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Another aspect that no one talks about is former drug addicts that have turned their lives around but have felony records. If we gave them an opportunity to clear their records, they would have a better chance getting meaningful jobs. Perhaps a five year clear history or something for non-violent offenders. Penalizing them for life costs us when they could be contributing citizens.
^^^Very good point. Nowadays most companies require background checks before hiring someone. This means the felons miss out on jobs even if they are qualified and even if the felony was a long time ago in many cases.
Years ago many companies didn't perform background checks so felons were able to get jobs. Now they are left out of the workforce for life or they get crappy jobs if they are lucky. There are lots of non-violent felons that might have felony DUIs and drug charges when they were younger. In Florida it's felony to tresspass on a property that is under construction, even if the house isn't built yet and you are walking on the empty lot. Lots of states have odd felonies that stick on peoples' records for life.
^^^Very good point. Nowadays most companies require background checks before hiring someone. This means the felons miss out on jobs even if they are qualified and even if the felony was a long time ago in many cases.
Years ago many companies didn't perform background checks so felons where able to get jobs. Now they are left out of the workforce for life or they get crappy jobs if they are lucky. There are lots of non-violent felons that might have felony DUIs and drug charges when they were younger. In Florida it's felony to tresspass on a property that is under construction, even if the house isn't built yet and you are walking on the empty lot. Lots of states have odd felonies that stick on peoples' records for life.
Shouldn't this be a big motivation not to be a thug or criminal ?
I think We have a welfare system to give people a hand when they need it, and most of them use it for exactly that. Then they get on with their lives. So put them back to work sounds like a very reasonable solution.
This said, I think there are people who take advantage of the system. There are always those who take advantage of loopholes, to pay fewer taxes, for instance, or to get away with things that most people can’t.
I agree. There are always people who are going to try to get over.
The most difficult, I think, are the ones who have been in the system for multiple generations. There are people who wouldn't even be able to fathom what you're talking about when you talk about working and supporting themselves. They don't think that applies to them, because they've never known that type of life. The whole concept of working for what you want is completely foreign to them. That is scary, and I don't know how we fix that.
A few months ago during the Milwaukee riots they interviewed this young man who says something to the effect that he and his mother came down to see what was happening, and the reason for the riots is that "Rich people have all the money and they aren't tryin' to give us none." This kid could not or didn't have the sense to speak clear English to a reporter even knowing he was on camera. I doubt he would have been able to write a sentence if you put a gun to his head.
My first reaction was to want to slap his mother upside the head, hard, for not doing her job raising such a man. But the reality is that she probably thinks the same way, and so did her mother, and her mother, etc. The default thinking is not like that of most of us--that you go out and find a way to support yourself--but rather that someone else who has something is supposed to give you some of what they have.
It's easy to just blame these people for their own disasters, but that doesn't solve the problem. How do you teach people like this what the rest of us grow up knowing--that we are expected to take care of ourselves? That the default is not that someone else does for you, but you do for yourself, when that is not how their minds work?
An article I read once about inner-city teenage mothers explained that finishing high school, much less going to college, is not even a thought for most of these girls. To them, adulthood is having a baby. Working, living somewhere better, going to school--that's not part of their world. That's something other people do and has no relevance to them whatsoever.
^^^Very good point. Nowadays most companies require background checks before hiring someone. This means the felons miss out on jobs even if they are qualified and even if the felony was a long time ago in many cases.
Years ago many companies didn't perform background checks so felons where able to get jobs. Now they are left out of the workforce for life or they get crappy jobs if they are lucky. There are lots of non-violent felons that might have felony DUIs and drug charges when they were younger. In Florida it's felony to tresspass on a property that is under construction, even if the house isn't built yet and you are walking on the empty lot. Lots of states have odd felonies that stick on peoples' records for life.
And we end up paying for them through welfare or disability. We are only hurting ourselves in that scenario. One would think Appalachia and the Rust Belt would get fully behind that because they have such a large drug problem. These people have no hope once they have a felony record. Give them the opportunity to clear their record and they would have an achievable goal where everyone benefits including themselves.
Shouldn't this be a big motivation not to be a thug or criminal ?
You didn't read my entire post. Re-read the last 2 sentences. especially the one about it being a felony to walk on an empty lot that is under construction. Hardly a criminal thug. Also realize someone that got a felony DUI when they were in their early 20s might not be a thug.
Regardless, these folks have trouble finding a job due to the felonies on their record. Which means they aren't contributing to society. They might be on food stamps(welfare) and living in homeless shelters because they are unemployable due to their records.
Welfare isn't going anywhere. For one, a huge white constituency is on welfare. And before someone says "well blacks are disproprotionately on welfare", raw numbers are important. Raw numbers will still show white people people on welfare are putting a strain on the budget. Now why do I mention that?
Because it's majority of some congressmen constituency. So are they REALLY going to vote to get rid of welfare? Of course not. Hence it's going nowhere. And if they try to get rid of welfare, it'll just be through overspending.
The bottomline the military takes up far more of budget than welfare does. In my opinion both institutions should go away. Privatize the military, and make it only for profit. And welfare can be done via for profit charities.
Welfare isn't going anywhere. For one, a huge white constituency is on welfare. And before someone says "well blacks are disproprotionately on welfare", raw numbers are important. Raw numbers will still show white people people on welfare are putting a strain on the budget. Now why do I mention that?
Because it's majority of some congressmen constituency. So are they REALLY going to vote to get rid of welfare? Of course not. Hence it's going nowhere. And if they try to get rid of welfare, it'll just be through overspending.
The bottomline the military takes up far more of budget than welfare does. In my opinion both institutions should go away. Privatize the military, and make it only for profit. And welfare can be done via for profit charities.
I agree about whites on welfare and don't forget those that moved from welfare to disability. Someone earlier in the thread said what about blacks in Mississippi on disability. The number one state on disability (almost 10%!) is West Virginia and they are about 95% white.
An article I read once about inner-city teenage mothers explained that finishing high school, much less going to college, is not even a thought for most of these girls. To them, adulthood is having a baby. Working, living somewhere better, going to school--that's not part of their world. That's something other people do and has no relevance to them whatsoever.
How do we fix that?
Some school systems have made progress by having schools with daycare so the mother can bring the child to school for the on-site babysitter to watch the child while the mother finishes her education. The #1 reason the mothers were quitting high school was because they didn't have childcare while they went to school.
They even have such day care programs for poor mothers that are done with high school - as a way to encourage them to work. Before they couldn't afford childcare so they didn't work. But with free or reduced cost childcare, they can go to work. Yeah - it's costly for childcare but it's cheaper than the alternative if the mother didn't work at all. They even try to help with transportation if it means the mother gets to work.
Of course, birth control is important in this matter too. Closing down planned parenthood will make it worse.
It really is shocking. I didn't realize there were commercials during the day from lawyers like that Binder guy basically offering to challenge disability denials. This is a real racket going on and no one seems to be talking about it. Welfare is going down, it's state based. The problem is disability because states are literally paying companies to move their welfare recipients on to permanent disability. And the companies are so eager to please, they find out how Social Security likes their paperwork.
"PCG also works very, very hard to make the people who work at the Social Security happy. Whenever the company wins a new contract, Coakley will personally introduce himself at the local Social Security Administration office, and see how he can make things as easy as possible for the administrators there.
"We go through even to the point, frankly, of do you like things to be stapled or paper-clipped?" he told me. "Paper clips wins out a lot of times because they need to make photocopies and they don't want to be taking staples out."
I've seen those Binder and Binder commercials on TV hawking those disability commercials. It is a big business so I'm not surprised at the number of businesses out there paving the path between the person seeking disability and the Social Security department ( federal disability programs are paid by SS).
There was mention in that linked NPR article of the workers who ended up on disability after the factory, or industrial plant that had employed them moved out or closed down. Some of these folks ended up on disability with the help of a sympathetic doctor mostly because at their ages or education level they were considered unemployable, yet some of them stated if jobs were available they could do they would prefer work to disability. Perhaps bringing some of those jobs back, including jobs for which workers were training, would help to decrease the numbers on disability.
There was also mention in the NPR article about children on disability. I had not realized that "learning disabilities" could qualify a kid for SSI, but the kids cited in the article were apparently supporting their families on the SSI checks they got for theirs. And I can't count the numbers of kids I encountered on SSI disability when I worked in healthcare facilities in South Florida. I knew parents who were carriers of genetic abnormalities who bore child after child they knew would have these abnormalities, just to get those disability payments and increase the family income that way-not even considering the expensive ongoing medical care, invaribly paid for by Medicaid, for those children. There were a lot of immigrants who did this, I even knew of women who knew they were pregnant with a child who had multiple genetic anomalies, and got into the US illegally so they could deliver the child here, the kid would be a citizen and entitled to the disability pay, Medicaid and other taxpayer supported programs and they got the help as parents of such a child. Some of those kids, I tell you, needed so much care and medical intervention they could break the Medicaid system all by themselves, or so it seemed.
And while it may be that the states save having to pay for welfare from their state coffers by transferring people from welfare to SSI disability, the support for those programs comes from the general treasury- that's taxes from you and me, and the rest of us working stiffs, from the fruits of our hard earned labor. And the SSDI, into which those folks who worked but became disabled ( either by getting hurt or by virtue of losing their jobs and being unable to get another one), is funded by our Social Security payroll deductions- they will transfer that money from the pension fund to the disability fund when it gets low. So either way, as I see it, the taxpayer is funding all those programs, whether they are state or federal.
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