Should we do away with lifetime welfare?

Question

There are people who literally spend their whole lives on welfare... I'm not suggesting there shouldn't be welfare for people who actually need it like victims of hurricane Katrina, but when someone doesn't work at all in their whole life, and get money for it... isn't that stupid?

Answer 1

Earth to tai. There is no longer a welfare system that runs longer than 5 years total for your entire life. SO for people living paycheck to paycheck. They've gotta really be down to even think about applying!!

Answer 2

Kinda like Ted Kennedy and George WMD Bush or for that matter people who hang-out in government jobs pretending to serve the public, in the case of congress they vote in their own raises annually making what ever pennies you are making pail in comparison! That's welfare, by the way welfare for the legal poor in this country does not exist, you get turn-away for benefits that are not even subsistence levels! I,ve been working poor for 38 years! never had welfare don't want it but can't find appropriate employment,over 5 of the past 10 years in Florida no income what do you think thats done to my life savings!

Answer 3

We already have, it's called the welfare reform act (of 1995 I believe)

you cannot receive benefits for more than 24 continuous months or a lifetime total of five years.

Answer 4

It is incredibly stupid and is creating yet another generation of welfare recipients.
Currently, we are spending more than $350 billion a year on 79 means-tested federal welfare programs. That's more than we spend on national defense. Theoretically, we could take that money and give $8,939 to every poor person in America, or $35,756 to a family of four.

Since 1965 we have spent $5 trillion on the War on Poverty, measured in 1992 constant dollars. Yet the poverty rate is higher today than it was the year the War on Poverty began.

The really scary part is how these dollars are spent:

Only 41 percent of all poverty families receive food stamps, and 28 percent of food-stamp families have incomes above the poverty level.

Only 23 percent of all poverty families live in public housing or receive housing subsidies, and yet almost half of the families receiving housing benefits are not poor.

Only 40 percent of all poverty families are covered by Medicaid; yet 40 percent of all Medicaid beneficiaries are not poor.

Amazingly, 41 percent of all poverty families receive no means-tested benefit of any kind from government; yet more than 50 percent of all families who receive at least one means-tested benefit are not poor.

And then we have the last interesting tidbit about welfare:

Probably the most sweeping welfare study in history was conducted in the 1970s by the federal government's Office of Economic Opportunity to examine the effect of welfare benefits on work effort. The study involved the provision of special welfare benefits to groups of recipients in Seattle and Denver from 1971 to 1978 and became known as the Seattle/Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME/DIME. The study was designed by advocates of expanding welfare who had hoped it would prove that generous welfare benefits did not adversely affect the degree of work by recipients.

What the study proved, overwhelmingly, was just the opposite. It found that every $1 of extra welfare given to low-income persons reduced labor and earnings by 80 percent. 36 Compared to similarly situated families not on welfare, families who were given the extra income changed their behavior substantially: 37

The number of hours of work dropped 9 percent for husbands, 20 percent for wives and an incredible 43 percent for young male adults.
The length of unemployment increased 27 percent for husbands, 42 percent for wives and 60 percent for single female household heads.
Despite the fact that this study was conducted 20 years ago it speaks volumes about the state of the welfare system in America still today. People abuse the system because they were raised to believe that they are entitled to a free ride.People are no longer taught to take personal responsibility for their choices- they are simply victims of circumstances- not realizing that as human beings born with free will- we have all the tools we need to shape our world into what we desire.

Answer 5

YES!!! Unfortunately, in this country there is the most screwed up sense of entiltlment. Everyone feels they deserve something and they don't have to work for it... Thanks a boat load liberals! Bottom line, the goverment should be in place to protect the country from invasion (which it has yet to do) and to govern the laws of our country. My tax money should not pay for my neighbor to buy his food. If my neighbor can't afford his food, he needs to find a way to take care of it, or he can come knock on my door and I will gladly share my meal with him. Too many people on welfare eat so much better than my family. We eat cheaply and when there isn't enough I go with out. I don't get to take my food stamp card to the grocery store and buy steak on the 1st of the month. I work at my job to pay for my food, car, house, property taxes, child's education, etc. I guess I was just raised differently than most.

Answer 6

Yes, cut off the children of the rich from their parents at age 18. No allowances, no inheritance, no more of this Preppy Republic.