Richards 0
Richards 0
QuoteQuoteIn my province (BC) Canada,
welfare wednesday last of every month,
is not called welfare any more, called:
"Employment and Income Assistance"
Alcoholics or drug addicts are not considered for montly disablitliy pension, nor are they considered unemployable. So, you have support amount monthly ---your shelter rate is paid direct to your landlord if you can possibly find shelter for the rate you receive.
You are free to party away your assistance the day you receive it........take cabs to the nearest liquor store, live it up for 1 day.
Then you line up at the food barns in the community for some stale bread everyday- go to soup kitchens at Salvation Army, go to the Sikh temple for meals daily..............pan handle, do B&E's, hit ladies over the head to steel their purses, home invasions to support your drug/alcohol addiction, plus you are free to blow your Universal Child Care Benefit if you have children........I consider this as enabling.
BC unfortunately is an extreme left province that views welfare as being owed. When I lived in BC they had the most riciculous system. It was so cozy that people in other provinces used to save a portion of each welfare check until they could afford a ticket to vancouver where they could immediately become part of the burden. They used to have a sign at the Main St. terminal telling new arrivals where the nearest welfare office was (I actually met people who pulled that bullshit). The NDP in an uncharacteristic move did something sensible and implemented a 3 month residency requirement for social assistance so as to mitigate the problem. This of course was met with huge protests by the extreme left (most of vancouver). The panhandling out there was ridiculous also until they started cracking down. It seems to have improved but there still is a huge culture of entitlement in vancouver unfortunately.My biggest handicap is that sometimes the hole in the front of my head operates a tad bit faster than the grey matter contained within.
DaVinci 0
Quote
Definitely a cultural issue.
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Elaborate.
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The entitlement mindset among certain groups of welfare recipients is a product of their environment.
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Which "certain groups"? Specify, please.
The ones that are on welfare and see it as a lifestyle. Pretty simple really unless YOU want to read something into it that is not there.
Andy9o8 2
Or, on the other hand, something that is. Remember, the context of my comment was the particular scrutiny of urban welfare recipients, as compared to non-urban recipients. If simple attitude was the issue, why bother to bring up "urban vs. non-urban" factors?
I wasn't born yesterday, you know.
I wasn't born yesterday, you know.
DaVinci 0
QuoteOr, on the other hand, something that is. Remember, the context of my comment was the particular scrutiny of urban welfare recipients, as compared to non-urban recipients. If simple attitude was the issue, why bother to bring up "urban vs. non-urban" factors?
URBAN is a place, not a race.
QuoteI wasn't born yesterday, you know.
Maybe that is part of the problem. I don't have the history of people holding such strong racial hatred in my mind. To me all races are equal. That does not mean that all peoples *actions* are equal.
I hold people to their actions, not their race. I was not raised any other way.
QuoteIs the welfare program and enabler program? (Do people receive welfare because they can not work or do people not work because they can receive welfare?)
Both. I think a lot of people get started in it to get a hand up. However, they soon discover that as soon as they start working, they'll have less money than if they weren't, because welfare paid more than their new job would.
This is a plan that a friend and I came up with when we were philosophically solving all the world's problems over beer (repost):
Open government stores (or, ideally, stores run by charities, or, as Billvon suggested, grocery stores with the ability to decline purchases that aren't staples) that sell staples at very cheap prices. Just the basics: healthy food, cheap clothes. Sell them at, or even slightly below cost. Instead of just sending people money, if they qualify for assistance, give them a difficult to forge photo ID debit card that only works at stores like this. Put a low amount of money (say $150 per family member) on the card each month. Set an amount of income that's considered "poverty" and use things like those cards and housing vouchers that corporations that run residential apartments must accept as regular currency to help (private landlords, such as people who rent out a room could be eligible to accept these, but they'd have to apply for permission. This is to both prevent slumlords and prevent someone from being required to accept vouchers if they're renting out a room or have a few small rental properties) Landlords are then reimbursed by the government for the face value of the voucher.
For every $100 people make over the set income, they lose $25 in benefits. That way, they're encouraged to work, because they'll still have more money than if they didn't.
Right now, people stay on welfare partially because they have more money than if they went to work. With a system like the above, you end up with a balance. The government helps out with essentials like food, clothing, and shelter only. That way, people have food to eat, clothes to wear, and a roof. Necessities only. Then, when they get a job, they end up with more money to spend than what the government was giving them, which is an incentive to find and keep a job.
This system bypasses the issues involved with minimum wage, because it doesn't cost employers more. It also bypasses the issues with the welfare system of people spending welfare dollars in ways they're not meant to, and encourages people to work because while benefits decrease, they decrease by a value significantly less than the increased income.
I'm sure there'd be some issues with a system like this, but it seems like there would be fewer issues than with our current system.
mnealtx 0
It would be a HUGE improvement over the current system, and end a lot of the abuses that are going on...
Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706
This the key problem. Too many on assistance feel it is an entitlement and that somehow being carried indefinitely is a constitutional right.