I'd be interested in hearing an overall rationale. You don't need to expand on each. I read your initiatives as fairly typical ideas for welfare reform from a right perspective. They're focused on a few broad ideas: Get off your ass if you can, if you aren't eligible for welfare you don't get it damnit, don't even think about using the money for stuff I consider a luxury, and don't expect your support to last long. In short, they're focused on pulling back support and limiting duration.
Fine ideas. Plenty of arguments in favor of all of them. But I wonder why you believe those changes will alter the course of the poor? Is it because you belief welfare causes poverty?
See my highlight - ding ding ding we have a winner.
You get more of what you incentivize, and less of what you disincentivize, it is pure human nature.
I think you or Dav8or asked 'which is easier' when referring to working and getting an education or sucking off the work of your fellow citizens via crime or welfare in another post as if all 3 are morally, practically or financially equivalent - they are not, on all 3 fronts.
And since when is life supposed to be 'easy'?I work not because I like to, not because it is expected of me, but because I have to. I have a family to support, and a growing Yak to feed. I do it because I cannot survive without it - would I prefer to just lounge at the hangar and fly all day - sure would and as soon as I figure out how I am all over it, but nobody owes me jackshit - I made MY plane happen, I made MY career happen, I made MY family, I am responsible for me and mine.
I have been employed since I was 13 (started in a family restaurant), with a grand total of 6 months of unemployment, in 33 years. I don't take vacations like regular folks since there is always too much to do and never enough time because in addition to my job I have to help others do theirs as well because if I don't things don't get done. I have sacrificed time with friends and family that I will never make up, so that my wife and daughter would have a roof over their head and three squares a day - at times working 1,000 miles way from them just to remain employed.
I have a child in college, I pay full freight, qualifying for no assistance of any kind, nice that she picked a less expensive community college for her first couple years but soon it gets more expensive, who pays I do. Now, you and others think I should pay more, not for my child, but for somebody else's - not for my housing but for somebody else's. If after all that I don't have enough for the movies or a new car, tough shit - work harder.
I have had a business fail, been victimized by fraud and theft, lost a home and even been laid off a couple times but I always have found and continue to find a way because I am a man and that is what men fucking do.
When asked how much more I should pay there is no specific answer, only more - as if confiscating roughly half of my total income is not already enough.
Well fuck you (not you specifically, said for effect).
Yes, I believe with a less comfy safety net people would find a way to earn the lifestyle they desire, but with a comfy safety net there is no reason to.
Dirtiest of the dirty little secrets about welfare and the New Deal - unemployment NEVER recovered to pre-Great Depression/pre-New Deal levels. NEVER. Unemployment in 1929 was 3.2%, Under Roosevelt it never dipped below 14% and averaged closer to 20% - only WWII caused the eventual recovery.
Want to end poverty? End welfare, period. But I recognize that cannot happen overnight and that is why I made the list of suggestions I made. If it were up to me it would be sink or swim for anyone who is not demonstrably physically or mentally UNABLE to work. We're all in this boat together, but 47% don't have their oars in the water.
'Gimp