A dem's view of the welfare system=rant.

[Hallen]

How about you do like me and put a rubber on until you can afford to raise a child and not look for other peoples money to help raise the child you decided to have.

LOL, shit happens, son. Unless you practice abstinence through buttsex or something, babies happen. You don't necessarily plan it, and you do still slap on the armor before going in, but it still happens. It happened to me.

The question is how you man up afterwards. My son still lives with me. I have provided for him all his life. I didn't walk away. It was hard, there were tough times, but we made it. Best investment I ever made even considering I don't ever expect a return on it.

My point was that families do start young at times and you may not have planned them. Some assistance for day care in situations like that is an overall benefit to society because parents take care of their kids, not the system, and those same parents can in a very short period of time become self-sustaining and give back to society. Until you have a kid, you have no fucking idea how expensive and time consuming it is. The best thing is to wait until you are both emotionally and financially able to deal with it. But that doesn't always work out.

Anyway, your point is correct. Either zip it or clip it or bag it until you are very ready to have kids. Irresponsibility in that area is not something to mess with.

[Funkmasta]

I don't pass judgements. Or at least sure try not to. When I met my wife, the state helped her to pay for child care, and received food vouchers.
She was a single mom, with a 4 year old, with a low paying job, living in an area with few jobs. And lived on her own, own apartment, etc.

She received 60bucks per week for daycare, and like 150/month for food. HOWEVER as soon as she got a job that even to me was mediocre at best (10/hr) she had her help decreased to NO daycare, and TEN DOLLARS per month for food........I'm not down for any of this shit if you don't have to have it so I had already told her before we moved in together etc, to be done with that I would help her out.......

A single mom, trying to make it on her own. And was trying fucking hard too.....



So today (She works sat so had fri off, I'm working 4 days per week) we go to an Aldi grocery store-discount grocery store, I'm sure there are other stores like it. You bag yourself etc.

There is a couple in front of us in there probably low 40's, VERY well dressed with probably 200 dollars of groceries, that cost them 4 fucking dollars. The rest went on there bridge card-food vouchers.......We bag our stuff and go out to the car and they are tooling in a VERY nice F250 4 door truck with a V10........


Something is fucked up with the welfare system. I really think that some people do need help. But some are just fucking lazy and have SOME HOW figured out how to manipulate the system.......It's mother fuckers like that today that give conservatives ammunition.----and after today I realize rightfully so.

Drugs. Tax the petty shit, and enforce the bad stuff.

[2Big4a3Series]

That's a good point!

Manditory drug testing for welfare recipients might stir up enough controversey to get the ACLU involved but I would consider it to be a way to "level" the playing field between those who work and those who dont.

If they don't have a job, what else are they doing to occupy their day? Even though they might not be employable, still make them do the same things that the working people have to do.. like make them show up at the welfare office at 8:30 every morning. They won't have to hang around. Just make them clock in and clock out every day. Oversleep if you want to.. we'll just doc you a half-day's worth of benefits if you show up late. Forget to clock in and/or out and you will lose an entire day's worth.

[chrisesteschiro]

I dont see why alot of people that pay taxes have to take take a drug test to work to earn money that goes to people whom dont have to pass a drug test to get your money.

[der affe]

wow! i have been saying that for a LONG time! ^^^^^^^
although sometimes i just say "you can't have a butt baby"
i could never figure out why people in a bad financial situation have kids when they can't afford them. if you have them and fall on hard times that is another thing altogether though

[chrisesteschiro]

How about you do like me and put a rubber on until you can afford to raise a child and not look for other peoples money to help raise the child you decided to have.

It is one of the programs that has a bit more of a purpose. It isn't in place to help you; it is in place to help working families afford care for their kids. Daycare costs can be a huge part of a young working family's budget. The food subsidies and other things you get is done so that you can keep the prices lower than you normally would have to charge for your service. That means more families can afford to do day care while they go to school or work... in other words so they can be productive. I don't have nearly as much of a problem with this kind of thing. It could be more tightly controlled for sure and I am sure there is waste, but the overall intent is better than most programs.

[jflip2002]

Its real unfortunate, because there are people who need it, and who dont use it. When I was 13, my mom and my dad split up. Well, my mom and my sister lived together, and I Went wtih my dad. My mom didnt have a job, had no stability. So naturally, she went and got welfare. She used it for about 4-5 months til things kinda worked their way out, and it helped her tread water til she got a job. Thats how it was meant to work.

Then she has this friend that collects welfare, and has since Ive known her. She has NEVER had a job, and says she never WILL have a job. She used to get foodstamps, and sell them for 50% of their face value, just to buy cigs or go play bingo or go to the casino. To this day, she still goes to the casino and blows her cash the day she gets it. Its fucking disgusting. THOSE are the kind of people who ruin for the people who really could just use a little hand during hard times. Pieces of shit they are.

[Ral]

trashcop, Im with ya.


Heres another one for ya. My family gets a subsidy not to farm on our land. All we have to do is have a percentage of it bush hogged every year, and they wire money into the account. I meet with them tomorrow in regards to this very issue. Its a way to regulate the price of corn, beans, cotton, etc. If everyone did it the price would fall to peanuts (no pun intended) So they pay people not to farm to keep the big farmers alive.

my uncle's a small-time farmer in Kansas, and unfortunately this is a very big part of his income. (the same income that prevented him from making payments on farm equipment necessary to run the farm- my dad had to bail him out and save him from bankruptcy.)

while I consider myself a fiscal conservative and would normally disagree with such a prosect, I think the end result actually decreases food prices. If all the farmers went out of business, the nation's food supply would be hampered and prices would skyrocket. (And before anyone begins with the "But the price of food is rising so high" speech, it's rising because of increased fuel prices, so it costs more to both produce the food (tractors, farm equipment,etc. all use diesel, most industrial fertilizers are petroleum based, etc.) and to transport it to market.

[eric (^__^)]

yo turf I am coming to texas we'll hunt boars with my new money

[2Big4a3Series]

One of the challenges in our society is that you don't get that many second chances to make a decent life for yourself if you make too many mistakes early in your adult life. Go to any college town and you are likely to meet someone in ther late 20's to mid 30's who is living below the poverty line because they spent their student loans on sex and beer and have nothing to show for it. They have no skills, no talents, and no marketable abilities. I wish we could put em all in the military but I think they stop taking new recruits after age 22.

Making $6 an hour is tough but that's the price you gotta pay for not hunkering down earlier when you had time to learn how to do something worthwhile.

I'm glad that my dad made me help him work on the car and help him do the "Honey-Do" projects around the house from when I was a young child. I'm thankful that if I ever hit rock bottom, I can still find a crappy job paying at least $15 an hour in ANY economy and I'll never have to depend on the system.

[SpecM]

Some people just STFU and work. One of my engineering friends couldn't get any better jobs during the summer in his hicktown, so he was a cashier at a gas station at min wage. A little college educated couldn't get an internship (grades weren't hot) so he don't worry about his ego and earned that $6/hr... and got his grades in order and got a real (nicely compensated) engineering internship this summer. He could have bitched and complained about not getting a job he wanted but he needed that $ more than pride.

Exactly

min wage > no job
$6 > $0

[rwh11385]

Turf1600:

Yup. And there are labor shortages in some unpopular manual labor fields and it IS an issue for some businesses... at the same time people are bitching about there not being jobs. There are just aren't jobs people want to do... or they are already trained in, or someone will put them on a silver platter for...

"Hi, I'm Joe Hippie, I studied french and history and I want to make $60k for doing nothing."

just as bad as

"Hi, I'm Jessica, I dropped out of HS because I didn't like it, and can't find a job to support myself after my parents kicked me out... I could get a job at Walmart or a gas station, but I don't want people to look down on me, so I get food stamps on a debit card. I'm going out in what guys buy me and sleep around for supplemental income from sugar daddies..."

Some people just STFU and work. One of my engineering friends couldn't get any better jobs during the summer in his hicktown, so he was a cashier at a gas station at min wage. A little college educated couldn't get an internship (grades weren't hot) so he don't worry about his ego and earned that $6/hr... and got his grades in order and got a real (nicely compensated) engineering internship this summer. He could have bitched and complained about not getting a job he wanted but he needed that $ more than pride.

[DSP74]

Honestly I could get anyone worth a shit a 40k job right now. Good people are far and few between. People around here have lower class "I'm owed everything" attitudes.

I just looked it up - 40k in houston is the same as 77k in San Francisco. Crazy.

If there is a silver lining to the slowing economy is that you can weed out the shit. I've got a little more compassion for people most times, BUT when I'm at work it's all business.......And I don't put up with ANY shit in my department. You show up everyday, do your job, do something extra if asked, and do it with a good attitude or hit the damn door. Because afterall it's really ME who will look bad.

We've had 4 layoffs since spring. Not one person in my department got the axe. And we've even moved my people to other areas to keep them there.

My point in all this is that you are right it is hard to find good people. But with a slow market a small company like mine needs to take advantage of the fact that ALOT of people in the area need jobs. You don't need to keep shit workers anymore.

[Turf1600]

... and without too big of an ego for do shit jobs.

Honestly I could get anyone worth a shit a 40k job right now. Good people are far and few between. People around here have lower class "I'm owed everything" attitudes.

I just looked it up - 40k in houston is the same as 77k in San Francisco. Crazy.

[rwh11385]

There are plenty of jobs available here for anyone with half a brainstem.

... and without too big of an ego for do shit jobs.