scramble to survive.
No, many of them won't survive. A goodly number will just end up homeless.
Jobs of any kind are becoming ever more scarce - even in the small town where I live, population ~500, the little grocery store expects a run-of-the-mill cashier to have 8 months experience (according to the sign posted on the door.)
It's not as easy as you think it is to just mosey on out into the world and find a job that actually pays the bills.
Lots of people complain about the US becoming a welfare state. Let's explore the consequences of the US government severely cutting back or even completely eliminating welfare. Would society be in chaos because of this?
it depends. most households in the USA have 1-7 days worth of food at home. once a family gets past that 7 day mark, the USA could very well see rioting in the street. it does not take much to see people robbing, killing and looting to feed their family.
if people including those on food stamps just used some of that money to stockpile items used to make food from scratch, then if something did happen, then they would still have food to feed their family.
There would be chaos. I'm sure we understand that some people come across hard times and they need a helping hand. I am all for it but it shouldn’t be a permanent thing. But then we have others who don't want to better themselves, look for work and just want to live off the government for as long as they can. I also think when it comes to food stamps, they need to cut out candy and all that type of junk food. Keep it healthy foods only. We need more programs that help people better themselves to get them out of poverty. Maybe programs to help them with certain skills to get a job, programs to help them learn a new trade that will get them into their workforce. Too many people rely on government help without trying to get themselves out of that situation.
Yes. What would happen if we opened the cages to all the animals in the zoo? Would chaos ensue? Yes. Why? If you have a large percentage of society that has a "learned dependence" for the basic requirements of life, when you take those necessities away, the individuals no longer have the ability to be self-reliant and survival instinct kicks in. That leads to chaos.
There is an old story that parallels this. One day a farmer decided he wanted to capture some wild pigs. First he started leaving food in his field. This attracted several wild pigs, but when the farmer attempted to get close, the pigs would run away. He continued feeding the pigs and after a few weeks, the pigs did not run when they saw the farmer. They did not run when he built a fence in front of them. The didn't run when he built a fence on either side of them. And finally, when the farmer built the last length of the fence that closed off their ability to run away, they didn't give it a second thought. They just ate the food that was given to them. Now imaging 5 years down the road...when the pigs have forgotten how to forage for themselves or how to fend off predators? If the farmer just knocks down the fences, what is going to happen. In a few days, the pigs will realize that there is no food coming to them and chaos breaks out.
Creating a "learned dependency" is not compassionate, nor moral. Welfare was never meant to be the "sleep-number bed" it has become. It was intended as a short term "safety net" to aid the most needy among us to get a "hand up" and back into society.
If all forms of welfare were terminated at once? You'd have political unrest, chaos and rioting on a level which is not acceptable to ruling elites.
People have forgotten the conditions that existed in the 19th-century era of laissez-faire. Strikes back then meant machine guns, dynamite, and blood in the street. Of course it would be satisfying to "make those welfare slackers go out and get a real job" but de-skilling, off-shoring and post-industrialisation have destroyed the prospects for a return to the mid-20th century ideal of employment.
The jobs are not coming back, period. The American working populace has been rendered superfluous, end of story. What we are really going to see is, a move to a de jure --rather than the currently existing de facto--guaranteed universal income. This will cause a momentous and historical change in the economic morality of people.
If all forms of welfare were terminated at once? You'd have political unrest, chaos and rioting on a level which is not acceptable to ruling elites.
People have forgotten the conditions that existed in the 19th-century era of laissez-faire. Strikes back then meant machine guns, dynamite, and blood in the street. Of course it would be satisfying to "make those welfare slackers go out and get a real job" but de-skilling, off-shoring and post-industrialisation have destroyed the prospects for a return to the mid-20th century ideal of employment.
The jobs are not coming back, period. The American working populace has been rendered superfluous, end of story. What we are really going to see is, a move to a de jure --rather than the currently existing de facto--guaranteed universal income. This will cause a momentous and historical change in the economic morality of people.
only the sheep have forgotten, which is about 95% of the total population of the USA. the other 5% would live just fine without any sort of government intervention at all.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,171,154 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by loriinwa
.....Creating a "learned dependency" is not compassionate, nor moral. Welfare was never meant to be the "sleep-number bed" it has become. It was intended as a short term "safety net" to aid the most needy among us to get a "hand up" and back into society.
That's still what it is, right? It's not available to able-bodied, healthy adults who just don't feel like working - with the exception of single mothers. In that case it's cheaper for society to give her welfare to raise her kids, than to pay for expensive childcare and have her go to a low-wage job.
Other than that, any healthy adults getting welfare are scamming the system. But the stats show that there is actually far less welfare abuse than most people think.
One of my exes had druggie parents who couldn't be bothered to feed the kids or apply for food stamps or pay the electric bill or what have you. So he formed a very successful street gang as a young teenager. The guy is brilliant, and later turned his life around, but you'd just see a lot more of that kind of thing. You'd also see a lot more theft and burglaries that turn violent. You'd see a greater polarization between the classes into the haves and have nots. You'd see increased barriers to upward mobility.
Really, if you want to know what something like this would look like, check out urban London throughout the 1700s and 1800s.
Yes, of course there is some welfare fraud, but the most sensational cases are the ones that everyone tosses around as anecdotes. You see a poor person wander by with tattoos, gold jewelry, designer clothes, an iPhone and cigarettes? I can tell you right now tattoos can be bartered for (an ex of mine got full sleeves by doing odd jobs for tattoo artists he knows, and who do tattoo artists practice on but themselves and volunteers?), gold jewelry is often not gold or can be pawned for ready cash if needed, designer clothes can be had for a song at your nearest thrift shop or knockoffs can be found shockingly cheap at the flea market, an iPhone is a valuable resource for communication/research/entertainment to anyone who lives in the transient world of the very poor (and can be bought secondhand) and well, cigarettes are marketed specifically to the poor and they're a better choice than heroin (though just as addictive, according to scientific research).
Lots of people complain about the US becoming a welfare state. Let's explore the consequences of the US government severely cutting back or even completely eliminating welfare. Would society be in chaos because of this?
You BETCHA!
When you are: poor/broke/starving/homeless, you have NOTHING TO LOSE. WITH SO MANY DENIED Benefits, SO Rioting WOULD ensue!
People who HAVE money would NOT be able to safely go to a food purveyor as there will be those without wiating to RAID/AMBUSH their carts of foodstuffs when they come out!
When there are too many of them, even paid security guards/police cannot hold against them.
I hate to say it, but LOOK what happens in a city where a "pro" hometeam loses a major game!
LOOK what happens in cities where there is percieved injustice against a particular race {like Ferguson, MO recently}, FOR DAYS that went on. {that part may get deleted by a moderator as "political"}
LOOK what happened in Brazil with the rioting over their "WORLD CUP" "FOOTBALL city" {soccer} when they eliminated low income housing around it. {again, "political"?}
So, in a word, YES, chaos would decend and it would rule the USA.
The best way to ensure it doesn't happen is to make sure everyone has a job that PAYS enough for them to live, regardless of education or status or birthright, race, orientation, etc. FED people who have shelter, and a littel savings are less likely to riot. AND you take care of those who cannot/can no longer work. Notice I said "can't work", not "won't work". Like the disabled, the elderly, the frail.
Even pharohs, dictators, kings learned long ago, that if they took care of the slaves/serfs, the slaves/serfs worked much better,a nd took care of them. Oh, about each century that gets forgotten by the wealthy who get greedy while others go needy.
AND remember: "A society is judged on well it takes care of the least among them."
SIMPLE. REAL simple.
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