You think all assistance programs should be ended, because you know someone is collecting "free money" that they don't deserve, in your opinion?
By that logic, major league sports need to be ended, too, because so many of the players are cheating with steroids - they're collecting money that they don't deserve, by use of fraud, no?
Well Actually I think that the Baseball exemption should be lifted because of the steroids issue alone and the government should not be footing the bill for new stadiums.
No Cheri, I do not think assistance programs should be stopped I think government run programs should be stopped. There is a difference and the source of the money is not what the issue is but it is how it is handled, how much real aid gets to people who need it and how much is the cost to provide the aid without leaving gaps in the system. The same money being wasted paying people in government to help people positions would be better and more efficiently spent if just given to organizations at the local level.
I also feel that the corruption and abuse will end if there is local control.
I've never even tried to collect anything other than unemployment, and not even that for more than a few weeks,
Good for you but unemployment is a different issue, a different program and you as an employee indirectly pay into it. I think that when you lose your job, there should be no signing up for it, the money should be returned to you. The same goes for Taxes, you created the wealth through your labor and should not be taxed on it.
but I can assure you: the government doesn't make it easy to collect money for not working.
No, I can not agree with this at all. I went through part of the process and watched a lot of people get into the system easily, they didn't have to work that hard or in most cases needed it. It seemed to me that there was a game to be played and the thought that some with situations where they 'can't' handle some life issue should be allowed to be deemed disabled cheapens the entire concept of helping people who need help.
The reason the government took over the assistance to the needy is because "the way it used to be" clearly didn't work. Those who hadn't any family, or religion, just fell through the cracks, (the way so many with mental disorders still do).
NO Cheri, the government created the programs not because enough wasn't being done but they wanted to meet some far fetched utopia goals that many in the government could work here because it 'worked' in the Soviet Union. Mind you that FDR had people who supported Stalin and Lenin and were over there watching these systems be formed at the same time millions were being staved to death to make a political statement. The meddling of our society by government have reaps negative rewards, always has. The idea that the government needs, has to or must take care of people creates more problems, more complacency and more laziness than it helps to eliminate.
You know back in the 1960's the government looked at the poor and poverty and said we need to do something about this. We took people who were hard working people, who were willing to work and gave them a means not to work, a reason not to work. This was the Great Society and it failed. If the government wanted to help, they would have gotten out of the way.
We now have the richest poor people in the world. Our poverty level is still higher than a lot of the world's nations standard of living.
So Dividing the issue up, there is a difference between mental health and every thing else to me. I strongly feel that our mental health programs and facilities went to the wayside because of the money needed to shore up the welfare programs. My state alone in my life time shut down most of the mental health facilities to help balance the welfare budget. Sorry I feel that feeding people should come second to maintaining a mental health system - the trade off is obvious by the fact that we didn't have mass starvation in the 40's and 50's when the mental health system was at the peak in this country. We always found ways to feed and cloth people, but we just haven't had the insight on how to help them with real mental issues - not the BS that is going on today because people are not taught how to handle life issues, but real help for real problems. It was always that the help for food and clothing was at the local levels and even today, you can find a lot of help at the local levels that the government can't/won't help.
The surprising thing is the ignorance of the past, many think that we were such a horrible country in the past and what we have today in the way of social programs are real solutions - they are not. Once we had community involvement, we had real disaster relief (and many forget the Katrina sized disasters of the past where the government had zero to do with rescue work, feeding and clothing displaced people and rebuilding their world - it all was done on local and state levels and worked!) and we didn't have the cost of running things like we do. We didn't have the isolation you speak of but we had pride not to accept hand out or aid but do it ourselves. Many didn't have family, didn't have religion to fall back on but they had their community.
We are a product of what FDR has started, we don't have the experiences of life before the alphabet programs and we never even knew what it was like to be paid in cash, or shop in our neighborhood stores or even know how the relief system worked back then. When people say that people fell through the cracks, it was much better than then it is now.
If you will concede that there are folks who cannot work, how would you deal with it?
I contend that there are some cases that people need assistance, and say that those cases should be helped but not at the level of involvement that we have today. But with that said, I know cases where no help is being provided even thought there is a slightly compelling case to do so.
One such case is a friend of ours who we have been helping out. She has gone through a horrible marriage and finally got a divorce. losing almost everything in the process. She has struggled to raise two kids, one is off to the war and the other is too young to even work. she has two medical problems and has to deal with constant pain from an auto accident. She has been refused any sort of disability, and has been just trying to keep up with her utilities and house payment. She enrolled in the system in the state but the state has played a lot of games with her and she and her daughter will be out on of their home in the next month and most likely will be living with us. She is one of two we have been helping because the system will not help them. We all have a mutual friend who's daughter now has a kid and will not get married. She lives at home, she is sitting there on welfare doing nothing but gets paid for anything she needs. Her parents took her off their insurance (is an extra $30 a month for her and the kid) so she can stay on Medicaid. She is now enrolled in College and even has transportation to and from school. Sorry Cheri, the system is broke and has been for a long long time, so scrapping and handling it back to the local control would be better for all than to have things like this and others I posted go on.
