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How to Shut Down the Welfare State (It's really easier than you think).
American Thinker ^ | 12/16/2011 | Richard B. Jones

Posted on 12/16/2011 7:45:27 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Welfare workers are constantly trying to figure out how to make their jobs effective, how to do something to actually combat poverty. Their jobs are very high-stress, so they often meet after work on Fridays, when happy hours encourage them to philosophize.

If only the clients had to look for work -- no, they're already under such a requirement. If the government built more public housing so the slumlords didn't grab every increase in benefits -- no, that's been tried. If food stamps and cash assistance were combined into one check -- no, that resulted in a class action suit, and threatened the criminal economy. There must be some way the welfare system can actually assist the poor.

Happily, there is an answer: shut it down. No, don't just suddenly chain the doors of the welfare office closed, as some workers suggest at the end of happy hour. Do a gradual shutdown that eliminates the system and its whole bureaucracy over a period of eighteen years -- a shutdown that salvages logistical resources and allows people to learn to take care of themselves at a rational pace.

First step: recognize that the entire concept of state and national public assistance is a mistake. Just like bilingual education, the War on Poverty is a beautiful theory that just doesn't work in reality. People are better off getting local assistance for verifiable emergencies, but to improve their general lifestyle, they are much better off if left to suffer the consequences of their behavior.

Just as children learn a target language more quickly on the playground with speakers of that language than they do in structured classes, people living in poverty learn to get away from it -- if they want -- much more quickly by suffering its disadvantages

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: welfare; welfarestate
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To: goseminoles

Lilly. My ass ain’t silly. Lol.


61 posted on 12/16/2011 9:37:23 AM PST by goseminoles
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To: goseminoles

Exactly. We had two secretaries in the office, one for the protectives services and one for welfare services. The welfare secretary had been there for many years but one day she flipped out. It finally dawned on her that her working paycheck was less than what the clients were getting for sitting on their backsides. She told them what they could do with her job and walked out.

That’s one of the reasons I no longer work for DHS.


62 posted on 12/16/2011 9:45:58 AM PST by bgill (The Obama administration is staging a coup. Wake up, America, before it's too late.)
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To: bgill

I really do hate my job and will sanction them in a minute. I’ve had anxiety attacks and am constantly in a bad mood. But, its a job. One positive is that it did make me go back to school for an MBA in Healthcare Management.


63 posted on 12/16/2011 9:52:46 AM PST by goseminoles
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To: Wolfie

Well, it would ve a good start, anyway.

AS for those other things, except maybe for farmers, they don’t need a transistion period. Especially foreign countries.


64 posted on 12/16/2011 10:00:09 AM PST by chesley (Eat what you want, and die like a man. Never trust anyone who hasn't been punched in the face)
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To: netmilsmom

most CHOOSE it via 3 bad choices:

1.drop out of school
2.get pregnant or get someone pregnant who you’re not married to
3.use drugs/get addicted

AND/OR all of the above.


65 posted on 12/16/2011 10:08:15 AM PST by WOBBLY BOB (Congress: Looting the future to bribe the present.)
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To: yldstrk
I agree with the sentiments of Ben Franklin.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

66 posted on 12/16/2011 10:13:27 AM PST by nitzy (A just law does not punish virtue nor reward vice.)
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To: yldstrk
And what say you to the $600 toilet seat sold by the contractor to the military?

Guess you'd rather they just junked the planes those seats were made for?

67 posted on 12/16/2011 10:15:26 AM PST by thulldud (Is it "alter or abolish" time yet?)
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To: goseminoles

Truth be told.


68 posted on 12/16/2011 10:24:24 AM PST by netmilsmom (Happiness is a choice)
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To: goseminoles

And you know what kills me, the people that tell us that we should be “compassionate”.

I did my time, I worked three jobs at once and sold plasma to make my electric bill. It was also the “hand dealt to me” in having a sister steal me blind right after my mom died. I had all the bills and she waltzed away with the cash I gave her to pay them.

We also dug out of dumpters and bought dirty eggs to survive when my dad had terminal cancer, my mom had congestive heart failure and I was in college. The money I made as a hotel maid didn’t go real far. I’ve seen a lot.

Now I give to the food banks and work there with my kids. I love separating brand new make-up to give to the poor that I just spent 10.00 a tube for. My “compassion” is wearing thin.

Stupid people have no clue and just take the “people are in danger of hunger” crap to heart. I’m tired of it.


69 posted on 12/16/2011 10:31:32 AM PST by netmilsmom (Happiness is a choice)
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To: Albion Wilde

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

—Benjamin Franklin”

Sorry, but that line is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It comes from Polonius’ advice to his son.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend.”


70 posted on 12/16/2011 10:44:25 AM PST by Wordkraft
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To: BenKenobi
Well, I was working three jobs at one point.

Let’s see. Will be one of my better years I guess, 10k from one job, 5k from another and 1k from the third.

Stop it, just stop it!

Who do you think you are, posting on the premier Conservative website your experiences and desire to take care of yourself, and stay off welfare?

Get your obviously deranged self over to the welfare office and apply, or better yet, get yourself about 3-4 girlfriends who can apply with you and "share" the welfare benefits with you. Those EBT cards can get you some amazing things!

Also, at least once every morning and evening, look in a mirror and say "Any failures in my life are NOT MY FAULT, they are the fault of My Mommy and Daddy, and the Government, and well.... just everybody! Including the cold hearted FReepers who will hate on me everyday!

This is your last warning! Freedom, self-determination, self-control, responsibility for self, etc., are NOT FOR YOU to aspire to. There are too many people who want to "help" you, and you must not disappoint them! You MUST be a needy, lazy, greedy, hand-out not hand-up kind of guy! Get with the program, NOW!

Oh, and by the way, once you have achieved your new status on the welfare state plantation, be sure and report what you're up to here on FR with regularity so that FReepers can hate on you. After all, haters gotta hate!

(BTW, while I was in the military, I once had to work 2 part-time jobs just to get the family through it -- viewed now as some of the best years of our married life [45 years in April], so I laud you for your determination and effort to support yourself in any [legal] manner necessary.)

71 posted on 12/16/2011 11:09:18 AM PST by Col Freeper (FR is a smorgasbord of Conservative thoughts and ideas - dig in and enjoy it to its fullest!)
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To: Wolfie

“Just to be clear, we’re only talking about welfare for poor people, right?”

####

The vast majority of the American “poor” choose to be that way via lifestyle choices.


72 posted on 12/16/2011 11:13:10 AM PST by EyeGuy (moral)
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To: EyeGuy

I agree, the people who choose to be rich and still suckle off the Governmnt teat are much wiser.


73 posted on 12/16/2011 11:17:37 AM PST by Wolfie
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To: yldstrk

I think you miss the point here. While there certainly are people who need TEMPORARY assistance, and a few who are totally dysfunctional and will need it forever, there are now multiple generations of losers sucking the life out of the rest of us whose mentality REALLY is “if I pump out one more kid, I’ll get upgraded from an apartment to a house”. (FROM FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE.)

And as an aside, there are the foster parent mills that this lifestyle has enabled, wherein people are pulling down $100K for providing a roof over the heads of five or six parentless, unwanted kids.


74 posted on 12/16/2011 11:20:38 AM PST by CanuckYank
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To: goseminoles
Im poor. And im a flipping “welfare” worker. Its a bitch being a conservative and doing what I do.

You should have picked a better school. ;)

Ok, I'm going straight to you-know-where for that one.

75 posted on 12/16/2011 11:21:26 AM PST by dfwgator
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To: yldstrk

Have you ever been poor?
Well, I have been dead broke three times in my life and each time rather than taking a single penny from the government, I took anything I could as a way of making money. From the bottom I rose up without sitting on my hands whining why I was poor and everyone else should support me.

I have absolutely no pity on the so-called “Poor.” They can get out and “bust their ass” just like I did in 1972, 1982 and 1986.

I now am living a very comfortable life by the sweat of my own brow...not that of the taxpayers.


76 posted on 12/16/2011 11:21:39 AM PST by DH (Once the tainted finger of government touches anything the rot begins)
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To: SeekAndFind

Freeze it! Totally. Don’t increase payouts nor income levels. Inflation will do the rest.


77 posted on 12/16/2011 11:24:57 AM PST by eccentric (a.k.a. baldwidow)
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To: Wolfie

What has that got to do with my objection to you accepting the liberal view that everyone on welfare is “poor”?

ALL welfare should be reigned in. Severely. Simultaneously. They are not mutually exclusive.


78 posted on 12/16/2011 11:26:46 AM PST by EyeGuy (moral)
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To: dfwgator

Low blow ... *ass* ;0) at least I didn’t go to FAMU.


79 posted on 12/16/2011 11:42:01 AM PST by goseminoles
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To: EyeGuy

I agree. I just wonder why the author doesn’t mention it.


80 posted on 12/16/2011 12:11:17 PM PST by Wolfie
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