Why are the poor in America treated to such obscene amenities?

Question

Free Housing, food stamps, medical services, rent/utilities assistance, DCFS, childcare, scholarships, WIC, legal services, etc...every conceivable need is met (and often exceeded) by a plethora of various government programs and agencies.

Right now poor people are actually encouraged to stay poor. If you are poor, you can go to college for free, not have to work, and make money having babies. Why would people try and overcome poverty when we have made it so comfortable; what incentive is there?!

Answer 1

Benjamin Franklin noted this about the poor:

"To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures is concurring with the Deity, ’tis Godlike, but if we provide encouragements for Laziness, and supports for Folly, may it not be found fighting against the order of God and Nature, which perhaps has appointed Want and Misery as the proper Punishments for, and Cautions against as well as necessary consequences of Idleness and Extravagancy.....support of the Poor should not be by maintaining them in Idleness, But by employing them in some kind of labour suited to their Abilities of body "

Franklin also warned about making the poor "too comfortable in their poverty and idleness", for they quickly grow accustomed to being taken care of. Why did no one in government read this when welfare was being proposed?

I remember back in the 1980s, the tv show 60-Minutes did an expose on welfare. It showed huge extended families where no one, in four generations, had held a job. One stridently defiant welfare momma looked at the cameras and boasted, "I ain't gonna take me no minimum wage-paying job. I has me my PRIDE." Can you imagine what Ben Franklin would have told this woman?

We forget that back in the 1700s, just having sugar in your tea was considered a luxury. In England, you were taxed by the number of windows you had, so poor people had to board them up and use candles. Nowadays, even poor people don't think twice about having an expensive mobile phone, cable tv, drinking a $3 cup of coffee at Starbucks, and eating in a restaurant. Of course, their children need those $150 shoes.

There is little incentive to try to succeed on your own. Luckily, the Newt Gingrich led Congress passed welfare reform under the Clinton administration, making it a lot harder to stay on welfare and forcing people to get a job. The Democrats warned that people would be dying in the streets like fish who had jumped out of the aquarium tank. Their dire warnings were completely without merit. Today, the welfare ranks are much smaller, and everyone is better off because of it.

Answer 2

Maybe you should check the facts. Most of your objections were resolved by the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 (read it) so you are more than a decade late with your rant. Free housing exist in emergency situation like a hurricane not in normal poverty. Most people getting food stamps are the working poor, that is they ave jobs, just not ones that pay very much. The largest welfare program is TANF, Temporary Assistance For Needy Families, which is as the name implies, temporary. Then there is unemployment insurance that runs for six months. So there is not a way to remain on assistance forever.

Answer 3

I think you are overstating the case.

Food stamps don't pay all that much. Rent assistance is just that, assistance. And only if you are low income and like living in an apt. in a crappy neighborhood. Welfare is not a lifelong benefit any longer.

The goal is to make sure people can survive if poor, but that it's a crappy existence that they don't want to stay there and will work to become better off.

Answer 4

It is because there is profit to be made by keeping them poor when you think about it. It also eliminates unnecessary competition, and promotes socialism. Somebodies is getting paid. The poor create government jobs to look after them, construction to build new housing for them, retailers know that people who get money for nothing spend it faster as they dont appreciate the value of earning a dollar. The solution is a hand up not a hand out, make them earn their check, disabled an exception, however even most disabled people can handle some sort of work load, like answering a phone, etc. many public service jobs, and the jobs that illegals hold could be done by those able bodied 3rd generation hard core welfare recipients

Answer 5

You make a case in some instances, but not nearly all. I'm
sure that most of these people living at or below poverty level
regardless to race. Would much rather be making their own way in this world. Some make it, and some just don't or won't
Any of these G'ovt programs are going to be abused by a certain portion of people. Regardless...........

Answer 6

I think being poor in America is largely a matter of choice. How else to explain the countless numbers of immigrants who have reached our shores with nothing and gone on to accomplish great things? People look at lower wage jobs as an insult, when in fact they are an opportunity and (hopefully) a motivational tool.

Answer 7

I think we all need to go live in someone else's shoes before we condemn them. You realize, I hope, that capitalism cannot function as a system unless there are poor people. There always has to be oppressed groups for the whole system to stay intact. Seems to me that we need to start looking into a more mixed economy, trading services and skills rather than selling them sometimes, growing our own food more often etc. etc. Finding alternatives to selling our time and labor for money only.
Have you ever been poor?
Have you ever been without enough to eat?

Answer 8

poor people are not "encouraged t stay poor" the system just isn't organized right, to help them get out of their rut.
When you are on a government program, once you get to a place where you might get on your feet, they cut you off leaving you without an income before you have a income from employment.
example:
unemployment ends when you start working for wages, not when you start recieving them. a person might go an entire month without a paycheck. many people can;t aford to do so.

many of our programs are stuctured the same way.

you should do more research on the subject you comment on.

Answer 9

Oh right. Those poor people are just living it up on food stamps and in those fancy houses and apartments. That's not reality. Nobody enjoys being poor living paycheck to paycheck.

Let me add, once those poor people graduate from "free college" (wasn't free for me and I grew up working class) or get a better paying job (with the job training they recieved) they're going to be making more money. That means they'll be paying taxes at the higher brackets.

So these net tax "takers" have now become net tax "givers"

Answer 10

LMAO

Yeah, poverty in America is comfortable.

38 million have trouble putting food on the table every day and don't eat 3 meals a day 7 days a week. That sure sounds comfortable to me!

I'm not a big proponent of runaway bureaucracy like we had under Carter, but your ignorance is appalling and not helpful in the least.