Adinnieken said:
sperrico87 said:
You don't have a right, and are not entitled to someone else's money. Private charity exists to help those who are in need, and for the most part people are generous and will help if they can. What is immoral is forcibly taking money from someone against their will and giving it to someone else.
Cell phones are not a right. There's just nothing else to say about that. No one, anywhere, should be given a free cell phone. That money should be used for roads or infrastructure. I work for a living, don't make much, and I have to pay for a cell phone on my own. Why should you get one for free? That offends me.
And you cannot argue that there are a lot of people on the welfare rolls who would lose money if they were to get a real job and start living in the real world. That is why so many people stay on welfare, because if they were to take a job, they would make less and therefore the welfare itself becomes a disincentive to working. That also offends me.
In Michigan, where I live, it used to be that the more children you had while on welfare, the more money you would receive every month. Thank God that law was overturned several years ago, and now there is a cap. There were literally lazy mothers who would deliberately have more kids just to get a bigger check every month, and then they would use the extra money on themselves instead of their children.
In Michigan, food stamps are called the "Bridge card", and until 2010 it was possible for college students to apply for one and receive hundreds of dollars a month for food. Guess what happened? People started taking advantage of it and used the bridge card to buy steak and shrimp, drink mixers, and expensive, high-on-the-hog things, and used their cash to buy alcohol. So it was overturned, because the abuse was so rampant.
Do you see where I'm going here? You've done nothing to convince me that welfare is a good thing. All you've done is proven that many people on welfare feel entitled and take advantage of others who work hard for a living and themselves are near-poor but somehow still manage to not be on welfare. I don't get any welfare, I work hard for a living, and I barely make ends meet. I'd rather live like I am now for the rest of my life than ever become a leech.
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And in Michigan where you live, you don't know facts.
The disincentive to work no longer exists since the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 (signed by Bill Clinton). Participants working and receiving assistance no longer immediately lose all benefits. So a single mother, having to pay for child care is no longer punished by getting a job. With this law, assistance was tied to the effort to find employment.
No law was ever over-turned. In fact, if a woman choses to have a dozen kids, each of those children will receive continued assistance until their 18th birthday, at which point depending on their circumstances, they will now have up to 48 months of assistance within their life time. Prior to 2011, the change (a tightening or restriction added) was that an adult could not receive assistance for greater than 60 months (enacted in 1996). The parents were the ones restricted, not children and the incentive is to get parents working.
Federal law dictate the EBT cards, no Michigan law, though Michigan's Food Assistance card is called the Bridge Card. The expansion of benefits to people who should not have been eligible was the result of Michigan hitting certain economic criteria which was never anticipated, namely Michigan's unemployment being significantly below the national average. As you mentioned college students became eligible under the expanded rules, but the loophole was more an unforeseen event rather than unregulated spending. Similar to the woman who still received assistance benefits despite having won a million dollars in the lottery. Assistance programs never took into account lottery winnings (even I thought they did), though food assistance is prohibited from being able to be used for lottery purchases. Clearly it was a matter of a loophole being missed, and those loopholes get closed to ensure assistance goes to those who are in need of it.
Your implication that individuals lived high-on-the-hog is just a wee bit overblown. Yes, they would have been able to purchase some food items they might otherwise not have been able to on their incomes, however any individual receiving food assistance is in the same position. The issue was not that under the expanded guidelines that ineligible individuals received benefits, but that whether or not college students, who were actively going to school and had their housing and food needs met should be considered eligible. The answer is an obvious no to any rational person.
I don't believe you appreciate the exact nature of the current situation that exists in the job market. People who have contributed to society, who likely paid tax money so you were able to get a student loan or grant for college, have now found themselves unemployed with no prospects for employment for no cause or fault of their own. Everything they had worked for, their entire life, was either drained away or completely lost. They've spent their careers paying into the system, and you want to fucking call them a leech? You're an ungrateful bastard.
The "Welfare State" doesn't exist, it hasn't existed since 1996 under the Welfare Reform Act. People have a limited number of months, mandated federally where they can receive certain benefits. Some of these people are the same people who paid into the system for decades. So don't sit there like some snot-nosed punk and tell those people that they are leeches. They didn't put themselves there. If you are lucky enough to never be unemployed then awesome, but if you're not I hope to God you don't feel entitled to unemployment benefits, health care, food assistance, or housing assistance, because with your smug attitude you don't deserve it.
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