Quote Originally Posted by oskar View Post
If the only purpose of welfare is to keep people from not starving to death, I guess that makes sense. If your goal is to give them the best possible chance of getting a job, then making it easier to social network seems important. So I think the latter makes more economical sense, but I really have no idea and I am not emotionally invested in this issue.
As spoon pointed out, it's not just food assistance that is being abused. That is just an obvious one that somehow seems to just be ignored.

The larger problem is the "entitlement" that these programs cultivate in people. Among those who patronize these programs, there seems to be an overwhelming feeling of being "owed". 'You can afford that, and I can't, so that's not fair'. And the government agrees.

So if you can afford food, but not name brand non-essential food, then the government will provide. The government will provide you with a free cell phone if you can't afford one. The government will provide you with housing, medical care, college financing, and a slew of other benefits. It's offensive to those of us who work for those things and not only pay for them, we pay for others to have them as well.

We used to promise our citizens a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". That's gone now. People feel that they are owed a certain lifestyle. To deny them that insults their human dignity. And since so many of them aren't white, any restrictions on these programs are considered racist.

And now you're just taking this "lifestyle entitlement" a step further by saying "people need to have social time". And you think the government should subsidize it with dollars taken from people who GO TO FUCKING WORK??? Christ almighty what is going on in this world??

It bothers me that there are people out there claiming benefits because of an inability to work, yet that inability to work was their own doing. Like if you smoke 2 packs and eat 6,000 calories a day, there will come a time when you can't get out of bed anymore. When that happens, why is it the taxpayer's fault if you die there? Why are you suddenly owed free shit because you ate yourself into oblivion.

. I think if you want to get people to stop abusing welfare you should probably start by looking at income tax. If a 40h minimum wage job barely keeps you from starving while the government takes 50+% of your income all things considered, I don't blame anyone for gaming the system
More than half of America pays $0 income tax.

If you can't live on a minimum wage job, get a better one. 40 hours a week isn't that much time. If you work that much, sleep 8 hours a night, commute 30 minutes each way to work, and take 3 hours a day for personal grooming, errands, and meal breaks, that still leaves you 46 hours a week to work a second job, find a better first job, or learn new skills in order to find a better job.

The problem is that there is no incentive to do any of those things. Moving up in the world means getting less benefits, so the net gain to the individual is negligible. I can make $10/hour at an easy job, keep most of it, and have the government pay for all my shit. Or I can work my balls off at a harder job for $20/hour and spend most of it buying things the government used to provide me for free when I was lazier.

The more entitlements expand...the worse this will get.