This is balderdash. I actually know someone on welfare. She can’t even buy hot food. If she gets toilet paper, she doesn’t have carfare. It is extreme, grueling poverty that nobody would choose.
She must not be one of “holder’s people” I overheard a very novice black caseworker tell a white woman that she was being “too honest” and encouraged her to work the system (the way generations of welfare recipients have done)
Can I dare ask the question whether she buys lottery tickets, uses drugs or alcohol?
> She can’t even buy hot food.
Then the money is probably being spent for “Administrative Costs”.
I remember reading somewhere that the welfare recipient only gets a small fraction of every dollar spent on the program.
A lot of welfare program spending never filters down to the poor. Social services bureaucraies take a large cut; the overhead percentage will vary greatly from place to place, but I imagine that on average it is very high. Then there is the gaming of the system, with large amounts being fraudulently siphoned off in improper payments to legally ineligble recipients. This leads to the always interesting question of how many $40,000 a year clerks, $80,000 a year investigators, and $120,000 a year supervisors you want to hire to chase people who are cheating SNAP for an extra $30 a month.
On top of that, you have to factor in the often massive incompetence and featherbedding of welfare services rendered in-kind rather than cash. I'm sure the situation varies greatly from place to place around the country, but here in DC, social services have notoriously been used as a jobs and political patronage program. I recall an expose of DC public housing years ago, back in Marion Barry days -- ancient history now -- that showed that it would have been significantly cheaper simply to shut the entire sytem dowm, and buy each public housing tenant a brand new townhome out in the suburbs. DC back then was probably an extreme case, and city administration has improved greatly since the Barry era (not that we're anywhere close to where we should be ...), but this is still a major factor. The system is short-stopping a lot of money that is intended for the poor.
A recent example from a different sector: DC as of 2010 was spending nearly $30,000 per year per student in DC Public Schools (DCPS), by far the highest figure in the country. That's almost Sidwell Friends tuition. While a handful of DC public schools have turned the corner and are noteworthy success stories, the DCPS system as a whole remains a disaster area, although one with a very large, very well paid staff and nearly as many non-teaching as teaching personnel. Welfare tends to work the same way.
If this thread is still alive tonight, I'll be glad to discuss solutions. Gotta get to work so I can pay my taxes. I have a whole lot of social workers and welfare administrators to support.
Why is she poor? Is physically disabled, severely retarded. etc.?
Of course peoplewl would choose it. It’s a universally observer fact that people on the margins are induced to choose to go on the dole rather than earn a living. You can’t imagine anyone choosing welfare probably because you are far enough above the line to make the proposition absurd. But try someone making only a little bit more than your friend, and the choice turns attractive.
She can’t buy hot food?
Who gives a damn.
Tell her to do what the rest of us do that have to pay for our own food.
Learn to cook and cook it herself.
Bag of beans and a bag of rice will go a long way.
Throw in a few cans of greens, some corn meal, a little flour, a few eggs, a dab of coking oil, and she’s set for the month.
I and a lot of other people have lived that way before at our own expense.
If we did it, she can too.
Tell her to buy cold food.
Tax paying producing stiffs do it all the time..
Tell your friend to move to Wisconsin. She could truly be a Welfare Queen here.
During my 15 years at the state unemployment office I helped veterans find work about half that time and taught job-seeking classes for welfare and food stamp recipients the other half. I could tell you stories that would curl your hair. And this was in a state with VERY LOW unemployment.