| kain_kusanagi said: We already have the people working at the agencies, all we need are cold hard rules with no way around them. It's all suposed to be a safety net, but people have used it as a comfy hammock that they just want to lie in forever. If there's a rule that says you have to work/volunteer 40 hours a week to be eligable for welfare and someone can't prove they did it then they don't get the help. This would enourage people to just get the closest thing to a full time job they can becuase even minimum wage would pay better than welfare with mandatory volunteer work. If your going to do 40 hours of work you might as well get paid for it and if you can't find a full time job and still need help you'll get that help so long as you volunteer the rest of the time you would be working. If there's a rule that says you can't do drugs and you test positive then they don't get help without entering a sobriety program. This would get a lot of drug abusers into real programs and people off the street. Thats just to examples of ways to make welfare a hand up rather than a hand out. It was never meant to be a way for people to get away with being lazy or addicted. It was supposed to be a way to get people on their feet so they can keep going long enough to pull themselves back up by their own bootstraps. The rules are too lax and the system has too many cracks. You don't need more people to fill in thoe cracks, you just have to make the rules water tight. |
Do you understand how welfare works in America, post-Clinton era? You apparently don't it seems. About the only ones that may "get the hammock" would end up beng single mothers. And if you want to crack down on that, answer what you want done with their children. The reason why you "get the hammock" is because of the children.
Anything you advocate about a "hand up" is going to require even more money going out, to hire staff to monitor people, make sure they don't cheat and so on. Gut the welfare system and you don't have the resources to be able to get an effective program. End of welfare means NO program, not one demanding more responsibility. Each level of insuring "no cheating" is even more bureaucratic overhead, inefficiencies, and lack of responsiveness. Do you want government bureaucrats determining who is actually doning things or not?
On a personal level, I have seen how bad the welfare system is, as far as being fairly useless and a pain for everyone, plus lacking humanity. Currently in NY, you have to account for about every single minute during you day, spending 40+ hours a week looking for work, and not factoring in commute time. They want a time sheet, and they want to see you were keeping busy looking.
