Feeling embarrassed being British right now

[Rolacoy]

You work or don't eat. If you can not work we will feed you. We will do it locally so we know what is going on.

[KSagal]

Originally Posted by Rolacoy

You work or don't eat. If you can not work we will feed you. We will do it locally so we know what is going on.

Worked for two hundred years. Only the last few decades was it a federal issue. The farther the control gets from the applications, the worse the government does with that control. This makes sense to me. (but there should be a framework of oversight for those local officials who make the decisions)

[Civicsman]

You work or don't eat. If you can not work we will feed you. We will do it locally so we know what is going on.

The large percentage of federal programs are administered by state governments, or even county governments. If you don't already know what's going on in those programs, it's your own fault.

And.. dear Rolacoy, good luck when you try to put the jobless on WPA type programs, and your local contractors scream bloody murder that it's unfair competition. What will you do then?

All these "I have zero experience with this, but I'm dern tootin' sure that the solution is so easy that it only takes two sentences to describe" folks eventually run into reality.

[goldwing_midland_tx]

I thought "welfare" was supposed to help people get back on their feet not become a full time "job"

[Bob.Kerns]

Originally Posted by KSagal

Worked for two hundred years. Only the last few decades was it a federal issue. The farther the control gets from the applications, the worse the government does with that control. This makes sense to me. (but there should be a framework of oversight for those local officials who make the decisions)

I often say exactly the same thing -- except the "worked for two hundred years' part, which really a rosy-colored view of history. We got where we are today, precisely because the consensus was it WASN'T working.

But there IS a fair bit of local control. I don't remember how it works in MA, but here in CA, it's administered at the county level, under state laws, within a Federal framework. Federal funds, though -- and I think that's a mistake.

[Bob.Kerns]

Originally Posted by Civicsman

And.. dear Rolacoy, good luck when you try to put the jobless on WPA type programs, and your local contractors scream bloody murder that it's unfair competition. What will you do then?

Tell them to get stuffed. It's taxpayer dollars, and we, the taxpayers, are entitled to do the job ourselves if we so choose. We do not owe contractors a bailout, and we do not owe them corporate welfare.

On the other hand, if they can demonstrate they can do it more economically and better than the government can, we may have a deal.

[Bob.Kerns]

Originally Posted by KSagal

"But note carefully, since you seen to have missed it. She is not getting this money because she is a single parent."

This is simply not the case. If she lives with her boyfriend or the father of her child, she will get more money from the government than if she marries the same man. That is a fact, and a reality in many parts of our society.

That pays people to not get married, but rather to claim to be single parents.

Show me how that works, please. It might be true in MA these days, and if so, I'd agree, it should be fixed.

But what I've seen, requires listing ALL people living within the same household, and their incomes and resources. I've not seen any hint of an anti-marriage incentive. If there is, I'll join you in opposing it.

In other words, I'm challenging you on the facts here, not the principle.

Originally Posted by KSagal

Also note that there are no efforts placed on requiring the mother to provide the name of the father. If the government were to chase him down and make him pay (by among other things requiring it before she gets any more money 'for the children') the incentive would change. But some would say that is an invasion of her privacy to have to disclose the father of her children.

I would say that. This isn't a new issue -- did you ever read The Scarlet Letter?

And in a lot of cases, she may not KNOW who the father is. Yeah, I know....but she's not asking us our opinion, is she?

Reproduction is a basic human right, and not one for government control.

But there is framework in place, in at least the states I'm familiar with, for the mother to go after the father for money. And generally, she'll benefit from that -- at a minimum, we should not reduce her welfare on a dollar-for-dollar basis, or we remove all incentive for her to do so.

But there may BE no money. Worse, having the father involved may be a very bad thing. Deadly, even.

But here's the thing. The per-child money we're talking about is FOR THE CHILDREN. So basically, you're proposing punishing the children for the sins of the mother.

Originally Posted by KSagal

Secondly,

"Generational poverty existed long before our government came into being. In 235 years, we haven't solved it. Nor has capitalism ever solved it. "

Whereas the first part of this statement is accurate, the second is woefully incomplete. The United States has been very capitalistic, and has made more upwardly mobile classes of people more of a reality than any other enterprise on the planet. Capitalism, and a proper republic, where the power remains in the hands of the greater populous, is the best bet for salvation from this problem.

The second part made no attempt to be complete -- but your response is incomplete as well. If you take a close look at Adam Smith, the basic end-point of competition under capitalism is to drive profits and wages to an absolute minimum.

Which is good, as far as it goes -- we get efficient production of inexpensive goods, and by that metric, we are among the wealthiest people, individually, in the history of the planet.

But there's a dark side here, too. Several, actually, but let's consider money and politics. When the rich can get richer by manipulating the political process, things go awry.

What we have is not entirely capitalism. There's an unholy marriage of corporatism and stateism, directly undermining the free market.

And I made the point earlier that in many communities, people do NOT feel they have upwardly-mobile hopes. Fixing any flaws in welfare won't fix that. We need to create positive incentives, positive role models -- and real opportunities. I'm not sure government is the institution for the job, but someone needs to tackle it. Ideas welcome!

Originally Posted by KSagal

In the last several generations, where the United States has become far more socialistic, this upward mobility has diminished significantly. The war on poverty has been utterly lost. Of course, we have a class of poor people who live better than most others in any class on the planet, but they still feel themselves poor and in need of government handouts, because the government wants them to. (and pays them to be dependent)

So, capitalism gives tools to the industrious poor to become not poor more so than any other policy I am aware of. If you have a better one, please inform me of it. To the lazy of all classes, it offers little.

So what you'd like to see, then, is for all these poor people to become entrepreneurs. Nice -- microlending in the third world won Muhammad Yanus the Nobel Peace Prize. Find a way to replicate that here, and you should win a prize!

If the opportunities are there, then people will take them, because welfare isn't nearly as nice as affluence and prestige. The problem is --the opportunities have to BE there --and people have to SEE them, and be ABLE to take advantage of them.

Changing the downside incentives isn't going to solve any of that, beyond maybe getting them to look a bit harder. It's going to take something else. Broadly speaking, it's going to take education. A broader type of education than we teach in school.

I'd lay a lot of the blame for poverty on a failure of our education system. And I'd lay a whole lot of that blame on the massive consolidation and centralization of the educational systems in our cities. LAUSD is absolutely insane. If I were raising kids in Boston -- I'd move to, say, Lincoln or Sudbury, at least based on the Lincoln-Sudbury district of 30 years ago.

It was absolutely pathetic, living in Charlestown, and watching the locals griping about integration and busing, when I'd have given anything to have my kids bused out of Charlestown (if I had kids back then). Except local control.

Although on second thought, the type of person who lived in Charlestown 30 years ago, well, I'm not sure I'd have wanted to try to fix a school with them.

But at least, with local control, if you're doing it wrong, and your neighbor is doing it right, you tend to run out of excuses.

Of course, we have evidence within a few miles of here that running out of excuses doesn't fix schools, either. Nor does money.

Originally Posted by KSagal

Interestingly, no socialistic government has ever solved this problem either, but you seem less adverse to it. You would be hard put to show an example of a socialistic government that has produced more wealth for more people then American Capitalism has. Furthermore, every socialistic (or communistic) government I have ever heard of has also had a thriving black market to provide services that the government simply does not provide. This black market exists everywhere, but thrives far less in a capitalistic republic than elsewhere.

I seem less adverse to it? Where did you get that???? You just made it up. My only mention of socialism was to say it didn't solve it.

But actually, I wouldn't be hard pressed. Norway. 20% higher on a purchasing-power basis, in fact. AND they paid off their national debt in the late 1990's and have been accumulating surplus ever since!

Still, I wouldn't consider that a counter-example. There are many factors involved, of which the degree of socialism is just one of many. There's plenty of examples of socialism gone bad.

And if personal wealth is our metric, we should model ourselves after Qatar. Let's see, I'll be the Emir, and we just need massive supplies of something in desperate demand around the world.

[Bob.Kerns]

Oh, I meant to refer you to the food stamp application for the state of CA:

http://www.calfresh.ca.gov/entres/fo...h/DFA285A1.PDF

Every welfare application that I've looked at has been roughly similar in approach.

Why do I look at welfare applications? Simple: I like to fact-check before I post.

Note that there is NO anti-marriage incentive there, and no exception for listing your live-in boyfriend's income.

There is an awful lot of mythology around welfare. A lot of it is from the political parties, trying to get your vote by trumping things up -- basically, lying for votes. It's a very successful strategy. Odd, but people actually tend to believe what politicians tell them, if it aligns at all with their world view.

[Bob.Kerns]

I also meant to respond to this, since you directly asked:

Originally Posted by KSagal

I have often had to work below my station. Have you?

I believe that taking a bad job, just to pay the bills, is often a better incentive to finding a better job than just being paid to sit and collect unemployment. It is harder, but better. Of course, that is my personal values.

Let's see -- I've been a landscape laborer, a janitor, a bus boy, a machine operator for a bulk mailing company, a warehouseman (in the Teamsters Union), an electronics technician.

I've done artificial intelligence, UI toolkits, early tools for international text and language processing. But I've also done build engineering and QA. I've made my own products, and I've helped others make theirs a success.

I've even been a manager.

But I've never been a political party hack, unlike my namesake in Lancaster County, PA.

So no, I guess I've never worked beneath my station.

[Bob.Kerns]

Originally Posted by Bob.Kerns

Changing the downside incentives isn't going to solve any of that, beyond maybe getting them to look a bit harder. It's going to take something else. Broadly speaking, it's going to take education. A broader type of education than we teach in school.

I'd lay a lot of the blame for poverty on a failure of our education system. And I'd lay a whole lot of that blame on the massive consolidation and centralization of the educational systems in our cities. LAUSD is absolutely insane. If I were raising kids in Boston -- I'd move to, say, Lincoln or Sudbury, at least based on the Lincoln-Sudbury district of 30 years ago.

I'd like to clarify this a bit. While I have a lot of criticism of schools and how they work, what I'm referring to here isn't just the building and the school board and who they hire.

I'm talking about the entire social institution -- all of the above, but also the whole social matrix around schools -- the expectations, the parental and community support, the connections between businesses and schools, and the opportunities for careers and other benefits that education opens up.

When a kid's view of his educational choices is to become a drug dealer or a professional athlete -- well, there aren't many professional athletes, and only a few make any real money at it.

But if a kid can learn to make things -- well, now THAT is doing something about the cycle of poverty. Whether it be artwork, music, buildings -- or robots, bridges, rockets, or software.

Things like Dean Kamen's FIRST program. Young Makers. Apprenticeships, internships, computer clubs... I claim that these do more good than you could possibly do by tweaking welfare incentives -- even if they were constructed the way you believed they are.

-------

BTW, here's the MA food stamp application. Note that while they do ask marital status -- they also ask for everyone who lives with you.

http://www.mass.gov/Eeohhs2/docs/dta/c_snapapp_eng.pdf

Note these sentences:

I understand that I must report to DTA any
changes in my household income, address, living arrangement, family size, employment or any other changes to my SNAP
household that may affect our eligibility.

Nonexempt household members will be notified of work requirements, have exemptions and penalties
for noncompliance explained and be referred to an employment activity, if appropriate.

And here's the MA general assistance application:

http://www.massresources.org/files/TABA-1.pdf

The WIC income criteria (including being based on household income) are identical to the foodstamp income criteria.

It doesn't seem to me like our opinions are all that different. Our FACTS, however...